Page 85 of Run Wild Omega

Wyatt stands up from the table and walks to the window. The sky outside is starting to lighten, a thin band of gray seeping into the black. He stares at it for a long moment, his back to us.

“And if Reddick gets questioned about the statement? If a reporter asks him why he endorsed the assessment of a rescue team that turns out to be the victim’s pack?”

“Reddick is a career lawman,” Miles says. “He’ll say he evaluated the facts independently, which is true. The statement is based on meteorological data and SAR reports, not on our opinion. The data doesn’t change just because our relationship to Tess changes.”

“The data doesn’t change,” Wyatt repeats. “But the perception does.”

“Yes. And perception is what we’re managing. That’s all this is—perception management. We’re not going to convince the people who’ve already decided Tess is reckless. We’re going to make it politically and socially inconvenient for them to keep saying it.”

I pick up my coffee again, turning the cup in my hands. “What about the investigation Daniel mentioned? The state inquiry into Sweet Creek Adventures?”

“That’s separate from the media narrative. The investigation is about insurance and compliance—boring, procedural stuff that doesn’t generate clicks. Daniel is handling it. Our job is the public face.”

Wyatt turns from the window. His face is tired, but his eyes are focused—the look he gets when he’s made a decision and is committing to it fully.

“We do it Miles’s way,” he says. “Scenting this morning. Hospital together. Let the statement run for a week, then file. And we don’t breathe a word about the timeline to anyone outside this room. Not even Tess.”

“She needs to know the strategy,” I say.

“She needs to know what’s happening to her body and her public identity. She doesn’t need to carry the burden of managing the sequence. That’s on us.”

I want to argue, but he’s right. Tess is lying in her parents’ living room with a rod in her leg and millions of people debating whether she deserves basic autonomy. She doesn’t need a seminar on media timing. She needs people she can trust to handle the things she can’t.

“Okay,” I say.

Miles nods, closing the laptop. “We should go. Margaret said breakfast at seven.”

“Margaret is making us breakfast?” I raise an eyebrow.

“Wyatt called her last night. She insisted.”

I look at Wyatt. He shrugs, but there’s a faint color high on his cheekbones that I’ve never seen before. “She said Tess needs to eat, and she wasn’t going to let her daughter watch three men starve in her kitchen.”

“Margaret Hartwell,” I say, shaking my head. “That woman could run this town from her kitchen and no one would notice.”

“She already does,” Miles says.

The drive to the Hartwells’ is short, but we take it in convoy anyway—Wyatt in the lead, me behind him, Miles bringing up the rear. Old habits. The town is quiet at this hour, the streets mostly empty, but I catch a few curtains twitching as we pass.

People are watching. They’re always watching now.

We park on the street and approach the house through the front walk. The ramp is still there, bolted to the steps, a grim reminder of why we’re here.

Margaret opens the door before we knock. She’s in an apron—floral, slightly flour-dusted—and she’s wearing an expression that blends warmth with a steeliness I recognize from Tess. Mother and daughter share more than just a face.

“Come in,” she says, stepping back. “Coffee’s fresh. Unlike whatever you’ve been drinking at that station.”

We file into the kitchen. It smells like pancakes and bacon and coffee that doesn’t taste like it’s been sitting on a burner for three hours. The kitchen table has been set for five—Margaret and Henry’s places, and three more, with napkins folded into neat triangles and a small vase of dried wildflowers in the center.

Margaret is already back at the stove, flipping pancakes with the efficiency of someone who’s made ten thousand of them. Henry is seated at the table with a mug, reading something on his tablet. He looks up when we enter and nods.

“Boys.”

“Henry.”

“Sit. Eat. You look like you haven’t had a real meal in a week.”

“We haven’t,” I say, dropping into a chair.