38. Wyatt
THIRTY-EIGHT
WYATT
The sky turned pink then orange as the sun rose over the rooftops. I hadn’t slept. I couldn’t. Harper’s breath was heavy with sleep, but her rest alternated between peaceful-looking slumber and violent nightmares. Every time she twisted in the sheets, I rested my hand on her body and she returned to her steady, even breathing.
She needed rest, and I needed to know that she was safe.
The Buck knife clipped to my belt felt like an old friend. As the sun made its appearance, I pulled out my satellite phone and tried to reach Jax one more time.
It rang and rang. I let it continue, the phone loose in my hand, the ringing disappearing into the background as I tried to imagine life without Harper – or her life without me. After this was all over, it was going to be one of those scenarios. If Joe and I were successful at dismantling Genocorp, Harper would need to stay as far away from me as possible.
The marriage comment from Joe had shocked me, but I brushed it off. He still wasn’t right in the head. We both knew that the best thing for Harper was for her to move on with her life, continue her career, and have babies with a man who didn’t leave fifteen-inch footprints in the mud.
The other option, if Joe and I failed… I shuddered. I couldn’t think about it. We had to succeed, not just for Harper, but for humanity. It was a lot to put on our linebacker shoulders.
I hung up the phone and stared at it. It seemed futile, but I pressed redial. This time, Jax’s voicemail picked up immediately.
“Buddy. I don’t know where you are, but if you get this message, I want you to know…” I gulped. I needed some red moss to get rid of this… emotion. I cleared the lump out of my throat and hesitated. If this was the last thing Jax would hear from me, I needed him to hear the truth.
“Shit’s going down here, Jax. If you don’t hear from me again, don’t come back. Stay far away from Stirling County and even further away from Seattle.”
My finger hovered over the red disconnect button.
“I love you,” I added and then stared at the brick of a phone in my hand.
Harper didn’t know the details of the plan. If she did, she wouldn’t have been able to sleep. Her father was going to make the ultimate sacrifice for his daughter. I’d been resistant to the idea, but as the night wore on and we tried to formulate a plan that didn’t involve trading Joe Davis for Atticus, I knew that it was the only way.
Joe Davis loved his daughter, and so did I. The respect I felt for the man had multiplied tenfold. Because Joe had deleted the files with his research, Genocorp needed either him or the hard drive. I didn’t know where he’d stashed it, but the plan was to keep the drive safe and trade Joe for Atticus.
My eyes stung as tears welled in my lids. I hadn’t expected to… feel… about this part. Joe was planning to sacrifice himself in a way that would ensure that Genocorp could never study his body. Their army of hybrids would never progress past the flawed prototypes that they had. The rogue from last year was what we would be dealing with, more animal than human – strong, but a creature that could be killed; a creature that didn’t know how to use modern weapons or strategize attacks.
We would launch our own attack when the time was right. The wolves were on their way to get more weapons. They might be hot-headed and a little crude, but they had deeper black-market connections than we did. It was scary exactly how much firepower the Dakota wolves could get their paws on.
Harper murmured in her sleep. We’d fucked up by fucking, but at least we both knew that it was the last time. I sat on the bed and rested my hand on her hip. Her eyelids flickered and she whimpered. I moved my hand to her heart, closing my eyes to better hear the beat beneath my palm.
I didn’t want to wake her, but her heart sounded weird. I leaned down to rest my ear on her chest and let out a sigh of relief when the thumping underneath her breasts sounded normal again. My hand moved to her stomach and I traced a circle around her navel.
“I’m going to miss you,” I whispered.
Her stomach let out a grumble and I made a note to bring her a big breakfast. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her eat anything. Her stomach churned with another hunger pang, one so strong I felt it beneath my palm.
While she was still asleep, I could get one more kiss. I let my lips linger on hers and then slipped out of the bedroom. She needed to rest.
When I came back to the bedroom, a beam of sunshine was trained on her like a spotlight. Her hair shone in the amber light and she looked like a glowing angel. I set down the tray of pancakes Gloria had made and slipped out the door. I wanted to tell her that I loved her one more time, but that was selfish. I needed to go.
I took one last look before I closed the door, then tightened my grip on the backpack and jogged out of the house to meet Joe.
He was waiting at the garage after spending his remaining hours with Tim. I wondered if our scientist had kept the new antidote he’d developed a secret. Over the past week, Tim had isolated a protein that showed immense promise for reversing Genocorp’s experiments. It had worked in simulations, but not on actual subjects, and the only test subject that would be able to confirm whether the antidote could work or not was Joe. The rest of us would rather die than live as human, and the man we’d captured, Jim, was too weak to risk it.
We needed Joe in his current form. If we turned him back into a human, he wouldn’t be able to help us with our plan.
“How’d it go with Tim?” I asked, studying his face.
He pulled up both his sleeves, revealing several Band-Aids. “Your scientist needs to get better at finding a vein. He took a lot of blood, but kept the experiment results to himself. I just hope it helps with whatever it is that he’s doing.”
Joe’s face didn’t give any sign that he knew what was going on in our labs, but he was a smart man. He had to know we were working on something to reverse the effects of the Genocorp experiments.
“Won’t that heal quickly?” Any time Tim had drawn blood from me, the prick marks disappeared within twenty minutes.
“I don’t think that my immune system is doing well.” Joe shrugged. “Hopefully Tim can get some good research from my mutant blood.”
“Did he give you…” I hated asking, but we needed all the pieces of the plan to be in place.
Joe pulled a tiny vial from his chest pocket. “It will be a painful death, but they won’t be able to get anything from me.” He smiled. “I wish I could be alive to see the look on Michelle Carder’s face when her billion-dollar experiment evaporates into a pile of goo in front of her.”
He was making light of the situation, but I understood.
“We’re going to rid the world of the Carders for good.” I clapped my hand on his shoulder. Joe Davis was about to save the world.