Page 30 of Hell and Halos

I don't know how long. The house makes house sounds. Somebody's boots on the stairs, then gone. Wind against the big windows. My own breathin', which is too loud, which has been too loud this whole time.

When I finally step back, my neck pops like a rifle shot.

Mercy's asleep. Curled under the hem of that gingham dress, one hand still fisted in the fabric, mouth open a little. She looks four. She looks like nobody ever hurt her.

Wyatt's gone from the doorway. I lean and see him through the closet door, crashed in Savannah's readin' chair, head back, shotgun across his lap, mouth open same as Mercy's.

Cash hasn't moved. Same shoulder against the jamb. Same crossed arms. Same eyes, dead level, waitin' on me the way he's been waitin' this whole time.

I look at the red light. I look at him.

"I don't have it," I say. "I don't fuckin' have it."

CHAPTER 8

Marcus's words echo in my head.

Take off your clothes. And do it slow.

I can't move. Not yet. My brain is still catching up to my body, still trying to process the fact that I'm sitting in a wingback chair thirty feet underground with a man who has been watching me my entire life and calling it love.

This is the worst possible situation I have ever been in.

And I have been in some bad ones.

The archive surrounds me on every side—Eleanor's life’s work stacked in flat files and archival boxes, labeled in her precise handwriting, organized by year, and subject, and God knows what other taxonomy only she understood.

Every negative she ever shot.

Every contact sheet.

The entire photographic record of the Ashby family, of this land, of me. Of Legion. It all lives down here in climate-controlled silence, and it is mine now.

Specifically, deliberately, legally mine. Eleanor made sure I was the only one who could access it, the only one who held the code.

Eleanor's biggest secret.

It is a safe room of sorts, but Eleanor didn't build it for survival. She built it for privacy. There are no emergency rations, no backup power supply, no secondary exit. It was never meant to keep a person alive during Armageddon.

It was meant to keep photographs in archival condition.

An open secret at this point, as far as it goes. Everyone in the family knows about it. Even Legion knows about it.

But the code—that's mine alone.

Last week Cash asked me about information that might've been kept down here. Information he needed. Hintin' at a business deal I don't understand. He was sure that the missin' piece of his puzzle was down here.

I was ready to give him the code. Told him he was welcome to look for himself. I never cared that the archive was secret. It holds no private information of mine. The closest thing to that would be the Book of Legion in the safe. But does that require a bunker under lock and key?

No. It's a photo album, for fuck's sake.

A very special photo album, to be sure. The record of one man's entire life through the eye and lens of a famous photographer.

But it contains no secrets. No illicit acts. Nothin' that deserves a bunker.

My suspicion is that the only reason that book was in the safe was because it was dear to my mother. It was somethin' she loved.

Cash didn't want to come down here and look. Said he couldn't. Said if he came down and saw all these photographs of me—every moment of my life cherished and captured—it would break him.