“I’m going to check my email,” she said. “I’ll be ready to leave for work around 7:30.”
Charlie had a mouthful of waffle, and nodded as she left the kitchen.
Wyrick thought about going out to the greenhouse to pick some of Merlin’s tomatoes first, then decided against it. She’d get them tonight when they came home. She’d been putting off checking online messages and email, but this morning it felt like the thing to do.
The office in the old mansion was grand—all cherrywood, overstuffed leather furniture and floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and every time she walked in, she half expected to see her old friend, Merlin, sitting behind the desk, sporting his long white hair and beard. He hadn’t needed a pointed hat and magic. He’d been wizard-smart without the trimmings.
It was sad to know someone that brilliant and vital was gone, and she was still struggling with the fact that he’d named her his heir. She didn’t need the money. She had too much of it already, and it still couldn’t buy her what she needed most—the anonymity of a personal life.
But the gift of that which he loved most, this estate in the heart of old Dallas, was a treasure she didn’t take lightly. She missed him. She missed his wit.
Except for Charlie, Merlin was the only other person she’d ever trusted, and cancer took him, just like Alzheimer’s had taken Charlie’s Annie. But that was life, and she obviously wasn’t through living hers, so she sat down in Merlin’s chair, booted up one of her personal computers and went to work.
She had messages from her stockbroker.
Messages regarding the stats on her gaming company. Messages about her newest patents.
Messages from every company she owned.
And alerts from websites connected to religious communities who were posting about her. A few referred to her as an angel from God. A larger number of them considered her a benign cancer upon humanity, who should never have been born.
But there were a couple with large followings who posted dire warnings about the wisdom of leaving her alive in the world, and having prayer meetings in secret places to pray for her death.
Those were the ones she kept an eye on. Getting Universal Theorem out of her life had come at a huge cost. It had unleashed the madness of people who used religion to pursue their own personal, and often selfish, agendas.
One group stood out among the rest as one of the most dangerous. The congregation was small, but the online presence was larger. They called themselves the Church of The Righteous, and had a website that was a hotbed of disinformation and religious rants, and currently, a lot of that had to do with her.
So far she’d had no personal contact with them, but she suspected she would. She wasn’t exactly afraid, but she was leery of bad men with personal power agendas. UT had taught her that.
She responded to her stockbroker’s questions, sent information and orders as needed to her holdings and then went to get ready for work.
The weather was changing along with the days as they moved into fall. And on days when the weather was overcast, it was also cold. She opted for black leather and long sleeves on her blouse, silver knee-high boots and red-and-silver eye shadow, with a slash of red on her lips. After dropping her phone into her purse, she slung the strap over her shoulder and headed downstairs to get the rest of her things.
Charlie was kicked back in the living room, flipping channels on the morning news shows, when she walked in. He looked up, then turned off the TV and stood.
Wyrick’s eyes narrowed as she quickly looked away.
Damn man. He made everything he wore look sexy, including the black Levi’s, the white shirt and the Western-cut black blazer he had on today. Even his boots were shining. She refused to watch when he settled that black Stetson on his head, and left the house ahead of him, knowing he would follow.
“I’m stopping to get bear claws on the way. Don’t forget. Stay off the beltway,” she said.
“I’m not likely to forget that, and I have to get gas. See you at the office,” Charlie said.
They both got in their cars. Wyrick used her remote to open the iron gates at the front of the estate, and Charlie used his to close them as they drove through. As always, Wyrick kept an eye out for people who didn’t belong, and Charlie kept an eye out for her, by following the tracker she’d put on her phone so he’d always know where she was.
They took backstreets toward Charlie’s office building, and parted ways when Wyrick pulled in to a strip mall and parked in front of a little bakery.
Even though Charlie had eaten waffles for breakfast, he was already thinking about coffee and crunching on sugar-glazed bear claws at the office. By the time he got to the station to refuel, Wyrick was back in her car and on her way to the office.
She beat him there because she needed to be first. She liked going into the quiet rooms, turning on lights and booting up computers. She liked making coffee and putting the pastries under the glass dome on the coffee bar. And she liked, most of all, sitting at her desk and hearing the stride of Charlie’s footsteps as he came up the hall toward the office, then waiting for his key in the door.
Before, he used to come striding in, bringing life and energy into the space. But that was before people started trying to kill her. Now they had bulletproof frosted glass in the door, a security camera in the hall outside and people had to wait to be buzzed in. Wyrick resented the loss of her freedom, but she’d done what it took to feel safe, so there was that.
By the time Charlie finally arrived, Wyrick had gone through the messages, had notes on his desk and was entering direct deposit payments into their office accounts.
“Morning,” he said as he passed her desk.
“Bear claws at the coffee bar. Messages on your desk,” she said without looking up.
Charlie nodded. Here, their relationship was back on a boss-to-employee basis. At home, they stood on equal ground, free to argue. Free to admit shit to each other that they never spoke aloud outside those walls.
He stopped at the coffee bar and poured himself a cup of coffee, snagged a bear claw on a napkin and went into his office. He left his hat on the rack, and the jacket below it, and went to work.
* * *
Rachel Dean woke up with a bad taste in her mouth and a pain in her neck. But when she rolled over and opened her eyes, she saw a single bulb burning from a fixture beside an air vent in a cement ceiling, the bare mattress she was lying on and the four walls of a concrete, windowless cell. She screamed. The horror of no echo told her how solid the walls had to be to deaden the sound.
She didn’t know where she was, or how she’d gotten here. The last thing she remembered was going into her bedroom to turn off the television, and then... Oh, my God! The pain in her neck! That hadn’t been an insect sting. She’d been drugged. In her own home!