Crossing his arms over his chest, Stygian stared at the desert beyond the hotel, wishing to hell he’d find a way to keep this from happening.
“We’re going to the crash site at dawn,” he told them. “She wants to know.”
“She’ll fight it. She’s probably fighting it now,” Mordecai said behind him. “But I have a suggestion.”
Stygian turned back slowly. “And that would be?”
“She keeps a personal journal on her laptop. I’ve tried to access it, but she’s not powered it up since she’s been here.”
“And you know she has a journal how?” Stygian growled back at him.
“I was almost in when she shut it down the last time she had the computer online,” Mordecai admitted. “I managed to pull some key words, though, which I used to be certain she may have information there. ‘Dreams,’ ‘nightmares,’ ‘labs’ and ‘pain.’”
Stygian tensed further.
“All you have to do is plug it in, power it up and attach a flash drive, I’ll take care of the rest. You don’t have to steal a password or hack in yourself,” Jonas assured him.
Stygian threw the other Breed a hard look. “And you think that will excuse the fact that I betrayed her? In her eyes or any others’? I’ll always be the only Breed to deliberately break the trust his mate has given him.”
“A mate who refuses to trust you?” Rule growled back at him. “She suspects she’s Honor Roberts, Stygian, just as you do.”
Stygian turned back to them again, the look he shot each of them filled with the mockery rising inside him. “It doesn’t matter if she trusts me or not. That doesn’t excuse betraying her.”
“Distrust excuses many things, my friend,” Rule said, as though reminding him of something he didn’t already know. “But if there’s no trust, there’s no love. What loyalty should any of us have to a mate that refuses to love?”
“What loyalty should any of us have to a mate that refuses to love?”
At that point, Liza rose jerkily from the bed, pulled her gown over her head, collected her robe from the floor and put it on with a furious shrug of her shoulders.
She couldn’t believe what she had heard.
Belting the robe with a furious jerk, she swept from the bedroom and headed for the connecting room.
Where had they lost their minds?
Just to begin with, had they forgotten that the connecting suite was tied into the intercom on the room phone? Stygian had set it up himself, just in case someone, anyone, attempted to invade their suite.
They were listed as staying in the connecting suite, not the one they were actually in. The precaution had been taken to ensure he and Liza had a head start in escaping.
Instead, it had given Liza a heads-up.
A heads-up into the plans Jonas Wyatt had, and why.
Gripping the door to the connecting suite, she pushed it open hard enough that the sound of it slamming into the wall behind it had Jonas, Rule Breaker and Mordecai Savant swinging to the side, their weapons drawing and leveling on Stygian as he jumped in front of her.
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.