The vault returned to silence.
The only sound left was the clean, cool sixty-cycle hum of the ventilation ducts and the steady, rhythmic tack… tack… tack of my grandfather’s chronometer watch on my wrist.
CHAPTER 8: EPILOGUE: THE TERRACE AT SHADOW RIDGE
Fourteen months later.
The early autumn sun broke over the high, emerald-green sugar maples and the vast, golden expanse of prairie bluffs in Omaha, Nebraska, burning off the sweet morning river mist that clung to the sweeping lawns and the blooming white hydrangeas along my front terrace at 44 Shadow Ridge Drive.
The air was sixty-eight degrees, smelling of sun-cured cedar shingles, damp autumn loam, fresh-baked blueberry scones, and the clean, honest ozone of an un-broken American sky.
The ten-million-dollar estate had been completely transformed.
The old formal dining room where Patricia had served the poisoned matcha tea had been converted into an expansive, light-filled pediatric neurological and historical surveying foundation, lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves holding nineteenth-century admiralty charts, geodetic surveys, and naval engineering ledgers.
