Gwendy’s Final Task

34

GWENDY FIRES OFF A brief note to Charlotte Morgan, thanking her and commending her for a job well done. There’s nothing else Charlotte can do for her at the moment, but that could change in a hurry.

Gwendy’s anger has diminished, but it’s been replaced by a soul-dragging heaviness that makes her head feel as if it weighs about a million pounds. It was just yesterday that she couldn’t sit still—did she really go for a run or did she dream that?—but now she can’t seem to make herself get up off the tiny sofa. She considers stretching out and taking a nap, but every time she closes her eyes, she sees Ryan’s lifeless body and the trail of bloody smear marks across the road, and all she hears in the dark silence of her mind is that awful high, barking laughter.

Finally, after giving herself a pep talk (at age sixty-four, Gwendy’s mental pep talks are still delivered in her mother’s voice), she closes her laptop and forces herself to get up and get moving. After depositing a handful of balled-up Kleenex in the zero-g wastebasket and closing the lid, she washes her face with cold water. Four more days, she reminds herself again, staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She’s not happy with what she sees. Her eyes are swollen from crying, and there’s a hint of barely contained hysteria in her gaze. NG, she thinks. Better do something about that before you show up at dinner. The last thing she needs to do is give Kathy and company a reason to start worrying about her again.

But those men weren’t men. They were from … somewhere else. Probably the same somewhere else the button box came from. Did Mr. Farris steal it to keep it safe? Gwendy doesn’t know—probably never will—but she thinks there’s a good chance he did.

It occurs to Gwendy there’s one thing she does know: she’s about to break bread with a man who had a hand in her husband’s death. How heavy that hand was she isn’t sure, but that doesn’t really matter. Does it? There’s a brief moment where she struggles to remember the man’s name—she thinks it might be Gary or maybe even Gregory—but then it comes back to her in a flash of certainty that is rare for her during these dark times. His name is Gareth Winston. He’s a billionaire, but he’ll never have enough money or power. He’ll always want more. And he knows the combination to the steel case marked CLASSIFIED MATERIAL. She’s sure of that, too.