“Hot shower’s already on my to-do list,” she told him around the toothbrush and the foam, “right after checking out clean clothing options, and a sumptuous dinner of cornflakes and it’s-usually-disgusting-but-tonight-it-will-be-delicious almond milk, and I know, I know, I’m brushing my teeth before I eat, and that’s insane, but the fuzz-mouth was driving me mad.”
“You never even mentioned it,” he said.
She shot him a hard look. “Yeah, like I’m going to whine about that to you, No-Jacket-Clown-Shoe-Crazy-Pants-Man? Plus, it was the least of my complaints. Hunger, thirst, mountain-madness from all those freaking relentless trees—and just wait’ll you see the foot-sized blister on my foot.”
“You have a foot-size blister,” he said, “that you didn’t think I should know about?”
“It’s so big I’ve been considering naming it.” Tasha hung her toothbrush in a holder attached to the wall, and wiped her mouth on a towel. “This rack’s mine,” she informed him. “Is there heat?” She didn’t let him answer as she went past him and back into the living room. “I mean, there’s obviously heat. It’s warm-ish in here—much warmer than outside, and I appreciate that. But can we maybe turn it up? To, like, eighty? I’d really like it to be eighty, even just for an hour or two.”
Thomas laughed, but shook his head as he followed her. “There’s a furnace, and a thermostat—set to sixty, but I don’t think we should touch it. A change in temperature might catch someone’s attention. There were a lot of blankets in the bedroom closet, though. We can make our own heat. I mean, with the blankets.”
Yeah, she knew what he meant.
“Let me look at your foot,” he said.
“You can meet Melvin after I shower,” she said, heading into the bedroom. “Hopefully we’ll both be a little less gross.” She turned on the light. Yikes.
Thomas’s earlier comment, Bedroom—whoa, suddenly made sense.
The relatively small room was almost completely filled by an enormous bed covered by a deep red comforter, but it was the floor-to-ceiling mirrors on every single wall that warranted that whoa. And yes, thank you so much, creepy Uncle Tedric, there was even a mirror on the ceiling.
It was dizzying—all the reflections, and reflections of reflections, of her standing there, bedraggled and grubby but undeniably alive.
The closet—its mirror-covered sliding door pushed back—had shelves that were, as Thomas had noted, filled with thick blankets, towels, and bedding. Two extra-large plush red robes hung in the closet with slippers in their pockets. Okay, that was nice, like a four-star hotel.
The closet also held a system of four large drawers. Tasha opened them, hoping to find anything—T-shirts, boxers, clean socks—but they were all empty. As if the place was ready to be AirBnB-ed, damn it.
So okay. This wasn’t perfect. There weren’t clean clothes ready and waiting for them and—hah, listen to her. How perfect did she need perfect to be, really? They weren’t going to freeze to death, they weren’t gonna starve, there was a hot shower available plus the glorious ability to flush and wash their hands after nature called, and even if the bad guys did find them, they wouldn’t be able to get through those heavy-duty doors to kill them.
That sounded pretty damn perfect—as long as the heat and the water and the lights stayed on.
“After we shower, we can maybe wash our clothes in the kitchen sink,” she said, but then realized that Thomas hadn’t followed her this time.
It was possible, after coming just once into this too-sexy-for-its-bed bedroom to make sure bad guys weren’t lurking in the closet, he would never venture into its mirrored red decadence again.
At least not while she was around.
Tasha took both of the robes from the closet and went out into the living room to find Thomas checking out the ancient TV system.
“Are you ready for some football?” she asked, and this time she’d non-sequitured him. She rephrased, because even though he didn’t let himself look tired, she knew he had to be exhausted. “I bet you’re looking for internet access.”
“I was hoping there’d be something hardwired,” he confirmed her guess. “But nope. There’s just an old DVD player and an ancient gaming system.”
“I was just wondering,” she said, “about the power that’s running this place—lighting the lights, heating the water. Is there some kind of generator?”
“Yes,” he said, “there is a generator, but no, it’s not being used. It looks like it’s never even been tested, which is... really irresponsible. It’s a recent model, so that’s good, I guess, but the rest of the backup power system—the batteries—gotta be originals from the 1960s. Like museum pieces. Also probably never used.”
“So this place is powered by...?”
“Regular, local electric utilities,” he told her, then smiled tightly at her disbelief. “Yup. It must’ve been wired separately from the main house, or we’d be in the dark right now. It’s probably got an underground power line, considering the climate and terrain. Underground is harder for hostiles to cut, because they’ve got to find it first.”
“Assuming they even know this bomb shelter is here.”
“This is definitely not a bomb shelter,” Thomas said. “It’s not even a panic room. More like a... secret hide out.”
Tash had to smile at his choice of a PG option over the mirrored-ceiling obviousness of sex-pod.
“Hurry up and take a shower,” Thomas told her, “then I’m next, then I get a look at Melvin.”
“And I get a better look at the back of your head,” she reminded him. “As long as we’re playing doctor.” She heard the words as they came out of her mouth, and rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean it like—”
“Take a shower,” he said again.
She headed for the bathroom. “Good idea.”
Chapter Twelve
Most people were staying off the roads, no doubt hunkering down and searching for news via shortwave radios, if they had ’em.
The police cars were few and far between on the highway, and even though no one stopped them, they were looked at, hard.
And Rio looked back, just as pointedly. The homegrown tangos who were behind the current wave of death and destruction had a toehold just about everywhere in America, including—especially—law enforcement and the military.
So maybe the mutual glaring was a good sign.
After a solid day of driving, as the last of the sunset lit the western sky behind them, Rio was behind the wheel again when a text alert came in from Admiral Francisco.
Dave jerked awake and scrambled for his phone. His disappointment was palpable when he realized the text wasn’t coming in on his personal number. Still, contact from the admiral was vital, so he quickly dropped his phone and was instantly alert and ready to assist—even though he probably wanted to take advantage of their rare glowing bars of cell service to send H-less-Jon another Are you ok, please check in text.
Always optimistic, Rio had already connected their SAT phone to the SUV’s computer. He hit a button on the screen, and the vehicle’s voiced-texting clicked on.