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earthquake, I expect at least three big waves.”
    And next time, she would know about the whirlpool, and before it threatened her, she would back away.
    Garik always said she had no common sense when it came to danger.
    Maybe not. Not the first time. But she learned from her mistakes.
    Which was more than she could say about him.

 
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    Over an hour later, three waves had advanced and retreated in a horrible, magnificent, destructive rhythm. The second tsunami had been the largest, cresting halfway up the canyon, sucking away debris while the earth rocked beneath Elizabeth’s feet. She hated for it to be over, and yet it was, the earthquake reduced to the occasional aftershock, the waves subsiding as if weary … and anyway, her camera battery was almost dead. In a voice hoarse with excitement and fatigue, she said, “The sun is setting, and I believe the worst of nature’s onslaught is finished. When the team returns, and we’re sure it’s safe, we’ll return to the many sites we have studied in the Virtue Falls Canyon—it will take a GPS to locate them—and investigate the changes the earthquake and tsunami have wrought. For now, as the sun sets, I can feel the earth living and breathing beneath my feet, and I have to wonder—what will tomorrow bring? Elizabeth Banner, signing off from Virtue Falls Canyon.”
    Trembling with excitement and perhaps a small residue of fear, she put the camera away in her bag, and placed it on the ground. With the light failing and the worst of the disaster behind her, she should go into town.
    But her heart still raced, and the need to discover more, learn more, observe every detail of a splendid cataclysm was a drug in her veins.
    One last surveillance and she would go. One last examination of the powerful, pervasive evidence that everything she and her father had worked to prove was true.
    Walking to the edge of the canyon, right to the spot where the ground dropped away into its steep slope, she looked, just looked with her whole eyes and for her whole self. She hugged herself, thankful she had been in the right place at the right time, amazed at the savagery and glory of nature.
    Yet the pain in her hand now prodded at her. Her focus was narrowing, returning to the smaller details of life. She wanted to remain, to savor, yet she knew she should get back to town and find a doctor.
    About twenty feet down in the canyon, caught in a pile of debris, something bleached and white caught her eye.
    What was that … down there? A bone?
    She inched down the slope, peering at it. Holding on to tree trunks and grabbing at branches, she slid farther down the slope, the loose dirt falling away beneath her feet.
    A femur? A human femur? Her mind leaped in scientific anticipation. Had the tsunami uncovered an archeological treasure? How cool would that be, if not only had her father’s prediction of earth-shattering disaster come true, but also the cataclysm had unearthed some ancient encampment built by prehistoric man?
    Something slithered in the underbrush.
    She half-screamed, then clutched her chest as a garter snake rippled away. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard her father’s voice say, They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.
    She doubted that. She was pretty calm about most of the creatures that populated the great outdoors, but snakes … She shuddered.
    She should climb back up. She knew she should. Snakes weren’t the only creatures that had been displaced by the water. All of those creatures would be confused and hostile. The tree trunks and the wild clutter of branches that was her goal had come to rest at the highest watermark. The ground in the vicinity was unstable, ready to slide into the chasm. The earth’s slightest shudder could send her tumbling into the mud below. She’d slip down into the canyon until a rock or debris stopped her—or until she rolled off a newly exposed cliff face and fell all the way to the bottom.
    At