Storm
“Asecret entrusted to one person can be stolen. A secret divided among five sisters becomes a promise.”
— James Sinclair
THE SECOND REQUIRES FIVE.
The words seemed to breathe on the stone.
I moved closer.
Five small circles had been carved beneath the message.
One beside the other.
Each contained a single letter.
S.
C.
I.
W.
H.
My heart stopped.
“Storm,” Mom whispered.
“Calle. Ivy. Willow. Hazel.”
Ward aimed his flashlight into the hidden passage.
“James built this for the five of you.”
“No,” Nathan said. “He changed it for them.”
Ward looked at him.
“What’s the difference?”
“This tunnel existed long before the girls were born. James didn’t build the gates. He discovered them.”
“And added the locking system?”
Nathan nodded.
“He must have.”
Mom traced the letters with trembling fingers.
“He never told me.”
“He couldn’t,” Nathan said.
Pain entered her eyes.
“I was his daughter-in-law.”
“You were also Daniel’s wife.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Nathan hesitated.
“James didn’t know who had betrayed him.”
Mom stepped away from him.
“You think he suspected Daniel?”
“No.”
“You just said—”
“I said he didn’t know who had betrayed him. That isn’t the same as believing it was Daniel.”
“Then why keep this from me?”
“Because anything he told you, you would have told your husband.”
“Of course I would have.”
“And James knew it.”
Mom’s face crumpled.
Nathan reached for her.
She moved away.
“Don’t.”
“Elanore—”
“My father and my husband argued a week before Daniel died. James knew something, didn’t he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve been keeping his secrets for almost three decades.”
“Not this one.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Nathan absorbed the accusation.
He didn’t become angry.
He simply looked tired.
“I would never lie to you about Daniel.”
Mom laughed bitterly.
“You stayed away for years and called it friendship. Forgive me if I’m uncertain what you consider a lie.”
The words struck him.
I saw it.
So did Mom.
Regret flickered across her face, but before she could speak, Ward raised one hand.
“Quiet.”
A faint electronic chirp came from beyond the hidden door.
Ward entered first.
Ben followed.
I started after them, but Nathan caught my shoulder.
“Stay with your mother.”
“Ward told me to stay between you and him.”
“And for once, you intend to listen?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
Mom almost smiled.
The expression vanished when we entered the chamber.
It wasn’t another natural cave.
Someone had built a control room inside the mountain.
Old electrical panels covered one wall. Most had rusted beyond use, but several small lights still glowed.
Five metal plates stood in a semicircle.
Each was the size of a human hand.
The same initials were etched beneath them.
S. C. I. W. H.
Mom stared at the plates.
“He changed it after Hazel was born.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“He couldn’t have known there would be five of you before then.”
Nathan moved toward the first plate.
Ward stopped him.
“Don’t touch it.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You jumped into a flooded cavern ten minutes ago.”
Nathan looked toward Mom.
“That was different.”
Ward’s mouth tightened.
“Everyone who falls in love with a Sinclair woman apparently loses the ability to recognize danger.”
Silence dropped over the chamber.
Ward froze.
I looked at him.
Ben suddenly became fascinated by the old control panels.
Mom’s eyebrows lifted.
Nathan almost smiled.
Ward cleared his throat.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It sounded like what you meant,” Mom said.
“It was a general observation.”
“Based on what evidence?” I asked.
“Can we concentrate on the five metal plates?”
I decided to let him escape.
For now.
Ben examined the control panel.
“These aren’t locks.”
“What are they?” Mom asked.
“Electrical contacts. All five have to be engaged simultaneously.”
“Five people,” I said.
“Possibly.”
Ward shone his light over the plates.
“James couldn’t have designed these specifically for his granddaughters. He had no way of knowing all five would survive him—or that they’d be together when the gate needed to open.”
“He knew us,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean he could predict the future.”
“No. But he taught all five of us to work together.”
Nathan looked at me.
“What did he teach you about Blackwater?”
“Nothing.”
“Think.”
“He wouldn’t even let us sail near it.”
“Not directly. What lessons did he repeat?”
Hundreds of memories passed through my mind.
Grandpa teaching us to tie knots.
Grandpa standing behind Calle while she repaired an engine.
Grandpa showing Ivy how to read cloud formations through a camera lens.
Grandpa teaching Willow to hear changes in a motor.
Grandpa holding Hazel above the water before teaching her to swim.
Then I remembered.
“He gave each of us a direction.”
Mom looked confused.
“A direction?”
“It was a game,” I said. “Whenever we sailed, he assigned each of us a position. I had north because I was the oldest. Calle had east. Ivy had south. Willow had west.”
“And Hazel?” Ben asked.
“Home.”
Nathan went still.
“What did he call the game?”
“Finding Blackwater.”
The temperature in the chamber seemed to drop.
Ward turned toward me.
“James used those exact words?”
“Yes. But Blackwater wasn’t a place. That was the point of the game. He’d choose a pretend destination, and we had to work together to get there.”
“What happened if one of you gave the wrong direction?”
“We started over.”
“And if one of you refused to play?”
“We all lost.”
Mom pressed a hand over her mouth.
“He trained you.”
The realization hurt more than it should have.
All those afternoons with Grandpa.
All those hours on the water.
We had thought he was playing with us.
But Grandpa had been preparing us for the day his secrets returned.
“Why didn’t he tell us the truth?” I whispered.
Nathan stood beside me.
“Because you were children.”
“We weren’t children when he died.”
“No. But by then, he may have believed the secret was safer buried.”
Ward walked toward the old control console.
