by Sharon Sala
“Do we need to order groceries again?”
She turned, then took a deep breath. Charlie was standing in the doorway in his sock feet wearing a pair of old gray sweatpants and a red long-sleeve T-shirt. The word outstanding came and went, and then she regained her focus.
“There’s food. I just don’t really want what’s here.”
“I can order. What sounds good?”
“Ribs.”
He grinned and gave her a thumbs-up.
“Good call. I’ll order. Want fries?”
“Yes, but that’s all. No slaw. No beans.”
“Meat and potatoes... My kind of woman,” Charlie said, and walked out without realizing what he’d said.
She knew he didn’t mean it the way she heard it, but it was a reminder not to get too comfortable with his presence. Once the shock and newness of her existence leveled off in the media, she would find a new normal and he would be gone.
And now that the decision of what to eat had been settled, she wandered back into the hall and then looked up.
The circular mural of naked nymphs romping with satyrs among a woodland setting had always intrigued her when she’d come here for the Mensa meetings. She had tried to imagine Merlin as a little boy growing up here, passing under this somewhat salacious artist rendering daily, but she never could see it. He would always be Merlin—the ancient wizard—to her.
* * *
Dinner came and went, and after the kitchen was clean, Wyrick uttered a terse good-night to Charlie and went to bed.
The press conference was for 2:00 p.m. tomorrow. She was tense and in despair that this was happening. She had puttered around for an hour, preparing herself for a sleepless night, when the security alarm at the front gates suddenly went off, and all of the searchlights and strobe lights and floodlights came on, lighting up the grounds all the way around the house and up into the sky.
Charlie was dreaming about Annie when the alarms went off. He came flying across the hall into her room with a gun in his hand, barefoot and wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants.
“Stay here and lock your door,” he said, and slammed it shut behind him.
She grabbed her gun and took off after him.
Charlie was all the way up the hall when he heard her running up behind him and turned around.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he shouted.
“I’m always your backup.”
“Jesus. Then stay out of sight. The cops should be here shortly.”
The place was lit up like Christmas as Charlie slipped out of the house. The cold air was a rude awakening to the fact that he was only half-dressed, but when he saw a man running across the grounds toward the back of the house, he leaped off the end of the porch to cut him off, then took him down in a flying tackle.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” the man kept shouting.
Charlie rolled him over onto his back, saw the camera hanging around his neck and yanked it off.
“Idiot paparazzi? What the hell kind of pictures did you hope to get in the dark?”
“I was going to hide in the bushes and get some stuff tomorrow when you came out for the press conference.”
Charlie dragged him to his feet, picked up the camera and started walking him toward the gate.
“You’re gonna get pictures all right, but they’ll be your mug shots.”
“Aw, man...just let me go and—”
“Your ride is here,” Charlie said, as a police car came flying up the street with lights flashing. The officer pulled up on the other side of the gates and got out with his gun in his hands.
“We’re good!” Charlie said. “I’m bringing him out.” Then he punched in the code and walked the man out to the cop.
“Intruder on the grounds. We’re pressing charges,” Charlie said.
The officer handcuffed the man and put him in the back of his cruiser, then glanced at Charlie.
“Do you have a permit for that gun?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m a licensed PI, but I don’t wear my identification to bed. If you need it, I can go back—”
“I thought you looked familiar,” the cop said. “You’re Charlie Dodge, aren’t you?”
Charlie nodded. “Guilty. Want the ID?”
“Naw, we’re good,” he said.
“Then I’m going back inside. If you need info, you know how to reach me.”
The cop left with the photographer as Charlie shut the gates and made a run for the house.
Wyrick was standing inside the door with the gun in her hands when he returned.
“Are you okay? Who was it?” she asked.
“Paparazzi. No gun. Just a camera. I’ll reset the security alarm. You go back to bed.”
She put a hand on her heart and then looked at him long and hard before walking back down the hall.
Charlie watched her go, thinking how this huge house made her look so little. She was so tall and so in charge that he’d never thought of her like that before. He thought about stopping by to make sure she was okay, but by the time he got everything reset, she was back in her room with the lights out.
He paused outside her door, then shook his head and went back into his room, pouring himself a shot of whiskey.
One sip to warm him up.
The second sip to settle the thunder of his heart.
Twenty
The media invited to the press conference had been slowly gathering at the Hyatt since before noon. The stage and sound systems were set up and working. The big screens behind the podium would allow perfect viewing, even from the seating in the back of the ballroom.
They began letting them into the foyer outside the ballroom at noon, and as soon as they had passed through the checkpoints, they drifted toward the buffet tables set up inside, filling plates with appetizers and fruits while music played in the background. As they began recognizing familiar faces, they gathered in little groups, discussing the shocking revelations of the Genesis baby’s existence.
Finally, the last of the invited guests had arrived, and the checkpoint was shut down. The guards shut the doors into the ballroom, and then four of them stood guard outside while the men Special Agent Raines had brought with him were inside and set up at their specific points around the ballroom.
