Page 51 of Dying to Meet You

Steps from the bedroom, I stop. My unease grows exponentially when I consider all the secrets, the lies…points he barely explains before giving orders. Am I being played? Are we becoming pawns in a cover-up? It wouldn’t be the first time I was used by someone exerting their control over me. Being a survivor of XIX honed one aspect of my personality through time: my gut instincts.

A cautious feeling crawls over me.

Something doesn’t sit right with me about this.

Eden’s lying in bed, holding Wes’s blanket. She’s been crying, her body jerking as she whimpers. Blaine hugs her tightly from behind. They don’t see me in the doorway, hesitant to enter because I’m worried I’ll be taken to task for a decision I had no part in. That I don’t agree with at all.

Their eyes track me as I move to the dresser to put my phone, the change in my pocket, and watch on it. I fully intend to hold Eden and give her any kind of comfort I can. I need it, too.

Wes’s blanket tucked between us; I lie facing Eden. I give her a kiss on the forehead before leaning my cheek against the top of her head.

“Do either one of you know where Hutton went? Did he tell you before he left or communicate with you after?”

Eden only shakes her head, but Blaine sits up slightly with an irritated look on his face. “Because Matt sent you to find out?”

“He’s in danger.”

Not that we aren’t all aware of that fact, but I can’t say who Hutton should be leery of.

“We were just talking about your late-night rendezvous with Matt. Were you discussing this move today? I shouldn’t be surprised.” Sneering at me, he continues, “I wouldn’t tell you where Hutton is even if I knew. He’s actually trying to find Wes.”

“That must be why I couldn’t find you.” Eden's scratchy voice is quiet as her breathing evens out from crying.

God forbid anything be kept private.

“You mean-” I can’t look her in the face, dropping my gaze to the ground, “he told you? About last night?” Damnit. The secrets have been piling up. This doesn’t look good.

Knowing Blaine, he made it sound like we were going at it. Like anyone is in the mental space to be intimate like that with our son missing. I want to deck him, but that’s not unusual for us. He doesn’t bother to hide his jealousies. “That wasn’t…No, we weren’t plotting or doing anything more than discussing what’s going on.”

As time slips away, I try not to think about where Weston might be. Whether he’s being mistreated or if he’s even alive. But I can’t push all the cases I’ve worked on involving missing children to the back of my mind. Close to fifty-five found the deceased, only two recovered alive. The pain of knowing he could be gone is more than I can live with if I don’t pull away from it.

Blaine leaves the room to check on Caleb and the kids while I hold Eden. She drifts off in my arms, her sleep troubled with twitching and restless movements. Brushing back her hair, I whisper words of a poem I once read to myself. “‘It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release…”

My life has been a series of tragedies.

The only thing that keeps me here is this love.

Resting her head against my chest, I say to her as she sleeps, “I won’t trade our love or Weston for anything…not anything.”

Especially not keeping secrets I don’t agree with.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Aishitemasu (I love you)

Hutton

Theyaren’ttryingtohide it. It’s all a ruse to draw me in, knowing I’ll come for my son. One down…

“Little bird, you need to run. Don’t let them catch you…run.”

Holing up in the parking ramp of the old Trinom Labs on the wellness center property, I pick apart the message Keir was handed on the thumb drive. It isn’t the words, which are vague and simple. It’s the code running beneath them. It mirrors the Nautilus code I used to hack into the government’s classified records and extract dark-web secrets.

When I developed it at sixteen, I’d glibly called it -the DTMY-Dying to Meet You code. Hints were dropped in the message to Eden, but I didn’t pick up on it right away. It’s essentially a virus that infiltrates and strips away information before rendering whole systems destroyed. I was paid almost three million dollars by the FBI for that code…albeit an altered and tamer version. That code in the wrong hands will wipe out government infrastructures, power grids…that code can launch nuclear weapons.

But I’m not dumb enough to trust any government, especially not the same agency partially responsible for the tortures I suffered growing up. I alone have the full code in my mind. It’s not printed anywhere or recorded in any way.

Is that what they want? Are members of the FBI posing as The Realist cult members? Why the copycat killings then? Why take Weston?

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