The vehicle shifted again, violently listing toward the cliff as the metal dented and bulged from repeated impacts. Mika barely heard the rush of debris pelting them from all angles over the pounding of her heart. She risked another drag across the van, inching toward the rear, when another impact slammed the vehicle.

  Something heavy and thick collided with her skull. A blinding pain pulsed through her temples, bulged her eyes. She gasped for breath as pain sizzled deep into her brain and everything snapped black.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DAPHNE

  “Have you had a chance to review the document marked as exhibit eight?” Don Lormack reclined in his chair like he hadn’t a care in the world.

  The witness swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me what it is for the record, please.”

  “This appears to be a bank statement.”

  “Who’s bank statement?” Lormack shifted almost imperceptibly, but Daphne caught it. The man had an amazing ability to appear calm and in control, even when an entire case hung on the answer to a single question.

  The witness kept his eyes trained on the binder and the exhibit in question. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know. Are you sure about that, Mr. Crane? How about you look again.”

  “He’s already answered—” Mr. Crane’s attorney began.

  “If you have a formal objection, make it. Otherwise, the witness is instructed to answer.” Lormack waited.

  Daphne held her breath.

  “It appears to be a bank account out of Grand Cayman.”

  “Have you ever opened a bank account in Grand Cayman, sir?”

  Mr. Crane cast a furtive glance at his attorney. “I don’t see how this is relevant.”

  “I’ll ask again. Have you ever opened a bank account in Grand Cayman?”

  “Objection, asked and answered.”

  Lormack leaned forward. “I’ve asked, but he hasn’t answered.”

  “Yes, he has.” Mr. Crane’s attorney sat a bit taller in his chair. “You might not like the answer, but he’s answered.”

  “Not to my satisfaction.”

  “That’s not for you to decide.”

  “We aren’t leaving here until he answers this question.”

  “Like I said, he’s already answered.”

  “Answer the question, Mr. Crane.” He waited again, staring the man down across the burnished oak.

  “Uh… um…” Mr. Crane began to mumble.

  His attorney interjected. “I’d like a moment to speak with my client.”

  “No. You’re not going to take a break and find a way to weasel out of this, Henry.”

  “Don, that’s not what I’m doing and you know it. He has a right to take a break. We’re taking a break.”

  “No, we’re not. You have a problem with it, get the judge on the phone. Otherwise, he’s answering the question.”

  Mr. Crane’s attorney sagged into his seat, visibly beaten. “Can you repeat it, please?”

  Lormack turned to the stenographer and waited. She scrolled the paper on her machine. “Mr. Lormack: Have you ever opened a bank account in Grand Cayman, sir?”

  Before the man answered, a ruckus rose up from outside. What sounded like a million dogs all began barking and whining and carrying on. Don cut a steely glance in Daphne’s direction.

  She jumped out of her chair and peeked through the blinds. “It’s the doggy daycare next door, Mr. Lormack. They’re all in the yard, running in circles and barking at the air.”

  “Well, somebody get on the phone and shut them up!” Lormack glowered at the junior associate only allowed in the deposition as long as he kept his mouth shut and his pen ready. The young man scurried out of the room like someone set his chair on fire.

  Lormack tugged on the lapels of his overpriced suit jacket. “As I was saying—”

  The dogs grew louder, barks turning to whines and growls and growing increasingly frantic. It wasn’t normal. Sure, there had been moments ever since the place opened last year when they’d had to call and ask for the dogs to be brought inside. But it was rare. And the animals never sounded like this. If Daphne didn’t know better, she would think they were being tortured.

  As she stared out the window, the skin on the back of her neck prickled. The blinds beneath her fingers quivered. At first, she blamed it on the stress, a tremble in her own hand brought on by being late and Lormack’s bad attitude. But when the pen rolled off the table and landed at her feet, she blinked in alarm.

  “You guys felt that, right?” The stenographer asked no one in particular, her eyes wide behind blue-framed glasses.

  Daphne stepped away from the window. Her breath hitched as what felt like a vibration rumbled beneath her feet. She glanced at the stenographer. They both felt it.

  Lormack seemed unfazed. He glared at the witness as if all the unforeseen disturbances were a creative attempt to stall. “You still have an unanswered question, Mr. Crane.”

  “Don, come on. You had to feel that,” the man’s lawyer interjected.

  “All I feel is the complete lack of understanding what under oath means.”

  A distant roar of what sounded like thunder echoed through the room and the entire building shook. It wasn’t supposed to rain, was it? Daphne glanced at the table. The water in the witness’s glass trembled.

  “Mr. Lormack, I don’t think—” Daphne began.

  He didn’t even look at her. “I don’t remember asking a paralegal for an opinion. If I remember correctly, there’s still a question on the table.”

  The lights flickered.

  Daphne took a step toward the door.

  “That’s it!” Opposing counsel grabbed his legal pad and reached beneath the desk for his briefcase. “This deposition is suspended.”

  “What?” Lormack practically roared in protest. “This is my deposition and I’ll be the one to decide when it’s suspended.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a damn earthquake going on, Don. Unless you think my client is the one shaking the entire office.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him at this point.”

