by Amber Lynn
Copyright ©2019 Amber Lynn
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
Prologue
Fifteen years ago
The buzzer indicating the end of class blared loudly through the room. Willow felt the vibration echo through her body and shivered. Among many things she hated about high school, the annoying screech announcing the end of class stood right around the middle of her list. It couldn’t compete with the fact too many people filled the classes and halls, most of whom stared at her openly.
It also didn’t compete with the germs and sickness she felt almost vibrating through the air. Willow considered herself a scientist, even if others thought it was just a phase. She wanted to someday work on ridding the world of diseases that took the toll on a person’s body and whittled them down to nothing.
Her grandmother had died of one such disease when Willow was six. Willow and her grandmother weren’t particularly close, as if anyone in her messed-up family could be, but Willow watched as the cancer ate away at her grandmother, and Willow’s brain flipped a switch and started learning everything she could on the subject of diseases and how to fight them.
Obviously, that may sound a little crazy for someone that young, but Willow never let something like that stand in her way. When she came up with a task, her determination saw it through to the end. In her small lab at home, she already had different compounds she played around with on a daily basis. She wasn’t anywhere near ready for clinical testing on anything, or even preclinical, but given another year or so, she thought she’d have something to present.
The plan to enroll in a public high school ate into each day she should’ve been home working. She thought the idea of enrolling was completely idiotic from the start, but her parents declared it time for her to socialize and learn how to be around others before heading off to college. At ten, Willow didn’t belong in high school, like she hadn’t belonged in grade school five years before.
It wasn’t her anti-social behavior that made that a fact. It was the pure and simple fact she knew more at ten than every teacher she’d come across in the school. And that was a fact.
Take the class she was in as an example. Dr. Anderson had to be one of the smartest teachers in the building, but the idea he’d shared about a revelation in the in vitro fertilization process had flaws. Willow hated puzzles with pieces fitting together wrong, which his explanation did, so she’d corrected the problems in front of her, announcing them to the class.
Dr. Anderson had at first smiled at the interruption and her corrections, but at some point, his friendly expression changed. Willow had trouble reading people. Her brain told her too many times that the face in front of her didn’t really match what the person felt.
Her mother was a prime example of this. Pauline Jamison’s face almost never moved. Part of it was thanks to the injections she got to keep wrinkles away, another thing Willow saw as idiotic. But mainly, her mother was just a cold woman who didn’t let her emotions show. Willow’s father had provided the cold description in an argument she’d overheard once, and it stuck in her mind.
Willow didn’t know if most parents would be proud that their child was considered a prodigy and genius. All she knew was the announcement and the constant “weirdness,” as they put it, made them unsure what to do with Willow. She didn’t mind, at least not most of the time. It usually meant she got to spend more time alone in front of the computer, picking up more for her almost photographic memory to store, or playing with the small lab she had set up in her room.
“Miss Jamison, do you mind staying after class for a few moments?”
With her books tucked away in her backpack, Willow had been ready to head home for the day. Her driver was probably waiting outside for her. Knowing Mark, probably wasn’t necessary, but Willow thought it anyway. The man had been working for her parents for years, and he never missed a drop off or pick up.
Looking up to the front of the room, Willow saw that Dr. Anderson had his back to her, studying the general process of in vitro he’d drawn on whiteboard for the class to learn. He’d left parts out of what was on the board, which annoyed Willow, even if he’d spoken them aloud. He might as well have put the beginning and ending of a story up there.
The rest of the room had cleared out, as it always did the second the buzzer sounded. She understood the need to be anywhere other than the classroom, but the reality of her smaller body being pushed around in the crowds of teenagers rushing to escape their prison of the day always made her remain a few extra minutes in class.
She walked up to the whiteboard and looked at the scribbles. Dr. Anderson’s handwriting left a lot to be desired, but Willow really couldn’t complain. Whenever she bothered writing things down, generally her thoughts moved so fast that scribbles were all anyone else could see. They always made sense to her, and she supposed that was most important.
“You have a brilliant mind, Miss Jamison. Especially for this kind of stuff, which shouldn’t be possible at your age.”
There were no questions in his words, so Willow didn’t bother responding. It annoyed her parents when they wanted to have a conversation and Willow found nothing worth saying on her part. Not that they ever really talked about anything that interested Willow. Maybe if they tried, she’d have more to say.
