“I have a daughter,” Audi said as Jonas moved back slowly. “And I know the pain you’re going through. If I could help your child, you wouldn’t even have to ask.”
“You’ve been asked to leave,” Jonas’s voice was grating now. “Please do so.”
Stepping back, he watched the three men. His expression was stone cold, but his eyes raged with agony.
Watching as her father, Claire’s and Isabelle’s left the room, Liza then turned her attention to Jonas.
His head lowered as he slowly shook it and said softly, “He said if he could give me what I needed, not that he didn’t have it.” He turned his gaze to her. “He would willingly burn in the fires of hell for you, wouldn’t he?”
Her father would never sacrifice her for Jonas’s daughter. That knowledge swirled around them, struck at her heart and caused a single tear to slip free of her eyes.
“Dad forgot to take my laptop,” she said, unable to bear the pain in his eyes or the fear she couldn’t fight any longer. “If you can bypass the new security Dad set up on the database with it, then you’re welcome to it. Perhaps it will be easier with the laptop itself rather than just tapping into it.” The last she said with painful mockery as she picked up the briefcase and handed it to him. “While you’re in there, if you could ignore the journal file, I’d appreciate it. I tend to collect passwords, though no one is really aware of the habit.” She stopped and then stared at Jonas as the panic rose inside her again. “No one is aware of it but one of the chiefs of the Six who suggested I do so.”
“Passwords?” His voice was thicker, the harsh sound brutal in its intensity as he accepted the laptop.
“Yeah. Passwords.” She refused to feel guilt. She was terrified of the choices she was making, but she wasn’t going to be frightened.
This had gone too far. If there was nothing to hide, then what she was doing would hurt no one. “Like my father’s security key to access the database. I want your word it will be used for nothing else, Jonas, and you’ll destroy the file once you’re finished.”
“I swear to you that no matter what is found, the only information I’ll use is any that will help my daughter, or those who were involved in the Brandenmore experiments.”
There was a warning in his eyes. If she was one of those girls, he wouldn’t walk away from it.
She consoled herself with the fact that the only access codes she had ever “collected” were those that weren’t harmful: the Genetic Database codes. Her parents’ personal Internet codes and those into their home computers.
Ray’s home Internet access code was there, but only because Liza and Claire often worked at his house when Claire spent the weekend there. Even the code to her father’s laptop, the one he used to keep information needed for the security of the Nation, was in there. She prayed Jonas was as true to his word as she had always heard he was.
If she was who she hoped she was, then there was no harm to be done.
No information regarding the Navajo Breed Underground Network could be on the networks or computers that would be compromised. If it was, then perhaps she should have never been told that such information was forbidden to be written down, or placed on a computer.
Relinquishing the laptop to him, she pushed aside the panic and the fear of what would be found. She couldn’t live with herself if she ever learned she could have saved Amber Wyatt’s life.
“Jonas, whatever his faults, whatever his secrets, my father loves me.”
“Would you submit to a Core Level DNA test?” Jonas asked then.
Core Level. The deepest genetic testing available and the only level that a recessed Breed could be identified at. It was also the only level at which proof of genetic tampering could be proven.
“You believe my father had my genetics tampered with?” she asked him. “That technology is only now a thing of science fiction, Director Wyatt.”
“And Breeds were only a part of science fiction one hundred years after the first one was created,” he said gently.
Liza clasped her hands together, her fingers holding to each other in a fierce grip as she fought to control fears that had no name and panic that had no reason.
“No DNA tests, Jonas.” It was Stygian who rejected the idea.
As Liza fought to hold control over the shadowed screams that had her lips trembling, Stygian gripped her hip as he stood behind her and faced his director.
A spasm of what Liza could only describe as agony crossed Jonas’s face before he glanced away from them for a moment. Turning back, he nodded slowly before focusing those strange eyes on her.
“Thank you for the help, Ms. Johnson.”
“Jonas, I need to discuss a few of your new security measures before you leave,” Stygian stated as he slowly released her.
“Talk on the way back to my suite,” Jonas breathed out roughly. “Amber had a difficult night and I’d like to get back so Rachel can rest.”
That hard knot of searing guilt gripped Liza’s chest as Stygian moved past her and followed Jonas out the door.
Left alone, Liza drew in a hard, deep breath before covering her face with her hands and fighting back the sobs rising in her chest. As she did, the memory of what she had told Stygian three nights before raced through her mind.
“You will destroy me—”
She had just given Jonas Wyatt the means to do just that, she feared, and she had done it for the man she had given her heart to.
As strong, as fearless and filled with honor as he was, she couldn’t allow him to see her as weak as she knew she was.
She was terrified.
“Why?” Jonas asked as they stepped into the hall and started moving toward the presidential suite.
“Contact Dash,” Stygian urged him as he caught the director’s arm to draw him to a stop. “I need Cassie here.”
He didn’t know why, he had no idea why his instincts were certain the DNA tests were the wrong answer, yet Cassie, the eerie little waif who saw ghosts, was the right one.
“Dash refuses to bring her out.” Jonas’s lips pulled back in a frustrated snarl. “Do you think I haven’t already tried that?”
“Try one more time, Jonas,” Stygian urged him. “You know how Dash and Cassie work. Dash will refuse at her request because she’s waiting on something. Tell him to tell her it’s time. Tell her I need her here, Jonas. My mate needs her.”