26. Wyatt
TWENTY-SIX
WYATT
The gates to the mansion groaned open and I waved at the guard as we entered the property.
Harper’s hands were clasped in her lap and she stared out the window. Rain had started to fall, streaking across the slanted window of the Lamborghini.
“Your friends are due to arrive soon for the meeting. What do you want to tell them?” I pushed the button for the door and the patter of rain disappeared as we entered the echoey garage. With the engine off and the car in park, the silence was, as they say, deafening.
Harper bit her lower lip. She was quiet, something I wasn’t used to. It was a little disarming. I couldn’t believe that everything had fallen apart so quickly.
Could I make her stay? I had tried to stop her from making the decision to end things, and as much as I wanted to scoop her up from the passenger seat of the car and carry her inside, hoping that she’d change her mind, I also knew my soulmate. She was bullheaded and she had made up her mind.
But, if she was going to leave me, was she even my soulmate? Could I have been wrong about the whole thing? One thing was for sure – if we broke up, she would be a lot safer out in the world without a connection to me and my world.
“You’re going to need to meet with Savannah and Connor, regardless of our relationship status.” Her voice was cold, resolute. She opened the car door before I could run around to help her out of the low car.
“Harper,” I whispered, reaching for her hands.
Instead of taking mine, she turned and slammed the car door, harder than I thought possible. “Sorry.” She turned. “I didn’t mean to close it so hard.”
“I don’t care about the damn car.” I grabbed her arm.
She stopped and turned, her eyes shimmering. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be. You’re a sasquatch. You’re not my soulmate, or fated mate, or whatever bullshit you call it.”
She was hurt, and her arm radiated heat into my hand. Her heart was beating hard and fast. It pounded against her chest so hard I could hear it. The whoosh of the blood in her veins pulsed under my palm each time it pumped. “Your heart, Harper.”
“Oh, stop it.” She ripped her arm from my hand and rubbed where it had turned red from my grip.
“No. It’s beating irregularly.” I rested my hand on her chest, and surprisingly, she let me. But under my palm her heart thumped in its regular rhythm. Maybe I was mistaken, but it had sounded like it was doing a double beat or something weird.
“My heart is fine, Wyatt.” Her voice trembled and cracked. She looked to the floor where the rainwater had started to pool around our feet, then returned her gaze to mine. Her face was turning the same color as the cherry red Lamborghini. “It’s just fucking broken.”
She stepped around me, weaving around the cars in the garage. “I’m going to pack my things to stay at Savannah and Connor’s. I’ll be safe enough there, so you can tell your henchmen to back off. You don’t have any right to keep me here against my will.”
I moved to follow her, but she was right. I stopped, the slam of the garage door echoing through the bays, leaving me alone with the cars.
“Did that just happen?” I whispered to myself. More than ever, I wished that Jax was here. He would talk some sense into me. He could get me through this.
I pulled out my phone and dialed the number for his satellite phone, but it immediately disconnected. “Jax, where are you?” I slid the phone into my pocket.
Instead of following Harper into the house, I opened the door to the Bronco and sat in the driver’s seat, running my hands over the steering wheel. I would give Harper some time. I turned the key so I could listen to the radio. I had an hour or so before the meeting with the wolves and the South Americans.
Maybe Harper was right. My life had been much easier before she’d come into it. I turned the dial and tried to find a station that wasn’t staticky. Country music filled the cab of the Bronco and I rested my head against the seat, listening to humans sing about pickup trucks, red dresses, and back roads. What had happened to our simple life on the island?
“Boss.” My eyes snapped open as Tank knocked on the window. “You’re not going to off yourself in here are you?” His grin was crooked. He was making a joke, but it wasn’t funny.
Instead of making an excuse, I cranked down the window. “Harper’s gone.”
“I know.” He crossed his arms. “That’s why I came to find you.”
“I’m fine.” The twangy tunes disappeared as I turned off the key.
“What happened?” Tank opened the door. “She packed a bag and stormed out. Denny tried to stop her from leaving, but she wouldn’t listen. Fiona was the only one who could get through to her. She convinced her to get a ride with her in the Range Rover.”
I was still holding the steering wheel, and stared straight ahead. “She’s not my soulmate.”
“I could’ve told you that,” Tank muttered, then held up his hands as I whipped to glare at him.
Instead of tearing a strip off of him, I just shrugged. “I lied to her about sleeping with Valentina.”
“That was years ago.” Tank’s brow furrowed. “The girl’s got jealousy issues.”
Sighing, I got out of the truck. “I lied, Tank. That’s the problem. But the bigger problem is that she wants to have kids, and….” I let my voice trail off. I didn’t need to tell him that like a dolphin and a lion, it was impossible for Harper and I to have a baby. He knew.