  As soon as the last word left his lips, the giant conference table lurched across the floor. Unoccupied desk chairs scattered. Daphne gasped and reached for the wall, stumbling as the building began to shake in earnest.

  The cabinet, apparently unsecured to the far wall, danced across the floor, doors opening and closing as if on timers. Opposing counsel and his client leapt to their feet and staggered toward the exit. The attorney fell into a rolling chair as it careened in front of him. The client didn’t even turn around.

  Cracks began to form in the drywall, splintering like fingers of a dry creek bed suddenly brought to life. The stenographer screamed as the windows flanking the far side of the room shattered, sending bits of glass cascading to the floor.

  Daphne’s own voice failed her, throat swollen with panic.

  She stumbled backward, away from the glass littering the floor and the chairs and the desk. The conference table skidded across the room, propelling the stenographer backward in her chair and practically pinning her to the far wall.

  Daphne found her voice at last and screamed. “We have to get out of here!” Over the din of the noise—from the dogs to the building breaking apart to the sound of mass chaos outside—no one heard her. Her voice sounded hollow and small.

  Insignificant.

  Her boss cursed and finally stood, grabbing his laptop off the broken table as a ceiling tile crashed into the room. Wires dangled from the ceiling and the power flickered once, twice, before failing completely. With the blinds mostly closed, the room descended into twilight and Daphne tripped over a heap of binders on her way to the door.

  Something thick and solid collided with her shoulder and she screamed before ducking down, arms hugging her head in defense. She curled into a ball, crawling across the carpet in the direction of the door.

  Another piece of the ceiling collapsed, breaking apart into a cloud of debris as it hit the conference table. Daphne tucked her nose into her elbow to ward against the dust tickling her nostrils and scratching her throat. She ducked beneath the thick slab of dark-stained desk and scanned the dim room.

  Don stood ten feet away, attempting in vain to pluck his laptop and his briefcase off the floor. Every time the building shifted, he lost his balance and dropped one or the other. He bellowed out a curse as a chair careened across the open space and rammed into his backside.

  Daphne twisted to catch sight of opposing counsel or the witness. They were nowhere to be seen, the only evidence of their existence an open door leading to the hall. She thought about all the earthquake training she’d had as a kid growing up in California. The safest place inside a building was an interior hallway away from any windows.

  Her knees burned as she pushed herself across the carpet beneath the table. Outside, in the hall, a strobe light flickered, some useless emergency warning system telling her what she already knew: they were screwed.

  This wasn’t one of those little tremors they would all joke about the next day before the deposition resumed. This was a big one. How long had the building been shaking? A minute? More? It seemed like eternity.

  She inched beneath the table, scooting past abandoned exhibits and broken chunks of drywall toward the door. The sight of a binder almost made her laugh. How inconsequential the morning now seemed. How unimportant.

  A violent tremor rocked the building. Something collapsed on the floor to her right. An object rolled across the floor.

  A high heeled shoe.

  She swallowed, hard, and kept moving. Three feet to the door, then two, then one. Daphne slithered out of the room and into the hall. She peered around. Safe was relative, she supposed. There wasn’t any furniture to slam her up against a wall or glass to shatter, but the wall was cracked, wires dangled from the collapsed ceiling, and a haze of dust and particulates hung thick in the air like fog rolling in off the coast.

  She couldn’t stay there. The building felt like it was ripping apart. She pulled her blouse up over her nose to block the worst of the dust hanging in the air and turned left and right. Finally. The sign for the stairs. Maybe she could make it outside to stand in the middle of the street and pray to God the ground didn’t open up and swallow her whole. She staggered toward the door, slamming into the left wall before the building shifted and she tumbled into the right.

  It seemed like she made no progress, the quake shoving her back every time she took a step. A sob clogged the back of her throat, mixing with the dust. Maybe she could hunker down, crouch in the hall and survive.

  Visions of Mika and Clint finding her dead, crumpled in a heap where she’d given up, swam in her mind and she pushed herself off the wall. I can do this. Only ten more feet.

  The door loomed before her and she reached for the handle. It slipped from her sweat-soaked grasp and she tried again, this time grabbing tight. The handle turned and Daphne tripped over a chunk of wall as she half-fell into the stairwell. It was dark and dry and blissfully without drywall or ceiling tiles or furniture.

  She turned and braced herself against the door, pushing it closed with all her might. It slammed shut and for a moment, Daphne didn’t know what to do. Her heart slammed against her ribs and her jagged breaths echoed against the bare walls. Plunged into darkness, with nothing around her but a trembling mass of concrete and steel, she slid to the floor, wrapped her arms around herself, and prayed.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FEMA

  Cherise emerged from the designated shelter area in the center of FEMA Region 10 Headquarters and sucked in a deep breath. “I clocked about four minutes. Anyone else?”

  “Same.” Derek ran a hand over his bald head and blew a steady stream of air from puffed cheeks. “That’s magnitude nine, right?”

  “I think so.” As Regional Director, Cherise oversaw FEMA’s disaster response for four states: Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Their headquarters—a squat, concrete square of a building—was built to survive a megathrust quake and it appeared to have done so with flying colors. The rest of the Western half of the state wouldn’t be so lucky.

