Chapter 6

Icontemplate Crew’s words, and no matter how many times I go over them in my head, I can’t picture a single scenario that will allow us to walk away without someone getting hurt.

“Is everything okay, Wilder?”

I look over at Salem as she walks towards me and offer her a smile.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“Really? Because I’ve been saying your name for the last five minutes.”

I sigh as she sits down beside me and rests her head on my arm.

“I’m thinking about Lara,” I admit.

“So you guys realized you were being assholes and apologized?”

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, honey.”

“No, but it burned in one. Look, if you don’t fix this now, it’ll get worse, and by the time you finally man up and find the balls to apologize, she won’t listen to a word you say.”

“Being a mom has made you mean.”

“Being a mom brings out all these protective instincts in me. Lara might not be my daughter, but she is my sister. And I’m disgusted at how quickly a group of adults turned on her in a moment based on her DNA. You’re all lucky I didn’t kick your asses.”

“None of us were acting rationally, Salem. It’s been a rough few months. You were attacked, we almost lost Astrid, Avery was shot and kidnapped, James is dead, and Greg almost joined him. And it’s all because of the Division and that motherfucker Penn. Everyone is just being cautious.”

“I understand, but that doesn’t make it right. Even Oz realized he was a dick, and let’s be honest, self-awareness is not his strong point. He drove Greg and Lara into town earlier. Judging by the time, I’d say he decided to stick around, not because he doesn’t trust her with Greg, but because he feels bad for what he said and wants a second chance.”

“But we don’t know if we can trust her yet.”

“We didn’t know if we could trust her before we found out her father is Penn, but that didn’t stop you from wanting her. Now you’re acting like she’s guilty of something because he’s her father. Are you really going to crucify the child for his sins? If so, then remember, he might be my father, too. Are you going to suddenly question my loyalty?”

“You know it’s not the same.”

“What I know is that a seventeen-year-old girl risked her life for a woman she hardly knows and a group of children who think the sun rises and sets with her. At seventeen, I was still figuring out how to look after myself, and here she is acting as a mother to a group of traumatized children. And she’s doing it with such grace, having very likely gone through a lot of trauma herself.”

I tap my fingers against my thigh, not liking the thought of that at all.

“Give her a chance, Wilder. If she’s working against us, then we’ll figure it out eventually. Really, there’s not much she can do to hurt us. Oz and Zig have this place on high alert, and nobody leaves Apex unarmed.”

“Oz is packing?”

“Yeah, and so is Greg. Even in his state, Greg’s still a crack-shot and able to protect Lara better than most men half his age.”

I grin because she’s right. We wind Greg up because he’s the oldest one here and has naturally become a father figure to us all, especially to our women. But we don’t tease him because we think he’s weak. Anyone who assumes otherwise is an idiot.

“Where’s Crew? He dropped in just after Lara, Greg, and Oz left, but I haven’t seen him since.”

If I had to guess, I’d say he’s following them, keeping an eye on the trio from a distance. After all, recon is what me and Crew excel at. He’ll want to observe Lara without her knowing she’s being watched.

“Not sure,” I lie. “He did mention maybe going for a run.”

“You boys and your running,” Salem mutters.

“We’ve gotta stay fit.”

She snorts. “I’ve never sprained my knee eating a doughnut.”

I slide my T-shirt up my stomach and reveal my hard-earned six-pack. “I’ve gotta run off those doughnuts if I want abs like these.”

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t slice you open and choke you with your intestines.”

We both look over our shoulders and find Zig standing behind the sofa with a sleeping Aries in his arms.

“Because it would wake the baby.” I press a kiss on Salem’s cheek to piss off the boss and jump up out of reach.

“I’m going to look for Ev and see if he’s found anything on that flash drive yet.”

“You really can’t sit still for long, can you?” Salem asks, leaning toward her sleeping son, kissing his head gently when Zig sits beside her.

“I like to be busy, that’s all. Thanks for the chat, Salem. I’ll think about what you said.” I tell her as I turn and walk out of the room.

“What exactly did you guys chat about?” I hear Zig’s voice rumble as I move down the hallway with a grin on my face.

I head upstairs, my grin slipping when I enter Ev’s office and find the multiple screens of his computer full of scrolling information.

“How does that shit not give you a headache?”

He doesn’t jump when I ask. He might be focused on what he’s doing, but nobody will ever be able to sneak up on him unnoticed.

“What the fuck is all this shit?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Ev mutters, enlarging the information on one of the screens so that I can see it better. Not that I understand any of it.