He fell into step next to me as we headed to the house. “Like I said, Boss, what cruel world would give you a soulmate who can’t continue our bloodline?”
For a dumbass, Tank was actually making some good points. “I hate to admit it.” I choked out a laugh. “But I think that you might be right. For once.”
Tank slung his arm over my shoulders. “You know what they say about getting over someone?”
“Stop.” I shrugged his arm off my body. “I’m not getting under anyone else.”
He grinned. “That’s not what I was going to say, but it’s not a bad idea.” He elbowed me. “Put on your camo gear and go for a wild run in the woods. Maybe destroy an evil empire on your way.”
I stood a little taller. Yes, I was heartbroken, whatever that meant. But I also had a job to do. And even though Harper and I weren’t together romantically, I had made her a promise. I was going to save her and her father from whatever was lurking out there in the woods.
There were horrors worse than us out there.
The conference room was buzzing and the air was thick with the smell of cedar and tension. Bannon, the head of the Dakota Wolves, sat next to Connor to my right. Valentina sat at the foot of the table, flanked by four of her crew. Savannah sat to my left, her hands gripping an expensive-looking computer bag. She pulled out a tablet and a pen thing, and proceeded to scribble something on its screen.
“What are we waiting for?” Bannon growled.
The doors opened and Fiona strode in with Atticus and Tank. They slid into the chairs next to Savannah. The lone human in the room shifted closer to me as the giant members of my crew settled into their seats.
As long as Savannah was sleeping with Connor, none of my crew would dare harm her while she was on the property. Valentina had been staring her down, and whispering to her closest henchman in hushed Portuguese.
“Just a few more minutes.” I checked my watch. Tim was a flighty scientist. It didn’t surprise me that he was late for the meeting.
Gloria entered through the swinging door from the kitchen with a tray of white moss-infused water. It had been my request. I wanted us to have a bit more reasoning capacity. I figured with all of the egos in the room, it wouldn’t hurt to give everyone the sasquatch version of Xanax. It wouldn’t work on the wolves, but when they were in their human form, I wasn’t afraid of them. I could take both of them at once, even at my weakest. They weren’t going to pull any shit in a room full of the most powerful creatures in the world.
After Gloria filled everyone’s glasses, I beckoned her to me. As I whispered for her to tear Tim away from the greenhouse, the French door creaked open. The scientist’s glasses fogged as he stepped inside. “My apologies for being late, but I was finishing up something very important.”
Valentina tsk’ed and studied her nails.
“Thank you, Tim. I appreciate your dedication to your work. Please have a seat.”
The only free seat was next to Bannon. Tim shuddered visibly, but gulped and took a seat next to the scraggly-looking biker.
“As you all know, we have an issue with Genocorp.” I stood and addressed the group. “Today, we are coming together to form a plan. Their masquerade ball is tomorrow, on Halloween, and it’s the perfect opportunity for us to get in close to their inner circle and figure out what the hell they’re doing in the forest.”
There was a grumble of agreeance as everyone nodded their heads. “Valentina and I will attend the masquerade together, accompanied by two bodyguards.” I knew that the lack of bodyguards would bother Valentina, but I needed her men for another mission. And the forest mission was going to be a hell of a lot more dangerous than wearing a mask and networking with the Genocorp executives.
Savannah stiffened as I put my hand on her shoulder. “Miss Savannah Smith is running PR for the event. She’s going to be our point person. Meanwhile, Atticus will run the mission to break into the Genocorp lab and get some intel. Once we figure out what’s going on, we can decide how to put a stop to it – if necessary.”
“If necessary.” Valentina mocked me. “They’re running experiments. We should drop a rocket on the lab and put a stop to it immediately.”
“That’s why she’s not in charge,” Connor whispered.
It wasn’t a quiet whisper, and Valentina shot Connor one of her death glares. Connor gave her a wink and made a gun with his fingers.
“Lobo de rua,” Valentina seethed in Portuguese. “You wolves don’t take anything serious enough.”
“Hey,” Bannon growled, jumping up at the insult. Lobo de rua inferred street wolf, something wild and uncouth. “We’re here, ain’t we?”
I held up my hands. “Tim is going to go over some of the progress he’s made in our labs. I think you will all be interested in what he’s found with respect to Genocorp.” I had briefed Tim earlier, and let him know to keep any of his other new findings secret until the South Americans and the wolves were safely out of Stirling County.
Tim spread pages of graphs and reports on the table in front of him. “Thank you, Wyatt. As you can see here…” He held up a bound report and pointed to a graph.
Savannah leaned closer as Tim went into the details of his experiments. It was the first we’d spoken. “Care to explain why your girlfriend showed up at our apartment with a suitcase?”