The Twin Test

“I’m not kidding, you two. I set your ground rules to keep you safe. Swimming without supervision isn’t okay—”

“But we’re good swim—”

“Don’t interrupt me, Ivy. I don’t care if you’re Olympic gold medalists. Things can happen. You could hit your head jumping and get knocked unconscious in the water. Or something even worse. And everyone here is a stranger—staff and guests. What if there was a creep hanging out here? Or a wild animal?”

There wasn’t even a lifeguard on duty, for crying out loud.

The images he’d seen of the South Asian earthquake-triggered tsunami that killed thousands—including families on vacation, lounging around pools—flicked through his mind. He’d been a sophomore in college at the time, and his friend had been on vacation in Indonesia. He’d died in the tsunami, along with his parents and sister.

The entire family. Gone. Unexpectedly.

The tragedy had hit Dax hard, eclipsing the other disasters ruining his life at the time, like his girlfriend dumping him and his parent’s divorce announcement.

He hated the unexpected.

Dax sucked in a deep breath, rubbed the base of his throat, then put his hands on his hips.

The tsunami was a memory. The past. The reason he’d decided to study quakes. To save people. To stop natural disasters from shaking and tearing lives apart like fissures in the crusty earth. It wasn’t something he talked about, especially not to the girls.

“We’re at a lodge, Dad. I think we’d need to go on a safari to see the wild animals.” Fern folded her arms and shifted her weight to one side. They’d been begging for him to take them on a safari, once they arrived in Kenya, but he didn’t have time for one yet. They weren’t here on vacation. He had work to do. People to answer to.

“Should I forward you the article I read about an elephant that kept breaking onto hotel grounds to drink from their pool? Besides, if gators and snakes can make it into toilets and pools in Florida, then I wouldn’t be surprised if something more dangerous slinked into a pool out here. And by dangerous, I mean more dangerous than the two of you.”

“Very funny.” Ivy grinned. “So, when’s Number Seven supposed to get here?”

“That’s Miss Melissa, to you. Don’t you dare call her Nanny Number Seven. She has no idea how many you’ve been through. Unless you told her.”

“Why would we do that?” Ivy pursed her lips as if to keep from smiling as she dried her hair.

There was that fleeting exchange between them again. Dax pinched the bridge of his nose, then raked his hair back.

Melissa had been with them only a week before he’d signed this contract with Erebus Oil. The contract had been an offer he couldn’t refuse. Due to his expertise and reputation as a seismologist, they were paying him more than he’d ever make in research...even more than he’d made on his last two jobs in the petroleum industry. And the living allowance Erebus offered as incentive was helping him afford Tabara Lodge. He’d told them upfront that he’d need a living situation amnenable to bringing his daughters along. That part of the deal had been nonnegotiable. His daughters and their nanny couldn’t live on-site in trailers, like the rest of Dax’s crew would be doing. He was lucky Melissa had agreed to come with them, and he’d gone over the arrangement with her multiple times. Of course, he had paid for her ticket from Texas, too.

Then he’d bribed the girls.

For every month the nanny stayed, he’d give them an allowance bonus. If their nanny quit, he’d dock their allowance. Reimbursement for his time and trouble. So far, so good.

“Miss Melissa should be here tonight. I was about to check for any flight delays when I returned from my meeting, but as luck would have it, I ended up looking for the two of you. You left the room unlocked, by the way. Strike two. Let’s go.”

“Oops.” Fern linked her arm in Ivy’s and the two vanished down the garden path toward their room. He heard them giggling to each other. Laughter was supposed to be a happy sound, not a worrisome one. He scrubbed his face and shook his head.

“It’s been less than forty-eight hours since you left home, Dax. Man up. You’ll survive,” he muttered. A little sleep wouldn’t hurt. His exhaustion and preoccupation with work gave the twins the advantage. How was it the girls seemed immune to jet lag? He needed a nap but didn’t dare take one. Unless, perhaps, he kept one eye open.

More laughter rang out as he started down the path after them, only this time it didn’t sound like the twins, and it was coming from—

He looked across the pool and beyond an arched stone arbor that led to an outdoor, canopy-covered seating area for the lodge’s restaurant. A woman with wildly curly auburn hair and an equally radiant smile walked past the tables and mass of fig trees that divided the dining and pool areas, making odd gestures with her arms as she spoke. There. He was right to warn the kids that everyone here was a stranger and some were a bit off in the knocker.