“Someone disagreed.”
A green light blinked near the center of the panel.
Ben leaned closer.
“This system was activated before we arrived.”
“The key opened the first gate,” Mom said.
“No. This is separate.”
“What does it control?”
Ben wiped grime from a small glass screen.
Letters appeared beneath it.
SEQUENCE INCOMPLETE.
Below them were five empty boxes.
Ward studied the display.
“They tried to open the second gate.”
“They couldn’t,” I said. “They didn’t have all five of us.”
Nathan’s face changed.
“What if they didn’t know what ‘five’ meant until tonight?”
Mom looked toward the carved initials.
“They know now.”
A cold knot formed in my stomach.
We had left Calle, Ivy, Willow, and Hazel aboard Sea Whisper.
Together.
I pulled out my radio.
“Calle, answer me.”
Static.
“Calle?”
Nothing.
Ward took the radio from me.
“John, report.”
Only static answered.
Ben checked his.
“Signal can’t penetrate this much rock.”
“We need to get outside,” I said.
Ward blocked the doorway.
“We will. Carefully.”
“My sisters could be in danger.”
“They’re aboard Sea Whisper with Coast Guard protection.”
“The men who took Mom got her from San Francisco and brought her all the way to Hawaii without anyone knowing.”
Mom gripped Nathan’s arm.
“I came to Hawaii because I was worried about you girls. They didn’t have to go to San Francisco.”
“They knew about the girls.”
“What did they say?” he asked.
“They kept asking where James had hidden the other four.”
“The other four what?”
“I thought he meant keys. I told them I didn’t know.”
“And now?”
Mom looked at the five plates.
“I think they meant my daughters.”
A metallic clank sounded beyond the control room.
Ward signaled for silence.
Footsteps entered the outer chamber.
Slow.
Uneven.
One person.
Ben moved beside the doorway.
Nathan drew Mom behind the control console.
Ward pushed me behind him.
A shadow crossed the wall.
Ward lifted his weapon.
“Show me your hands.”
A man stumbled through the doorway.
Blood covered his shirt.
I recognized him as the guard Ward had taken down near the tunnel entrance.
His weapon was gone.
One hand pressed against his side.
The other held a phone.
“Don’t shoot.”
Ward searched him and pulled him into the chamber.
“Who do you work for?”
The man laughed weakly.
“You still think this is about one crew?”
“Who do you work for?”
“It doesn’t matter. We failed.”
“Who has the Sinclair sisters?”
“No one.”
Relief nearly weakened my knees.
Then he smiled.
“Yet.”
Nathan caught the man by the front of his shirt.
“What does that mean?”
“The key was supposed to give us access. The old woman said James left five parts, so they thought he separated the mechanism.”
Mom stiffened at being called an old woman.
Even bruised and exhausted, her eyes flashed with anger.
“I’m fifty-six, I am not an old woman.”
The guard blinked.
Nathan tightened his grip.
“And she looks younger than you. Answer the question.”
“The first gate opened,” the man said. “But the second system rejected the key.”
“Because it requires all five sisters,” Ward said.
“We know that now.”
“How?”
The man looked at the initials.
“There’s another inscription on the other side of the second gate.”
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know.”
Nathan shoved him against the wall.
“Try again.”
“Our leader read it. James Sinclair left instructions.”
“What instructions?”
“I only heard part of it over the radio.”
“Tell us.”
The man’s eyes found mine.
“When the five daughters of the storm stand together, Blackwater will surrender what it stole.”
No one spoke.
My skin prickled.
“They aren’t daughters,” I said. “We’re his granddaughters.”
The guard shrugged.
“That’s what it said.”
Mom’s hand closed around Nathan’s.
“The storm wasn’t you.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“Your grandfather didn’t mean your name.”
“What did he mean?”
Her face had gone pale again.
“The storm the night your father disappeared.”
The chamber trembled.
A red light appeared on the control panel.
Then another.
Ben stared at the screen.
“Something is drawing power.”
The five empty boxes disappeared.
A new message replaced them.
NORTH POSITION DETECTED.
My initial illuminated beneath the first metal plate.
S.
I stepped backward.
“I didn’t touch anything.”
Ward looked at the floor beneath my feet.
A faded compass had been carved into the stone.
I was standing on its northern point.
The system had recognized my position.
Somehow, after all these years, Grandpa’s game had begun again.
The control panel chimed.
A second message appeared.
FOUR POSITIONS REMAIN.
Then a timer started counting down.
00:59:59
00:59:58
00:59:57
Mom stared at the numbers.
“What happens when it reaches zero?”
The wounded guard laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because he knew.
Ward grabbed him.
“What happens?”
The man looked toward the sealed gate.
“Blackwater resets.”
“What does that mean?”
“Everything beneath this mountain floods.”
Ward shoved the radio into Ben’s hand.
“Get outside. Contact John and the Coast Guard. Tell them to bring Calle, Ivy, Willow, and Hazel here.”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
“No.”
Everyone turned toward me.
I stared at the timer.
Grandpa’s message.
The five positions.
The mountain waiting beneath us.
“This is what they want.”
Ward’s eyes narrowed.
“Explain.”
“They couldn’t open the second gate because they didn’t have all five sisters. Now they’ve started a countdown that forces us to bring the others here.”
Nathan looked at the wounded guard.
“Who activated it?”
The man’s smile widened.
“Our leader.”
“Where is he?”
“He left before you closed the first gate.”
Ward’s face hardened.
“Where did he go?”
The guard looked directly at me.
“To collect the other four.”