“We all will,” Andreas assured me. “We all hid away for different reasons. Some of us were running from our past.”
“Our present,” Oz offered.
“Our choices,” Hatch said with a smirk.
All three of them looked to Dirk, who just folded his arms. “I wasn’t running from anything. I was there to protect her.”
“And you have…all of you have. But if we want a chance at our life here, we cannot be waging war with a corporation. I think the government would help us.” In New Zealand anyway, they’d been welcoming enough to me. Maybe even the Americans. “But I don’t want to be owned by any one government. I want my work to help everyone.”
More, I didn’t want to be owned by anyone. I wanted to go back to our compound. Or the island. Anywhere it could just be us, where they could be happy, too. Suddenly, my parents’ choices made so much more sense to me. They hadn’t been walking away from the world, they’d run to be together. But they also hadn’t given up on it. My mother designed me, a perfect test tube baby combining their genes in exactly the right way, because like so many who suffered from the virus, fertility had been a problem for them.
Not her.
My father.
But she found a way to do it.
I was more a clone than a baby, but I’d been gestated and I’d grown. She had to tweak me over the years, not something I wanted to share, but they would know now and I was no longer willing to hide it. She’d also found a way to repair the issue with shedding DNA. She’d locked it in my own genes, it had just taken me a while to find it.
I had to wonder if she’d realized what she’d done, or had she just been too obsessed with having a child? Her journals all suggested the latter. Love wound its way around me, and Oz reached across the table to take my hands.
“Dirk said you had an idea,” he prompted me, and I met his gaze and then looked to each of the others.
They were definitely not going to like it, but of the choices facing us, it was the best one.
I just needed them to trust me.
Smithson and his men arrived the next morning. We’d barely slept, but I had managed a couple of hours curled up with Oz. Though I would’ve liked to have had more, we were both exhausted. Even though we’d been expecting Smithson, because there was no way he would trust us to keep our word, we hadn’t run.
When he stepped inside, surprise had flickered through is expression. He truly hadn’t expected us to be there. He’d brought a dozen men with him.
“Have you made a decision?” he asked, focusing on me.
“I have,” I told him. “But you’re not going to like it.”
Chapter 16
“Life asked Death, ‘Why do people love me but hate you?’ Death responded, ‘Because you are a beautiful lie, and I’m a painful truth.’” - Unknown
DIRK
The arrival of Smithson and his people grated on Dirk, but he couldn’t argue with Valda’s plan. She made good points on all of it. Staring at Smithson though, all he wanted to do was put a bullet in his head and call it good.
Dead men couldn’t hunt them. Couldn’t hunt her.
The problem was while Smithson was one man, his corporation wasn’t. Dirk had enough people here they could take the team he’d brought with them. In fact, they might be needed, but for now they had their orders. He and the guys had agreed and they were doing this Valda’s way.
Again, they were seated in the kitchen. Well, Valda was, Dirk had removed the other chairs. Hatch leaned against the wall like he didn’t have a care in the world, which was such utter bullshit. The man played his part to perfection. Sometimes, the asshole played it too well. The connection forged between him and Valda could have irked Dirk.
Honestly, he was surprised it hadn’t. They had always shared a closeness, because Hatch could make her laugh and tease her even from the most distant moods. But now that he seemed to have a window into her mind? Dirk could’ve resented him, he supposed.
But he was just glad his brother was there for her. As irritating as he could’ve been, Hatch had Dirk’s back time and again. More, he’d had hers. He would’ve done anything for her, even fight all of them and change all the rules. Honestly, they needed his chaos in their lives.
She needed him.
If that meant they were indelibly linked, Dirk could live with it. There were definite security advantages to it.
Smithson, the pathetic little toad, swept his glance over all of them and then focused on Valda. Of course, her attention was what he wanted. Needed. He was desperate enough to do anything for it. Because he wanted to use her.
Dirk’s palms itched to grasp the weapon strapped to his thigh. Oz sat right next to Valda, a hand on her back but his expression schooled to unreadable. Doc had skills, too. The fact that he’d risked his own life and come for Dirk and Hatch would never be forgotten. He wasn’t a man who waged war, but he’d found a way to win the battle his way and given them the opportunity to break free.
That was all right, Dirk didn’t need Doc to kill people.
He was good at that.
“Well?” Smithson demanded, but Andreas interrupted by serving mugs of tea. He passed out mugs to Smithson and made offers of it to his men, but they just shook their heads. Shrugging, he made a circuit and passed mugs to all of their family, including Dirk.
Dirk knocked back half of it in one gulp. It was hot and burned its way down his throat, but he craved the burn. Hatch gave him a smirk and took a dainty sip of his.
Fucker.
Andreas finally took the seat on Valda’s right with his own tea, and she smiled at him. She’d changed. Obviously, she had. There was no escaping that she would have changed in the years since she ended up in a coma and they’d hooked her up to that crazy fucking machine. While he couldn’t believe it had worked, he’d never doubted Hatch’s ability to play the odds and win.
Truthfully, Dirk was kind of counting on that right now.
“Are we quite done?” Sarcasm dripped from every syllable as Smithson glared at Valda, and Dirk was right back to wanting to shoot the fucker.
“Patience,” she counseled him. At his glare, she gave him what Dirk would call her polite smile. It was most often reserved for those who interrupted her work and she couldn’t just dismiss them. Valda respected social norms to a point. Dirk never needed it, and she’d always appreciated it about him.
But that was another way she’d changed. Granted, they’d been forced by circumstance to move and hide, but she hadn’t retreated into her work at all. She’d been reaching out, to all of us, and she no longer made unilateral decisions.
Dirk loved Valda.
He still might need time to get to know this new woman, but he already liked her.
“Patience,” Valda repeated. “It’s a necessity for any scientist. You deal in facts and figures, though, am I correct?”
With an impatient huff, Smithson glared, then nodded. “I do, and the simple facts are, I’m not leaving without you. Whether you come willingly or not, you are too important to the work.” His men raised their weapons.
So predictable.