Stygian's Honor (42 page)

“What other reason would she have to treat me so disrespectfully?” Ray charged.

“There was no disrespect, Father.” Claire straightened her shoulders as she battled her tears. The sight of it broke Liza’s heart. “You can’t bear the truth now, any more than you could bear it when I was younger. I’m starting to wonder if you wouldn’t have preferred to see Isabelle raped or murdered than to see her with a Breed. Just as I wonder if you wouldn’t have preferred I died in that crash.”

“Enough of this.” Terran stepped forward, his dark eyes blazing with anger as he glanced at Ray and Audi. “I’ll be damned if I’ll stand here and listen to you insult my child as well as your own. We’re not here to discuss who our adult children have taken as lovers. We’re here to discuss their safety and the fact that the security we placed on their phones and laptops has been broken.” He turned to Liza. “That, my dear, is the reason your, Chelsea’s, Claire’s and Isabelle’s security clearance was denied so quickly. The signal we tracked moved from your phone to your laptop, slid past the encryption and began sending files to a location we’ve yet to track.”

Liza stalked from Stygian into the next room. She moved across the sitting room to the bedroom and grabbed her phone off the bedside table.

Returning, she slapped it on the desk beside her father before moving to the couch, collecting her laptop and dropping it at his feet. “There you go. If you had listened to me last month, when I told you it was acting strange, perhaps you would have found the problem before now.”

Her father watched her with a hard scowl as she moved back to Stygian.

His arm slid around her, pulling her to his side as she stared back at her father challengingly. “Are we still fired?”

“Until we determine what’s going on, yes, you are.” It was Ray Martinez who stated the obvious. No doubt, he was the one who gave the order to rescind their security as well.

Liza nodded slowly, her gaze never leaving her father’s.

“Liza, I know you’re hurt and angry,” he said. “But, rather than blaming us, you and Isabelle should look to your new friends.” His gaze moved to Malachi and Stygian. “We couldn’t track it, but we know damned good and well that signal didn’t leave this hotel.”

Stygian felt his mate tense, felt to the bottom of his soul the sudden suspicion and anger that invaded her delicate body, and he knew she was remembering the night she had overheard Jonas attempting to convince him to betray her—to bug her phone and laptop for the access code into the Navajo database.

“I think it’s time you leave, Dad,” Liza stated then, the scent of her pain slicing through his soul. “We need to get ready and go job hunting, it seems. Since we no longer have jobs.”

She couldn’t describe the hurt flowing through her or the sense of betrayal she felt.

“Liza, we couldn’t risk the possibility that whoever was using the phones and laptops to hack into the database could actually manage to slip through the final layers of security,” her father argued as frustration tightened his expression. “Surely you understand that.”

“I understand that you live less than twenty minutes from this hotel,” she burst out furiously. “Twenty minutes, Dad. And rather than driving over here to tell me what was going on, you let me walk into the offices only to be stopped by security as though I were some criminal myself.”

Grimacing, he turned his head away for a second. He folded his arms over his chest, braced his feet apart and just stared back at her silently.

“So now I just get your military face,” she accused him, her voice thick. “As far as you’re concerned, the subject’s closed, right?”

“I apologized, Liza,” he stated firmly. “Once I had my information together, I came here, but you had already left.”

“You called my phone, knowing it was compromised and
a call wouldn’t go through. You couldn’t call Stygian or Jonas, but you obviously got hold of the others.”

“Dad called me,” Claire stated with a hard, cold anger Liza considered uncharacteristic of her as she let Liza know that her father hadn’t tried to stop the humiliation she had suffered earlier.

“Claire, that’s enough,” her father warned her, his tone harsh, harsher than Liza had heard him speak to her since they had awakened from the wreck they were in as teenagers.

“God, this is incredible,” Isabelle stared at the two men, confusion creasing her face. “Claire and Liza have always behaved above reproach. They have never done anything to shame either of you, and this is the only way you can treat them now that they aren’t following your orders?”

“Isabelle, that isn’t true,” Audi argued. Liza noticed his voice was even sincere. “This has nothing to do with the mistakes you girls are making in your current lovers—”

“Oh, excuse me!” Isabelle demanded then. “Our mistakes in our lovers? You can go to hell! As for you, Uncle Ray, you can jump and accuse Claire of doing drugs because she had the nerve to argue with you? And you can’t go out of your way to warn your daughter not to arrive at the office after you’ve canceled her clearance? I’m sorry, Audi, but that’s exactly what it sounds like.”

“Isabelle.” It was Terran who stepped in at that point. “There are things you don’t understand, sweetheart.”

“They why not explain it, Dad?” Chelsea rose slowly from her seat as well. “Because it’s obvious the two of them”—she nodded toward Liza’s and Claire’s fathers—“aren’t going to explain a damned thing.”

Terran grimaced, his hand lifting to rub at the back of his neck as he glanced at the other two men, his expression uncertain. Finally, he gave a brief shake of his head as his expression turned resigned.

“I’m out of here,” Chelsea bit out, the fact that she was at the end of her patience more than obvious. “I’ve had it to my back teeth with the half-truths and manipulations going on here.” She turned to Liza. “When our parents decide to be honest with us and tell us what the hell is going on, I hope
someone lets me know.” She stalked from the room, the door slamming closed behind her.

