big a coward to take himself out.
It took two days before the FBI arrived at his office unannounced. Cyrus stood as they flashed their badges and laid a handful of search warrants on his desk.
“You knocked?” he drawled.
“Search warrants, sir. You and Universal Theorem have been accused of illegal medical practices involving human embryos, hiding the deaths of surrogate mothers and the babies they were carrying, human trafficking...”
The agent was still talking, but Cyrus tuned him out. He already knew the charges. He was trying to wrap his head around the fact that this was really happening.
“Am I under arrest?”
“You’re being taken in for questioning,” the agent said.
A cold shudder ran through him. Someone was reading him his rights as another was patting him down. He looked around at the opulence of his office and the view of Richmond from the windows, and as the handcuffs locked shut upon his wrists, he had a feeling he was never coming back.
As they walked him out of his office, he locked eyes with his secretary and uttered his last order.
“Roberta, call my lawyer.”
* * *
It was just after breakfast and Wyrick was in the office scanning through the online news feeds. It had been days since Wyrick pulled the trigger on Cyrus Parks. She’d read the stories that came out. She knew Cyrus Parks was being detained, and that other arrests had been made. She knew the media was looking for her, and the sooner she gave her first interview, the sooner the pressure would be off.
The first thing she had to face were the emails she’d been ignoring. When she’d sent the files, she’d sent them from her public email account, giving all of the recipients the freedom to contact her. So the barrage of waiting mail to be read was inevitable. At last count, there were over four thousand. It made her skin crawl just thinking about it. She’d been an oddity to people who saw her out and about, but an anonymous oddity. But like her hair and her boobs, that part of her life was gone.
The good part was she was healing—really fast.
The bad part was she didn’t really need Charlie’s help to take care of herself anymore. And she was getting antsy. Sitting around waiting for the other shoe to fall wasn’t like her. It was time to come out of the shadows. So she put her laptop aside and went to look for Charlie.
Nineteen
Charlie had fallen in love with this old mansion. He loved the dark wood and the grand hall with the marble floor—all the high tray ceilings and the ornate decor carved into the massive fireplaces of the living room and the den.
The den, which was right across the hall from Wyrick, had become his room. The oversize, overstuffed chairs were made for a man his size, and the massive sofa where he’d been sleeping was long enough for him to stretch his legs.
A high-tech television mounted on the wall had obviously been Merlin’s newest toy, and there was a wet bar with a mini fridge where he stashed his midnight snacks. More than once, he was reminded that his entire apartment would fit inside this den with space left over. There was a half bath for the sake of convenience, but he used one of the bathrooms upstairs to shower and shave.
He knew Wyrick was in a holding pattern. She had to get over the shock of what happened, as well as the healing. But he also knew she was priming herself for the first public appearance she would have to make.
Being dubbed the Genesis baby was like being a human hybrid—a sideshow freak. He was angry on her behalf with no way to help other than keep her safe.
When she went to the office after breakfast, he went up to the third floor. Part of it was attic storage, but there were small empty rooms that Wyrick told him had once been the living quarters of house servants. There were no fireplaces up here to warm the area, and only one small window per room for cooling in the summer. It would have been a very uncomfortable place to sleep and a hard life to live.
He was poking through old boxes when he heard her calling him. He ran out of the attic to the head of the stairs and looked down through the stairwell.
“I’m up here! I’ll be right down,” he said.
She was waiting at the foot of the stairs, holding