He looked at her sharply. Not because it was cruel. She didn't say it cruelly. because it was precise in a way he hadn't expected. Yeah, he said exactly that.
She nodded slowly. I understand that better than you'd think. You built an empire. I built an empire so I didn't have to think about what I wasn't building. She said it matterof factly, the way she said most true things without decoration, as if the truth was practical information rather than confession.
There are people around me constantly, assistants, executives, advisers, attorneys. I fly between cities. I attend events. I am on paper one of the least lonely people in the world. She looked at the far wall of the cellar.
Every single one of them needs something from me. Not from me from what I control. That's a specific kind of alone, Cade said. Yes, she glanced at him sideways. It is something shifted in the room.
Not dramatically. Not the way it happens in movies with convenient lighting and swelling music. just a small quiet shift in the space between two people who had been strangers 24 hours ago and were no longer exactly that. Cade looked at her. Being needed and being loved are different things.
Where did you learn that, Brin? He said it simply. I thought taking care of her was the same as he stopped. She told me once when she was six that I was the best dad, but sometimes she just wanted me to sit down. Stop doing just sit.
He half smiled. 6 years old. Octavia was quiet for a moment. She sounds like someone I would find extremely inconvenient, she said. In a way I would enjoy.
He laughed. It came out a little ragged around the edges, the way laughter does after a hard night, but it was real. She smiled too, not the almost smile from before. Something fuller, something she hadn't managed yet. It changed her face in a way he wasn't prepared for.
He looked away first. They stayed in the cellar for another hour. The storm was audible, even through the stone and earth, a constant pressure from outside, and occasionally the house above them would make a sound like something straining. Cade kept listening for anything that wasn't weather. He told Octavia what he'd done in the equipment, shed the bolted doors, the beacon, and she listened with her head slightly tilted, asking questions that were specific and practical rather than anxious.
She wanted to understand the situation, not be reassured about it. He respected that. Around 6:00 in the morning, the wind shift had not dropped, but changed direction in a way Cade recognized from years of reading Mountain Weather. The worst of the pressure system was moving east. The storm would continue, but the violence of it was peaking. "
We should get out of the cellar," he said. " Go upstairs. The main system should be holding heat. We'll have better visibility and better options up there." and Luther locked in the equipment shed.
He's not getting out without breaking the exterior door and that's solid steel in a foot and a half of snow. Cade stood careful with his shoulder. He's not going anywhere. The other man don't know. He went back through the passage.
I have no way to know if he went outside or if he's still in the house. He looked at her directly. We need to do a full sweep before we settle anywhere. She nodded and stood, reached out and picked up the headlamp from the floor and handed it back to him. Together, she said it wasn't a question.
They went through the house room by room, starting from the sublevel and working upward. Cade in front and Octavia three steps behind. She didn't crowd him, and she didn't lag. She moved through her own house like she was seeing it for the first time from the wrong side as a space with vulnerabilities rather than a space designed for comfort. On the second floor, in the small sitting room at the far end of the east corridor, they found evidence that the second man had been there.
A window latch was broken pride from outside, probably a long-handled tool, and the curtain had been disturbed. Bootprints on the hardwood that matched neither Cade nor Octavia's. He was gone. The window lock was damaged, but the window itself was closed, and the snow outside showed no fresh tracks, which meant he'd left before the storm got any worse. or he was waiting.
Cade closed the sitting room door and wedged a chair under the handle. We stay on the opposite side of the house, he said. Sitting room with the fireplace, one entrance, interior wall, fireplace for heat. Agreed. Octavia was looking at the broken window latch with an expression he couldn't fully read.
Something between Fury and something older and colder than Fury. They planned this. Yes, they waited for the storm. They knew the forecast had changed. Her voice was very controlled.
Someone with access to my communications changed the forecast alert I was receiving. I thought the storm was coming Friday. I sent my security staff home Thursday morning. Cade absorbed this. Someone inside your organization.
Someone inside my organization. She said it like she was picking up a piece of broken glass carefully. That narrows it to 11 people who have that level of access. She turned and walked back toward the main corridor. When this is over, I'm going to need to dismantle quite a few things.
That's for later, Cade said. I know she didn't slow down. I'm saying it now because if I don't say it somewhere, I'm going to start thinking about it exclusively, and I need to not do that right now. He followed her back to the sitting room. He rebuilt the fire from the coals while she found a wool throw from the closet and wrapped it around her shoulders without any apparent self-consciousness about doing so.