Tony’s lids lowered halfway, unruffled.
“Tony. Liza.” Parker cut into his meal. “Enough with the bickering. Our meals are getting cold. Tony, why don’t you help Griff? Don’t tell me you’re filming late. You said you’d wrapped it all up.”
Tony’s brow furrowed. “What about Sloan? When was the last time she went out?”
It was at this point Parker pinched the bridge over his nose and sighed exuberantly.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going by myself,” Griffin said. “Now, the second item on the agenda—the imposter. Most of you know he attacked me yesterday at the newsroom and ensured he received a sample of my blood. Have you gathered any information on him since I sent you his details?”
It was Flint who answered. “Donald Doppenger has been working for the Cardinal Copy for fifteen years. In that time he’d been nominated for the Pulitzer twice but no award. His brother is a Senator. His father is a retired Supreme Court judge, and his mother died a few years ago, but she was a standout surgeon who invented a new spray on membrane that could be used internally.”
“Yes, I remember that name,” Grace added. “Ruth Doppenger.”
“As you can see, Donald came from a family of high achievers. He also dated Lilo Likeke for a few years, but that relationship is over. That’s about the extent of the information we could pull, nothing to explain why he would be going out of his way to get a sample of your blood, Griff. Are you sure you have the right man?”
Hearing Lilo’s and Donald’s name in the same sentence made him feel ill, but she was their closest connection to him. The thought had crossed his mind to question Lilo about Doppenger’s motives, but he couldn’t bring himself to involve her further.
“I’m one hundred percent certain. Doppenger’s greed signature matched the imposter. He wasn’t at the newsroom today for me to investigate further.”
“Hold up.” Tony lifted his palm. “Now, don’t throw flying-forks at me, but who’s to say this woman isn’t still involved with him? It all sounds a little too connected to me.”
Griffin stabbed his steak with his knife. “She broke up with him months ago.”
“So she tells you. I’m just playing devil’s advocate. Her family are mafiosi. No need to look at me like that.”
“No,” Grace added with a sympathetic look to Griffin. “There’s no chance she’s with Donnie.”
“How can you be sure, Doc?” Evan asked softly.
“I shouldn’t be saying this because it’s a breach of trust, but I want you to know she is one of the best people I know. There’s no chance she’s in league with him because… it was an abusive relationship.”
Abusive?
No sound, no thought, nothing moved in Griffin’s mind except that word, over and over, and with each repetition, his muscles locked tighter. He couldn’t get it out of his mind.
Abusive.
What had Doppenger done to her? How? When? Where?
I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole.
It wasn’t until Parker said, “Chill out, Griff,” that Griffin realized he’d let his control slip and metal utensils hovered an inch from the surface of the table. Forks, knives and spoons whirled at face level, spinning faster and faster with Griffin’s elevating stress.
“This is awesome!” Evan grinned. “I can’t wait until we spar, bro. Finally on the same level with someone. Although, you know metal conducts electricity, maybe we can team up and—”
“Evan.” Grace put her palm gently on his arm. “Not the time.”
“Right. Sorry.”
In a panic, Griffin looked to Mary. She wasn’t worried. He shouldn’t be worried.
Focus on your breathing.
Griffin reigned in his ability, slowly and smoothly. The items lowered softly to the ground.
“You’re getting better at that,” Mary noted. “Keep flexing those supernatural muscles.”
He wanted to dab the sweat on his brow, but resisted. The effort to keep his emotions in check when thinking about Lilo was hard, but not impossible.
Knowing Doppenger abused her, he wanted her nowhere near him, and he didn’t want to ask her about him. Anything Griffin could do to avoid her pain, he would.
“Doppenger will need to be questioned. I should be the one to do it,” he stated.
“No.” Parker re-organized his cutlery. “You’re too close to this. I’ll do it. Sloan will come.”
“What?” Sloan whined. “But—”
“But what? Do you have more pressing things to do?”
“I don’t fit my gear.”
“That excuse is getting old. Get new gear made, or wear something else, or get your ass into the gym. We have a new suit prototype coming soon, and when that happens, you’ll have no excuse, so get used to it. For now, all you need is your mask to hide your face and a hood or a hat.”
She groaned. “Fine.”
An expression of accomplishment flittered over Parker. “Good. I think it’s clear to everyone that if this is another Syndicate stunt—and let’s be honest, blood sampling is their MO—then we’re in some deep shit. We’re getting stalked, photographed, and set up. We need to take the offensive while we still have the chance. We’ve lost a lot of advantage over the years we fell apart. Our identities are at stake, and if we’re exposed, then losing our freedom might not be the worst we have to face.”
“I hate to say it,” Mary added grimly, “but it could be the Hildegard Sisterhood.”
Flint frowned at his wife and lowered his voice, but they all heard him speak. “They’ve left you alone all this time. Why bother now?”
“Because we stole these children from them.”
“We stole them from the Syndicate. The Sisterhood were only another group trying to steal them.”
“Exactly.”
“No,” Parker added. “I don’t think it’s them. But we will remain wary. It’s the Syndicate who have us on their radar at the moment, and none of us are safe.”
