Deflated, Valene softened her tone. “I would miss you, too. But the deal breaker from my point of view is Wyatt leaving Arkansas forever and being unable to tell his big, wonderful family about where he’s going and that he’ll never return. He’d forever be a missing person.”
Gage nodded in understanding. “Right. Thatwouldbe difficult.”
“I’ve never wanted him to make that choice. So instead of running away, eloping and spending our lives on the run looking over our shoulders every moment for a Royal Magistrate Guard to show up and shackle us, I expect after this prison escape fiasco, he’ll have a massive memory wipe. It will not only cover the prisoner escapee search, but also the entire year of our secret relationship. He won’t remember me, I’ll spend my life utterly alone and die a miserable old crone.”
Clearly ignoring the dramatic vision she expressed, Gage simply said, “Looked to me like he’d consider the alternative.”
“Doesn’t matter. How long before he’d miss his family and resent me for making him leave them? And worse, making them suffer the loss of never knowing what happened to him.”
“Maybe never. Maybe he’d just love you forever and never look back.”
Valene shook her head. “Still doesn’t matter. I don’t want to take that chance. I find it more and more difficult to ask him to give up everything when I don’t want to give up my family. At least I would still get to see you on occasion. And most of all, my family would know I was safe. Wyatt’s family would be in the dark forever. I believe that evenIwould resent me, given enough time.”
“You should still at least consider the glass half-full scenario, Valene.”
A loud beep interrupted the difficult conversation. Gage raced to his computer. He typed madly and made an inarticulate noise, like he’d discovered something interesting.
“What is it?” Valene asked, looking over his shoulder at the screen, which displayed charts and diagrams that made no sense to her.
“I ran a system check of the cryo-pods’ reboot history. Looks like one prisoner’s cryo-podwasopened much earlier than the others during the solar flares.”
“I’ll bet I can guess which one.”
Gage looked over his shoulder, a slight frown in place.
“Indigo Smith, right?”
He nodded. Turning to his keyboard, he tapped several keys, changing the screens into more graphs and pictures she didn’t understand.
“Then there was another cryo-tube accessed a few minutes later.”
“Someone else left early with him?”
“Not sure. It opened and closed. Then seventeen minutes after that a rear service hatch on the gulag ship was accessed, opened briefly and then closed.”
“I can’t believe no one knew about it until now.”
Gage typed and more screens appeared. “No one would have had reason to check these files if not for the solar flares opening up the cryo-pods and letting everyone escape. But you’re right, someone should have noted the hatch opening and closing. Unless—”
“Unless, what?”
“One of the guards was in on it.”
“Better prove that before you make any accusations.”
“Oh, I will. Don’t worry.”
Valene pondered a moment. “You’re saying that Indigo Smith already had an escape plan in place that no one would have known about until they got to the gulag, if the solar flares hadn’t released everyone.”
“Yes. That’s my theory.”
“How long was he gone before the other cryo-pods opened because of the solar flares?”
“Twenty-eight hours.”
Valene thought about what she’d been doing twenty-eight hours ago when Indigo Smith had made his secret getaway. She’d been crying her eyes out alone in her room because Wyatt asked her to marry him two weeks before and she’d had to say no, again. The event crushed her spirit completely even two weeks later. She was darn near inconsolable.
“I hate to think about how long he’s really been on the run and how far he’s been able to travel without anyone knowing he was gone.”
