Lily followed Sierra out into the hall.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said. “You saved my son and my husband. I am so grateful I’m afraid I’m going to burst into tears any second now.”
“North is the one who saved Mr. Chastain,” Sierra said. “I’m just the go-between. I was hired to help track down the artifact and arrange for North to acquire it. I did my job, that’s all.”
Her parents were standing nearby, sipping coffee. She was aware that Byron was studying her with an assessing gaze, as if he were analyzing her words the way he intuitively analyzed a poem. Her mother had a knowing look.
Lily smiled a misty smile and shook her head. She looked through the observation window of the hospital room. Inside, North and Chandler were talking with Victor and Lucas. It was obvious the conversation was serious in nature.
“North told me you discovered that someone deliberately sabotaged those damned glasses he’d worn for the past few weeks,” Lily said. “There’s no telling what might have happened if you hadn’t come into his life when you did.”
“There’s a lot of talent at Foundation headquarters,” Sierra said. “I’m sure eventually someone would have figured out what was going on.”
“Maybe, but probably not in time to save his night vision. What matters to me is that you were the one who was there when he needed you.” Lily turned away from the window. “There’s something else I want to thank you for as well. All these years Chandler and North have lived with the knowledge that Griffin Chastain might have been a traitor. I know the sins of the fathers are not supposed to be handed down to the sons, but that is exactly what happens in real life. Chandler and North have both tried to overcome Griffin’s reputation as a traitor, but they couldn’t, not entirely.”
“‘. . . And nothing that I try to do brings credit to my name,’” Sierra quoted softly.
Lily gave her a searching look. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a line from a poem Dad sent to me a few days ago,” Sierra explained. She glanced at Byron. “I read the whole thing to North on the plane. He told me ‘Hope and Love’ could have been written for him. He said he felt as if he was always dealing dust. That his cards crumbled in his hands.”
“Evidently North was also searching for his calling,” Byron said. He glanced through the observation window. “Looks like he found it.”
Lily smiled at Sierra. “I’m not sure about the calling business, but I do know you helped North restore the family honor. That means more than you can possibly imagine to both him and his father. And because it matters so much to them, it matters to me, too.”
“Thank you,” Sierra said. “But until the cleaners find Loring and those last two Puppets, I’m afraid your family is still in danger. It’s obvious that Loring has a personal vendetta going against the Chastains.”
Byron nodded in a somber manner. “The desire for revenge can be handed down through a family as surely as the sins of the fathers. And it is equally destructive.”
The door of the hospital room opened just as he finished speaking. Victor emerged.
“Unfortunately, you’re right, Byron,” he said. “We’ve got all the cleaners looking for Loring and his thugs. It’s just a matter of time before we track them down. By now the two Puppets who got away are probably highly unstable, but that will only make them more dangerous.”
North came out of the room, followed by Chandler and Lucas.
North focused on Victor. “You’ve had time to look into the background of Garraway, the director at Riverview. Find anything useful?”
Victor frowned. “As far as we can tell, Garraway was, as your intuition indicated, just the money guy. He was a skilled con man who made a fortune with a sophisticated pyramid scheme. Indications are he had some talent. Loring evidently convinced him to back the Riverview project.”
“Takes a psychic con man to con another psychic con man,” Lucas observed. “Loring must have promised to tune some of the weapons to Garraway’s signature. Either that or he promised Garraway a cut of the action. Whatever the case, Garraway went for it.”
“Everything relating to Riverview was in the name of a shell corporation,” Victor added. “But we haven’t found anything that directly connects to Loring. No bank accounts. No credit cards. No cell phone. He was living as far off the grid as it was possible to get.”
“What about his car?” North asked.
“That was in the name of the Riverview corporation,” Victor said. “Just like everything else.”
North got a thoughtful expression. “He’ll have a safe house, not just for himself but for the devices that Rancourt stole. They’re all red-hot.”
“But somehow they’ve remained concealed all these years,” Sierra said. “There haven’t even been any rumors about them. Trust me—Mr. Jones, the serious dealers and the go-betweens who work the underground market would have heard about such a valuable cache of crystal tech. You just can’t keep something like that quiet, not for decades.”
“Unless,” North said, “the artifacts have been stored in a collector’s vault all this time.”
Lucas got a speculative look. “If you’re right, we’re talking about a collector who stole the cache before the lost labs were shut down.”
“Crocker Rancourt,” North said. “He took them from the lab vault shortly before he murdered my grandfather and evidently died without revealing where he hid them. Somehow Loring discovered the artifacts. They must have been stashed in a very secure vault, one that hasn’t been opened since Crocker Rancourt locked the relics inside.”
“We tore the Riverview hospital apart as soon as we moved the patients out,” Victor said. “We’ve still got a team there to secure Loring’s lab, but so far they haven’t found anything except the artifacts that were stored in the lab vault there.”
“I need to take a look at what the forensic accountants found,” North said. “Everything.”