Huxley

My body feels like it’s weighed down by a thousand pounds as I walk through the front door of the compound. Leaving Tia this morning was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Because I don’t know if I’ll ever see my wife again after my meeting with Warren Thorne this afternoon.

“You ready for this?” Salinger asks when I sit down at the kitchen table.

I take the cup of coffee he offers. “Today’s as good a day as any to kill the man.”

Salinger grunts. “How was Tia when you left her?”

I shrug, not wanting to talk about the tears I’d seen in her eyes. The fear.

Love is a fucked up thing. It makes you willing to die for it, and yet at the same time, it makes you want to live forever.

Fallon comes into the room, a deep scowl on his face. “You said Thorne’s plane was coming in at three this afternoon?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I just got a call that a private jet just landed on the old strip northwest of the highway. He’s already here.”

“Fuck.” I push my chair back. “We have to go.”

“Just wait a minute, before you go rushing in and trying to be a hero. Your meeting time is still set, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then he’s most likely here to see someone else as well.”

“Who?”

Fallon shakes his head. “I don’t know. But let me go. I’ll watch him. See where he goes.”

“And if he sees you?”

“He won’t. Just keep your phone on. I’ll text you as soon as I know more. Unless something comes up, we stick to the original plan.”

I grit my back teeth at the way he takes command, like this whole thing was his idea.

But I’m used to him by now and know that having control is the way he feels confident.

I pace the damn house for the next couple of hours waiting to hear back from Fallon, checking my watch every five minutes, my patience wearing thin.

“You’re going to wear a damn hole in the carpet if you don’t sit down,” Banks mutters, glaring at me over his laptop.

I glare back at him, but sit down in the chair, then immediately stand up again, and walk to the window, checking my phone. “He should have called by now.”

Almost immediately my phone buzzes in my hand.

“What the hell is going on?” I bark out when I answer the call.

Fallon exhales harshly on the other end. “I watched Thorne get off the plane. He’s got four armed men with him, plus the pilot, and a driver that picked him up in a black Escalade.”

“Did you get the license plate number?”

He gives me the numbers and I curse under my breath. “That’s Stefano's car. Fucking bastard will drive anyone for the right price. The car is practically a tank.”

“Lucky we’re not going after the car,” Fallon says, but it’s more of a warning to stick to the plan.

I drag my hand through my hair. “And the girls? Did you see them? Are they all right?”

There’s a short moment of silence.

“Fallon?” I say roughly.

“They weren’t with him.”

“What do you mean they weren’t with him? Maybe they’re still on the plane.”

“I’m sorry, Hux. But I don’t think he brought them.”

“Goddamnit.” I punch my hand against the wall, denting the drywall and bruising my knuckles. But the pain is nothing compared to the way my chest constricts. “I have to...can’t let him...”

“I know.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Banks is watching me with raised brows, but I just shake my head at him. I’ll let him know later what’s going on.

“We can still get them back,” Fallon says.

“How? Once I show up without Tia, I’ll have lost my chance at leverage. If I kill him now...”

“We’ve already broken in St. Augustine’s once, we can do it again.”

I let his words sink in. “You’d do that? Go there with me?”

“Hasn’t Giles slammed it in your head by now? We’re family, Hux.”

I breathe out an emotionally wrought breath. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. You need to figure out how you’re going to deal with Thorne. Tia’s safe right now. We can still leave him to the authorities. Expose the evidence--”

“You and I both know that won’t work. He--” I lean on the window sill, squinting at the black Escalade that pulls up our driveway. And I know even before the door opens who is inside. “Fuck. He’s here.”

“Who?” Fallon and Banks say at the same time.

“Thorne.” I watch as four armed men in suits surround the bastard and usher him up the pathway towards the front door.

“At our house?” Fallon’s question is filled with the same dread I feel.

“Yes. I have to go.” I hang up and yell at Banks. “You need to get out of here. Now.”

He frowns at me. “I’m not leaving you.”

I want to argue with him, but the front door bursts open before I can utter a reply, and guns are trained on both of us.

Thank fucking God we brought Tia to Mariam’s bunker, that’s my only thought as the weaselly-looking man in the ten thousand dollar suit walks into my house and pins me with a look that tells me I’m not walking out of here alive.

“Thorne,” I say, trying to regain some composure. “I wasn’t expecting you here.”

His gaze goes to Banks momentarily, giving me a chance to take in the four guards. One looks familiar, and it takes me a few seconds to realize where I think I’ve seen him before. He looks like the man who came here with Helene. Her bodyguard.

