“Hi, Spence. Sorry to call so late. How are you, honey?”
He went limp instantly. “Uh—hi, Mom.” Blushing, he groped for the lever of the La-Z-Boy and yanked it out of the recline position. The open medical journal lying on his chest, the one he’d been trying to concentrate on when he’d drifted off to sleep, and the sealed Ziploc bag of ice (now slush) draped across his aching right knee, toppled to the floor. “Is everything okay? How’s Dad?”
“We’re fine, dear. I was calling to check on you. I was watching the Weather Channel just now and wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Why?”
“The storm, dear. There are mudslides in Malibu. Bad ones. Entire houses sliding down cliffs, Spencer. Isn’t Malibu close to you?”
He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “No, Mom.” His folks still lived in the same small town in eastern Washington they’d called home for forty years, and his mother phoned every time a California wildfire, mudslide, or earthquake made the news. None of these had ever occurred within fifty miles of his home, and no matter how many times he’d explained it to her, his mother would never understand that California was 800 miles long and 250 miles wide. “Malibu is 150 miles from here.”
“Oh.” She sounded mildly disappointed, like her life would have been more interesting if her only child was imperiled by tons of choking mud. “Well. Thank goodness. Is it raining where you are?”
He peered out the window. Night had fallen, and hard rain was beating against the glass. Blasts of wind rattled the pane. He lived in a one-story house, and could hear the rain pounding on the roof.
Man. How long have I been out? He checked his watch: two hours.
“Yeah. Pretty hard. About as hard as I’ve ever seen it in San Diego.”
“Exactly! They’re saying this storm—something about El Ni?o—is the biggest one in years. Isn’t there a hill behind your house?”
“No, Mom.”
“When your father and I were out visiting last summer, I distinctly remember a hill.”
“Mom. That was my friend Greg and his wife Sarah’s house. We had brunch there one day.”
“Oh. Well. Maybe you should check on them.”
The hill behind Greg and Sarah’s house was a five-foot-high, gently sloping rise covered with dense foliage—hardly a mudslide waiting to happen. “They’re fine, Mom. So how are you and Dad?”
“Oh. Well. You know—”
His mother launched into a summary of recent happenings: the kidney stone she’d passed (“The pain, Spencer! Worse than childbirth!”); the bridge tournament she and Dad had won; the married town councilman caught up in a sex scandal with a girl half his age. They kept busy and were (mostly) healthy: She was a retired elementary school teacher who volunteered at the local library, his dad a retired cop who still worked their thirty-acre farm and rode a tractor every day. But they weren’t getting any younger. Dad needed a new knee, and had agreed (grumpily) to spend a month in San Diego this winter getting one installed by an orthopedic surgeon handpicked by Spencer.
She eventually handed the phone off to Dad, who repeated much of what Mom had told him, but from his dad’s (not-all-that-different) point of view. They refused to adopt any social media, including Facebook, so when they were done, he hung up with promises to call them tomorrow and let them know everything was all right.
He put his phone down and shifted his sore knee, and his thoughts turned back to Rita.
Spencer, I can’t hear him, I can’t hear him when you’re around.
He remembered her left ear, and the MRI, and about the way the auto-surgeon acted in the OR this morning: how it responded almost too well to that bleeding.
Spencer, I can’t hear him, I can’t hear him when you’re around …
His phone rang again. He looked at the caller ID.
“Hey, Raj. What’s up?”
“Spence.” Raj’s excitement spilled through the receiver. “Dude. I finished the analysis of the MRI.”
“Yeah?” Spence sat up straighter. “And?”
“You have got to see this.”
SEBASTIAN
Preparations.
Preparations, and plans.
Sebastian was again sitting in his car in Turner’s parking garage. A half-empty Thermos of coffee lay in the cup holder next to him. Although the corner of the garage he’d chosen was deserted, he’d covered himself, and his phone, with a thick blanket, away from prying eyes.
Preparations.
After he’d dropped Finney off, Sebastian had stopped at his shabby apartment in Pacific Beach to retrieve his few possessions, brew a pot of coffee, charge his phone, and change into an all-black outfit: jeans, boots, long-sleeve shirt, and formfitting waterproof windbreaker—along with a few extra items he thought he might need tonight, including the conduction gun.
And plans.