  The low-level lights powered by the backup generator cast the office in an eerie, artificial glow. “Let’s get back online as quickly as possible. If the quake was as bad as we fear, there’s catastrophic damage all along the coast. Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland will be hardest hit due to size, but many smaller towns were probably destroyed.”

  “Should I pull up the forecasts?” Kelly, a younger FEMA hire responsible for modeling spoke up from the back of the assembled group of employees.

  “Yes, let’s refresh everyone’s recollection on what we’re facing.” Cherise smiled out at the sea of people who would now spend every minute of the next few weeks together, working around the clock. “Everyone take a second, call or text home. Let them know you’re safe, but you’re here for the foreseeable future.”

  A brief complaint rumbled through the gathered employees and she held up a hand. “I know it’s never the best time for a disaster, but that’s why they pay us the big bucks, right?” Humor was necessary in times like these.

  “Is there overtime at least?”

  “Yes, and hazard, pay, too.” Cherise flashed a conciliatory smile. “After you talk to your families, let’s hit the phones. Run down your list of contacts, start figuring out where we stand. If we just survived what I think we did, there’s not much time.”

  Everyone dispersed and Cherise hurried to her desk. Apart from scattered pens and a broken picture frame, everything appeared in working order. If only the rest of the region could be so lucky. She picked up the phone and called the first office on her list: Washington state’s governor.

  Out of place smooth jazz played on the line as the receptionist pushed her through.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Governor, it’s a pleasure. This is Cherise McNeil, director of FEMA Region 10. Are you in a safe location?”

  “Heck if I know. The whole building shook so hard I lost a filling.”

  “Do you have access to a helicopter, sir?”

  “Well, yes, I assume so. Why?”

  Cherise cut to the chase. “The incoming tsunami, sir. Based on our prior estimates, you have less than thirty minutes until Olympia will flood.”

  A string of curses filtered across the phone line. “Are you sure?”

  “No. But it’s been forecast as probable. Do you remember last year’s briefing?”

  “Might as well have been a lifetime ago.” The governor’s voice grew muffled as he spoke to someone else in the room. “Okay. I’ve put in the request. What else can you tell me?”

  Cherise inhaled and began to recite the litany of facts she knew by heart. “At this point, the electrical grid has failed pretty much up and down the entire coast. All of Seattle and Portland are without power, most likely Tacoma as well.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  She ignored his comment and plowed ahead. “There is mass destruction throughout the region, collapsed buildings, shattered glass. Up to seventy-five percent of all buildings in the Cascadia Subduction Zone have most likely collapsed. Half of all highway bridges are impassable. Half of the police stations are destroyed, along with two-thirds of all area hospitals and a third of all fire stations.”

  The governor swore.

  “Landslides are most likely occurring throughout the region. We don’t have any actual data, but prior estimates were as high as 30,000 in the Seattle area alone. Fifteen percent of Seattle is built on what scientists term liquefiable land. Meaning that during a megathrust quake, the ground will start behaving not like a solid, but a liquid, and anything on top of it will collapse.”

  “What’s built on that fifteen percent, do you know?”

  Cherise swallowed. “Seventeen day care centers and homes housing over 34,000 people.”

  Someone else’s voice carried across the line and the governor responded from far away, “Give me one minute.” His voice returned, urgent and full of fear. “Chopper is ready. What else do I need to know?”

  There were a million more facts Cherise could relay. How the Pacific Northwest’s critical energy infrastructure ran through the subduction zone and was most likely broken beyond repair, triggering fires and pipe failures and dam breaches. How most grocery stores were either ruined or without power. How the refugees would soon overwhelm any area volunteer services. But there was only one thing worthy of the moment.

  “When the tsunami comes, you better be far out of the area if you want to survive.”

  “God help us. Thank you, Director.”

  The line went dead and Cherise closed her eyes for a moment before dialing the next number on her list.

  “Ma’am?”

  Cherise turned to find one of the lower-level employees she didn’t personally know standing in front of her, lips gaping like a fish out of water. “What is it?”

  “I just hung up with someone from Oregon Coastal Management.”

  “And?”

  The employee moved her lips but no sound came out.

  “Spit it out, hon, we don’t have all day.”

  “He said due to the nice weather this weekend, he estimates there are 80,000 people on the beaches, ma’am.” The young woman pushed her glasses up her nose. “Tourists, mostly. They won’t have a clue what’s coming or where to go.”

  Visions of beach goers running for their lives as a thirty-foot tidal wave crashed to the ground filled Cherise’s mind, but she shoved them away. Tourists weren’t the only ones about to die. “The inundation zone will probably encompass over a hundred thousand square miles and 453 miles of coastline. The beaches are the least of our worries.”

  The young woman staggered back a step and Cherise softened her tone. “It’s going be more terrible than any of us can imagine. So get back to work.”

  She checked her phone for the time as the employee scurried away. Ten minutes post-quake. The water must be sucking away from the coastline already. She turned to the room and spoke over the din. “Anyone have eyes out there?”