Blind Faith - Sharon Sala Page 0,66

a heartbeat with a few clicks on a keyboard.

But the other aspect of this publicity would become a safety factor for her.

Cyrus Parks’s name and face were known only in certain circles for a reason. The more powerful people were, the less they wanted to be known. Now the world was going to know the name, which would generate all kinds of research and poking into his life in a way he was going to hate...and make it far more difficult to put out another hit on her when the world was watching.

He was a cold, heartless bastard, and she wasn’t going to waste a moment of guilt on him. For a man who’d devoted his entire career to trying to create a new race of humans, he had no regard for human life as it existed.

Now that she’d enacted her own retribution for trying to kill her, she shifted focus back to Dodge Investigations, updating the file she’d made on Wanda Carrollton’s missing granddaughter, then updating the file on Tony Dawson. Once she was finished, she closed them.

After that, there were dozens of new messages to go through, and phone calls to return that had been left on their voice mail. It was business as usual.

* * *

It took less than twenty-four hours for Cyrus’s “donations” to make the news, but he wasn’t aware of it until he got a phone call at work. His secretary buzzed him on the intercom.

“Mr. Parks, there is a call for you on line one. It’s a reporter from the New York Times.”

Cyrus frowned. “Thank you,” he said, and took the call.

“This is Cyrus Parks.”

“Mr. Parks! I’m Ed Warner, a reporter for the Times. We want to interview you regarding your generous donation to rebuilding on the Grand Bahama and Abaco after Hurricane Dorian. What prompted you to donate so much money? Forty million dollars is an amazing amount. Do you have personal connections there? Or was it a favorite holiday retreat for you?”

Cyrus gasped. Forty million dollars? And then it hit him! That was what Wyrick did with his money.

She gave it away. To a bunch of nobodies.

“I have nothing to say,” he said, and hung up.

Within seconds, his secretary was buzzing him again.

“Mr. Parks, there are dozens of calls coming in from media. Some of it worldwide.”

“Tell all of them I’m not making any statements or granting any interviews.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

Cyrus lurched from his chair and strode to the windows. The leaves were beautiful in Richmond this time of year—a veritable color wheel of reds and golds, with patches of evergreens throughout. He should have been thinking of roaring fires and mulled wine, of hot chocolate in his mother’s kitchen on a cold day. Instead, he was still picking at the sore Jade Wyrick was on his ass.

He knew after the three-day shutdown that she was dangerous. And then finding out she’d been a part of shutting down Fourth Dimension had been the last straw. He hadn’t said a word to anyone at UT about that, but there was only one person on earth who could have taken down the security that was in place there, and that was the person who’d built it. Then when he found out Charlie Dodge was involved, he knew she’d been there.

He accepted his part in why she shunned them now, but her existence was a threat to his life’s work. At first, she had cheated death, and he wanted to know how. But that desire had long since passed. Now she was that thing he’d left undone.

He watched a single red leaf come loose from a branch, then float toward the ground. When it finally landed, he sighed. Having witnessed the death of something beautiful, he was uncertain of how many more seasons he would see. It made him nostalgic for his youth all over again.

He could hear the phones ringing in the outer office. His poor secretary. Maybe hiring a hit man hadn’t been the best idea, but he couldn’t figure out how Wyrick knew what he was before he’d even made an attempt. Something else had to be going on with her now. It was almost as if she was psychic.

And then it hit him. One of the DNA donors they’d used in the experimental lot from which she’d come was a psychic.

Crap. What was she turning into next?

He already knew she was a mathematical whiz, and a tech genius, and her scientific understanding of everything was beyond human comprehension. She