“No, you can’t sleep on the bed tonight,” Luke said softly. “There’s no room.”
“What?” Sophy said, her voice muffled by the pillow.
“Nothing. I was just informing Bruce that he’s sleeping on the floor tonight.”
“Mmm.”
Sophy went silent again.
Luke switched his attention to the doughnut sculpture, going over the message Deke had held up in the hologram.
Deke was one of the Agency’s most successful agents, a true professional. That meant that every word he had written on the lined yellow paper was important. So much to ponder.
But the handwritten warning was not the last thing he thought about before drifting off the sleep. Instead, he contemplated the concept of failed experiments. It was not an unfamiliar notion. After all, he came from a family of engineers. Failure analysis was embedded deep into the culture of Wells, Inc. But he had never considered using the technique to examine a relationship disaster. Until now.
There were, he thought, a lot of things he had not contemplated before meeting Sophy. He had a feeling that, going forward, his life would be divided into the pre-Sophy era and the post-Sophy era.
He did not want to think about a post-Sophy time.
Twenty-Eight
Meanwhile, in the underground safe room…
“We should have married fiveyears ago,” Deke said.
“It would not have worked out well for either of us.” Bea walked across the floor of the cave and sat down on a chair-sized boulder at the edge of the narrow, crystal clear underground river. “You were still blaming yourself for Irene’s death and you were still hooked on the adrenaline rush you got from your Agency assignments.”
The cave was a prepper’s dream home, she thought. The use-by dates on the MREs and canned goods were far into the future, so she and Deke assumed the previous owner was the one who had discovered the old safe room and stocked it. Theoretically, thanks to the food and the endless supply of fresh water, she and Deke could survive for months or even years, depending on how long it took them to go mad from the effects of living in a cave. Probably weeks, at most.
But they did not have weeks or months, let alone years. They had a couple of days, if that. The disaster, when it happened, would devastate the entire compound and bury the secrets hidden underit. Their safe room was also their prison. If Sophy and Luke Wells did not find them and free them, it would become their crypt.
“When I think of all the time we wasted—” Deke shook his head. “I was an idiot.”
“I believe I mentioned that a few times.”
He groaned. “You told me to get therapy. I should have listened.”
“I was wrong. If you had talked to a therapist you would have had to explain what really happened that day in Gilmartin’s house. You could not take that risk. Even if you had been in a position to talk to a professional, I’m not sure you would have been open to change.”
“So I talked to you instead.”
“I’ll keep your secrets,” she said.
“I know.”
“You needed time to accept that you were not responsible for what happened to Irene. She cheated on you. She had an affair with a very dangerous man who used her to get access to those files. When he had what he wanted, he killed her. She’s the one who made the poor decisions, not you.”
She did not add the rest out loud, but they both knew what she had left unsaid. Joel Gilmartin had been in his mansion on his private island, protected by state-of-the-art security and armed guards, when Deke had tracked him down. The two men had confronted each other in Gilmartin’s study. Deke had walked out alive. Gilmartin had died at his desk. Natural causes, according to the authorities. No one had seen Deke arrive and no one had seen him leave.
He’d had his revenge, she thought, but it had exacted a heavy psychic toll.
“I didn’t really come to terms with things until I realized thatLuke was going down a similar road,” Deke said. “That shook me. Gave me a different perspective.”
“He’ll either accept that he will make mistakes and learn to deal with those mistakes or he won’t,” Bea said. “And if he doesn’t learn, then he isn’t qualified to become the next CEO of Wells, Inc.”
Deke snorted. “That would be really bad news for the family, because we don’t have a backup. The Boss says we’re going to need a very special kind of talent to take the company into the future.”
“What kind of talent?”
