Constance (Constance #1)(47)

That seemed to surprise him, and he took a moment to recalibrate. “How much are you missing?”

“My last refresh was December 26, 2038. I don’t know anything after that.”

His eyes cleared as he recognized the date. “That’s the night I saw her sing for the first time. You don’t remember that?”

Con shook her head, already inserting his part of the story into the timeline. That meant that after meeting Levi Greer, she’d moved to Virginia and stopped doing her refreshes. Never even told him about having a clone backup. Why? Didn’t she think she needed them anymore? The questions kept mounting, each one a jagged splinter beneath her skin that would only be extracted by answers that Greer seemed less and less willing to provide.

“Well, now we’ve met,” Greer said, voice hard and low. “So what is it you want to talk about that’s so important? Why won’t you help the police find her?”

“Because I needed to see this, alright?” she said, gesturing at him and the house. “I don’t understand. How are we married? How is this my life? I—”

He cut her off, slapping his hands together in front of her face. “It’s not your life, Con. And we’re not married.”

Greer took a step forward; she took an involuntary step back—a cruel, ancient dance choreographed by generations of men and women. She tried to read anything in his face that might tell her what he was really about. Was he the kind for whom arguing with a woman led inevitably to violence? Con liked to think she wouldn’t have married that sort of man, but some men didn’t show themselves until it was too late. If he took another step, then she would know. She set her feet. This was as far as she would go.

But he didn’t. He stayed where he was, his expression turning from anger to exhaustion and despair. “I just need to know what happened to her. I can’t take this. You don’t know what it’s like not knowing.”

Except she did know and had put this man through hell anyway. Maybe because of the existential threat he represented, she’d resisted thinking of him as a real person up until now. It was cruel of her.

“Please,” he implored her. “Tell the police where she is. Whatever you want. I’ll do anything.”

“I will. I promise,” she said. “Can we just talk? After? I have a lot of questions. There are things I need to know too.”

He wiped away tears and nodded. “That’s all you want?”

That was everything.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN


When Con left Levi Greer, she’d had every intention of keeping her word. She’d even pulled up Darius Clarke’s contact and had her finger on the call button. But then the questions started piling up again, and the need to know, like an itch beneath her skin, returned with a vengeance. Are you really about to call the police? it accused her. Did you really risk coming into Virginia just to turn it all over to Darius Clarke? The moment she told him what he wanted to know, he’d cut her out of the loop. Then she’d never get her answers; there wasn’t a doubt in her mind. So she’d given the GPS coordinates to her car and let it drive her here to a small farm in Buffum, an unincorporated community in Dinwiddie County.

It was the middle of the twenty-first century, but she thought Dorothea Lange would recognize this place. The land looked like it had been abandoned since before the Civil War, and a weathered “For Sale” sign hung limply from a stake driven into the ground. The dirt road leading to the boarded-up farmhouse was barred by a rusted gate padlocked with a length of chain. Con told the car to park on the grassy shoulder of State Route 670. It was near noon and a furnace sun rode high and righteous in the cloudless sky. Off to her left, an old grain silo, proud as a sore thumb, stood defiant against the heat, though much of its paint had long since flaked away. Beside the silo stood the skeletal remains of a barn that leaned wearily to the west. Con had seen a hundred farms like it when she was a child. More than a thousand miles separated Virginia and Texas, but loss was loss. Before she’d been old enough to understand the pain behind foreclosures, Con had found the decrepit romance of abandoned buildings beautiful.

Of course, it was easy to find an abandoned farm picturesque at a quarter to twelve on a summer afternoon. Come nightfall, the farm would turn sinister, all runaway shadows and restless dreams, and the tree line that formed a loose semicircle around the property would bloom with specters and myth. Strange how that worked. Buildings didn’t know day from night. They didn’t change, only the light did, and with the light how she would see them. Better to be long gone before then.

On that note, Con killed the engine. She got out, popped the trunk, and opened the storage compartment. Where the spare tire should have been was the go bag that Peter had packed for her. He hadn’t said a word, but she could tell he wasn’t a fan of her decision to go to Virginia. Inside the bag was a first-aid kit, food and water, three hundred dollars in cash, a change of clothes, a flashlight, a paper map of Virginia, a second LFD, a survival knife, and pepper spray. Do you know how to handle firearms? he’d asked. She’d raised one eyebrow and reminded him that she was from Texas. Hunting mule deer with the uncles was an annual Stickling Thanksgiving tradition. That had made Peter chuckle, but he had given her a crash course on the Smith & Wesson Shield 9 mm anyway. At the time, she’d thought it was overkill, but now, looking out at the farmstead, she was grateful that he was a worrier.