Wyrick and Charlie were already there, waiting in a small room just off the stage, and she’d been sitting in total silence with her hands folded in her lap ever since their arrival, gathering herself for what was coming.
Charlie wished he had words to ease her.
He glanced at the clock. It was almost time.
And then Hank came knocking on the door.
He got up and opened it.
“It’s time,” Hank said.
“Is the live feed set up?” Charlie asked.
“It’s all a go. I haven’t seen this much detail since my last assignment with the president. You did good, Wyrick.”
She stood up, then lifted her chin in a familiar gesture Charlie recognized. She was ready for battle.
“Just trying to stay alive,” she said.
Hank grimaced. “Would it help if I mentioned you look like ten million bucks?”
She shrugged. “It’s all about the mask you present to the world—and I’m about to spill my guts in front of it.”
“You did a damn fine thing,” Hank said. “We’re taking down human trafficking rings by the hour. We’ve shut down more illegal research labs, and there’s so much more that’s coming down with it. God only knows how many lives you’re saving.”
Wyrick glanced at Charlie.
“Right beside you,” he said.
She nodded. “Then let’s go.”
Hank led them across the hall into the backstage area of the ballroom.
The journalists had already take
n their seats, so when Hank gave a signal for the sound crew to stop the music, the room fell silent. All eyes were focused on a spotlight sweeping across the stage. When the curtains began to open, the hush deepened—and then she appeared, pausing a moment in the light.
The fact that she was bald seemed to go with her otherworldly appearance. She was unusually tall and whip-thin, and wearing formfitting pants in black leather, silver over-the-knee boots with three-inch heels, silver glitter eye shadow framing eyes so dark they looked black. Her lips were red, which then drew the eye to the red-and-black dragon on her chest, visible through a white shirt so sheer that it shimmered.
When she started walking toward the podium like a panther stalking prey, the people in the front row leaned back in their seats.
Then Charlie Dodge appeared behind her. Taller than her six-plus feet by five inches, wearing dark slacks and a Western-style sport coat with a white open-collar shirt beneath, he matched her stride all the way to the microphone.
Within seconds, three agents from the FBI, including Special Agent Hank Raines, took their places onstage a distance behind her. There was no mistaking the level of security she’d brought with her or why it was there. They’d all read the files. They knew about the continuing arrests that had ensued since the files were released, and they thought they knew Jade Wyrick. But they were wrong.
Jade was stone-faced and focused when she reached the podium. She paused until she caught a glimpse of Charlie to her right, noted the location of the television crews scattered about the room that would be filming live, and then she turned her attention to the audience before her.
“My name is Jade Wyrick, and this press conference is a one and done. I won’t be available for interviews later. There will be no personal appearances on talk shows. I am not available for your entertainment. After being stalked for years, then tailed everywhere I went, there were two attempts made on my life. The last one less than two weeks ago. After being shot out of the air, I crawled out of a burning chopper, bleeding out with two bullet wounds. My boss, Charlie Dodge, who stands here with me, was with the search team who found me before I died, and I am still in recovery from that. I knew then that as long as Universal Theorem was still in business under Cyrus Parks, my life wasn’t worth a shit. I’m going public purely to save my life.”
Then she glanced at all of the cameras.
“You’ve all read varying stories about the people who made me—and what they did afterward. How many women died. How many embryos were genetically and medically manipulated trying to re-create me. You all named me the Genesis baby—the only one of my kind in existence. The crazies already hate me just for breathing. The religious zealots want to pray the devil out of me. But I am not to blame for how I came to be. They continued to fail in re-creating me, because when they murdered the woman who was my mother, they lost their chance to ever re-create me again. I have the DNA of four of the greatest scientific and psychic minds in the world in me. But I have the blood and DNA of Laura Wyrick in me, too. I came from one of her harvested eggs. I am a science experiment that worked, and they wanted me back. She didn’t agree, and they killed her to make me theirs.”
Jade took a deep breath and looked down at the podium, at her hands, gripping it as tightly as they’d gripped the pole she was holding on the merry-go-round, and when she looked up, her dark eyes were blazing with a rage she rarely let herself feel.
“They kidnapped me from a merry-go-round, on a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon. There were men in clown masks who grabbed me. I heard her scream. And I heard the shots that killed her. But UT had their experiment back, and I lost the rest of my childhood in labs, performing like a monkey on a chain for pieces of candy. Can Jade put this piece of electronics back together? Can Jade work these mathematical equations? Does Jade know how jet propulsion works? Does Jade understand the stars? See how long it takes Jade to crack a code, to hack a computer, to not leave any tracks in doing it. What they didn’t know was that in doing all that, I also found the files to me...and I purposefully began failing little bits of the tests they gave me, because I didn’t want them to know that my skills, knowledge and power were growing at an alarming rate...even to me.”