“Is she safe?” Liza asked Stygian softly as her friend slammed out of the room.

“She’s safe.” The growl in his voice sent a chill racing up her spine.

She didn’t dare glance back at his expression, not while she was watching the trepidation in her father’s eyes as he glanced behind her.

“Gentlemen.” Stygian stepped forward then. “Leave.”

The order was given in such a primal, furious tone of voice that Liza flinched.

Liza’s father glowered back at him. “This meeting isn’t over.”

“It’s over.” As he spoke, the door opened and Flint entered with Dog, Mutt, Mongrel and Loki. Behind them walked in Jonas Wyatt.

“What’s going on here?” Liza asked Stygian, her voice low.

“This room is tied into Breed security.” Lowering his head, he answered her in a tone that she doubted anyone but she could hear. “Jonas has been watching.”

“Did you bug my laptop, Stygian?” While she had his attention, had him close enough to ask where no one else could hear, she took the opportunity.

“I would never betray my mate.” The forbidding tone of his voice was almost enough to make her nervous.

It was a warning—she didn’t dare question him further, and she didn’t dare disbelieve him.

The animal he was so related to was clear in his voice, the dominance and arrogant strength shadowing it.

No, he hadn’t betrayed her, she could bet her life on it.

CHAPTER 20

Liza watched with a frown as Jonas and her father stood, staring each other down.

Both men were incredibly strong-willed, each with an innate arrogance that no doubt grated on the other.

They were two men who would never get along. They would rarely see eye to eye.

And one was about as stubborn as the other.

Jonas wouldn’t leave Window Rock until he had answers, one way or the other.

If her father knew those answers involved his daughter, then hell would freeze over before he’d tell Jonas a damned thing.

Unfortunately, in the meantime, a little girl was suffering and she and Claire were on a roller-coaster ride they couldn’t seem to stop.

“I believe, Mr. Johnson, you were asked to leave.” Stygian stepped around her, placing his body in a protective position in front of her.

“This is ridiculous, Stygian,” she muttered.

Turning his head and pinning her with his gaze, his lips formed the words, “Trust me.”

She sighed. She trusted him fine, it would just be nice to
know what the hell was going on, and to make sense of her father’s and Ray Martinez’s attitudes.

“Liza, you know I would never hurt you,” her father stated as she watched him silently.

No, he would never hurt her physically, but emotionally, she was learning, was another thing.

“Dad, that’s exactly what you’ve done.” Tears thickened her voice, humiliating her, making her feel like the child he obviously believed she was.

“Your feelings are hurt, but I’d much prefer your feelings or your pride singed versus the alternative,” he stated cryptically.

“And that alternative would be?” It was Jonas who spoke up as her father, Ray and Terran moved to leave the room.

Audi stopped, his expression tightening, gray eyes flashing in anger. “The situation you’ve provoked, Director Wyatt. You’re placing her life in danger,” he bit out, unable to hide the anger in his voice. “You and your refusal to allow the past to die.”

“Audi, stop,” Ray snapped, his voice low.

“My refusal to allow my child to die?” Jonas snapped back, the liquid mercury of his gaze shifting dangerously. “We asked for your help when we arrived, yours and President Martinez’s. You refused. I will not leave here until I have the answers I came to find.”

“We don’t have what you want,” her father snarled, surprising her with the frustrated fury in his voice.

“And you think your training can actually dissipate the lie you fucking stink of every time you’re questioned on this.” Jonas was suddenly on him, his voice raised, all but nose to nose, fiery anger and a dangerous warning echoing in his tone. “Let me tell you who you are dealing with, Mr. Johnson. You are dealing with a Breed whose senses are far superior to those that obviously trained you to lie to a Breed.”

Panic tightened through her.

Why?

Liza could feel the fear rising in the depths of her soul, a
sense of such horrible panic that the premonition seemed apocalyptic.

“Tell me, Mr. Johnson, exactly what are you hiding?”

She wanted to scream.

Liza had to fight to hold back a cry of denial, a furious demand that Jonas stop, that he leave, that her father hold his secrets as he had always done.

Her heart was racing in her chest, the blood thundering through her veins with such force that she would be amazed if everyone in the room couldn’t hear it.

“Easy.” Stygian’s voice was so soft, so low, she wondered for a moment if she heard it. “Your secrets are safe.”

She heard him. Everyone’s attention was on Jonas and her father, so no one saw him lower his head or heard the words he whispered at her ear.

“Audi has kept your secrets this long, Jonas won’t draw them from him. I give you my word.” Once again, so low, so quiet, it reached her ears only.

Her heart rate eased.

Stygian wouldn’t lie to her. He wouldn’t give her his word unless he was certain.

“I’m keeping many secrets from you, Director Wyatt,” her father stated sarcastically. “Many. But I assure you, if I could give you any information, any clue in your efforts to save your daughter, then I would do so.”

The look of pain that flashed across Jonas’s face was so overwhelming, so deep, that Liza would have given anything in that moment to help him.

“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?”