“Yes,” Luca said slowly, remembering. “I think so.”
Everly’s eyes were pierced on him, wide and searching. “When,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Not long before you showed up. A week or two, maybe.” Luca tried to think back to what he’d seen that day. It had been unusual, which was why he could still call the incident to mind. “I was working in here and I saw him walk into the lobby. Hardly anyone new walks in anymore. He walked inside and sat down on one of those benches—you know, the wooden ones just inside the door? Like he was waiting. A little while later, I saw Dr. Dubose enter the lobby. It looked like he was trying to talk to the man, but the man wasn’t having it. I can’t hear anything in here,” he gestured to the mute screens, “but it was easy to see the man was yelling. Waving his hands around, pacing back and forth.”
“Then what happened?” Everly asked.
Luca paused, trying to remember. “Dr. Dubose must have said something to placate him. It looked like the man stopped yelling, and he followed Dr. Dubose into the elevator.” Luca shook his head. “I don’t know what happened after that. I was curious, so I tried to find them again on the screens, but they must have gone somewhere I can’t see.”
“Did you see him leave later? The man?”
“No,” Luca said. “I worked here a few more hours and didn’t notice anything else strange. Then my shift ended. I didn’t see anything else.”
A single silver tear slid down Everly’s face. She made no move to wipe it away, so Luca leaned forward, placed his thumb under her eye, and gently caught the tear.
“Jacob Tertium,” he said softly, repeating the name Everly had given. “Someone you know?”
“My dad,” she said. “He died. Not long after that.”
“I’m sorry,” Luca said. He couldn’t remember his own parents—couldn’t remember anything from his life before the building—but he had people he cared about, too. He knew what it was like to have and to lose.
She shrugged. “It’s part of why I came here in the first place. I thought”—she swallowed thickly—“I thought I could figure it out. What happened to him. But this place is a vault with its secrets. There’s no prying them loose.”
Luca found himself leaning closer to her, until he could make out the freckles that danced across her nose and could count the individual strands of her eyelashes.
“If there’s anything to find, I can help you,” he told her. “Nothing can stay buried forever.”
She tilted her head down, causing a strand of auburn hair to fall into her face. He reached out a hand, brushing it back, and she placed her own hand up, touching the tips of her fingers to his.
“You’re a good man, Luca. I’m glad I found you in here.”
They were so close now. If either were to lift their head, even the slightest amount, their lips would glance across each other.
And it was this woman—this manifestation of all his best and worst dreams. Part of him didn’t think this could possibly be happening. Thought maybe it was all a dream. Maybe she wasn’t real at all. Maybe he wasn’t, either.
Head swimming in the moment, Luca found himself asking Everly, in a voice barely above a whisper, “Do you ever have dreams?”
“Dreams?” she said, her words wispy and light as a breeze. “Sure, don’t most people?”
“Different sorts of dreams,” he said, his lips hovering over hers. “Do you ever dream about . . . me?”
Before Everly could answer, Luca heard the door opening behind them, and he jumped away from Everly, face burning as he repositioned himself, facing the screens again. It was Caleb, who smiled at Everly, then walked over to stand behind Luca.
“How’s it going in here, then?”
Luca grunted over his shoulder, pretending to be engaged in something. Everly answered for him. “He’s a hard worker, this one.” Then in a mock whisper, she asked, “Is he always like that?”
Caleb chuckled. “Only when he has someone to impress.”
Luca scowled into the screens, but he could feel the back of his neck turning warm. Tearing his eyes away from the screens, Luca leaned back in his chair and stretched out his arms.
“Neck hurts,” he said to no one in particular, rolling his shoulders. Then he spun his chair around so that he was facing Caleb, his eyebrows scrunched together in concern. “How do you feel?”
Caleb offered a weary smile that Luca didn’t believe for a second. “I’m all right,” he responded softly, but Luca could see the deep shadows that lingered beneath his eyes, the hollowness to his cheeks. Luca frowned, and Caleb’s smile slipped slightly. “Thank you for taking over earlier.”
Luca waved him off. “Anytime. Just don’t tell Anker I said that—he’ll be on me every other day to do his stupid chores.” Luca stood up, offering Caleb his chair. Caleb tried to shake his head, but Luca walked toward the door. “I have to get out for a few, clear my head, look at something besides a million pixels streaming across my frontal cortex. You sit, I’ll be right back.”
Luca stood in the doorway long enough to watch Caleb sink into the chair, his eyes fluttering in something like relief. Luca’s jaw clenched, but he exited into the hallway, shutting the door to the surveillance room before he sagged against the wall.
Caleb was getting worse every day, and Luca didn’t know how much longer he could protect him. He didn’t know how much more he could do, how much longer his friend could fight.
Luca liked to think there was a solution to everything, but he didn’t know if this was something he’d be able to fix.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The woman who wasn’t her mother was staring right at her.
Well, not at her. At the camera that was propped up in the woman’s room, pointed down at her. And even then, Everly supposed that the woman probably wasn’t looking at the camera, but rather vacantly staring in some arbitrary direction that just happened to face where the camera was installed.
Nonetheless, her eerie blue eyes had snagged Everly’s attention, holding her own gaze tied to the small screen that held the woman who was, and wasn’t, and couldn’t be, couldn’t possibly be—
Her mother.
The woman was sitting alone on her bed in her small gray bedroom upstairs. Bruises were blooming on her face, but other than that she seemed okay. Despite how unnerved she was by the woman and her stare, Everly hoped nothing else had happened to her since yesterday—she hoped Jamie hadn’t returned. Hoped he wouldn’t for a long time to come.
Everly’s mind wandered back to a passage she’d previously found in one of Richard’s journals, one that had struck her as just ominous enough to be memorable. It was dated about twenty years ago—right around the same time her mother had died.
I made a mistake. I couldn’t see it before, couldn’t see how my actions—or in this case, my inaction—would lead to this. It must have been a variable I’ve noticed in the past, even in passing. The significance of age for them, out there. In the real world. But I never thought to study it, to understand it. And now the worst has happened, and I can’t fix it. I failed her. I failed my own daughter.
