Tempest Unleashed (22 page)

Chapter 18

The house was empty when we got there. I rang the doorbell again and again, waiting for one of my brothers, or the new housekeeper/nanny my father had hired when I left, to answer. But no one came, and I grew increasingly freaked out with each second that passed.

“Is there another way in?” Kona demanded, already checking around the porch for a key.

“The spare is hidden on the back patio. Or at least it used to be.”

“Let’s go, then.”

The gates into our backyard were also locked, so we hopped the fence like my brothers and I used to do when we forgot to bring our keys to the beach. There was none of the lazy joy of those days in our movements now, though. I was as close to frantic as I’d been in a long time. It was the middle of the day in the heart of summer and my brothers weren’t at home. Nor were they on the beach, which was usually their favorite place.

I tried to convince myself that it was no big deal, that they were shopping or at a movie or maybe even on vacation. But I knew better. I hadn’t come all this way on a hunch. I knew, without a doubt, that something was very, very wrong.

Kona found the key underneath the rim of the outside bar, right where my dad had always kept it, and in seconds we were both inside. What I saw there wasn’t encouraging.

A carton of milk was sitting on the counter, open and spoiling, while a half-eaten bowl of what was once Cheerios rested on the kitchen table. The box was on its side, with half the contents spilled on the floor in front of the key holder—like my dad had knocked it over in a rush to get his keys and then hadn’t bothered to pick it up.

Which wasn’t like him.

“Dad!” I yelled, taking off running through the house. “Moku? Rio? Dad!”

There was no answer, but that didn’t stop me from shouting as I ran from room to room looking for someone or something that would tell me where they were. There was nothing, not even a note, although why would there be? It wasn’t like my dad just expected me to drop by …

“It’s okay, Tempest. We’ll find them, but you need to calm down.”

Kona slid his arms around me, pressed a soft kiss to my temple. And that’s when I realized I was crying. More like sobbing, really, and I couldn’t seem to stop. Fear was a wild tsunami inside of me, swamping everything else.

Kona held me until I could finally get myself under control. “First of all, do you think your dad still has some of your old clothes?” he asked when I started breathing again. “And maybe something for me to borrow? We can’t exactly go running around town like this.” He gestured to our damp bathing suits and sandy feet. I’d been so panicked I’d forgotten to wash off in the outside shower.

“Yeah, right. Clothes.” We were standing in the middle of my dad’s room anyway, so I crossed to his closet and pulled out a surfing T-shirt and a pair of shorts for Kona to wear. Thank God my dad liked his shorts baggy, because Kona was so tall that nothing else would have worked.

I left him to take a quick shower in my dad’s bathroom and went in search of my room, the only place in the house I hadn’t checked for my dad and brothers. What I found there nearly had me bursting into tears all over again.

Nothing had changed.

Not one thing, except my bed was made, and I remembered that I hadn’t bothered with it before heading out to the beach all those months ago. Other than that, the room was exactly as I had left it—right down to the painting I’d been working on still resting, half-finished, on the easel near the window, and my pre-calc homework sitting on my desk.

Maybe I should be glad my dad hadn’t messed with my stuff, but there was something intensely sad about the fact that nothing had been touched. Like it had just been waiting—
they
had just been waiting—for me to come home.

The thought had my heart breaking wide open.

Where are they?
I asked myself for the millionth time. I crossed to my dresser, pulled out a purple tank top and my favorite pair of jeans. After a quick shower using my old shampoo—which was still in the adjacent bathroom—I shimmied into them. It felt strange to be wearing regular clothes again after so long. But it was a good strange.

Kona tapped on my door as I was sliding my feet into a pair of sandals. “Where do you want to start looking?” he asked. He was wearing a pair of flip-flops, but his feet were so much bigger than my dad’s that his toes and heels extended over the front and back. I probably would have laughed if I wasn’t so panicked.

“I need to call my dad’s office, see if they know where he is.” I was already reaching for the phone.

I dialed my dad’s private number from memory, and his assistant answered right away. “How is he, Bobby? What did the tests show?”

My stomach plummeted. “It’s Tempest, Sylvia. What tests? What’s wrong? I came home and—” My voice broke.

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Moku had an accident on the beach yesterday. He’s been in a coma for the last twenty-four hours.”

I know she said more, but I couldn’t hear it over the roaring in my ears. My legs gave out and I hit the ground, hard.

Not my baby brother, not my baby brother, not my baby brother
, I repeated to myself over and over again as Kona drove my car—which had still been sitting on my side of the garage like it was waiting for me—to the hospital. We were going about twenty miles above the speed limit, and I fought the urge to scream at him to go faster. Especially since neither one of us was exactly carrying a license—and Kona didn’t even own one. The only reason he was driving was because I was too upset to think, let alone pay attention to the road.

Let him be okay
, I pleaded with whatever higher power was out there.
Please, let him be okay.

We pulled into the parking lot of Rady Children’s Hospital, and Kona sped straight to the front doors. “Go on in,” he told me grimly. “I’ll park and meet you up there.”

I didn’t even pause to say thank you, just headed for the front desk at a dead run. “Moku Maguire,” I told the two women sitting behind the information desk. “What room is he in?”

