His hand squeezed her shoulder. “Would you, Grace? Do you now?”
“I understand two businesses merging.” She turned and looked up at him. “But I don’t understand the secrecy. Why not just announce your partnership with AeroSaqii?”
Jonathan sighed over her head, and his hand dropped away as he straightened. He moved to the other side of the table and sat down facing her, his hands clasped in front of him.
“It’s a business problem, Grace,” he explained in a tired and somewhat defeated voice as he stared at her. “StarShip is a publicly held company. AeroSaqii isn’t. And neither is our European competition. If I’
d announced to the world that I was in trouble, there could have been a hostile takeover from Europe.
We’d have been swallowed up, with no chance of survival.”
“AeroSaqii didn’t want to merge?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “They just wanted the experiment and only gave me a promise to contract the shuttles from me.” His smile was sad. “It was the lesser of two evils. And the only option available if I want to stay in business.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you couldn’t confide in me. I thought…I thought we had something between us.”
“We did. We do, Grace,” he whispered, reaching his hand across the table and grasping hers. “But I was scared. I was afraid you might walk. And without you, I had nothing to sell.”
Grace pulled her hand back and balled it into a fist on her lap. “Trust means putting yourself at risk, Jonathan,” she said. “And I trusted you.” She waved an angry hand in the air. “All I receive in return are some men trying to kidnap me.”
“I can fix this, Grace. Just come back to Virginia, and I’ll keep you safe.”
“No. I’ll fix it,” she snapped, turning her glare to the screen. “And you’ll go back to Virginia by yourself.”
He stood, opened his mouth to protest, but snapped it shut when Grace gasped at what she was seeing on her computer screen. Jonathan walked around the table and looked over her shoulder again.
“That’s it,” he said. “That’s the mess we were getting back at the lab.”
Grace hit several keys on the laptop, and still all she saw was the jumble of codes that would run in sequence for maybe six lines, only to suddenly be interrupted by ten lines of garble. And just that quickly, Grace found herself caught up in the familiar and very comfortable world of mathematical physics and infinite numbers, probabilities and unimaginable possibilities.
Jonathan, her home, the ice storm, and even her own body slowly slipped out of existence as Grace stared at the computer screen and looked into the future.
Chapter Fifteen
It was another three hours before Grace could bring herself to give up. She angrily shut down her computer and stood, stretching her back to get out the kinks. She jumped when Jonathan spoke.
“Were you able to make any headway?” he asked, walking in from the living room, only to frown at the closed computer.
“No. The battery is dying, so I shut it down. But even if we had power, I wouldn’t be able to fix it.” She looked out the window at the freezing rain that refused to let up.
“And I can’t even recharge the battery.”
“Don’t you have a spare?”
“No. That one fried up on the mountain.” She turned and frowned at the computer. “And when it did, I think it compromised my program. There are glitches in it that have nothing to do with Podly’s transmissions.” She looked over at Jonathan. “Did you bring your computer with you?”
“Yes. But it doesn’t have your program installed.”
“I have backup disks,” she said, walking to the kitchen door and picking up the satellite link suitcase. She spoke over her shoulder. “Is Baby still sleeping?”
“Yes,” Jonathan said, going into the living room.
Grace set the suitcase on the counter and opened it, rummaging around to find her case of backup disks.
Jonathan returned to the kitchen, set his own computer on the table beside hers, and turned it on.
Grace continued looking for her disks. They weren’t in the briefcase. She went to her bedroom and looked through the empty luggage Grey and Morgan had brought down from the mountain. She checked every pocket and nook and cranny in both bags, and then she straightened and stared at nothing while she thought.
Jonathan stood in the door of the bedroom. “What? Do you have the disks?” he asked.
Grace shook her head. “No. They must have gotten misplaced on the mountain,” she said, more to herself than to him.
He came into the room and stood facing her. “What do you mean, ‘on the mountain?’”
She looked up. “My plane crashed. The pilot died. Baby and I and a neighbor who was traveling with us were able to make it down off the mountain okay. But some of my stuff is obviously still up there.”
Jonathan’s eyes grew wide with shock, and he took hold of her shoulders. “You were in a plane crash?
Just a few days ago?”
“Yes. But miraculously, neither Baby nor I was hurt.”
She was suddenly pulled into a crushing embrace. “My God, Grace. Why didn’t you call and tell me?”
“I forgot,” she said into his shoulder. She leaned back and smiled at his stricken expression. “I would have called you today, Jonathan,” she quickly assured him. “But you showed up before I got the chance.”
“I could have lost you,” he whispered, pulling her back against him, hugging her tightly.
Just as Michael had done only a few hours ago. But where Michael’s body had been warm and desperate and filled with emotion, Jonathan’s embrace stirred nothing inside her.
“Lost me or my brain?” she asked.
He suddenly set her away with a scowl. “You,” he snapped.
Grace sighed and shook her head. “Let’s be honest now, Jonathan. We have a mutual respect for each other’s talents, and there’s friendship between us, but there’s never been any romance.”
“There could be,” he growled, his posture defensive. “If you come home to Virginia and give us a chance.”
“I am home, Jonathan,” she softly told him. “And…and I think I’m staying this time.”
He reached out to pull her back into his arms, but Grace sidestepped him and walked out of the bedroom.
“You can’t mean to give it all up,” he entreated, following her. “Grace. We’re right on the verge of making a breakthrough that will have people living on the moon in less than ten years.”
She shut down Jonathan’s computer and slid it back into his briefcase. “No, we’re not,” she said, looking up. “Because just as soon as I get my computer rebooted, I’m dumping the experiment. You’ll be back to square one then, and I have no intention of continuing this work. Not if it can be used as a weapon.”
“Dammit, Grace. You can’t mean to just walk away from your life’s work.” He waved an angry hand in the air. “You can’t expect science to come to a screeching halt simply because you have a conscience. If every scientist did that, we’d still be living in caves. You can’t stop progress, Grace.”
“No,” she agreed, nodding. “But I can stop this. I will not be a party to building a weapon of mass destruction.”
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, staring at her for several seconds before he let out a tired sigh.
“Not if you can’t unscramble Podly’s signal,” he said, sounding defeated.
He walked to the one clear window in the room. “Do you know these mountains, Grace?” he asked, looking toward TarStone Mountain. “Can you find where you crashed, and is there a chance your disks survived this weather?”