The Last Straw (The Jigsaw Files #4) - Sharon Sala Page 0,102

way, so was she. She loved Charlie Dodge with all her heart. But he was here because of a duty he felt to keep her safe. He was always with her, and yet, she felt so alone.

She sat down at her computers and then paused, looking around at all of the technology and knowing that she had the world at her fingertips at any given time.

She also knew that everything she knew and could do, could be weaponized if it fell into the wrong hands. She understood things in the universe others had yet to even know existed, and she wasn’t about to show them, or explain it, because it would never be used for good. There was always going to be someone greedy enough for money and power, who was willing to walk over bodies and souls to get it.

The simple existence she’d known before that day on the boardwalk when her mother had taken her to ride the merry-go-round, was a painful memory she rarely revisited.

She kept thinking about that book in Sonny Burch’s apartment. The one his grandmother had given him. The one he’d used to hide his secrets. The Velveteen Rabbit. She needed to read that one day, just to see what was special enough to keep it.

She didn’t understand how someone could turn into a monster, when they started life with so much going for them.

And why had it been monsters who had created her? Why couldn’t she just have been born—like a regular child with normal parents—so she could have lived a normal life? But if she’d been normal, she would likely never have known Charlie Dodge, and that wasn’t something she would ever regret.

Wyrick thought of Bethie.

She’d cured Bethie’s cancer, just like she’d cured her own. But she would never forget that it was getting cancer in the first place that finally set her free.

So how could she be sad? Healing that child had set her free to live again, too, so she couldn’t regret one second of her decision. Whatever came from the video Lola Franklin had uploaded was on Wyrick’s head and no one else’s, and so it would be.

Last week she’d been an alien...and a demon...and today she was a healer sent from God. If that didn’t speak for the insanity of the human race, then nothing would.

She turned to the computer she had up and running and put her hands on the keyboard. Within seconds she was looking at images of choppers. She’d been chased on the ground and shot out of the sky, and she was still standing. She would be damned before she’d let other people’s madness dictate her quality of life.

She liked flying. The convenience and availability of having a chopper had been instrumental in helping solve many cases. Who knew when they’d need one again? She had the urge and she had the money. It was time to get her wings back again.

And while she was searching, Charlie was on his laptop, monitoring the surge of posts on social media about Wyrick and the video, and the longer he sat reading the posts, the more worried he became. Enough so that he went upstairs long enough to get his handgun. He’d spent too many years as a soldier to ignore what he was feeling. There was an enemy encroaching, and he did not want to be caught unprepared.

Even after Wyrick finally went up to bed, he stayed downstairs in the dark, standing watch from a window overlooking the front gates. The security system was armed, and so was he.

* * *

It was after sunrise before the chaos began. Charlie was standing at the front windows overlooking the grounds, sipping on one of the countless cups of coffee he’d had throughout the night. He was thinking about making some toast when he realized the car passing beneath the fading streetlights just now had come this way before. And when it came around the third time, his skin crawled.

He put down the coffee he’d been drinking and stepped into the shadows to keep watch. Within a few moments he saw another car, and then a trio of people on foot were suddenly standing at the gate, and then cars began lining the streets and the people emerging from them were either pushing someone in a wheelchair or carrying children in their arms.

“Oh, hell,” Charlie said, and was already calling 911 when the security alarm went off. Someone was coming over a wall. At that point the number