Not yet.
This was too important to risk messing up. Right now, they knew that the mystery woman had flipped, but they didn't know if she’d flipped back. After all, she’d set off the explosions knowing he and his team were inside. While she had tried to save them before, he couldn’t rely on the fact that when Dr. Gardner had figured out her betrayal, she hadn't gone crawling back to him, willing to offer anything to save her own skin.
So he had to wait, watch, and make sure the woman wasn't waiting on someone else to show up. Then once he was confident she was all alone out here, he was going to make his move, get the information his team needed to destroy Dr. Gardner, and then take this woman back to his team so they could kill her together.
January 10th
11:00 P.M.
She was supposed to be less paranoid now that she’d made her move.
Wasn't she?
Whitney glanced around the small bedroom. It should feel safe, homey, a place where she was comfortable to finally be herself.
But it didn't.
Not at all.
This escape had been years in the planning. Far too many years, and when she thought about just how many, it made her feel sick and devastated. Dr. Gardner had been in control of her every move, but there had always been a teeny tiny little rebellious streak she’d nurtured even when she had no idea where it was going to end.
Finding a way out had seemed like a pipedream, but she’d worked toward it. She’d created herself a fake ID, a detailed one, with a history, bank accounts, credit cards, college degrees, a work history, everything she would need to start a whole new life. That included buying this farmhouse and fitting it out with all the things she would have chosen for herself if she didn't livein a single room in a warehouse that she was rarely allowed to leave.
When Dr. Gardner got an email from what had to be his team of surviving super soldiers, taunting him that they had his sister, and if he wanted to save her life, he’d have to hand himself over to them, she knew it was time.
The opening she needed to finally make her move.
So she had.
Getting to work, she used the hacking skills Dr. Gardner didn't even know she had, which had allowed her to siphon off money to buy her house and furnish it, as well as setting her up with enough money to live off until she could find a job, to try to find the team. But it wasn't until he learned that the team was now employed by Prey that everything had fallen into place, and she’d actually managed to escape.
Now she was here, and she should be celebrating, but instead, it felt like she was being watched.
Had Dr. Gardner followed her?
Found her already?
No.
He couldn’t have. She’d been too careful. There was no way he could connect this farmhouse to her, and he likely thought that she was long gone. Even if he found out she’d done a second clean down of the warehouse and assumed she’d been hiding out close by, he would now think she’d made a dash out of the country.
It was why she’d chosen this place that was only a couple of hours from where she’d been living ever since Dr. Gardner acquired her. She was trying to do the opposite of what was expected of her.
“You're safe, so stop panicking,” she ordered herself. “This is your dream bedroom. Everything in this house is what you’ve always wanted. You’re free now. You have enough money to stayhere for at least a year, and there are plenty of jobs you could work from home. Then, when it’s safe, you can sell up and go anywhere in the world.”
That was all true, but it didn't offer her any comfort.
Whitney had been so sure that once she was free, everything would be perfect, she’d be in control of her life, and she could live it however she wanted.
Only she felt the opposite.
She was so used to belonging to someone else that she didn't know how to be her own person. She had never learned.
Maybe it would have been smarter to ask Cassandra Charleston to take her to the super soldiers. They’d hate her, of course, punish her quite rightfully for her part in destroying their lives, but she could have helped them somehow. Because Dr. Gardner’s death was the only thing that was really going to make her safe.
As long as he was out there, she would always be in danger.
The super soldiers might believe that they were the scientist’s greatest asset, and she wasn't denying that Dr. Gardner wanted them back, but she trumped them. Without her, there was no future for his program.