She paused to take a drink of the water from the glass beneath the podium when Charlie swept it out of her hands.
The audience gasped.
“Sorry,” he said softly, then leaned into the mic and pointed at the servers manning the buffet tables. “Someone bring me an unopened bottle of water.”
Wyrick looked at him then, realizing why he’d done that, then looked back at the audience.
“I am an important commodity in Charlie Dodge’s world, too. I bring bear claws to the office every morning.”
And they erupted into a roar of laughter, shifting shock to humor at just the right time.
A waiter came running to the foot of the stage with two bottles of water and gave them to the agents on guard. One handed them up to Agent Raines, who tossed them to Charlie.
“Good catch,” he said, and went back to his post.
Charlie opened one of the bottles and then handed it to her. She took a couple of quick sips and then handed it back to him.
“Just a few more comments for those special people who are claiming I am an alien, and that they know because they went to school with me. I’ve never been in a school in my life. I look like this because I had breast cancer. UT decided I wasn’t so special after all because my body got sick, so they fired me. I took myself home to die. Only I didn’t. Something inside me turned on, and my body healed itself. But my hair never grew back, which pissed me off, so I rejected the idea of wigs, and in defiance, which Charlie will tell you is one of my best traits, I opted for a badass tattoo instead of new boobs. I never have bad hair days. I threw away my bras, and when I look at my naked self in the mirror, I don’t see a victim of anything. I see the dragon, and I see the warrior that life made me become. UT wanted me back after I didn’t die. They wanted to study me again. And that’s when they came after me again. When I wouldn’t comply, they stalked me, and then decided I knew too much and tried to kill me.
“The first time they tried and failed, it cost Cyrus Parks forty million dollars of his personal money, donated in his name, of course, to a charity for hurricane victims.”
This bit of info created a ripple of murmurs across the ballroom, but she kept talking.
“The second time was what I just told you. I crashed in Sam Houston National Forest and woke up alive and crawled out, and in retaliation for the second attempt, this happened, and Cyrus Parks is in prison for life with no chance of parole and, knowing what I can still do to him if I chose, happy to be there. I will answer questions for thirty minutes unless they offend me, in which case one of my friends in the FBI will escort your ass out of here, or if they’re too stupid to discuss, we will all say a prayer for your mama’s grief in raising an idiot. So pick your topics wisely. And do not hound me anywhere in the days to come. Even though I have revealed my truth, my life is not your business. You may not have forty million dollars to spare, but I will make you sorry. Forever.”
She didn’t know people had been crying throughout her statement. And she hadn’t seen the constant shock and disbelief on their faces. She took the silence that ensued afterward as disinterest or disapproval, and at this point, she was too numb to care.
And then a man in the front row stood up and started to clap, and then another in the back of the room stood and joined him, and then one by one, everyone present was on their feet, clapping. And they kept clapping and clapping as the waves of emotion washed through every inch of Wyrick’s body.
Then she looked at Charlie.
“I want to go home.”
“After you,” Charlie said.
She nodded. But when she turned around to walk off, there was another moment when the audience realized there was more of the dragon t
attoo on her back, and below the waistband of those black leather pants, as well. And the mental images of her naked made their hair stand on end.
And then she was gone.
The agents followed her and Charlie out, and then formed a convoy around them as Charlie loaded her into the Jeep. He took a cold Pepsi out of the cooler, wiped it dry and opened it up, then handed it to her.
“You rocked that, lady. This should be champagne, but the Snickers in the console will make up for it,” he said, and then got in.
“About the water,” Wyrick said, referring to the glass he’d knocked out of her hand. “I didn’t think. Thank you.”
“Like you said, it’s all about the bear claws,” he said, then put the car in gear. They drove home, surrounded by Feds.
* * *
As far as the media was concerned, the press conference worked. They saw her in person. They got her on film. And after that parting shot she gave them about making them sorry, no one had the guts to push her further. The applause they’d given her was far less than she deserved, but it was all they had.
The impact of the press conference was felt around the nation, then, as it spread, around the world. And the sight of her had been far more than what they’d expected. She was a beautiful oddity in a fascinating way. And every person who’d ever had a tattoo was in awe of what she’d endured to wear that red-and-black dragon.
* * *
Tony Dawson and his parents had watched from their home, amazed that this woman on television had been instrumental in saving his life.
Trish Caldwell and her mother clung to each other as they watched, weeping for a little girl’s tragedy.
Wanda Carrollton cried for the childhood Wyrick lost, and the granddaughter Jade Wyrick had given back to her.
Every cop in Dallas who knew her from Charlie Dodge’s office had a whole new appreciation for the badass she was, and were now impressed that Charlie wasn’t scared of her.
The Dunleavy family from Denver they’d helped before had come to love her odd ways while she and Charlie were their guests, and after watching the live feed, they wept for the loss of a life she’d never known.
