Gently but firmly, Athena urged Makayla back down on the sofa. “I’ll handle the deputy director. Pandora’s Box is ready to fling open its doors. You can help me by taking care of yourself. Put your foot up and stop making me feel guilty for depriving you of the joy of examining those beautiful gowns we’ve been plotting for months to get our hands on.” She squeezed Makayla’s warm fingers. “I’m so sorry. I know you’re terribly disappointed not to go.”
“It’s a bummer. Everyone I know wants to see the awesome stuff the Clayworths are hiding out there. It’s like an urban legend. But I don’t feel so great.” Makayla’s lips quivered into a smile.
“I know.” Looking into Makayla’s pale face, so young, so earnest, Athena knew this wasn’t another mistake. “Tomorrow I promise to tell you everything about the treasures buried out there.”
Sighing, Makayla lifted her foot up onto the sofa. “You’re awesome, and so are your sisters and your dad. That Rebecca Covington-Sumner is right on in her column about your dad. I think the Clayworths gave him a bum deal after all the years he worked for them.”
Athena blinked and curled her mouth into her “oldest-sister smile.” The one she’d perfected to protect those younger and more vulnerable from learning about an unhappy possibility sooner than necessary.
Or Dad made a horrible mistake. Or he’s covering something up. Otherwise surely he would have stood and fought like he taught me to do instead of running away.
Like she was fighting now to fix everything she and her dad had messed up.
Which was why, without so much as a blush, a tremble in her voice, or more than a tiny shred of guilt, Athena told the second-biggest lie of her life. “I agree with Rebecca, too.”
Athena spied Bridget O’Flynn waiting next to the black Lincoln Town Car and swayed to a stop, nearly toppling off her heels.
Why in the world would the den mother to the Clayworth men and head of security for John Clayworth and Company be driving me out to the Secret Closet?
“I cleared my schedule so I could get the chance to see you,” Bridget called, as if she’d read Athena’s thoughts.
Before the debacle with her dad, Athena would have loved spending time with her, but right this second she wanted to run and hide like she’d been doing for weeks.
Bridget smiled at her, and Athena couldn’t resist. She’d always adored her, so she smiled right back.
Walking slowly toward the car, Athena glanced around, half expecting the Clayworth brothers, who were widely known to be off overseeing their far-flung empire, to have suddenly returned to cause more problems. The way this day was going, Bridget’s nephew, Connor, the stuffy lawyer with the body of a Greek god, would probably pop up in the back seat. Or, God forbid, Drew might climb out of the trunk to torment her.
She tried to think back to the days when she’d been friends with all the Clayworth men. Well, she’d been more than friends with Drew, but that was ancient history.
Now good manners and real affection made Athena slide into the passenger seat next to Bridget instead of hiding in the back to lick her wounds like she’d planned.
“What’s wrong, Athena? Why are you still wearin’ those dark glasses?” Bridget’s voice held the familiar note of gruff, kind concern that made her so lovable.
“Just a bit of eye strain.” Athena glanced over and got caught in Bridget’s sharp green stare.
“You’ve been wearin’ those shades since your dad left town. Have you seen a doctor?”
Athena adjusted the offending glasses, painfully aware that Bridget never minced words.
“It’s nothing to worry about. I keep straining my eyes at work.”
“Humph!” Bridget snorted through her aquiline nose. “Seems to me you’ve had nothin’ but a ton of strain lately. Sure you want to visit the closet yourself today?”
“Absolutely!” Athena said with real feeling. Her fate might be sealed, but she would defeat it. If she saw any of the Clayworth men, she’d simply shove them out of her way and get to those clothes. “Everyone wants a peek into that closet. Mom once told me that in the old days they covered the eyes of all who went out there because of the treasures locked away in its depths.” She slid Bridget a hopeful look. “Are you going to put a blindfold on me? Any Clayworth skeletons for me to find out there?”
Bridget chuckled. “No skeletons and no blindfolds. I trust you.” She gunned the high-horsepower engine. “All right, then. Rest your eyes a while. We’ll be there in about an hour. Dependin’ on traffic.”
Athena turned her head toward the window, but she couldn’t close her eyes. Now that she was on her way to the family’s top-secret fallout shelter, built beneath a farmer’s field during the Cold War, which currently housed many of their treasures, including Bertha’s priceless gowns, excitement made her feel warm all over, like it had her entire life. Like she’d felt when word came that the Clayworth family had agreed to the museum’s request to examine the dresses for possible inclusion in the exhibit.
Why had they agreed? Guilt? For old times’ sake?
Their tangled friendships were such old, old news. Yet since her dad’s firing, the Clayworths and everything they’d meant to her filled her mind nearly every waking moment. She shoved them away again, determined to focus on her goal of doing provenance on the department store’s impressive, never-before-seen collection of vintage couture clothing.
Warm and eager, she watched the city fade away into flat prairie. Travel on I90 appeared lighter than normal. Thirty minutes later, Bridget exited onto a two-lane highway. She seemed to know the road by heart, anticipating the bad patches and the sharp twists. Prairie gave way to slightly rolling cornfields. Bridget slowed and turned onto a one-lane black-tar road. She sped up, a clear, smooth stretch of road before them. All at once the tar turned to gravel and Bridget made a sharp right onto a bumpy dirt track leading into a soybean field.
She braked to a halt, and Athena, getting more eager by the second, sat up straighter. They were plop in the middle of Midwest farmland, surrounded by low soybean sprouts and rustling stalks of short young corn.
Athena pressed her nose to the window. “There’s nothing here.”
Bridget laughed. “They built it so it couldn’t be seen from the air. Look again.”
When she’d been a child whiling away the long, hot summer afternoons, lying on the grass in their back yard in Lincoln Park, Athena’s family would play the cloud game. She squinted her eyes looking for the secret. Once she’d been the best at spotting everything from her cat, Drusilla, to the Field Museum in the clouds, and once, absolutely, she still swore to this day, she saw Abraham Lincoln in his top hat.
In this case, at first she thought she must be simply gazing at good black Illinois dirt, but no.
I’ve found it!
A steel door big enough to back a semi trailer into. The rolling field of soybeans directly in front of her had to be the roof.
“I see it!” Athena quickly stepped out and followed Bridget to the enormous black wall. She paused to read the sign engraved into the steeclass="underline" “When the alarm sounds, a blast has occurred. You have three minutes to get inside.”
“Gives you the willies, doesn’t it?” Bridget shuddered. “Wait until you see the rest.” She punched a code into the panel on a smaller door, barely visible, and led Athena into silent blackness.
Athena blinked, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dim, vast cavern looming in front of her. She pulled off her glasses to get a better look.
The cooler air sent goose bumps crawling along her arms, and she rubbed them away. “This constant underground temperature is the best storage.”