What was Dr. Rex doing here?
He reached Heath and stopped in front of him, smiling. Did they know each other?
Had Heath called my pediatrician to attend to me?
My vision swam in a fever-hot mirage as my mind cast about for understanding. The two did not embrace, didn’t even shake hands.
And Heath definitely wasn’t smiling. He stood stiffly facing the shorter, older man.
“Hello, son,” Dr. Rex said.
“You ordered this?” Heath growled. “Your goon squad terrified Daniel, you know. What are they going to do with him?”
Dr. Rex smiled. “Don’t worry. He’ll be fine. He’ll be back in the arms of his ‘mother’ very soon. She was quite insistent on seeing him—she’ll probably be waiting at the landing pad.”
Wait—what? What was happening here? My head spun like the whirling blades above us.
“I’m surprised you came personally to bring him home,” Heath said in a surly tone. “It takes a miracle to get you out of your lab these days,”
“Miracles don’t exist. Science, however…”
His eyes gleaming, the doctor stepped past Heath and came to squat in front of me. “Remarkable. You have surprised me, young lady. That’s not an easy thing to do.”
“Dr. Rex… I don’t understand.”
The man I’d always seen as a surrogate grandfather placed a finger under my chin and tipped my face up to bring us eye to eye.
“Mireya, dear, I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you these fifteen years or so. Let me introduce myself properly. My name is not Rex. I’m Apollo Gideon, and I’m your father… so to speak.”
A loud gasp escaped me. “You’re Gideon? But why did you…”
Shock prevented me from finishing my question. Gideon answered it anyway.
“Pretend to be your pediatrician?” He smiled. “I wanted the chance to see my creations up close… without the need for messy explanations. And who better to monitor your growth and development than your maker? Being the kindly old physician offered me the opportunity to observe you all in a natural setting, even to attend a few family functions over the years— birthday parties, for instance.”
My tenth birthday. The photo with Heath in the background. That’s why he’d been there on the base, watching me blow out candles.
He’d been there with his father.
I looked up at Heath, whose face was pinched with stress. “You were there.”
He didn’t respond to me. Instead he turned his attention to Gideon. “You still haven’t said why you’ve come.”
Dr. Rex—Gideon—stood and faced Heath. “I’m here because you have apparently gone off the rails. I’m not about to let the most valuable asset my company has ever owned slip through my fingers.”
At Heath’s shocked expression, he chuckled. “Yes, I know all about this mythical ‘Haven’ of yours. Truth be told, I’d never put much stock in the stories, but you might be onto something after all. Thanks to your adventures, I may actually be able to recover some of our other lost assets. My soldiers spotted several figures moving through the trees from the helicopter.”
He nodded toward a squad of four men who turned and headed down the trail toward the creek. I closed my eyes, still reeling from shock and saying a quick prayer that the guy I’d seen in the woods had enough sense to stay out of the sight of Gideon’s soldiers.
To one of the remaining soldiers, Gideon said, “Put the female on the helicopter.”
The female. His tone was casual, as if he’d placed a dinner order instead of sending commandos to imprison a teenage girl.
But why should that surprise me? This was a man who had no love for his own little boy, who thought of sweet Daniel as a thing.
“No.” Heath charged toward us, gripping his father’s shoulder and spinning him around to face him. “You can’t have her. We’re not going with you.”
Completely unintimidated, Gideon smirked. He motioned to two nearby soldiers, who grabbed Heath and held his arms as he struggled against them.
“You may stay here if you wish. But the asset is coming with me.”
“Her name is Mireya,” he spat at his father. “And she’s not an asset—she’s a person.”
“If you wish. Either way, she’s too valuable to allow her to roam about ‘playing house’ with you in the woods.”
He flicked his fingers in my direction, and the remaining two soldiers stepped forward and grabbed me, following his wordless order.
Heath let loose a string of curses, fighting harder.
“Get your hands off her.”
He succeeded in freeing one of his arms and lunged forward, tackling the man who held my left arm. The end result was Heath and two guards in a roiling heap on the ground. The other ran forward and shot Gideon a questioning glance.
“Sir?”
It was obvious he wanted to do his job but wasn’t certain how much force to use with the boss’s son.
Gideon let out a beleaguered sigh.
“Such drama. For pity’s sake, get him under control and out of here,” he barked at the guard. “Use the wand—turn it up to maximum if you have to.”
“Yes, sir.”
The guard moved toward Heath, brandishing his nerve-disrupting wand and aiming it at his neck. Hearing the instrument buzz sent a throb of renewed pain up my spine. It had only touched me on the hip—I couldn’t imagine sustaining a jolt from that thing on my neck or face.
The guard jabbed the device into Heath’s nape, prompting him to let out a pained shout that reached down inside me and raked my heart.
I pulled against the guard who still held onto my right arm. “Stop—please—don’t hurt him. I’ll go with you—I’ll do whatever you want—just stop hurting him.”
Heath was no longer struggling, but he was still conscious, breathing hard. He lifted his head and looked at me.
His father also turned to face me. “Hold on.”
He extended an arm to the side, showing his palm to the guard in a “stop” gesture. Squinting at me in apparent fascination, he moved closer.
“What did you say?”
“I said ‘don’t hurt him.’”
“You said more than that—you offered to take his place.”
Wearing a gleeful smile, he spun to face his son.
“I believe I owe you an apology, son. When you removed all your chips and turned off your tracking devices, I wasn’t sure whose side you were on. When you incapacitated my retrieval squad here at the park, I thought I knew. I believed you had betrayed me. But now I see what you were up to.”
