Page 100 of The Secret of Secrets

Without hesitation, he moved into her arms, letting the bookcase swing closed behind them. As they held each other in the darkness of the tiny alcove, Langdon could hear her quietly weeping.

“Thank God,” she managed. “I thought you were dead.”

“I’m right here,” he whispered.

Chapter 64

In the blackness of the alcove, Katherine pressed her body into Langdon’s, holding on tight, neither one saying a word. Whatever chaos currently existed outside this small space, they were now alone in the world, at least for this brief moment, safe and together.

I thought I might never see him again, Katherine thought.

It felt like an eternity that she had been hiding in here, terrified for her life and also devastated that she might have lost the man with whom she was falling in love. To be without him would have been the cruelest of twists; for years Katherine had felt powerfully drawn to Langdon’s effortless charm, and yet for some reason, she’d always resisted letting it become romantic. Perhaps it had been the fear of losing him as a friend, but even so, every time their paths had crossed, she had found herself secretly wondering if one day, after decades of friendship, the time might be right.

And now…at last, it was.

Overcome with emotion, Katherine held Langdon tighter, savoring the seamless fit of their embrace and the warmth of his body.

“You feel cold,” Langdon whispered. “Are you okay? Where’s your coat?”

“I used it to tie the door shut,” she said, having lashed one sleeve to the spiral railing and the other to the handle on the door so nobody could pull open the bookcase. “This alcove was the only place I could think to hide.”

“But why are you hiding?!” he asked, sounding thoroughly confused.

Katherine explained how she had received a panicked voicemail this morning from a PRH systems tech named Alex. She had called him back, and he frantically warned her that someone had hacked into the PRH server…and deleted all traces of her manuscript.

“What?!” Langdon sounded aghast. “Your manuscript is gone?”

“Apparently so,” she said. “And the tech was terrified. He told me…” Katherine paused, her voice catching with emotion. “Robert…he said he thought you had drowned.”

Langdon pulled away, trying to see her face in the darkness. “He told you I was dead?!”

“He feared as much, yes,” Katherine replied, her voice frail and emotional. “He said he had tracked your phone to the middle of the Vltava River…and the signal disappeared. I was too upset to ask questions, and he told me to dump my phone immediately, get off the street, and hide somewhere safe until he had more information. The problem was that he couldn’t reach us anywhere, and it seemed like whoever had deleted my manuscript had come after all three of us! He also told me Jonas has entirely disappeared!”

Langdon could barely get his head around what he was hearing. Jonas is missing? “But why would anyone target your manuscript? Or any of us?!”

“I have no idea,” she said, pulling him even closer, her sweet-smelling hair falling against his cheek. “I’m just relieved you’re safe.”

“Katherine,” he whispered. “I have no idea what’s going on here…but I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through it.” He knew he needed to share the details of his own chaotic morning, but for the moment he was still trying to figure out what to do next. “And you’re certain your manuscript is…gone?”

“According to Alex, yes,” she said. “Deleted from all servers. The only good news is that this morning, on my way out of the hotel, I noticed the business office was deserted, and I decided to take advantage of the private moment to print a hard copy of the manuscript for you to read.”

For the last several days, Katherine had said she was almost ready to give him his own reading copy, but publishing decorum required that her editor receive the manuscript first…which he now had.

“I printed your copy, but as I was about to go upstairs and lock it in our suite’s safe, a fire alarm went off at the hotel, and I had to evacuate the building!”

To his amazement, Langdon realized that Katherine had been just around the corner in the business center when he sprinted through the lobby and pulled the alarm. My God, I just missed her.

“The hard copy you printed,” Langdon asked, able to see nothing in the darkness. “Did you manage to put it somewhere safe?”

“I have it right here in my bag!” she said. “When I told Alex I was carrying it, he said it might turn out to be the only remaining copy, and he urged me to take it somewhere secure until we could figure out what was going on. I was just down the street at the time, so I came here.”

Langdon held her tighter.

“I trusted you were alive, Robert—I could feel it, whatever Alex said about you drowning. I wanted to call and tell you where I would be waiting for you. The problem was, he warned me someone was probably monitoring our communications.”

“So you emailed me in code before you dumped your phone,” Langdon said, feeling the pieces now fall into place.

“Yes. Enochian and Codex XL. It was as obscure a message as I could think of, but I knew you’d understand.”