“Not yet.”
As he started to take a step back to give her privacy, she touched his arm.
“No. Stay.”
Ash caught Chloe’s attention, and motioned with his eyes toward where his children were waiting with Ginny Thorton. Chloe nodded, collected the kids, and led them toward the base.
Soon, the only ones left by the grave were Rachel, Ash, and the four men burying the casket.
“Walk with me,” Rachel said.
She started down a path leading away from the base into the empty desert, Ash walking at her side.
“I can’t do this,” she said after they were out of earshot of the others.
Ash said nothing.
“I’m serious. I’m not qualified. I don’t know what he knew, I didn’t have his experience. I can’t…it’s too much.”
“None of us is qualified,” he said.
She turned to him. “You are. You have a military background. You should take his place.”
“No one is going to take Matt’s place.”
“But that’s what everyone’s expecting me to do.”
“No, they’re not. They are expecting you to lead us, yes, but they know you’re not Matt.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“It’s not.” He paused. “The people here look up to you. They always have. They wouldn’t accept anyone else in charge but you.”
“But I can’t do what my brother did! I wasn’t inside the Project. I don’t know what he knew.”
“I don’t, either. And neither does Pax or Chloe or anyone else. That’s something we’ll have to move forward without.”
“But Matt always knew what to do.”
“Just because you’re in charge doesn’t mean you have to lead the same way he did. You can rely on others to advise you and help decide courses of action.”
She turned back to the desert. In a near whisper, she said, “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
Chloe was waiting near the entrance when Ash escorted Rachel inside thirty minutes later. She was pretending to inspect some equipment, but he knew she was waiting for him.
“Where would you like to go?” he asked Rachel. “Your room?”
Rachel thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Please.”
As they headed toward the tunnel leading to the residential sections, Ash caught Chloe’s eye and patted the air with his hand, telling her to stay. She frowned, but he knew she would do as he asked.
The few people he and Rachel passed on the way to her quarters moved quickly to the side, muttering their condolences. Rachel greeted the first two with a “thank you,” but seemed to lose steam after that so Ash took up the task.
When they finally reached her room, he said, “If you need anything at all, want to talk or whatever, have someone find me and I’ll come right away.”
She put a weak hand on his arm. “I know you will, and I appreciate it.” She opened her door and disappeared inside.
The moment the latch slipped into place, he headed back the way they’d come.
As soon as Chloe saw him, she said, “Okay?”
He nodded.
But before they could leave, they heard steps coming toward them from one of the other hallways. They held their position and were joined a few seconds later by two men from engineering, toting tool boxes and dressed for the outside.
“Captain,” the lead man said. “Chloe.”
His partner nodded.
“Morning, Caleb,” Ash said. “Problems?”
Caleb Matthews stopped next to the outside door and adjusted his scarf. “Stupid solar panels,” he said. “One of them decided it didn’t want to work today.”
He opened the door and let a blast of cold air into the room.
“This is going to be fun,” the other man — Devin — said as he pulled his hood over his head.
“This is not my definition of fun,” Caleb shot back.
“Hello, it was a joke,” Devin said.
“Not a funny one.”
“Be careful out there,” Ash said.
“Oh, I’ll be fine,” Caleb replied. “Devin’s doing all the work.”
“I don’t think so,” Devin said as they stepped outside.
Caleb said something back but it was lost behind the shutting of the door.
“Come on,” Ash said to Chloe.
They returned to the residential section and stopped in front of Matt’s room.
Until that morning, it had been where their friend’s body was kept. As a show of respect, members of the Resistance had taken turns sitting watch. All very thoughtful and good, except it meant the room had not been vacant since Ash, Chloe, and the others had brought Matt to Ward Mountain.
Augustine. Dream. Sky.
Those had been nearly the last words Matt had spoken before he died. He had been desperate for Ash to remember them, but had failed to explain their significance.
During the journey back to Nevada, Chloe was the only one Ash told about the words, but she’d had no more ideas than he did about their meaning. What they did know was that the words were important or Matt wouldn’t have wasted his last breaths passing them on. And since he’d kept them secret, they agreed to be careful about who they asked about the words’ significance.
Rachel was the obvious one to talk to, but she had been in a deep depression since they’d radioed ahead about her brother’s death and was having a hard time focusing on anything. So Ash had been reluctant to approach her and had even considered putting it off. It was Chloe who finally convinced him it was not something that could wait. With her help, he’d arranged a few moments alone with Rachel the day before.
“I don’t mean to bother you,” he’d said, “but I need to ask you something.”
It took her a moment to look at him, as if his words were traveling at a fraction of the speed of sound.
“What?” she asked, even that single word a struggle.
“Matt said something to me before he died.”
She looked confused.
“I didn’t understand what he meant, but thought maybe you would.”
“What did he say?”
“Augustine dream sky.”
A blank stare, then, “Sounds like gibberish to me.”
“He was very insistent. Wanted me to remember.”
“I have no idea what he meant,” she said, her face hardening. “If it’s not gibberish, then it’s probably something that will get our people killed. Forget it. Forget he said anything.”
“I thought it might be good if we—”
“I said forget it.”
He should have waited, he realized, let a few days pass, maybe a week or two. Her brother’s death was still too fresh. He could see all she wanted to do was curl up in a corner and he couldn’t blame her for that. But he couldn’t ignore Matt’s message, and a delay of a week or two could very well be too long.
The only other person who might’ve known something was Rich Paxton. But while Ash was relieved to hear Pax was alive and had returned from northern Canada, Matt’s old right-hand man had left for Latin America to help a group of survivors, so a private conversation with him was currently impossible.
The only option left was for Chloe and Ash to check through Matt’s things to see if they could find an answer.
Obtaining a key to Matt’s room had not been a problem. With Rachel overwhelmed by her brother’s death, and Pax off site, Ash had been seen as the next in command. No one noticed when he kept one of Matt’s keys.
The hallway empty, they slipped inside the room and closed the door.
The bed where Matt’s body had lain was rumpled, the top cover off center from when the pallbearers had come to carry him out to the casket. Piled against the back wall were the four boxes and two large duffel bags containing all his personal possessions from the Ranch, waiting to be unpacked. Though in death Matt had occupied the room, he had never lived there.