Griffin looked at his plate, thinking on the ramifications of his brother’s words.
It was Evan who finished the train of thought. “The Syndicate tried to kidnap me once, now the attention is on Griffin so soon after he’s unlocked his DNA. That can’t be a coincidence. You have to protect Lilo at all costs. If they discover the link between her and you, she’s not safe.”
He was right. Griffin’s heart tripped, and although Lilo was angry at him for forbidding her to go to the meeting, he was convinced he did the right thing. She had to stay safe.
“They’re not done with us,” Evan continued. “And by the looks of it, they’re roping in more people to do their dirty work.”
I’m only after the greedy ones.
The memory slammed into Griffin. When dressed as the imposter, Doppenger mentioned he was hunting sinners of greed. At the time Griffin had been defiantly furious because greed was his sin, and he’d be damned if someone else thought they could hunt better than him. But he’d escaped the fact that no one else should have the capability to sense greed at all.
“Doppenger could sense greed, like me,” he said.
“That’s not possible,” Parker replied.
Mary added, “Nothing in the intel we sourced said anything about him being manufactured in a lab, like you all were. In fact, he led a very boring and mundane life until we all turned up in town and gave him something to write about.”
“Then how did he have the skill to sense greed?”
“Maybe it was a misnomer.”
“Maybe he’s working with the Syndicate.”
“They must have given him something, altered him somehow.”
Everyone spoke at once until Parker stood, towering over them all. The feral glint in his eye was enough to silence them all. “This is unacceptable. We’re elite specimens, manufactured soldiers, yet, somehow this organization has all this information about us and we have nothing on them. I want everyone on this. Your lives depend on it.”
Chapter
Seventeen
After visiting her parents’ house, Lilo spent a few days keeping to herself, working quietly, and processing her feelings. It hadn’t been easy as Griffin always seemed near. He wandered past her desk, loitered in her periphery and tried to strike up conversations. Once, he’d given her a mug of hot coffee which she politely declined. Nevertheless, his relentless efforts of attention let her know he was there.
She looked at her hero vision board and remembered why she’d put it there in the first place—to remind herself there were good men out there. That there was hope.
I forbid it.
End of discussion.
Those had been Griffin’s unbending words.
Sitting at her desk and staring at her screen, she felt so stupid. She’d allowed herself to be taken in by him; she’d been blind to trust him completely. From the moment she collided with him in the break room, she’d been head over heels for his confidence, strong jaw, kissable lips… God! She slammed the heel of her palm into her eye socket and grimaced. She still couldn’t stop thinking about how attracted she was to him. Had she really been so desperate for affection that she’d not seen his stubborn and rigid personality for what it was? Controlling, possessive and the opposite of what she wanted in a partner. Donnie had given her plenty of that and it almost broke her. It still messed with her brain. The very thought of getting intimate with another man gave her heart palpitations, and not for a good reason.
You’ll never be fulfilled without me.
What if Donnie was right? What if she couldn’t get any satisfaction because he wasn’t there, telling her what to do, or how to feel? He’d always been dominant in the bedroom, and for a while it worked. She never had to worry about making the wrong decision, or disappointing him.
Enough thinking about disappointing men.
She turned to her computer screen and opened the file she’d started on the Lazarus family. Despite what Donnie or Griffin thought, she knew she could make her own decisions. She wouldn’t be at the Cardinal Copy if she wasn’t a decent investigator, so it was time to do what she knew best. Time to work out why Griffin had avoided giving her the pictures. He’d coveted them. Had been a little too protective.
Alarm bells had been ringing in her head since, and they sparked an unquenchable curiosity that had Lilo roaming the internet for information about the Lazarus family. On her notepad next to her keyboard, she wrote all the names down, including Mary and Flint—Griffin’s parents. For hours she was lost in news article over news article. She found plenty online about Parker, Tony, Wyatt and even Evan, but rarely any Liza or Sloan. Griffin was virtually invisible. No other family was mentioned. No cousins, no social media accounts. All of their history only started a few years ago. It was like their digital blueprint before ten years ago was a ghost.
Her journalist instincts were buzzing.
There was something about the family. Possibly something big.
Lilo tapped her notebook with her pencil and doodled next to each name. For such a large family, they were blissfully free from run-ins with the law. It was almost too clean.
She jolted as her phone alarm went off and she glanced at the clock. Four-fifty. The meeting with the kidnappers was scheduled at six, and the location was deep in the South-Side district where crime ran rampant, and even the police feared to tread. She’d have to pass through the slums by the river to get there, but she had her trusty cattle prod strapped to her thigh under her skirt. The other thigh holster held a small pistol. She also had her trusty spy-phone in her bag to help capture evidence.
Most people would be indoors because of the cold.
She would be safe.
She could do this.
It wouldn’t be the first time she’d ventured to the South-Side alone at night. Once, she’d followed a lead to uncover the source of EZ-m, a new drug made from bath salts. It was snorted by many impressionable youth who missed out on a buzz, but got free trips to the Emergency Department. Lilo’s father had sent her coordinates of the suspected dealers, but she couldn’t take him at his word. She vetted the information herself before handing it over to Donnie for an exposé. She’d trekked deep into the district on her own, staked out a house for twelve hours, and took incriminating photographs, all without being discovered. If she could do that, she could meet her father’s kidnappers and negotiate.