“I wish I could study it,” he said as he turned to face her. Willow’s gaze remained on the board, but she saw the movement. “I deliberately put holes in the discussion today to see if you’d pick up on them.”
That statement caught Willow’s attention. Her head moved slightly to take in his expression. It seemed closed off, but that wasn’t unusual for someone dealing with her.
“But you went beyond just pointing them out. You brought to my attention the flaws in my hypothesis. I wouldn’t expect that from a college student taking this class, let alone a ten-year-old.”
His voice remained flat. Much like facial expressions, Willow couldn’t always tell the meaning behind a person’s words from their voice. That’s why she generally just stayed away from others. Her brain woul
d try to pick up what it had trouble sensing or get caught up on one small aspect and time would float away. She’d stand there immobile thinking things through, while the world around her went on like she didn’t exist.
She didn’t mind the not existing part, but others did. They could tell she was never fully there in the conversation and annoyance always followed.
Dr. Anderson didn’t seem to mind, though. She saw his smile out the corner of her eye as her brain remained focused more on the board in front of her. The idea of creating a life intrigued her. She’d been studying biology long before coming to Dr. Anderson’s AP class on the subject. She knew all about the normal way to make babies, but the idea of starting the process outside of the body was more her speed.
“You’ve indicated you want to someday cure diseases. Cure even the deadliest cancers, I believe you said.”
Willow nodded, absently. The conversation, like most, wasn’t going to hold her attention. What she wanted to do in the future seemed far off. Not that she couldn’t start on that road now. Adults just didn’t seem inclined to let her. Even if she did start mixing up compounds in her little home lab, which was a joke on the scale of what she dreamed of one day having, no one would seriously consider testing anything she produced. That’s why she had to work so hard to prove them wrong.
“My wife has been given a death sentence, sadly one that sounds like it’s going to be drawn out. I need you to find a cure for it, and I need you to start today.”
The words caught Willow’s attention again. She almost didn’t think she heard him right, but when she turned her full attention, his eyes had changed. Any happiness was gone from the narrowed slits. She rarely looked a person directly in their eyes, but she couldn’t help herself. The darkness etched in what were usually brown eyes but had turned black scared her. Willow had never felt the sensation before, but she knew it instinctively.
He turned from her as she tried to make sense of the situation. She heard the wheels of a large suitcase glide across the floor as it came into view. She didn’t have time to think about what it meant as she watched him take a cloth and bottle from a drawer in his desk. Willow told her body it needed to move, but she remained frozen. As the cloth lowered to her face, Willow cursed her body for not understanding the danger. Within seconds, she started slowly blinking and the world went dark.
Chapter 1
Present day
It felt like a forest surrounded Willow. A hair tie usually corralled her blonde hair down her back, but she positioned her new inky locks to hide as much of her face as she could. She should’ve cut the knee-length hair to change her appearance even more. The new color from a bottle helped a little, but a shorter cut along with it would’ve been better to make her look like a different person.
If changing her hair was all it took to hide and stay safe, she wouldn’t hesitate to shave it off. She’d thought about chopping just some of it off, but it was awkward with the long, thick length, and she couldn’t trust someone else to do it. Plus, making it easier to see her face wasn’t the best idea.
Makeup did little to cover the thin scar along her left cheek, and she didn’t have contacts to hide her purple eyes. She hoped after another few weeks at the diner, she’d have enough money to take care of the latter. Then, maybe, she could consider cutting her hair.
The scar was still an issue, but maybe some better makeup would help. She’d gone with the cheapest concealer she could find, and it left a lot to be desired. No one had specifically asked about the scar. Eyes lingered on it, though, which drove Willow to hide behind the forest of hair as much as possible.
Until she could get some money together, the hair color change and some rub-on tanning lotion to darken her pale skin worked well enough. No one had recognized her, not that she gave people abundant chances, or that anyone would know who she was. Her job in the kitchen made it so only the few people working during her shifts and her boss/landlady saw her with any frequency.
And Connor.
The little boy pulled on her arm and pointed to his favorite box of cereal. Willow had known Connor since the day he was born, and not once had she heard the four-year-old speak. Knowing how demented his father was, Willow didn’t blame him. As a baby, he learned early not to cry, a lesson Willow also had to learn. The scar on her face was one of the punishments for not understanding that. There were times over the years that even her lack of general emotions didn’t help her. She hated crying, but her body seemed to think it necessary from time to time.
“So, you recommend the marshmallow one?”
