“I’m certain I don’t know why they would target me either,” she assured the director. “What I do know is that I’m not in the mood for the third-degree here. You guys have done nothing but cause trouble since you arrived. First Isabelle was kidnapped and nearly turned over to those deranged Coyotes Holden was trying to take her to, a friend is nearly murdered in front of her and now I’m being accosted during my morning run no more than weeks later. What’s next with the lot of you?”
With each accusation, Jonas’s expression turned stonier while Stygian eyed her with greater intensity.
“Your abduction could be next.”
Liza followed Jonas with her gaze as he moved to the long table against the wall.
“Let me show you something,” he suggested. Turning, he indicated that she should follow him.
Liza’s gaze shifted to Stygian before she turned and moved carefully to the table.
She had a feeling she didn’t want to see what the director was pulling from the files stacked there.
Stepping to his side, she stared down at the photos he was setting out on the table.
The eight-by-ten glossy photos were of a very ill child, her little head bare of hair, blue eyes filled with sorrow.
She was pale, obviously in pain, and stared into the camera with a sense of resignation.
Her heart beat faster, her throat felt tight with dread. She tried to tell herself, to convince herself it was because of a child’s pain seen so clearly in those frightened, worn blue eyes.
But that didn’t explain the flash of some long-forgotten sensation attacking her arm. The feel of phantom needles inserted into an arm so thin, already so bruised and abused, sent a shock wave of horror traveling through her so quickly that before she could react, it was gone.
What was that? It couldn’t be a memory, because Liza knew she hadn’t ever been so ill as a child.
The next photo was one of another young girl, though her illness wasn’t as apparent. Dark brown eyes and hair lay around her pale face. Her lips were cracked and dry, her gaze distant as though she were forcing herself to see beyond the camera.
She was living, but she wasn’t really with them. They were desperate to pull her back. What if she never came back? What if she went away inside herself and never returned to them? All the planning, all the deception and the lies would have been for nothing?
Liza felt her breath catch as she fought to hide the shock and fear that nearly overcame her. Clenching her fingers into fists and tucking them beneath the fold of her arms, she kept her gaze centered on the corner of the photos until the wave of disorientation receded.
But she couldn’t keep her eyes from them for long.
There were pictures of the two girls together; then, there were pictures of the hairless girl with two adults Liza assumed were her parents.
The tall, broad male had a haunted look in his gaze, while the mother’s face was filled with pain and love. They weren’t staring at the camera; rather they were standing next to the hospital bed where their child lay sleeping.
Sleeping?
Or dead?
There were other pictures.
The two girls with two Breeds. It was obvious because they were displaying their incisors in the pictures. In their eyes though, Liza could glimpse the hell all four were clearly enduring.
Compassion filled her, as well as a sense of sorrow.
“Who are they?” Looking up at the director, she had to refrain from rubbing at the chill that suddenly raced over her arms. “Will they be okay?”
Jonas gathered the photos together before replacing them in the file.
“They grew up,” he stated. “The one with her parents is Honor Roberts. The leukemia she had was diagnosed as a particularly fast-growing and fatal illness. There is no known cure or procedure for remission, even now.”
“The other girl was Fawn Corrigan. At two months of age she was near death, diagnosed with infant AIDS and given only weeks to live. As you saw in the photo, at age ten, she was still alive.”
“But still ill,” she stated.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “Did you recognize any of them?”
“Why would I?” Her gaze jerked back to his with a hard frown. “The two girls were with two immature Breed males. There are no Breed males of that age in Window Rock that I’m aware of.”
Tightening her stomach, she refused to allow herself to think about them—or her reaction to the photos.
“Those pictures were taken more than a decade ago.” The obvious impatience in his voice was reflected in the darkening swirls of gray in his eyes.
“Then why would I know them?” She glanced around the room at the Breeds gathered there before turning her gaze back to the director. “Why don’t you just tell me what the hell is going on here, Director Wyatt? That would be a hell of a lot easier than the games you seem to so enjoy.”
If she wasn’t mistaken, he didn’t particularly care for the fact that she called him on his habit of deliberately manipulating anyone and everyone he came in contact with.
Megan Fields Arness stepped forward. “Liza, the point is that we’re searching for the two girls. Finding them is of the highest importance to the Breeds, to ensure the Genetics Council doesn’t acquire them for whatever research purposes they have in mind. There’s nothing nefarious in the least in the Breeds’ wish to find them.”
The knowledge that Megan would lie to her—probably was lying to her—had her fighting back the sting of tears.
She had known Megan most of her life.
Megan’s grandfather and Isabelle, Chelsea, and Claire’s were both part of the chiefs of the Six Tribes. Besides that, the Martinez family was a very close unit and socialized together often.
They were friends—or so she had thought. Friends weren’t supposed to lie to each other to this extent.
“Well, there’s nothing nefarious in the least about the fact that I haven’t seen or heard of them. But I would like to know what the hell they have to do with me?” Liza stared back at Megan, meeting her gaze and wishing she could find that sense of calm that Megan seemed to hold in her dark brown eyes.
“Those girls are currently the focus of a search by the Genetics Council as well as the Breeds,” Megan told her. “They were part of an experiment that lasted for more than a decade. The two girls and the two Breeds all survived but disappeared about ten years ago. We have to find them before the Genetics Council does.”
And if the four had disappeared and never come forward, then it was apparent they didn’t want to be found.
“Why?” Liza questioned her. “Why would you believe you have the right either to find them or to acquire them?”
Damn, she felt sorry for the former kids now being hunted by two such powerful, merciless forces.
“If we don’t,” Stygian said, stepping forward, his voice dark and rough, rasping over her senses like velvet, “then trust me, Ms. Johnson, the Genetics Council will make damned sure they regret the fact that the Council found them rather than the Breeds.”
She had to physically restrain the shiver that wanted to race across her flesh at the sound of his voice caressing her senses. It reminded her of dark, wicked sex.
Of sinning in the most pleasurable of ways.
Every cell in her body tingled at the sound. Her breasts became swollen and heavy, her nipples taut and eager for touch. And between her thighs, her clit throbbed in heightened alert as she suddenly became aware of the emptiness in her vagina.
Damn.
No man had the right to make a woman so aware of the fact that a male wasn’t possessing her.
“Well, if I could help you, I would,” she assured, stepping back carefully as he moved just behind Jonas Wyatt. “The fact is, though, that I can’t. As I stated, I don’t know them, nor do I know who they are.”