Devoted(4)
If he has to go into hiding for the rest of his life with only a measly hundred million to sustain himself, he will have a lot of free time in which to plot the ruination of Purcell and little or no inclination to do anything else.
From the start, Lee Shacket has understood that, should something go very wrong, he will have to take the fall. Dorian Purcell will forever remain untouchable, an icon of the high-tech revolution. Nevertheless, now that Shacket is having to pay that price, he feels deceived, tricked, bamboozled.
Driving through the early night, he is racked by anger and by self-pity and anxiety, but also by what he believes to be grief, an emotion that is new to him. Ninety-two Refine employees are in the locked-down high-security facility near Springville, prevented from communicating with the outside world, in their final hours of life. He’s as pissed off at them as at Dorian. One of those geniuses—or several—has done something careless that sealed their fate and put him in this untenable position. Yet some are his friends, to the extent that a CEO can allow himself friends among those he must supervise, and their suffering, as it should, distresses him.
During the building of that complex, he’d taken pains to ensure that the module containing his office and those of his immediate support staff—five others—would go into airtight lockdown ninety seconds after all of the labs were hermetically sealed in a crisis. When the alarm sounded, he assured his staff that they were safe, that they should stay at their posts—and he quietly departed.
He had no choice but to lie to them. The alarm didn’t announce impending disaster, but an immediate one. They are as contaminated as the researchers in the labs. Shacket is likewise contaminated, but in mortal circumstances like these, he isn’t capable of lying to himself as easily as he lied to them.
Anyway, he’s always been clever about eluding the consequences of his mistakes. Maybe his luck will hold through one last escape.
He’ll soon be hunted, the quarry of legitimate authorities but also of Dorian’s ruthless cleanup crew. He hopes, in what he believes is a spirit of mercy and sorrow, that all employees at Springville will perish before any can bear witness against him.
5
When Rosa Leon went downstairs to make a sandwich for herself, Kipp was alone with Dorothy.
The lamplight was low, the shadows as smooth as still water, the stately pine beyond the window silvered with moonlight.
She said, “I have arranged with Rosa that you will be with her when I’ve gone. She’ll take good care of you.”
By way of acknowledgment, Kipp thumped his tail three times on the mattress. Three meant Yes, all right. One thump meant No or That feels wrong.
In truth, his destiny would take him elsewhere than with Rosa.
No need, however, to distress Dorothy.
“Short stuff, you have been a gift of no less value to me than my son, Jack, or dear sweet Arthur.”
Kipp raised his head from his mistress’s hip to lick her pale hand, with which she so often smoothed his coat and fed him treats.
“I wish together we might have found a way to solve the mystery of your origins.”
With a long sigh, Kipp expressed agreement.
“But in the end, our origins are all the same, born in the heart that shaped all that is.”
Kipp yearned to say so much to her while time remained.
Although his intelligence had somehow been enhanced to a human level, he lacked the vocal apparatus for speech. He could make many sounds, but none were words.
She had devised a clever method of communication, but it was in a ground-floor room, and she lacked the strength to go downstairs.
It didn’t matter. Everything he wanted to say to her had been said before. I love you. I will miss you terribly. I will never forget you.
“Dear child,” she said, “let me look into your eyes.”
He adjusted himself, laid his head upon her breast, and met her loving gaze.
“Your eyes and heart are as golden as your breed, dear Kipp.”
Her eyes were blue and clear and deep.
6
Lee Shacket parks his Dodge Demon in a far corner of the lot at the Best Western motel in the small town of Delta, Utah. Sitting in the car, he shaves off his immaculately trimmed beard, which he’s had since he was twenty-four. He washes his hands with a sanitizer and inserts nonprescription contact lenses to change his eyes from tungsten-gray to brown.
After pulling on a baseball cap to conceal most of his blond hair, he heads south on State Route 257, transitions to Route 21, then to Route 130. After 125 miles, he arrives in Cedar City, where he registers at the Holiday Inn, using a driver’s license and credit card in the name of Nathan Palmer.
In his room, before dyeing his hair, he needs to know if the situation in the Springville facility has made it to cable news. Standing in front of the television, the first thing he sees is video taken near the end of the workday, before nightfall. When he’d fled, the lab complex hadn’t been ablaze. The fire broke out minutes after his frantic departure. The ferocious flames tower sixty or seventy feet above the lab complex, from one end to the other.
The blaze must have been triggered to obliterate the truth of what happened in that place. Without his knowledge, fuel of some kind and an ignition system must have been incorporated into the structure to ensure that all proof of the nature of the work being done there would never be discovered in the aftermath of a crisis.