The deep voice made Willow’s body tighten. Her lungs seized as her breath whooshed out of her. Connor wrapped his arms around her leg and squeezed. At least he could move. Willow’s fight or flight instinct was more of a freeze in place instinct. It always had been.
In the middle of a grocery store didn’t rank high as a place where that instinct came in handy. The store was small, much like the town they were hiding out in. They’d been on the run for three weeks and somehow managed to not draw any attention. Not that a man asking about cereal should register the end of the world is near, but Willow preferred to be as invisible as possible.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. There just isn’t anyone else around to ask what kind of cereal a five-year-old prefers. I figure you look about that age, right?”
Nothing about the man’s voice revealed menace, but Willow had learned when she was ten not to trust anyone. Now twenty-five, she knew firsthand that even pillars of the community could turn out to be monsters.
Darting a quick look to the right, where the man stood, she felt her eyes widen as she tried to school her expression to rid it of the fear welling inside of her. They were just a mother and son out getting groceries, she told herself. Act normal.
The problem with that sentiment was that Willow had no clue what normal was. The large man next to them seemed anything but normal, so he wasn’t helping the illusion. He stood at least six feet, towering over her five foot four, and had wide shoulders that tapered into arms bigger around than her legs.
If his deep voice was enough to freeze her in place, his sheer size made her heart want to stop. Not to mention the fact that she wasn’t the only one with a scar on her face. The small scar next to his lips wasn’t fully healed, with pink skin puckered slightly. Unlike her scar, which detracted from her overall looks, his made him seem dangerous, or maybe it was just his size that did that. Either way, danger was what she’d been trying to stay far away from while she and Connor attempted to start a new life.
Her eyes didn’t make it above his lips. She pulled Connor, whose small body had begun to tremble, against her even tighter and sidestepped to try to get away from the man as quickly as she could. They were in a store, so chances were he wasn’t about to snatch them up or anything, but she couldn’t take that chance.
“Hey, wait. Don’t run off, please. I just wanted a little advice.”
The man’s tone had never been harsh, but his new words were quiet and clearly meant to try to calm. They didn’t stop her from taking another step away. For getting away as quickly as she could, Willow had only managed to put a few feet of distance between them. Running from the store would only draw more attention. She didn’t know how her mind processed that idea, but she’d been in preservation mode for so long that she stopped questioning when her mind overruled her body’s need to do something.
“My nephew is spending the night at my place, and I have no clue what kids like to eat. I figured you two would have a little expertise on the subject.”
The idea made sense, in the real world, but Willow hadn’t lived in the real world for over a decade. In her world, words never meant what they should, and people couldn’t be trusted.
“All kids like the one with the marshmallows,” she said softly. Her words sounded disjointed even to her ears.
She didn’t want to say anything, but she’d barely started filling their cart with the groceries they needed
and there wasn’t another store in town. She hoped an answer would get the guy moving on his way, so they could finish up and return to their tiny apartment.
“Yeah, I should’ve guessed.”
Willow eyed the man as he reached out to grab a box of cereal and put it in his basket. He didn’t move, other than his arm, showing her how close he’d been. She’d been right in front of that cereal. She couldn’t believe she’d let him get that close. The thought sent a shiver down her spine.
“Are you guys okay? I don’t mean to pry, but I’m not exactly sure what I did to make it so you’d rather be in Antarctica than in the cereal aisle with me.”
The guy was a talker. Why couldn’t he see her social cues and run the other direction? It was obvious he’d read the room right. Antarctica sounded like a perfect place for them, but there was no way they could jump on a plane and hide.
Willow had stolen only a couple hundred dollars in her mad rush to get away, so money was tight. Most of it had gone to train tickets to help them get away as quickly as possible. She had no identification for her or Connor, making air travel out of their reach.
Luck had finally granted her a little leeway when she found the job at the diner and Rachel, the owner, had taken pity on her by relenting to pay her in cash. Willow had considered putting another state between her and the man who’d kidnapped her, but Connor was tired and needed to rest. She figured hiding out for a month or two would be fine.
A small town in West Virginia wasn’t as far as she could get from Austin, but she figured it wouldn’t be the first place anyone would look for her. She went east because west was the logical direction for her.
After a few years of being stuck in a basement in Nevada, her kidnappers decided to move to another house they owned in Texas. She’d been in a trunk and blindfolded until she found herself in an identical lab and set up from the other house. It could have been the same place, but when she escaped, it became clear quickly they really were in another state.