What the hell?

Is she working with Thorne too? Nothing would surprise me anymore.

Thorne’s gaze is trained on me again. “In light of some recent--” His lips pull back over his teeth in a snarl. “Files going missing on our servers, there’s been a change in plans.” He takes a step towards me. “I really hope you had nothing to do with that. Or we’re going to have a bigger problem than you delivering my package on time.”

“Hacking has never been my thing,” I say stoically, trying to keep all emotion out of my voice.

He studies me for a long moment, before saying, “Good. Because once I do find out who was behind it, it won’t just be their head that rolls, but every person they care about.”

I hold back the shiver that threatens to race through me.

“Now, Huxley.” He leans close, his spittle wetting my cheek. “Where is my daughter?”

“Daughter?” Banks asks, thankfully playing along like he has no clue what’s going on. “What the hell did you do, Huxley?”

A vicious smile plays on Thorne’s lips when he looks at Banks. “So, you know who I am? Which means you know what I want. Where is Christina?”

“Nowhere you’ll ever find her, you sadistic fucker.” Banks moves so quickly, I think even the trained bodyguards are shocked when he gets two inches from Thorne’s face before being taken down to the floor, a gun pressed to his temple.

“One more move like that, son, and your grey matter will be painting the walls of this compound.” Thorne turns back to me. “Patient C65, where is she?”

I have no idea how the hell Banks and I are getting out of this one still breathing, but I know I’ve got to play the game.

“We had a deal. I don’t see my payment.”

“Your packages will be delivered as soon as my daughter is in custody and back in Seattle.”

“Looks like we’re going to have a problem then.”

Almost instantly, two men have me shoved up against the wall, one large hand around my throat.

“I won’t ask again.” Thorne gets in my face, and I see the desperation in his eyes. “Where is she?”

“Gone,” I choke out.

“Gone where?”

“I...” Can’t breathe. “I don’t know,” I lie. “One of the husbands took her yesterday. I haven’t seen them since.”

My head bounces off the wall as I’m slammed back again.

“Did you warn her I was coming?”

“No, I--” A fist slams into my gut taking my breath away. I’m getting really fucking tired of getting the shit kicked out of me. I still have bruises from where the guys hit me when they thought I’d betrayed Tia.

So, when another fist flies in my direction, I headbutt one of the guards, making him fall back, blood spurting from his nose. The barrel of a gun is pointed at my head.

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you right now.” Thorne’s right eye twitches.

“Because you’re standing on federal ground, in my house,” Salinger says from the doorway, his own gun pointed at Thorne’s head. “And if you don’t have your men release him this second, I will have you arrested for breaking and entering, and any other charge I feel like laying.”

Thorne turns to Salinger, slow and steady, his movements meticulous and calculated just like everything he does. “Do you have any idea who you’re pointing a gun at, boy?”

“Yes. And I beg you to give me one reason to pull this trigger and put a bullet through that perverted head of yours.”

The tension between the men is almost palpable, like two energies that war between each other, deciding which one will back down. But I already know which one has more to fight for. Still, Thorne is volatile and unpredictable.

So, when Thorne finally raises his hand and says to his guards. “Lower your weapons,” I let out the breath I was holding in and sink back against the wall as I’m released.

The guard holding Banks down also let him go.

“This isn’t over,” Thorne hisses. Turning to me he says, “You’re going to pay for betraying me.”

I’m about to open my mouth to retaliate, but I catch Salinger’s gaze and he gives me a look of warning.

When the door shuts behind the men, and I’m alone with Salinger and Banks, I shout, “I can’t believe you’re just letting him walk.”

“And what would you have me do? Shoot him?”

“Yes.” I pick up a vase and throw it across the room. “Or arrest him. Just do something.”

“Tia is safe,” Salinger says. “I have men waiting outside of the compound ready to escort him back to his plane. “He’ll be given a warning that if he ever comes back to Alaska, he will be arrested on sight. All three of us would have died if I’d taken the shot.”

I know what he says makes sense. It wasn’t the time to act. We were outnumbered. Outgunned. And there would have been no way of explaining away the death right in our own home.

I sit down on the couch and bury my face in my hands.

“Salinger is right,” Banks says. “And you might want to say a small thank you because I’m pretty sure Thorne had no intention of letting either of us live if he hadn’t shown up.”

“I should have had my gun on me,” I mumble. “One clean shot and this would have all been over.”

“And you’d be in prison or worse.”

Even hearing the rationale in Banks words, I can’t help but think we’d just lost our best chance at taking the man out, making him pay for the sins he’s committed.

