“I can try, but we got married in Mexico.”
“Yes, I know. Cancún.” Holly’s voice was leaden, distant.
“I’m so, so sorry. I—”
“I don’t know how anyone could have anticipated anything like this.”
“I’ll call the resort right now and see what I can come up with.”
“Take a shower first,” Holly said. “Get dressed and make yourself feel better.”
“Why are you being kind to me?” Jessica asked.
Holly sighed. “I’ve tried hating you, but it just doesn’t make any sense. The only way to get through this nightmare is together.”
Holly turned off her engine, got out of her car, and walked over to Jack’s massive workbench while the garage door rumbled down behind her. A gleaming array of tools hung neatly on a pegboard, carefully arranged and, to her knowledge, never used. The workers she hired for improvements and repairs brought their own toolboxes filled with implements that were chipped and dusty, spattered with paint and Spackle. She lifted a solid black crowbar off its hooks, thought for a moment, and then picked up a claw hammer, too.
Upstairs in Jack’s office, she opened the cabinet that concealed the safe where Jack kept his most important personal papers. Though it was just a fire safe, not a secure banking model, it was still sealed with a five-digit combination lock. She didn’t even bother trying to guess. Placing the chisel end of the crowbar next to the lock, she struck the back end of the crowbar with the hammer. Her fingers stung as the cold metal jumped out of her hands and clattered on the floor, but at least she had made a satisfying dent in the safe. She picked up the crowbar and tried again, swinging the hammer carefully, keeping her grip despite the intense vibrations. The high-pitched clangs hurt her ears.
Two dozen blows later, the lock had sprung, and she was able to open the door of the safe. Inside was a foot-tall stack of papers, envelopes, and manila folders, along with a few rubber-banded stacks of hundreds.
She dragged everything out onto the floor and went through it, quickly sorting deeds to the house and their summer home in Union Pier, and records for various insurance policies. There were stocks and bonds, birth certificates for the whole family, and, almost touchingly, Jack and Holly’s wedding license. But nothing to indicate Jack and Jessica had tied the knot in a clandestine ceremony in Mexico.
She took her wireless earbuds out of her jacket pocket, put them in, and dialed Jessica so she could talk hands-free.
“There’s nothing in the safe,” she said as soon as Jessica answered.
“I left a message with someone at the resort who said she’d try to track down the minister, but she didn’t sound especially eager. Is there anywhere else he might have put it?”
“His desk, but I don’t think he uses it much. It’s mostly full of old work stuff.”
Holly heard Jessica exhale before asking, “What, exactly, does Jon tell you about how things are going with the Revelate?”
A memory came to Holly so vividly that she could almost smell the wax in the flickering candle as Jack, his eyes alight, tried to convince her over a restaurant table that disrupting early detection of childhood cancers was what he’d been put on earth to do. That particular anniversary dinner had been woefully short on romance.
“Why do you ask?”
“Let me guess, he always says everything’s going just great,” Jessica continued.
Holly chuckled bitterly. The woman obviously knew her husband. “From your tone, I’m guessing it’s not.”
“I wanted to believe it was. Now I’m not sure.”
“And you have reason for your suspicion?”
“For one thing, our biggest client is upset because the machine doesn’t do what we promised, and the only reason they’re not breaking their contract is because Jon doubled down and told them he’s about to deliver more than they ever dreamed.”
“Will he?”
“That’s what I’m wondering.”
Had Jack indeed married Jessica for reasons that had nothing to do with romance? Did Jessica offer something incredibly special to Cancura—or did Jack think she could keep something very bad from happening to it? Either reason might explain why he’d taken such a drastic step.
“When I originally said it—when I told Jack we needed an easy way to diagnose leukemia, lymphoma, and other cancers earlier—it wasn’t a big idea, and it wasn’t anything ten thousand doctors before me hadn’t thought, too,” said Holly. “I was just wishing out loud, because the technology wasn’t there, and I had no idea if it ever would be. But to Jack, it was like a revelation. I was never sure whether he really thought he could pull it off, or he was simply selling the idea, to be honest. Either way, he had a way of making true believers out of everyone.”
“Every time I find a piece of data or a scrap of information that contradicts what I’ve been told is true, Jon concocts a hasty explanation or tells me there’s something so spectacular on the horizon that my concern seems suddenly moot.”
“Just like he does at . . . home.”
“Yes,” Jessica said, the word sounding like a sob. “What happens if it just never works?”
“A lot of people will have their careers and financial futures ruined, for starters. Which is why people aren’t too eager to ask questions.”
“I think it would be more important that people know the truth. We of all people know what it’s like to live in false hope.”
Unfolding her stiff limbs, Holly raised herself from the carpet and stood up. “I’m going to look in his desk.”
“Do you have a key?”
“Yes, but I don’t need it.”
Jack’s sock drawer was too far away. And besides, what would Annie Wilkes do?
Holly picked up the tools and kicked Jack’s desk chair out of the way. With one strong swing of the crowbar, she sent his elaborate computer setup crashing to the floor. Working the crowbar into the gap between the pencil
