He tried to make sense of this, to make it fit with this kind woman, this mother figure, whom he’d come to trust and admire so much. How—why—had she hidden this from him, even after everything that June told them?
“He owned a garage when I met him. He wasn’t a mechanic himself. But he had business instinct. He always seemed to sense what was in the wind. He’d bought a garage and a few months later the new inspection legislation passed. The money rolled in. Well, it seemed at the time like big money. We got a three-bedroom house on a half-acre lot. He paid cash for it. We both had cars.” She stared at the ceiling, smiling a small smile. “That—” She jabbed at the air. “That was the sweet spot. I didn’t know it then, though. David was always saying, ‘Onward and upward.’ As directions go, that sounded good to me. So I followed him. He had more good instincts. And then we were very wealthy, and I had the boys. It’s easy to live in denial about your world when you have children, Wes. Maybe you’ll see that firsthand someday.”
He hadn’t thought much about kids. He shrugged.
“But I’m giving myself a pass. The truth, Wes, is that my husband’s one of the reasons we’re hostage here. And I guess that makes me responsible, too.”
“You know that’s not true,” Wes said. “I mean, if you want to lay blame, lay it here.” He tapped his chest. Despite his breezy comment to Edie about saving it up for his therapist, what Wes couldn’t stop thinking about for the last several nights, as he tried to sleep, were all of those lives lost outside Gulf Zone. The crater in the ground. The massacre that happened simply because he had gotten greedy and insecure and come up with a bright idea, a shiny new moneymaking scheme. He hadn’t known, could never have guessed in a million years this outcome, but was that any excuse? He could no longer deny to himself the truth: he’d seen the gaps in the reports his people gave him on Perrone. He could read between the lines. His COO Sandy had made herself indispensable to Wes, in part, by shielding him—from underlings, from petty concerns, from annoying details, from inconvenient truths. If David Perrone were everything Marta and June seemed willing to agree he was, then Sandy knew, or knew enough. And she spared Wes this knowledge. Wes, so full of Virtuz, had gladly let her.
“I don’t think David was like he is now when we started dating,” Marta said. “In fact, I’m sure of it. Which makes me wonder. About me. Our marriage sure didn’t stop him from changing. For all I know it helped him along his way.”
“So you told June who you are,” Wes said.
Marta nodded.
“Why?” Wes thought about it. “You could have gone home to your sons. You could have warned your husband about what was happening out here.”
“Could I?” Marta said. “I’m not so sure.” She threw a pointed glance toward Ken, who was still studying the chess board, and lowered her voice. “He isn’t like Berto. He isn’t happy or relieved, I mean. He seems sad. Lost. Like he’s in mourning.”
“He’s always seemed like that.”
“Not like this. Not quite.”
Wes ran his thumb along the pages of The Portrait of a Lady, releasing another puff of that good old book scent.
“At any rate,” said Marta, “I made a quick decision. Maybe it was the wrong one, but I don’t think so.”
She put out her hand, which was closed around some small object, and opened her fingers to reveal a NicoClean refill canister.
“What is that, another Quicksilver canister?” Wes asked.
Marta shook her head. “I thought when I brought it out here it was fifteen grams of street Salt. David gave it to me along with the Quicksilver.”
Wes processed this oddity. “Why on earth would he do that?”
“You flatter me,” Marta said. She smiled thinly. “Or else you see me as too old to party. Not that I ever partied, really. But I did this stuff. For years. It’s an excellent high. I have to give June and her people credit. It’s like . . . a gondola ride. Steady and smooth. I quit about a month before boot camp started, and David never knew. Hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“But it’s not the Salt?”
“Oh, it’s the Salt,” Marta said. She unscrewed the cap on the vial, turned it over on its side, and tapped the contents into her left palm. A fine white powder. She rubbed it with the pad of her right forefinger, a longing, almost sensual touch. “Look inside the vial. At the very bottom.”
Wes did, angling it toward the light coming in from the window. “Is that . . . some kind of microchip?”
“I think so,” Marta said. “Well, I wouldn’t know, actually. I figure you’d know better than I do. But I think it’s a tracking device. I think he sent this with me to keep tabs on me. Or on you, through me.” She ran a thumb over the chip, thoughtfully. “That’s more likely, actually. He told me to stick close to you. Get to know you. I didn’t know why. And Wes, that’s not what I did. I mean, I got to know you, but not for him. I did it for me. I hope that’s clear.”
“Hey,” Wes said. “Don’t sweat it. I believe you.” He did. “And you just happened to find it,” he mused. “The chip.”
Marta cupped her hand and shook the powder back into the vial, then wiped her palm briskly on the leg of her microsuit. “Oh, I thought about blitzkrieging on it. By the second night in here? Oh, I thought hard. I didn’t. But it was close.”
“So he’s tracking us,” Wes said. “He already knows where we are.”
Marta nodded.
“I don’t know what to do with that.”
“I don’t either,” Marta said. “Well, I’ll say this—if our people made it back to Quarantine, David knows. Whatever stories they’ve told, whatever promises they’ve kept. He knows.”
“Unless they didn’t make it back.”
“Yes. Unless that.”
“You think they might be dead,” Wes said. A wave of sorrow passed through him. He hadn’t cared much for Lee. He’d loathed Jesse. Anastasia, Wendy—they were fine, he’d liked them fine, but he felt no special kinship with them. You couldn’t endure what this group had endured together, though, and not ache at such news. How hopeful they’d all been, gathering their meager belongings, heading out to the van with Andy.
“I think,” Marta said, “we have to consider that possibility.”
“Oh, man.” Wes pinched his tear ducts. “Man. Wow.”
“We can’t trust her,” Marta said. “I’m not saying I don’t sympathize with the situation here. It seems like there are some good people. June might even have their best interests at heart. But there’s some piece of the puzzle missing. Something June hasn’t told us. And she hasn’t started dosing us with the tea, either. Not even you. Or letting us roam free like she promised.”
“Even Berto’s had trouble explaining that one away,” Wes said. “It’s been days.”
“We have to assume the worst of them, and we have to look out for ourselves.”