it into her shaking hand. “Drink this.” She looked at him, completely unfocused, uncomprehending. As if he’d spoken to her in a foreign language. He cupped the hand holding the tumbler and nudged it up toward her mouth. “Drink.” Luke put command in his voice. He’d commanded men in battle. He knew how to make people obey.
She drank the whiskey in a couple of swallows and coughed. Some color slowly came back to her face.
“Good girl,” he said and gently tightened his grip on her shoulder. Reminding her she wasn’t alone in this. “So. We need to watch this. You ready?”
And his admiration for her, already strong, went up several notches. She sat up straight, nodded. “Yes.” And reached out herself to click the video back on.
Luke sat back down in the other chair, sliding it as close to hers as it could get, and took her hand. It was small and icy cold.
Frank Glass appeared again on the screen, emaciated, with only wisps of blond hair on his bald head, gray skin hanging off his jawline. Luke had seen many wounded men, but rarely any sick men. This man had death written all over him. You could see his skull beneath the skin.
He hadn’t followed Glass’s story at all. Luke wasn’t in the computer world. Glass had been famous for being famous, as far as he was concerned. And he’d died when Luke had been on a mission and they hadn’t had access to any news that didn’t come from HQ.
But for someone in the world of computers, apparently, Glass was a very big deal. Their god.
And, apparently, Hope’s uncle.
Hope was sitting on the edge of her seat, face forward, the monitor’s light reflected off her pale face.
“Before I tell you your story, my darling niece, I’m going to need to sit down.” He reached out with his cane and pulled a rolling office chair towards him. “Sorry. Not doing too well these days. But you’d know that. The tech press is speculating on when I’ll die. The stock price of Glass Inc will change and some people will make a lot of money. And some will lose a lot of money.”
He was in some kind of studio. There was no furniture at all besides the chair. Some kind of bland backdrop of an indeterminate gray-brown, featureless. Just the sick man, sitting down in a chair, telling his story.
The camera must have been on a tripod because it was rock steady. He was probably alone in that room.
He sighed, a small rattle sounding when he exhaled. This was one sick dude. A small smile played around his lips as he hooked the cane on the arm of the office chair and folded his veiny hands in his lap.
“So. Now that I have your attention, I’ll assure you that you can verify what I say. I am your uncle. Your mother, Lucy Benson, was my sister. Half sister, which is why we don’t — didn’t — share a last name. But I left a vial of my blood with my lawyer, Morris Cannon, in Mountain View. You can google him. He has instructions to give it to you when you ask. The DNA analysis will prove that I am telling the truth, but in the meantime, I am just going to have to ask you to take my word for it.”
Luke was interested in what the man was saying but he was more interested in how Hope was taking this. Glass stopped and wheezed for a moment and Luke watched her. That look of absolute shock was gone, but she was intensely focused.
Focused, but ok. She was holding up. Luke settled back and waited for the sick man to catch his breath to tell his story.
“The truth,” Glass wheezed. “I’ve been waiting a long time to tell you the truth. Maybe I would have waited forever but I don’t have much time left. It started in my head —” he stopped for a coughing fit that left him shaken. “Sorry. It’s spread to the lungs. This isn’t how I imagined telling you. I imagined telling you in person, then hugging you. Tight.”
Glass cut away and on the monitor appeared the photograph of a young woman. California-cute, very blonde, blue-eyed, with big hair. Luke had never seen her before but neither had Hope. She frowned, but otherwise didn’t react.
The screen cut back to Glass. “That was your mother, Hope.”
Luke turned to Hope as she gasped. Her hand reached out for his