She nodded slowly.
Everything was fine.
Everything but Liza. Because, in a few short minutes she had managed to lose her sense of her training, her independence and her certainty that not just Stygian but also Cullen and the team would be there to support her. For one horrifyingly dark moment, she was alone and facing almost certain death.
She couldn’t let this happen to her. She couldn’t lose herself this way every time something happened. She couldn’t let those dark, hidden memories that weren’t exactly memories, that she knew couldn’t belong to her, erode her control.
And she wouldn’t allow it to, she promised herself, not ever again.
Never would she be weak again.
CHAPTER 14
Claire was waiting with her parents, as well as Liza’s, in the Presidential Suite, sitting still and silent, her hands folded in her lap as she stared down at them.
Entering the room, Liza stared at the assembled Breeds and parents, their expressions quiet, savage or just emotionless.
“Good, we’re all here.” Jonas Wyatt moved to the center of the room as Liza sat slowly in the wingback loveseat next to the matching chair her friend had taken.
Glancing at her father, she was taken aback by the anger that glittered in his eyes, and the barely hidden fear in her mother’s.
“What’s going on?” she questioned the director.
She’d rather hear any bad news from someone she wasn’t certain she liked than to hear it from anyone else.
“Gideon Cross, the fourth member of the Brandenmore Omega experiments, has arrived in Window Rock, and he’s asking specifically about the two of you. What, Ms. Johnson, do you and Ms. Martinez have to do with all this?”
He wasn’t questioning her, he was interrogating her.
Liza shook her head. “Nothing. I don’t know why he’s asking about us, or what he wants, any more than we know why the Genetics Council has targeted us.”
But a part of her did know—
“Are you aware that the county health department was broken into several weeks ago and only your and Claire’s childhood files are missing?” Jonas asked then.
No, she hadn’t known that.
“Dad?” She turned to her father questioningly. “Did you know?”
The health department would surely have informed him of the situation if they had been unable to reach her.
Of course, there was no reason why they couldn’t have reached her other than the fact that Ray Martinez’s cousin was the director there. If he had asked that she make him aware of any problems before Liza and his daughter were told, then that was exactly what would happen.
“There was no sense in worrying you,” her father stated as though it were of no importance at all.
She could only blink back at him.
She wasn’t going to berate her father in front of strangers, but there was a sense of disbelief and even a sense of betrayal that he had withheld something so important.
“We can discuss it later, Liza,” he promised her, as though he had sensed her feeling of betrayal. “I wasn’t intentionally keeping it from you.”
Yes, he had been, but once again, she wasn’t going to confront him here and now. Not when so many interested eyes were watching, suspicious, analyzing every move, every look, every word spoken.
Not when Stygian was keeping her from retreating, from hiding within herself by the invisible bonds of a mating she still didn’t understand.
She turned back to Jonas, determined to hold on to the anger building inside her.
“I want to know why the Genetics Council and Gideon Cross have targeted us just as much as you do,” she informed Jonas. “We’re nobodies, Mr. Wyatt. An assistant and a receptionist?” She all but laughed at the absurdity of it. “Why target us because of two girls no one has seen in over twelve years?”