“How do you spell the name?” the one on the left asked. She had gray curls and wore hot-pink glasses and a teddy-bear shirt. I wanted to strangle her as she slowly pulled her keyboard closer and waited, fingers poised over the keys.

“M-O-K-U,” I said through gritted teeth. “M-A-G-U-I-R-E.”

She leisurely typed the name in as I imagined snatching the keyboard away and doing it for her. After what felt like forever, she glanced over the top of the screen, her expression ripe with sympathy. “He’s in the Critical Care Unit, honey. But only family is allowed.”

“I’m his sister. What floor is the CCU on?”

She told me and then I was running for the elevator, banging on the button over and over again, like that would somehow make it come faster. It was as if there were two of me: the calm, rational one and the one who was a step away from losing her mind. Guess which one was in control.

Kona caught up to me just as I stepped on the elevator. He tried to wrap his arm around my waist, but I shrugged him off. I felt like any wrong move, any drop of sympathy, and I was going to start screaming and never stop.

The elevator dinged on the appropriate floor, and we stepped off, only to be confronted by a bunch of signs pointing in other directions. I tried to read them, but the letters kept blurring in front of my eyes. “Where do we go?” I asked Kona as I frantically rubbed the tears away. “Which way do we go?”

“This way, baby.” He reached for my hand and this time I didn’t pull away. Instead, I let him guide me down the hallway to the nurse’s station, each step closer to the CCU an agony of fear and horror inside of me.
Let him be okay
, I prayed again.
Please, don’t take Moku from me. Not Moku.

We finally found the nurse’s station, a relatively quiet area walled behind glass. There was a line in front of me, and I waited impatiently, feeling the whole time like I was about to jump out of my skin.

Finally, finally, it was my turn. “Moku Maguire,” I said at the front desk.

The nurse looked me over. “Name, please.”

“Tempest Maguire.”

She typed it into the computer. “I’m sorry, but you’re not on the list of approved visitors.”

The words hit me like a blow, and I probably would have fallen then if Kona hadn’t been there to hold me up. “That’s because my dad wasn’t expecting me.” I stumbled over the words. “Is he here?” I demanded. “Is Bobby Maguire in there right now?”

Again, she checked the screen. “He is.”

“Please, can you get him? He doesn’t know I made it back to town. Please, tell him I’m here. I need to see my brother. I need to know—” My throat tightened up.

The woman nodded. “Let me see what I can do, sweetheart. Why don’t you go sit in the waiting room, and I’ll see about getting your dad out here.” She pointed to an open door about twenty feet away.

I didn’t want to go to the waiting room. I wanted to see Moku. But while her eyes were sympathetic, her demeanor was implacable, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get around her.

Kona and I walked slowly down the hall to the waiting room. I kept turning around, trying to catch a glimpse of my father coming through the brightly painted double doors that guarded the CCU.

We were hovering in the entrance to the waiting room when I saw him barreling through the doors and into the reception area near the front desk, a slightly crazed, completely disbelieving look on his face. “Tempest?” he called, looking both ways.

“I’m here, Daddy. I’m here.”

And then I was running straight into his arms and the biggest bear hug I’d ever had in my life.

Chapter 19

Hours later, I sat by Moku’s bedside, willing him to wake up. So far, it hadn’t worked.

Beside me was Rio, my now fourteen-year-old brother. Since only two of us were allowed in at a time, my dad was outside in the waiting room.

I think he believed that sending Rio and me in together would help break the ice between us, get us talking. Not so much. Oh, my brother kept stealing glances at me out of the corner of his eye, like he couldn’t believe I was really there, but he wasn’t saying a word. Even worse, he didn’t exactly look happy to see me.

In fact, he looked downright angry. Not just at me, but at the whole world. In the eight months that I’d been underwater, his appearance had undergone a radical change. The surfing tees and board shorts were MIA, replaced by black jeans and T-shirt, a chained belt, and spiked, black leather bracelets. His shaggy blond surfer’s cut had been shaved into a Mohawk he spiked up with a copious amount of gel, his flip-flops replaced by Doc Martens. I was also pretty sure he was wearing my favorite black eyeliner.

I had no idea what to say to him at this point, especially since my first few tries at starting a conversation had been shut down. Viciously. Still, I wanted to reach him.
Needed
to reach him. Now that my brothers were right in front of me, this inability to communicate with either of them was driving me completely insane.

“How are the waves?” I asked Rio when I caught him looking at me for about the thirtieth time.

He snorted. “Brutal. Or did you think Moku was in here because he wanted a vacation?”

“Rio …”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he deliberately turned his back, his obvious dismissal leaving me to deal with my recriminations and fears alone. There were a lot of them.

Every time I thought about what had happened to Moku, I felt horror ripple through me. When I had first asked, my father said my brother had been out at the beach early yesterday morning, catching some of the smaller waves. Rosa, the babysitter/housekeeper, had been with him, but in the end, that hadn’t mattered.

He’d gotten caught in the undertow, and judging by the bruises, the doctors thought he’d hit his head on a rock right before the drop-off. Whatever had happened, he’d ended up passing out and had been underwater for over seven minutes before Mark and Logan had finally managed to find him and fish him out.