“She’s all I have left. I think you underestimate what I would do to have her in my life. Like you underestimated what I would do to keep you safe, to save your life.”
Jessica shook her head. “You’d have to take down an entire army. Kill probably a dozen people still loyal to Abe and Knox. And they could be anywhere. You’re going to hunt all of them down? Kill all of them?” She grunted a laugh, punctuating the insanity of it all.
I leaned down and kissed her head. “Please stop underestimating me. Now … go home with your family.”
As I made my way toward my car, she called, “Where are you going?”
Without stopping, without looking back, I murmured only to myself, “I’m going to kill them. All of them.”
Epilogue
Wylder
“Where are we?” Livy (Emily James) opened her tired eyes as the small plane landed, coasting up to the shore.
It took months to plan her death, months to plan the death of Alex Obermeier. That meant months apart.
Months of not being with her at her doctor’s visits.
Months of not hearing the heartbeat of my child.
Months of the most torturous patience.
Then we spent another month apart as we were moved to multiple temporary locations (separately) while it was determined if anyone was following us … suspecting we were still alive.
At seven-and-a-half months pregnant, we were transported to the same airport to be reunited and then put on a sea plane for the final leg of our journey to a new life. With a doctor who would stay with us until the birth of the baby, we took an hour flight to an island off the coast of Livy-would-never-know. And that was where we were to live out the rest of our lives.
“It’s home.” I unfastened her seat belt and kissed her belly while I was in the vicinity.
“It’s an island.”
I chuckled, taking her hand to guide her off the small plane as the doctor grabbed her bag and followed us along with Jericho. “Good observation, Mrs. James.”
“What island?” She slipped on her sunglasses as our feet hit sand.
“Our island.”
“What does that mean?”
I took her hand and led her toward the two ATVs that had been delivered a few weeks earlier along with all of our new belongings. “It means I bought an island for us. It’s small. No one else lives here. All of our supplies will be delivered once a week. And we’ll never have to do stupid shit like work or wait in traffic.”
“Can I be president of our island?” She climbed into the passenger seat of the first ATV.
I leaned in and kissed her slowly for a few seconds before pulling away and smiling. “No. Our island doesn’t have a president. It has a queen.”
“We’re a monarchy.” She grinned.
I helped the pilot and the doctor with the bags, tossing them in the back of the second ATV.
“Up.” I nodded to the seat for Jericho to hop up there as the doctor climbed into the driver’s seat and grinned at Jericho and his reluctance. Hope Faber (previously Gemma Blair) was weeks away from finishing her fellowship to become an OBGYN when her father was killed by Abe, and she was shot and left for dead.
After years of rehabilitation, she fully recovered, all while taking on a new identity far away from friends and family who all assumed she did in fact die. Jackson sent her to bring his grandchild safely into the world.
It was a ten-minute drive to the only structure on the island, our house.
“Eddie … it’s stunning …” She leaned forward, head swiveling in every direction as we pulled to the small drive of our small two-bedroom bungalow on the beach. The island was tiny, so basically everything was on the beach.
Referring to me as Eddie, my new name, surprised me. I assumed I’d always be her Wylder.
Before I got the ATV in Park, she jumped out and ran to the side of the house and straight to the beach. “The waves! Oh my gosh! I can surf these babies!”
“I’ve got this.” Hope giggled as she pulled out the bags. We had very little with us, most everything else had been delivered earlier.
Jericho followed me to the beach as Livy kicked off her sandals and lifted her sun dress, running to the water. “No surfing with my baby still inside of you.”
She ignored me, wading farther out until it reached her belly, soaking the bottom of her dress. “I’m going to surf for the rest of my life.” She turned and gave me the first real smile I’d seen on her face since the day I carried her away from her father, sobbing and crying, “It’s not fair.”
It wasn’t fair.
It was life.
“And you…” she drudged through the water back to the beach “…will hunt and fish.”
“Oh, I will, huh?” I grinned, sliding my arms around her.
“You bought me an island,” she whispered, shaking her head as the first real sparkle of life came back to her brown eyes.
“I bought you an island. It seemed like the only fair thing to do since you won’t be president.” I pecked her lips. “Let’s go inside. I’m starving and you should be too.”
*
Wylder James came two weeks early, weighing in at six pounds, eight ounces and one hundred percent perfect.
I didn’t know how to be a dad. Livy said fathers have two jobs: to love and protect.
That I could do.
I wasn’t sure any father had ever loved their son the way I loved Wylder. And I knew it the second he first looked at me.
Livy called them moments.
“Moments …” Livy (because she was forever my Livy) said as she breastfed our son and drank tea in a lounge chair under a palm tree as the sun set.
“What moment this time?” I asked, carving an odd figure out of a piece of driftwood.
“This one. I like it, but it’s incomplete. It’s bittersweet. It’s everything, but with an asterisk. Your mom has a grandson, so does my dad. One they will never see.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” she parroted.
“Your dad doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would really let his daughter go forever.”
“What are you saying?”
I offered another shrug, focusing on what looked like a dolphin taking shape. Or a wood turd. “I’m saying … I think your dad isn’t ready to let me win quite yet.” I squinted one eye and gave her a quick glance.
Hope.
Hope did a lot of things. In that moment, it breathed life into my wife. It gave her back her most genuine smile. Hope came with no promises. It offered no solutions. It fought the good fight and knew when to let go. And I knew the most likely scenario was that she would never see her father again. But life was too fucking short to lose hope.
She stretched her leg out and dug her toe into my side until I grinned, keeping my head down and focusing on her birthday present taking shape. “I love you.”
I set the knife and wood down. Then I grabbed her foot and kissed my way up her leg, over her soft belly, stopping to kiss Wylder on the cheek before continuing up her neck and to her ear.
“I love you back.”
*
Livy
After putting nine-month-old Wylder to bed, I peeked out the window at my husband sitting in the sand next to Jericho, gazing into the dark night and endless miles of ocean. He did it every night. I never asked why or what he thought about. His dark, mysterious side is what first drew me to him, so I let him have his moments, his time alone.