She had a sudden flashback to another vault, standing before a far more ancient door ten years ago and deliberately setting off a trap that had turned the room into a storm of fire. A trap she had prepared for, a trap she had been able to avoid.
Then, she was ready.
Today, she was not.
“Mom!” she heard, and turned toward the sound before the fiery tsunami fell upon her. She tried to cry out to him, tried to say something meaningful in that moment. What could she possibly say in her final seconds to the son who would grow up, grow into a man and live his entire life without her?
Instead, she just clasped her burning hands together, lowered her head, and met her fate.
Caleb, now it’s up to you.
Halfway across South America, cruising at top speed, Caleb woke with a scream that ripped Phoebe and Orlando from their trances. They stared at him wordlessly.
His mouth was dry as a desert, his lips cracked, splitting. “Did you see it?”
Phoebe reached for him. “No, I didn’t get a clear view. The vault room, a fire…”
“Yeah,” Orlando said, “and some crazy red-haired dude, his clothes smoking, dragging a boy up the stairs.”
“Lydia. I saw her consumed in the explosion. My trap.” Caleb held his head. “What have I done?”
Phoebe was there, holding his hands. “Don’t jump to any conclusions. Remember, this could be anything. A future glimpse, or maybe you were just seeing the past again. The Pharos trap and—”
Caleb met her gaze with pained and desperate eyes as he shook his head. “No, she’s gone. I felt her reaching out to me. Begging for me to save Alexander.”
“He’s got him,” Orlando said. “I was pretty sure about that.”
“Alive?”
“I think so. But I had the sense that he was protected somehow, and maybe holding your boy, it saved him too?”
Caleb nodded slowly, and closed his eyes.
“He’s got the tablet.”
7
Alexander watched from the prow of Old Rusty as Xavier Montross piloted the boat out into Sodus Bay and around the bend into Lake Ontario before the legion of police and fire engines descended upon his house. He watched as the dawn lifted out of the mist, the clouds swallowed up the roiling black smoke, and his lighthouse burned like a biblical pillar of flame.
Mom. He wanted to dive overboard, to brave the icy currents, to swim back to her, or to run over the water itself, back home, to join her in the cleansing fire. But then he thought of his father and his Aunt Phoebe.
They needed him.
He sensed footsteps behind him, a shadow over his shoulder. Silent, the winds stealing even his breath, Alexander wiped away tears that wouldn’t stop flowing. He turned and tried to sound strong as he faced Montross. “What are you going to do with the tablet?”
A silhouette before the rising sun, Montross stood quietly a long time considering him. “The better question, I think, is what am I going to do with you?”
“Let me go?”
“That was my original plan, but now, I think you may be useful.”
“Why? You gonna ransom me?”
“Not at all. I have plenty of money. But since I’m fairly certain your father survived, and since the regrettable incident in your lighthouse basement, I fear he will be after me with a vengeance now. So, it would be prudent to have some leverage.”
“They’re going to look for the boat,” Alexander said. “My dad knows I know where the key is hidden, that you made me tell you how to start it. They’ll come after us with helicopters, jets, satellite stuff. And of course they’re psychic. There’s nowhere to hide.”
Montross walked back toward the cabin. “I’m not worried about that. I avoided their detection for years.”
“How?”
He smiled to himself. “I’ve got something. Something I found after the Pharos incident. It’s old. And it has the side benefit of blocking the user from certain prying eyes.”
“I don’t understand,” Alexander said. “But — how old?”
“Never mind. In any case, we’re not going to be on your precious boat much longer. Maybe this was my escape route all the time.”
Montross cut the engines and they drifted into a choppy area of the lake. A moment of calm, and then suddenly Alexander had to hold on tight, feeling his stomach lurch. Just then, a big wave caught them and they rose higher than he could have imagined, then slammed back down.
Wiping spray from his face, Alexander looked over the side at the sleek black thing rising from the lake, the thing at first he took to be some fanciful lake monster. But then he saw the hump wasn’t a hump at all, especially when a door in its base opened.
“Come on,” Montross said. “Our sub is here.”
Five hours after the rogue submarine and its small crew made its way into the Atlantic Ocean, Caleb, Phoebe and Orlando arrived at Sodus Point, jumped out of the car and passed through the crowd of neighbors, firemen and police. They walked to the edge of the caution tape, where they stared in silence at the smoldering wreckage of the house that had been in the Crowe family for four generations.
The lighthouse alone stood above the ruins, just its brick and concrete façade remaining, up to the scorched glass cupola. The intense heat had turned it black, and now it stood lording above the smoking ruins, like one of Sauron’s towers.
“All gone,” Caleb whispered, with Phoebe at his side as the police approached.
“Your books…”
He held out his hand, seeing black body bags lying in one section of the lawn. “Wait, we need to be sure Alexander wasn’t inside.”
“He wasn’t,” she voiced hopefully.
“Mr. Crowe?” The first officer took off his hat. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but your wife…”
The FBI agent arrived an hour later.
She found Caleb with a blackened book in his hands, the pages crumbling, the cover brittle. He held the book, and without a word remaining on its cover, he knew it was the first book he had written, The Life and Times of the Alexandrian Library. Not only that, it was the one he had signed for Lydia. The day they met, at his first book signing.
He trembled as the images rolled through his mind like a tender wave, picking up the shells and stones and sand with the flotsam of his memories. Not psychic visions, just clear, pure memories. Their memories, together. Like a kaleidoscopic light show, Lydia and her jade eyes, her scent of cinnamon perfume, cascaded through this vision.
“Caleb?”
At first, the word mingled with Lydia’s voice, speaking close to his ear. Caleb, goodbye.
“Caleb Crowe?”
A tremor shook him and he let the book drop. He blinked, then glanced up into a woman’s face. Short auburn hair, brown, not-unsympathetic eyes that were darting around a little too fast for him to follow. Grey suit. She held out a hand, helped him up, then pulled away. “Renée Wagner, FBI.”
Caleb forced his eyes to focus. “FBI?”
She nodded curtly. “The police chief called us as soon as it was clear that in addition to arson and murder, this involves a kidnapping, with evidence that the perpetrators have fled to international waters. I’m so sorry for your loss, but time is of the essence. We really have to—”
“You know,” Caleb said softly, looking at the brittle book at his feet, “there’s a theory beloved by bibliophiles everywhere, one that suggests that the way to keep alive, to stave off death itself, is to constantly read. If you’re reading many books at once, perpetually awaiting the resolution of cliffhanger moments, you’ll be unable to rest until you know it all works out. All the mysteries, plot twists and turns, everything that keeps you guessing — and turning pages — all of that will keep you striving to live another day.”