“It’s some kind of code. I asked Avery to look at it, but it wasn’t something she’s seen before. Don’t worry, I’ll crack it eventually. I have an algorithm running to see if there’s anything similar out there, which is doubtful, but you never know. We may get lucky.”

“You could ask Lara,” I offer begrudgingly.

“Oh, I will when she gets back, but I don’t think she’ll know what this is either. Not if her main job was the day-to-day care of the kids.”

“No harm in asking, though.”

“Agreed, plus there are a few things here not written in code that I’d like her to elaborate on.”

“Like what?”

“Like the kids’ files, for instance.”

I pull out the chair beside him and sit down. “Do you have all the kids’ information? Anything we need to know about?”

“Oh yeah, but only because I think we should all be aware of the hell these kids have survived.”

Ev clicks a few buttons, and the screen in front of me suddenly shows a list of files. There are no names, just subject numbers, and as the screen scrolls up, more and more files appear.

“Jesus, how many are there?”

“A lot. It looks like they go back decades.”

“There any way to find out which file goes with which of the kids we have here?”

“Yeah, actually. The files are saved in order from the first to the current batch of kids.”

Ev’s fingers fly across the keys until only four files remain on the screen. With a click of the mouse, one of them opens.

Subject: 08789 D.O.B.: 01/30/2016 Sex: Male

“Noah.”

I start reading, and my body becomes more tense the farther through the file I get. By the time I’m done, my hands are fisted so tightly that my fingers cramp.

“They found him in a fucking dog cage?!” I all but roar.

“Calm down. I know how you feel, but he’s here now, and he’s safe.”

I rub my hand over my face, feeling sick to my stomach. According to the file, Noah’s parents sold him when he was four to a loan shark after they ran up a debt they couldn’t pay. When the loan shark realized Noah had a knack for numbers, he treated him like a prize pet, part of which meant performing on demand and being kept in a fucking cage.

“He screamed so much that he had to have surgery on his throat. There is a report that says”—Ev trails off, scrolling back through the file to find the report—“that although the surgery was successful, the psychological toll would take longer to heal. At a critical learning age, Noah learned that crying, screaming, and begging got him exactly nothing except pain. Now he’s quiet, partly out of self-preservation, partly because he knows being loud doesn’t work.”

I look at Ev and shake my head. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“It’s worth noting that it wasn’t the Division that did this to him. They effectively rescued him.”

“Yeah, but instead of making sure he went to a loving home, they kept him for their own use.”

“From what I’ve been able to find out, that’s why the government created the Division—to help find and save gifted people. It wasn”t until the higher-ups started to question how these people could be used to further humanity that it became corrupt, and the gifted people were exploited. That’s when the chip was developed and the Penn Travis project started. It wasn’t much later that they started their breeding program.” He shakes his head.

“A corrupt blacklist government-funded group gone rogue? Imagine that,” I mock. I wish I could say this was the first time I heard of something like this happening, but that would be a lie.

“Right?” He snorts.

“What about Lara’s file?”

“I have no way of narrowing down the field other than by age and sex, and that still leaves over four hundred people who fit the parameters.”

“They have four hundred seventeen-year-old girls?”

“Not quite. They’ve had four hundred girls who would be seventeen now. What the files don’t say is when or if the girl left, died, or was relocated. Lara is going to have to be the one who shows me the correct file.”

“I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

“Can you blame her? I’ve only read a few of these files, and each one is worse than the last. We don’t know Lara’s history or how she ended up at the Division. Was she one of the kids rescued?—”

I jump up before he can finish. I can honestly say it never occurred to me that Lara might have been a victim herself. It should have, of course. Especially after everything Avery told us about her time working for the Division.

“But her father…” I protest.

“Didn’t exactly take Salem in. But if he’d been keeping an eye on her, like we think, then he knew her mom had died. And he would have known about the situation with the cartel.”

“So the man won’t be winning father of the year anytime soon. But for his daughter to end up in the hands of a…a…” I stumble, not wanting to put the words out there in case it makes them true.

“It might be worth talking to Greg, see if she’s said anything to him. Let’s hope, for our sake, we’re wrong about this.”

“What do you mean, for our sake?” I frown in confusion.

“Imagine the worst things that could have happened to that girl at the hands of her father. And then think about what it would feel like to finally be rescued, only to have the rescuers turn on you and, worse, believe you were working with their abuser.”

And that comment has me running for the trash can and throwing up.