Page 40 of Twisted Empire

I reached over and patted her hand. “There’s one thing you’ll love about me having access to obscene amounts of wealth all my life.”

“Yeah?”

“My father didn’t evennotice when I paid for one of the Ark apartments. So he has no idea about it, and he’ll never suspect we’re there.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. He probably would’ve disowned me or sent me to a mental health facility if he found out I bought a doomsday shelter.” I snorted. “I remember a PA brought up the concept of the luxury shelters to him years ago, and he scoffed at it and fired the guy for presenting such a ridiculous idea to him. Way he sees it, if the world goes to hell in a handbasket, no one will even have time to make it to the shelters.” I paused for a breath. “Anyway, I think the Ark is the perfect haven for us. Thank fucking god Henry has a better memory than I do. I mean… had.”

Merely voicing his name again sent a sudden shooting pain searing through my head as though someone had momentarily lodged an ice pick into my brain. I sucked in a harsh breath and pressed my lips into a thin line, trying to push back the wave of misery. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to grieve for Henry. I did. I just couldn’t afford to do it right now. Not until Tatum was out of harm’s way.

She nervously twisted her hands in her lap. “How safe is the shelter, exactly?”

“Like I said before, it’s literally the safest place imaginable. It’s built to withstand a nuclear strike, so once we’re locked in, no one has any hope of getting to us.”

“What about other apartment owners? Or the owners of the company who developed it? Surely some of them come to visit sometimes.”

I nodded. “From what I remember, the company sends a maintenance team out once a month to make sure everything is up to scratch. When we get there, we can find their paperwork and logs so we can figure out when they’re due back again. When that happens, we can just lay low for a few hours. They won’t care that we’re there, because owners are allowed to visit their apartments, but we still don’t want to attract too much attention.”

“What about the other apartment owners?”

“Some of them might like to visit the place once in a while, but I highly doubt it. I mean, these are millionaires and billionaires we’re talking about. When they go on vacation, they can go literally anywhere in the world. When you’ve got places like Florence, Chamonix and Bora Bora, why would you willingly stay in a nuclear shelter in the side of a mountain?”

She shrugged. “Just for the novelty of it, like you were saying earlier.”

“They already get that out of the way when they test it before buying.” I reached over and patted her leg. “Trust me, it’ll be fine. Even if another owner happens to show up for a little vacation, we have our disguises. We’ll give them fake names and say we’re testing out our own apartment, and then we’ll just avoid them as much as possible. We can also see when anyone’s coming.”

“How?”

“The place has a ton of security, including surveillance cameras outside, and there are a ton of alarm systems that get triggered when anyone comes onto the land. On the outside it’s silent, but down in the shelter, you can hear it immediately. So we’d know if anyone was coming from miles away, and we’d be able to see who it is from the control room with the CCTV footage.”

Her shoulders relaxed, and she smiled faintly. “Okay, good.” She sat up straighter a second later. “Hold on, how do we get in? If you forgot the place even existed till now, I’m guessing you don’t have a key on you.”

“No keys or passcodes. It’s set up so only approved people can open it via fingerprint and retinal scanning.”

“Oh, wow.” She held up her cup of peppermint tea. “Well, here’s to people with way too much money,” she said in a wry tone. “Their need for a luxurious place to hang out when aliens invade has given us a safe place to go.”

“Exactly.”

“Where is it, anyway?”

“Southwest Vermont, near Bennington. It’s about a three hour drive from here.”

“Wow. I never would’ve thought there’d be a massive doomsday shelter in Vermont, of all places.” She paused. “To be honest, I never would’ve thought anywhere would have something like the Ark. It seems a bit…” She trailed off.

“Unfair?”

“Yeah. If something apocalyptic actually happened to the world, I’m pretty sure I’d die along with almost everyone else, all because I can’t afford a secret underground shelter,” she said glumly.

“If it makes you feel any better, I think my father might be right. Most of the people with access to places like the Ark wouldn’t make it there in time, no matter how much money they have. So if we go down someday, we’re probably all going down.”

Tatum cracked a tiny smile again. I took a left onto a different road, and her eyes widened slightly.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine. It’s just… this is the road you drive up to get to my old town. Fairwick. It’s weird being around here again after everything that’s happened.” She picked at a nail as she spoke. “For a second just then, I kinda felt like I was eight years old again, on my way home from a school trip or something like that.”

I flashed her a brief sidelong glance. In all the time I’d known her, she’d never discussed her childhood.

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