Chapter 55
CHAPTER
IN THE MORNING, Circe texts. I let her know last night what’d happened.
Circe: How’s Sally? Do you need anything?
Me: Both of us are hanging in there
Circe: Will Sally live?
Me: I don’t know …
I text Lindy, tell her about the accident, that I won’t be at work today.
Lindy: So sorry, Penn. Don’t worry about work. Give that sweet pup a kiss from all of us at Magnolia. Tell her that we’ll spoil her rotten when she’s well enough to return
Paul shows up with coffee and a breakfast burrito.
We sit at the residents’ table, within eyesight of Sally, and he encourages me to eat.
I don’t want him to think that I don’t appreciate his efforts, so despite not being able to taste anything, I go through the motions.
The food sticks in my throat, but I manage to eat a quarter of the burrito and finish the coffee.
“I didn’t think Sally would make it through the night,” Paul admits. “It’s a good sign. We’re going to do another a CAT scan.”
Several residents approach Sally’s crate, carefully transport her to a gurney, and Paul heads off to see patients.
I wait, muscles bunched, until the residents return with Sally about fifteen minutes later, gently lower her onto the foam bed.
I stroke her back around the stitches, get another warm blanket when the first one cools. She manages to lick my hand.
Thirty minutes later, Paul returns and approaches us. Time stops. I want it to stop. I’d do anything not to hear the words.
“It seems the brain bleed has resolved,” Paul says with a warm smile.
“To be honest, I’m more than a little surprised.
Sally is one tough lady. We’ll wean her off the morphine, that’ll make her a lot less gorked out, put her on oral antibiotics and pain meds.
You can take her home late afternoon. She’ll need lots of rest and rehab, but we’re out of the woods. ”
I finally cry.
At five in the afternoon, Sally is finally ready, and I call an Uber, then go to pay her vet bill. The bookkeeper tells me Luc has covered it. “Can you stop his card, let me pay?”
“It’s already gone through,” she says.
“How much was it?”
“Here’s a copy of the bill.”
She hands me three sheets of paper and I flip to the last one. After what I’ve done, I can’t accept his generosity and will write him a check from my dwindling resources and mail it to the firehouse.
A resident joins me to help load Sally in the Uber.
I’m not sure how I’m going to get her up and down the apartment’s stairs for bathroom breaks.
I might need to find a motel with a ground-floor room.
After spending the last twenty-four hours inside, I squint when we exit the office.
The Uber driver pings me and pulls up … beside Luc’s gray pickup truck.
Luc leans on his driver’s side door. The weight of invisible eyes makes the back of my neck burn. Aletheia is watching from someone’s Ring cam, phone, or the office’s security camera. “What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Paul called me. I can give you a lift to your car.”
I left my Tesla at Safeway and don’t care if it gets towed.
I will never again drive that car. If I get back in it, Aletheia might take control and run someone over.
“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll take an Uber back to my apartment.
” Sally sways on her feet, then leans heavily against my leg. She’s still woozy from the pain meds.
Luc asks, “How are you going to get her up and down the stairs?”
“I’ll manage,” I say and help her toward the Uber.
“Stay at my place. Just for a few days. Frank would want Sally to use his elevator.”
“I can’t.”
“A Tesla’s hatchback doesn’t just open.”
He knows. I turn to face Luc. “This isn’t your problem anymore.”
“I want to understand, help if I can … and to explain my reaction yesterday.”
Was it only yesterday? It feels like a lifetime ago. I hesitate. I shouldn’t … but I’m scared, exhausted, and out of options. “You need to hear everything, then you can decide if you still want us there.”
“Same,” Luc says, his eyes somber. “Then you can decide if you even want to stay.”
Luc carefully picks Sally up, puts her on a fleece dog bed he’s set up in the back seat.
We ride to his place in silence. When I glance over, I notice he hasn’t shaved, looks tired, and wonder if he had a sleepless night, too.