A brood of six blond-haired kids emerged from behind the curve of the lodge’s wall, following her like she was the Pied Piper. Okay, so she wasn’t talking to herself, but still, one had to be just a tad nuts to have that many kids. He could barely handle two.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and returned to the bungalow. Reassured by the sound of the twins’ voices in their room, he went straight for his laptop, hoping the lodge’s wifi wouldn’t fail him. It was yet another reason he’d booked this place. Most lodges only offered it in the lounge and restaurant.

The first few emails were from Ron Swale, the chief engineer he’d met with earlier at the survey site. The not-so-subtle yet diplomatic reminder that any seismic data Dax and his team collected was for the purpose of analyzing and mapping the possibility of oil pockets in a field extension near Erebus’s current wells—not research—had set his blood to simmering. It had taken everything in him not to walk away, but he’d signed a contract and his crew was counting on him for their jobs. He needed the income, as well. The fact was, he’d cleared collecting a little seismic data on his own time with management when he’d signed on for this. He’d never been close to the Greater Rift Valley region before. Not studying the area while he was here would be like forcing a kid to walk through miles of toys and not be allowed to touch even one.

Ron’s condescension might have irked him, but it was guilt that really gnawed at Dax.

Giving up on researching earthquake prediction hadn’t been a choice, it had been a necessity. And now any research he did was in the name of serving the oil company.

He knew about the relatively recent uptick in tremor activity in the area, some too weak for anyone to feel, but environmental groups were beginning to make waves. The same anti-fracking environmental groups Sandy used to support. Most oil companies insisted post-fracking water injections had nothing to do with increases in seismic activity.

Dax wasn’t so sure. Yet, here he was. That made him an enabler, didn’t it? But he had debts to pay off and the girls to raise and working for a petroleum company paid well. Six-figures well, which was more than double what he’d been pulling in before from research grants.

Don’t overanalyze. It’s a steady job. Just do it. But “doing it” meant he required full-time help with the twins more than ever. He rubbed the back of his neck as he scrolled down the emails in his inbox, finally spotting one from Melissa. He needed her here yesterday. He opened the email, but the knots in his neck only tightened. You’ve got to be kidding me.

“Ivy! Fern! Come in here. Now.”

The carved wood door to their room swung open and the two appeared dressed in shorts and T-shirts with their wet hair loose and half-combed out. Their eyes flitted toward his laptop and back up to him, widening just enough to look innocent.

“What’s up?”

“Nanny Number Seven quit. What do you two know about this?”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to call her that,” Fern said.

“I’m a little upset here, so I’ll call her Seven if I want to, especially since I now have to take time I don’t have to search for Eight.” He was sounding just like the twins. He squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled, long and deep.

“He’s at a 5.0,” Ivy muttered. “We’ll live.”

“Are you kidding? His neck is red. That puts him at a 6.5,” Fern countered.

Dax ignored their habit of using the Richter scale to gauge how mad he was at their shenanigans.

“It says in her email that the giant spider in her purse was the last straw.”

“It was fake. Besides, that’s such an overused prank, she should have expected it. She’s just a wimp. So much for her acting all sergeant-like. All bark and no bite. And she’s lazy—anyone who uses that as an excuse to quit doesn’t really want to work,” Ivy said.

“And you two certainly are a job.” He had no doubt the spider had only been a warm-up for the twins. A test. It didn’t come close to their somewhat scary creative capacity.

“It was harmless, Dad. We pulled it out of our Halloween supplies. We were just having fun. Fun is a necessary part of raising well-rounded, healthy, psychologically balanced children,” Fern added.

Wow. Just wow.

He closed his laptop. Three years and he still had to pause and ask himself what Sandy would do. Only lately, he kept coming up blank. She didn’t even visit in his dreams anymore...not the way she had after she’d left him and kept the girls. They had been five at the time.

Looking back, he couldn’t blame her for leaving. She’d been right. He’d been too busy chasing after his obsession to find better ways of predicting earthquakes and saving lives. He’d spent more time in tents doing field research than he had at home, protecting his family.

But he had tried to make it up to her. He’d been as present as he could possibly be after her diagnosis...but it had been too late.

He checked his watch again. He was supposed to be at the site by midmorning tomorrow to start setting up equipment, laying out geophones and cables. But now he had no nanny and there was no way he was taking the girls to the site. Too dangerous and not allowed.