And she could write the story herself. This time, she would see it published in her name, no matter what boy’s club strings Donnie tried to pull.
There were too many things about the kidnapping that didn’t add up. Her mother’s erratic behavior for one. Lilo had the sense her mother knew something about it. Janet had a greedy heart, but never before had she talked about killing her own husband. Seeing her mother’s true colors made Lilo believe her father shielded her from the brunt of the psychopathic behavior, and if he’d done that, then what else had he protected her from?
A flash of her sixteenth party, of her father spending most of the evening indoors with her mother came to mind. Was there more to it? Had her father been keeping her crazy mother away from the revelers for Lilo’s sake?
No.
She’d seen her father’s corrupt ways with her own eyes. Nobody made him pay all those people to lie to her. Nobody made him sell weapons of mass destruction from his den. He was as bad as her mother.
Still, something didn’t sit well.
A sneaky, terrible thought unfurled from the edges of her mind. What if he’d become the way he was because of her mother’s irrational demands? Lilo knew as well as any abusive relationship refugee that sometimes the abuse wasn’t obvious. Sometimes it silently wore you down until one day you found yourself in a situation you couldn’t escape.
Lilo rubbed her eyes until they felt raw. Her brain hurt. She was tired of lies and cover-ups. She was tired of being managed by men. First her father, then Donnie, now Griffin.
Her eyes drifted to her hero vision board with a longing.
“Home time,” Bev said from her side of the partition.
“Yes.” Candy fist pumped the air, and launched from her seat, leaving without another word.
“Five o’clock,” Lilo whispered, heart racing.
It was time.
She put on her coat, wrapped her scarf around her neck and tugged her woolen beanie over her head and ears. After waving goodbye to Bev, she collected her hand bag and made her way toward the exit. As she waited for the elevator, nervous tension crept up her spine, so when someone called her name, she jumped.
“Lilo.” His voice cut through her heart to its aching center.
She turned. Griffin stood behind her, hands in his pockets, blue eyes attentive and focused on her. She’d rarely spoken to him the past couple of days, but had watched from the corner of her eye every time he entered the room, turning beet red with awareness. She’d felt his heat from across the distance and through the walls as though he’d stood next to her desk all day. It had been torture to shut down his every attempt at conversation, but she had pride and dignity. Now he stood there, looking all broad shouldered and manly in his tight black sweater, completely unaware of his effect on her.
He used a finger to adjust his spectacles at the bridge. “Do you need a lift home?”
She blinked and turned back to the elevator, now opening its doors. “No. Thank you.”
He followed her in. “You are going home, aren’t you?”
Oh, she saw where this was going, and fire snapped in her vision. “It’s none of your business where I go.”
A tall man wearing a Fedora came into the lift. Griffin growled and pushed him out. “Catch the next one.”
“Griffin!” she exclaimed and then mouthed an apology to the hat man.
Griffin punched the ground button then rounded on her, eyes blazing. “I don’t have time for games, Lilo.”
And here comes the real Griffin, she thought bitterly, hating that she’d been right.
The doors closed, shutting them in together, but
she was damned if she acquiesced to such bossy orchestrations. She stuck out her chin and stared at the doors.
“Just tell me you’re going home and I’ll leave you alone.”
“I’m going home.” At some point.
He exhaled. “Good.”
The doors opened, and she strode out knowing full well his intense eyes were glued to her back, watching the entire way it took her to cross the lobby and exit the glass rotating doors into the night. She deliberately turned right, letting him think she was going to catch a cab from the bay. When she rounded the corner, she doubled back and made her way to the subway.
Until she’d bumped into Griffin at the elevator, she’d been on edge, but seeing him try yet again to sway her actions gave her the motivation to stick to her principles and continue her journey.
Half an hour later, she exited the South-Side subway station.
But by the time she walked deep into the district, her nerve began to falter.
It was an older area of town and the desperation of residents dripped from the crumbling and stained brownstone. Walls with broken windows loomed on all sides, and as she hurried through the darkened streets, loaded stares pummeled her—mostly from men wondering how long the lone woman would remain untouched. She shivered and hugged her coat tight. They weren’t thinking that. It was her own paranoia trying to make her retreat.
A sense of dread settled in suffocating waves as she neared her destination. When she approached a line of homeless people huddled in the alcove of an old church, a baby’s cry pierced the air, bringing her attention to a crouched woman wearing only a saggy sweater and dress. Her boots were old with holes in the toes. Hugged under her arm was a small bundle.
Lilo stopped. It was so cold out there, and people lived in squalor. That baby wouldn’t survive the night.
With her current plight forgotten, Lilo walked up to the woman. She had long, stringy light brown hair that stuck to her shoulders from the dampening night. The mother noticed Lilo and hugged her baby tighter.
“What do you want?” said a grizzly man to the right.
Greed Page 14
