Stepping around him, she faced the other three furiously before pinning Jonas Wyatt with her gaze.
“Have you once come to me and asked me to take a single blood test, or to allow you permission to access the database when you told me you needed it? You have lied to me continually, Jonas. To me and to the Navajo Council. But not once did you ever ask for help.” she said, her voice shaking with her anger as he and the others slowly holstered their weapons.
“Would it have done any good?” Jonas asked.
“If I thought for one minute it would be used for Amber only, then yes, it would have,” she snapped back at him, her fingers curling into fists, fury burning through her. “But as Stygian said, there wouldn’t be a chance, would there?”
“War isn’t pretty,” Rule growled.
“This isn’t war.” She hated this. She hated him. She hated the bleak fury tearing through her. “You would use anyone, anything, to get what you wanted, wouldn’t you, Wyatt? You want to know who I might be, but you still want that database. You still believe it will lead you to Gideon Cross, don’t you?
And the information was in her journal. The chiefs of the Six had actually suggested she keep the information written down somewhere safe, despite her protests. She’d never understood why, nor had she given it much thought in the past months either.
“I’d use anything or anyone to save my child,” he snarled back, the dangerous incisors at the side of his teeth flashing warningly. “Don’t doubt that for a second.”
“And pretending I’m Honor Roberts will do that for you? Ordering Stygian to betray the one person it would destroy him to betray would do that?”
“Is that why you rushed in here so quickly, rather than waiting to hear his answer?” Jonas asked her then, suddenly mocking rather than angry. “Afraid he’d agree to do as I asked, Ms. Roberts?”
“He wouldn’t have done it,” she sneered back at him. “If he were going to do it, he would have done it by now. He’s had weeks to help you betray me and he’s still refused. What more would it take to convince you? What more would it take to get you the hell out of Window Rock?”
“What would it take?” He took a step forward, only to pause at the sudden, fearsome snarl that sounded in Stygian’s chest at the inherent threat in Jonas’s move. “It would take you, Fawn Corrigan and that damned Breed you called Judd. The three of you, and I could draw Gideon in. Then, I would have what I needed to save my daughter.”
“And what do you need to save your daughter?” Liza crossed her arms over her br**sts and stared back at him curiously. “Tell me, Mr. Wyatt, what do they have that she needs if you can’t access their memories?”
“Whatever’s left in their bodies of the serum Brandenmore used. The changes that took place in their bodies would be apparent in both you and Fawn, while Gideon and Judd would show the changes to the Breed physiology. That’s what I want.”
As he spoke, terror chased through her.
It was all she could do to keep her expression closed, to contain her emotions and her rage. To contain her fear.
Because as he spoke, she saw herself, but she wasn’t herself. Watching doctors, seeing the printouts lying beside them, reading the information. It made sense.
For only seconds, it was there. A formula, a child’s pain-filled cries and the knowledge that, once again, the tests were going to hurt. Once again, they were going to experience hell.
She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath.
She hadn’t realized that for the briefest second, the pain that radiated through her could be felt by every Breed in the room.
And each of them flinched.
“Enough!” Stygian’s arms were suddenly around her, pulling her against his chest a second before she was able to slip back into that distant, remote place she’d been unable to access since he’d taken her.
“I’m sorry.” She was almost wheezing again.
God, she hadn’t wheezed in so long.
“They can have the damned code,” she whispered hoarsely. “I’ll give them the damned thing. Just get them out of here.”
“The code isn’t what they needed,” he told her, his own voice thick with fury now. “It wasn’t the code. It was this, Liza. It was your pain he wanted to access, and you’re giving him exactly what he wanted.”
But was that it?
Staring back at Jonas, she saw a man tormented. His eyes flashed with enraged mercury, his expression becoming taut as he fought to wipe it free of emotion.
No, her pain wasn’t what Jonas wanted any more than he wanted to see his own daughter’s pain. He just wanted answers—answers and the key to save the child he loved as though she were created from his genetics rather than another man’s.
“Don’t you know I would help you if I could,” she suddenly cried out to Jonas, desperate, terrified of what she suddenly felt rising within herself. “Do you think I would deny her for the hell of it?”