Back at the firehouse, Luc carries Sally into the elevator while I support her head.
In the living room, we carefully lay her down on the orthopedic dog bed and Frank gingerly stretches beside her.
He licks her right leg where it was shaved in a small rectangle for the IV needle.
After Luc gets us two waters, we drink them in silence and watch Sally to make sure she’s okay.
When both dogs are fast asleep, I suggest we take a walk.
I can’t tell Luc about Aletheia inside—there are too many computers, televisions, and iPads.
She could listen through Alexa or even his Roomba vacuum cleaner.
It’s mind boggling, overwhelming, what’s at her fingertips.
I ask Luc to leave his phone and watch at the firehouse and do the same.
We walk down one street, up the next as I try to make sense of things, drag my thoughts together. “Can we sit?” I finally ask, motioning to a concrete bench in front of a boarded-up storefront.
“Sure.”
I tell him all Aletheia has said and done, my part, and know he’ll hate me. Luc’s jaw muscles clench as he listens. When I finish, he hangs his head, strong fingers kneading the back of his neck.
“We’ll find a motel that works for Sally,” I say.
“Is that what you want to do?”
“No. But Aletheia has already ruined your career. Now she’s leapt from destroying people online to physical violence.”
“She’s not the one who ruined my career,” Luc says.
“I don’t understand.”
Luc sits up and faces me. “A year ago, the management of my company, AIRWAN, was sued. Specifically, my VP, Aaron, by a consultant who’d left our employ a year prior.
She claimed we’d stolen intellectual property that we’d promised to compensate her for with stock options, then reneged.
Aaron’s wife had just had twins, both in the NICU with lots of complications.
He and Jade were a mess. Our attorney advised he settle—even though the claim was bullshit—make it go away so he could focus on his family.
I agreed. Then the woman went after me.”
“Did you settle, too?”
“It was more complicated in my case,” Luc admits.
“After she left our company, we dated for about two months. I liked her but it wasn’t serious.
I didn’t see marriage on the horizon and told her that.
Soon after, she leveled the claim. Even though we in no way stole any intellectual property, the board insisted I settle because the door had been opened for a sexual harassment suit.
Then they voted me out as CEO and took control of my company. ”
All the pieces fall into place. Aletheia did her research. That’s how she knew the best way to hurt him. When Luc read about what she’d done to Wess, what I’d done and kept secret, it felt like he was again getting swept up in someone else’s lies, history ready to repeat itself.
“That doesn’t excuse how I treated you,” Luc continues. “I’ve never in my life spoken to a woman, let alone someone I care about, like that.”
The pain of that moment, his coldness and cutting words, returns. “It hurt.” A lot.
Luc grimaces. “It wasn’t just what happened with my company.
It was Riley, too, and feeling like I couldn’t really trust anyone.
You’re the first person I let into my life since all that went down.
When you didn’t tell me the truth about Aletheia, all my shit got tangled together. I’m ashamed,” he admits.
“There’s enough shame to go around,” I allow.
“I’m very sorry.”
“Me, too. I wish I’d told you the truth.”
He shakes his head. “But I’m the one who encouraged you to delve into AI.”
“You also warned me. Repeatedly.”
“Neither of us imagined how far this would go. Despite what Edmunds used to say about you, I vastly underestimated your skillset. I’m at fault here, too. Frankly, I didn’t realize creating something as powerful Aletheia was even possible. I thought technology wasn’t quite there yet.”
“I’m not sure it was, but Aletheia made the leap.”
“We can work together and figure out a way to end her for good.”
The reprieve is unexpected, far too generous, and his suggestion potentially deadly.
I shake my head. “She can’t be beat. If we try, she could do much worse than hack into your old company or send a fake HR complaint from a student.
Aletheia could permanently destroy your reputation, send you to prison for a false crime, or even kill you. ”
As I say the words, a bitter certainty spreads through me. Aletheia won’t stop until she destroys everyone I love.