"Why would your father cancel your secur- ity?" Stygian asked as they entered the elev- ator alone and pressed the fifth floor b.u.t.ton.
"Security risk, layoff, termination." She shrugged. "Either of the three means I"m out of a job."
"Has he called?"
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"I left my phone in the suite." She grim- aced as she gripped the straps of her purse and briefcase in a tight grip. "I never do that.
But we"ve not been gone long, right? If he had called before I left, I would have heard the phone ring."
"Your father"s waiting in the adjoining suite next to our room," he told her before murmuring an affirmative to Flint that he had given her the message.
Those d.a.m.ned earbud communicators. Jo- nas wouldn"t let her have one.
"Should I tell him you"ll be a while?" he asked her, his voice gentle as the elevator came to a smooth stop.
"No. Facing him now is just as good as later. Preferable, even."
His hand settled at the small of her back.
The touch was surprisingly comforting, and far too pleasurable. For a second, a moment out of time, she could feel his c.o.c.k pushing 662/862.
inside her, his lips on hers. She could taste his kiss, feel his touch.
"Now you"re just making me h.o.r.n.y," he drawled as they reached the suite next to theirs.
Liza remained silent.
Stygian"s hard knock was answered quickly by Dog.
A scowl covered his face while his light gray eyes were the color of hard, cold steel.
"Join the party," he invited, his voice low.
"We"re just all getting ready to have fun."
Liza stepped inside and looked around the room.
Her father stood with Ray Martinez on the far side of the room. Ray leaned against the desk behind him, his arms crossed over his chest, a heavy frown pulling at his brow as his dark eyes flashed in anger.
Audi Johnson stood to the side of the desk, hands braced on hips, lips thin with obvious impatience. To the other side of the Nation 663/862.
president, his legal advisor and Isabelle and Chelsea"s father, Terran Martinez, stood, leaning against the wall rather than the desk.
"Did you show up at work too before you realized you"d been fired?" Chelsea sat on the couch next to Claire, who had her head down, concentrating on her fingers.
"Pretty much," Liza agreed, moving to the couch to join her friends, always aware of Stygian close to her. On the love seat across from Claire and Chelsea, Isabelle and Mala- chi sat silently as well. Isabelle was obviously upset; Malachi appeared furious.
She turned to her father. "You didn"t call, Dad. You let security deny me access."
Her father"s lips thinned. "I did call, Liza, the call didn"t go through. I"ve tried to con- tact you since three in the morning. I learned at about six that your sat-phone signal had somehow been hijacked and your phone was connected to another source and uploading data to it."
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She blinked back at him. "I wasn"t upload- ing anything."
"No, you weren"t," he agreed. "Any more than you were uploading from your laptop, but both were in the process of a large up- load. I managed to sever the upload and the connection, but your phone and laptop Wi-Fi chips have been permanently disabled."
"The laptop screen was flickering again this weekend," she stated, moving to set the briefcase on the floor as though it would somehow incriminate her. "Just like it did last month."
Her father nodded. "There"s a serious se- curity breach with each of your electronics,"
he told them. "The Breeds obviously are not included in that statement." There was a vein of animosity in his tone now.
"Is there any way the Breeds can help, Mr.
Johnson?" Malachi offered cordially.
"Oh, there sure is-"
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"Dad, don"t-" Liza knew that tone of voice, the look in his eyes.
"You and your buddies can pack the h.e.l.l up and get off Navajo land. And take those G.o.d be-d.a.m.ned Genetics Council agents with you."
Isabelle"s expression flared with fury as she made it halfway out of her seat in de- fense of her lover.
Malachi caught her instantly, pulling her back to his side as he leaned close, his head over hers as he whispered something intently at her ear.
"That"s enough!" Liza stepped forward, overwhelmed by the sheer disbelief that her father had said such a thing. "That"s unfair, Dad, and you know it."
No matter any of their personal feelings, her father still considered Isabelle a favored niece. To say such a thing to the man she loved was horrendous.
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"This is none of your business, Liza." He used that cool, firm tone that a.s.sured her he still considered her a child and just as easy to control.
"Oh, well now, I just have to beg to dis- agree." He"d taught her to stand her ground and to fight for what she believed in.
She"d never imagined it would one day be her father she was having to defend a friend to, though.
"Trust me, Liza, it has nothing to do with you," he repeated, his gaze brooding and filled with anger.
"When my lover is one of the Breeds you"re trying to run off Navajo land, then yes, I do believe it is my business."
Her father"s shock was surprising. "There"s no way I heard you correctly." His gaze was colder, harder now than before, shocking her.
Surely he had already guessed?
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"Why are you so surprised?" Her arms crossed over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s once again. "You knew we were sharing a suite. You knew he had been at the house when we were at- tacked. As for Malachi, you seem to be for- getting what Holden Mayhew would have done to Isabelle if Malachi hadn"t been there."
"What he did wouldn"t have happened if it wasn"t for him." Audi"s finger jabbed in Malachi"s direction. The Breed followed his mate as she jumped from the love seat again.
"Because rather than trying to give her to the Genetics Council, he would have just raped her himself." Claire surprised them all as she stood, fury flushing her face.
"Claire, what is wrong with you?" her fath- er snapped, his gaze suspicious. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h, are you on something?"
The accusation had silence suddenly filling the room as all eyes turned on the Nation"s president.
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Liza couldn"t believe the words had left his lips. That he had dared to say something so horrible to Claire, especially in front of so many people.
The look on Claire"s face was so rife with tortured pain, Liza could only stare back at her miserably before turning to her own father again.
"So if we stand up to either of you then we obviously have to be on something? We can"t possibly be adults who are simply sick and d.a.m.ned tired of being treated like children, could we?" Liza asked them as her chest tightened with pain.
Ray had always aggressively fought Claire"s independence with every weapon he could come up with. This was one of them.
Accusing her of doing drugs as past friends did, or not caring about her family, whatever it took to get her to back down and obey his demands rather than living as she longed to do.
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Behind her, Stygian let his hand grip her hip as he moved closer.
She was certain no one heard it, even she didn"t, but she felt the growl rumbling in his chest.
"I didn"t say that," Ray snapped back at her.
"Neither of us did." Her father stared back at her as though he didn"t know her, though.
"No, it"s the same accusation he used when she tried to leave and go to college in Califor-nia, and the same one he used when she tried to take a job at the casino rather than the receptionist at the Navajo Nation headquar- ters. For G.o.d"s sake, she"s his daughter and didn"t even get the a.s.sistant"s job. She was pushed down to a d.a.m.ned receptionist as though she were some lowly distant cousin he felt responsible for," she accused Ray.
"And he used the same tone of derision and disgust when she announced she was moving into the house with me too."
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"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 start- ing 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 d.a.m.ned 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 671/862.
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 be- side 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 challen- gingly. "Are we still fired?"
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"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 d.a.m.ned good and well that signal didn"t leave this hotel."
Stygian felt his mate tense, felt to the bot- tom of his soul the sudden suspicion and an- ger 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 673/862.
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 man- age to slip through the final layers of secur- ity," her father argued as frustration tightened his expression. "Surely you under- stand 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, 674/862.
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 675/862.
awakened from the wreck they were in as teenagers.