Page 79 of The Accidental Husband

Now he looked straight ahead, not at me, as he spoke. “In a way, Bastian, you’re my hero. You stood up for yourself and got out. I’ve taken a different road to what I hope is a similar destination. But don’t think I haven’t been jealous of your freedom. Or proud of you for standing up.”

Still not an admission, but this was my brother. I knew him well enough to read between the lines. “You could, too, you know,” I said, and bumped his shoulder against mine.

“Someday, I hope. We’ll see what happens after today. I’d intended to fly under Dad’s radar. Take control of Van Horn. Then act. Today, I am a very obvious blip on that radar.” He bumped his shoulder against mine in return. “It was worth it.”

“Worth it to throw me under the rocket and send me to Mars?”

“Send me pictures.” A grin broke through the façade and changed his entire face from hard executive to brilliant, happy man. “Besides. Did you really think I wouldn’t find a way to ensure you were at your husband’s bedside? He needs you there as much as he needs the treatment. You’re one of the few people I trust to administer it and train others to do it, anyway.”

“I haven’t worked with it in years.”

“It never mattered, with you. You always had a healer’s hands.” He breezed into the foyer and out the door, where a sleek, expensive car and driver waited next to my battered SUV. “We’re going to the lab. One of the people there will refresh your memory on the process and go over the improvements we’ve made. I’m sending you with three doses, not just one, so you can teach the doctors on Mars and leave some with them.”

Blink. Blink. “You are?”

“Naturally.” The driver opened the door for us, and we climbed into a vehicle that didn’t smell like last week’s French fries. Possibly because they actually clean it, unlike some people named Sebastian I know. “I don’t know whose husband will need it next time. Or whose wife. All I know is that someday, there will be another casualty on a hospital bed, and another crying spouse, and I will not be the one who leaves their lover to die. That is not the man I want to be.”

In that moment, as the dawn hit the mountain home and sunlight flooded the car, I changed my long-held opinion about the people who shared my blood. I loved my brother. I was proud of who he had become. And, just for a fast heartbeat, I was proud to be a Van Horn.

* * *

Four hours later, I had a special cooler full of a rare experimental drug that cost more than every car in my lane of the busy interstate from Boulder to Colorado Springs. I also had a lunch packed for me by my parents’ kitchen staff, courtesy of my mother, which boggled me more than anything else that had happened that day. My mom hadn’t even packed me lunch in grade school.

She hadn’t said anything about what had occurred between her and my father after Johann and I left. Her eyes remained dry and clear, without puffiness or pinkness or any sign she’d shed a single tear. “I also asked them to clean and detail your car for you, since it was here,” she said, and I could almost hear the judgement in her voice about that French fry smell.

Let it be known that upon that day, my car did not smell like any type of potato. It smelled like a particularly aggressive breed of pine tree had mugged the SUV and left tree funk behind.

Say what you will of my family and their company, but Van Horn Biologics makes pharmaceutical solutions without peer. My brother called in the lead scientist for Trigeneris and asked her to walk me through the progress they’d made since I last worked with the drug. She ensured I knew all best practices and edge cases so I could do what I needed to.

My God, but they had outdone themselves. If I were set to drive straight back to a hospital in Colorado Springs and administer it there, I would actually have felt hopeful that I’d pull Jackson through the worst. I wasn’t doing that. I still had one more teeny-tiny step to take before I could pump these chemicals into Jackson’s arm.

A teeny-tiny step like boarding an experimental spacecraft and crossing one-hundred-ninety-six-million miles of hard vacuum without exploding. At which point I would land on a planet that wanted to murder me, set up an IV with a special pressure feed to account for lower gravity, and try not to kill my beloved husband with an unapproved drug while a war raged on in the airless outdoors.

No pressure or anything.

I’d called Randall on the way to the lab and told him I had an agreement to take delivery of a treatment course of Trigeneris, but that it came with an unexpected caveat. Then I swore I’d had nothing to do with it. He told me he understood, and that it was okay. Just to get the drug, learn how to use it right, and return safely to the base as soon as I could arrive, and that oh, I had a new destination: Schriever Air Force Base.

Once I hit the road, I called him again to tell him I’d set out and would be there in about two and a half hours. He said I’d probably make better time than that. I thought he’d thrown an oblique threat to drive faster. Then I encountered the police escort that waited for me on the south side of Denver. They fell in around me and ushered other cars out of the way.

I pulled past the gate at Schriever a crisp two hours later. A couple of military vehicles lurked there to pick up the escort and lead me to a facility not far from the largest of their runways.Whysat right there on the long, paved strip, massive and sleek and matte black but for the stars and stripes on its vertical stabilizer.

That right there was my ride into the stars. Have you ever experienced a moment when excitement and terror turn into identical twins, put on each other’s clothes, and dare you to tell them apart? They both tasted the same on my tongue, both felt like the worst adrenaline high I couldn’t come down from.

I was going to Mars. My fear was the final obstacle in my path.

* * *

Let me dart off on a tangent here.

When I pulled up outside the facility, one of the guards motioned for me to stay inside my vehicle until indicated otherwise. I did not waste this time.

Laramie had, probably at his father’s request, disabled the security on his phone. If he’d had more time between his father’sgimmerequest and Randall plunking the phone in my hand I suspect Laramie would have locked that sucker up but for the phone call function. He had not possessed that time.

And I possessed his unlocked phone.

A good, kind, generous man would have remembered Laramie had lived through a terrible day. His brother, who was his hero, lay dying millions of miles into the sky. His family was in crisis. He had allowed the use of his phone for a genuine emergency.

That kind man would buff his fingerprints off the phone and hand it back unscathed. A good man would hand it back in the same condition he had received it, because family tragedies should be off-limits for pettiness.

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