But Thorne isn’t winning this fight. Not now, not ever.

I punch Fallon’s number into my phone. I know what we need to do.

It’s gonna be a long ass night, but by morning, I’ll have two more reasons to live.

“Weeping may tarry all night, but joy comes with the morning,” I murmur the words that were embroidered on an old blanket that was my sister’s, finally realizing the significance of the words as I hold the small child in my arms and escape through the long tunnels of the dormitory.

It’s early morning when we land back in Alaska, after flying straight through the night. The horizon is washed in pastels signifying the start of a new day, a new hope.

“You got her okay?” Fallon asks as I walk down the narrow flight of stairs, exiting the plane with my niece in my arms.

“Yeah, she’s still out cold,” I say, shifting the four-year-old whose little hands still clutch my shirt, even in sleep. So frail and delicate, she still hasn’t said a word, and I wonder if she can talk. God only knows the emotional trauma, the neglect she’s gone through because of Thorne.

“So, is this little one,” Jefferson says, cradling my youngest niece to his chest and exiting the plane behind me.

Fallon’s father came with us. We needed another man on this mission, we knew getting in and out of Seattle so quickly was going to require a second pilot so we could fly through the night.

Now, seeing this older man holding a two-year-old girl in his arms, it’s like his grandfatherly instincts have kicked in. I’m not sure he’s gonna be able to let her go.

Not many men have the honor of watching their kids grow up and have children of their own anymore, and I can only imagine the thoughts running through Jefferson’s head. Memories of his daughter, Caroline, and the life she never got to live.

“I know I asked if your niece was okay,” Fallon says. “But are you okay?” he continues as we walk toward his SUV. “You look a little shaken up.”

I inhale, wishing I could do a better job right now of keeping my emotions in check. Last night wrecked me in ways I wasn’t prepared for. So much suffering. So many other children and women that we left there.

“It’s just a lot, going back to the lab, seeing so many victims that we weren’t able to save--”

“Yet.” Fallon cuts me off.

“Right.” I nod, hoping like hell he’s right. “Yet.”

We drive toward the compound, the girls in our arms, wrapped in blankets, and I keep telling Fal to slow down.

“Dude, I’m going ten under as it is. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves either.”

He’s right. Once Thorne gets word of what we did to undermine him, there’s no limit to what he’ll do. I shake my head, not wanting to imagine. But also knowing saving them from Saint Augustine's is just the beginning of what I’m going to have to to do to keep them safe.

“I know,” I tell him, trying to calm myself down. “I just get nervous. We should have car seats or some shit right?”

“Yeah, you’ll need those, as well as diapers for the little one, and clothes,” Jefferson lists. “ And maybe clean up your language too.”

Fallon catches my eyes in the rearview mirror. “You’re in so far over your head, Hux. You realize that, right?”

I twist my lips, knowing he’s right. This is all new territory for me. But then I look down at my niece in my lap and then at the other one in Jefferson’s arms. Saving these girls is the first step in righting all my wrongs.

“I should call Tia,” I say pulling out my phone.

“I beat you to it,” Fallon says. “I called Salinger when we flew over Juneau; you’d fallen asleep. Anyways, he’s bringing her back to the compound, his mom reported that Thorne was seen back in Seattle late last night.”

“Fuck,” I say whistling low, realizing what that means. “We must have just crossed paths. This could have gone down a lot differently.”

“But it didn’t,” Fal says.

“No. You’re right.” Feeling a sense of relief I finally begin to relax after days of running on fumes. “What do you think Tia’s gonna say when she finds out what we did?”

I clench my jaw, waiting for his answer.

Why the hell do I need his approval anyway?

He looks at me in the mirror again. He’s smiling, and I realize why I care about what he thinks so much.

He’s my family.

Fallon knows about sacrifice, about thick and thin, and I count myself lucky to share a wife with him.

“So, what do you think? She gonna be pissed?” I ask.

“No,” Fallon says. “I think she’s gonna say these girls need names. Can’t call them patients R-767 and R-768 forever.

“I know what we should name them,” I say stroking the light brown hair away from the four-year-old’s cheek.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” A smile pulls at my lips. “This one is Beth.” After my sister. I glance at the toddler in Jefferson’s arms and hope that what I’m about to say is all right with him and Fallon. “And that one is Caroline.”

There’s a small moment of silence before Jefferson chokes out, “I think those are great names.”

Fallon gives a hard nod, catching my gaze in the mirror. “Very good names.”