Blindsided (9 page)

She hesitated before answering, her lips drawn thin—probably realizing she’d given away more information than she wished to. “No, Mom just believed in order. If her world was in order, then she was in control.”

“Doesn’t sound like a fun childhood.”

“They were good parents,” she hastily defended them. As much to convince herself as him?

“I never said they weren’t,” he pointed out.
 

He stepped forward, running his fingers over the chair, pressed the nail of his index finger in. Yup, real leather.
 

“So now that we have that cleared up—”

“Your mother,” he cut her off, rubbing his hand over the small spot he’d marred. A quick glance showed her confusion. A little twist of guilt tore through his gut at what he was about to do. Though really, she’d done it to herself when she’d walked up and knocked on Garret’s door. The questions he needed answered were how much did she know, how deep was she involved, and how she was involved? If the answer was not much to any of the above, then maybe he could minimize the import of her involvement and thus the damage to her. If not…

Damn John and his skillful snooping. No, damn Whitesman for giving him the assignment and placing this burden on his shoulders in the first place.
 

“Your mother had a hereditary disease,” he continued at her silence. “One that is passed down to the next generation of children fifty percent of the time. Gerald’s Syndrome. Very painful, very debilitating unless treated. Highly expensive to treat, too, but at least treatment can provide a regular life…for a while.”

He observed her closely. She blinked, but otherwise remained perfectly still.

“Of course, even when treated the disease results in early death.”

Her shoulders tensed.

He waited for more of a reaction. When it became apparent she wasn’t going to show any more, he pushed on, his voice ruthlessly toneless. “Rapid systems failure. Normally between adolescence and full adulthood. Your mother lucked out and beat the odds for a while.”

Another blink.

“But when it does catch up with you? Here one day,” he snapped his fingers, “gone the next.”

She flinched.

He paused, giving her opportunity to lob the ball back in his court. Her reaction to this and the next big play would determine how the rest of this game went.
Come on, Aria, show me some real emotion. I need to know what your motives are in all this.

She sat up straighter, seeming to draw into herself. “I’m aware of my family’s health history. If you came to enlighten me on the subject, it was unnecessary. As you can see,” she spread her hands. “I’m still alive.”

“I see that,” he conceded. “Alive and beautiful.”
 

She turned her head away and to the side, cheeks reddening…and throwing him out of sync. What the hell was happening to him? All she’d done was blush.

He ran a hand across his head, scrubbed his hair, pulling the roots slightly in hopes that the mild pain would keep him focused.
 

“Your mother’s sister also happened to be a research assistant for Dr. Viadal, a noted geneticist. It was claimed that she and Dr. Viadal were very close.”

Her head snapped back up, the blood draining from her face. Something—fear?—made her pupils widen. An answering sickness pooled in the pit of his stomach. Shit. He’d hoped she was clueless about her aunt’s profession. But she’d just confirmed what he’d dreaded. She was well aware of her aunt’s questionable relationship with the good doctor. Of course, how else would she have known who and what Garret was? And she did know. He didn’t doubt that. Just like she must somehow know that someone was killing Viadal’s progeny. Why else had she come to Garret’s house?

The question now was how did she know? Aria’s auntie dearest had worked for Viadal between the years of 2068 until his death in 2077.
She
might have had the means possible to track down and instigate a conspiracy with one of their “creations,” but she’d died less than a year and a half after Viadal and couldn’t be involved in their current problem. Was Aria? Or did she simply have an old family contact somewhere high up in the government who would have known and alerted her to the fact?

“Again, nothing new.” She gave him a toothy smile. “Will that be all?”

“Not quite.”

He strode over and plopped down into one of the chairs across the desk from her. Even knowing she was concealing information and might even be some sort of traitor, he was having a hard time not reacting to her. She was dressed simply, elegantly. The gauzy pant suit clung to her body and the low V-neck showed the tasteful lace of the camisole beneath. He itched to come up behind her, lay his hands on her shoulders, let one dip down the suits lines and into the opening…cup her breast. Sitting down seemed the smarter decision.

“I’m interested in knowing more about your twin brother. Finding any information on him besides pretty boy pictures and tabloids is difficult.” He leaned forward toward the desk. “Did your brother really die in a personal chopper explosion?”

“I assume you’re asking if he died of this hereditary disease,” she said. “If it was covered up. The answer is no. On March 7
^th
, 2093 my brother’s helicopter exploded, less than five miles from my boarding school. Does that answer your question?”

“Not really. Just because his chopper exploded doesn’t mean it wasn’t a cover up.”

Her brow furrowed. Frustration? Pain?

“My brother did not die from a genetic defect,” she finally said.

Well, that was half an answer. And part of what he was afraid of. Had Viadal helped out his mistress’s sister and fixed the hereditary plague of the family? Had he taken it a step further? If so, how much further?
 

She leaned forward. “Here’s the thing about ratios and probability in inherited traits, Mr. Evans. It is a fifty percent chance for each child, not a one-hundred percent chance that if the first doesn’t have a condition the second will. If that were the case, then there would never be couples with two daughters and no sons or two sons and no daughters. Funny how that works, isn’t it?”

“I’m not really a geneticist. I wouldn’t know. And frankly I’ll leave that crap to the scientists to work out.”

“You’re not even interested, Garret? Seems to me you would be, given your background.”

He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “What do you know of my background?”

She gave a little shrug. “My aunt liked to brag about Viadal’s work. Even though it was top secret, she spoke to my mother in my presence.”

Agitation had him jumping up. He wanted her to be perfectly innocent, perfectly normal. He wasn’t going to get what he wanted.

He walked around the office, looking at the plaques on the wall, the console of controls. She followed him around the room. Not with her eyes, but with her head cocked so she could hear him, where he was, what he was doing. A very good actress, or very blind. He moved back near the door. Brushed his fingers over the manual wall plate and turned off the lights. Everything was pitch black except for the lights on the console behind her.

“I can see changes in light. So unless you’re trying to even the odds for some reason, I would recommend you turn them on again. Willis will notice and return.”

“Huh.” Teigan palmed the light on again. “And the doctors couldn’t work with that?”

A delicately curved brow flew up. “Do you know any more about medicine than you do genetics?”

“So it’s a medical condition, not a genetic one.”

“I didn’t say that,” she snapped, grabbing up an electronic notebook from the desk and deftly fingering in a message.
 

It just didn’t fit. Yeah, she knew more than she should. And yes, there was a possibility her genetics had been tampered with enough to eliminate the hereditary disease. But he just couldn’t see her as a Viadal. More importantly, he couldn’t see her associating with a Viadal for the purposes of eliminating the V-10. Her reactions seemed all wrong. The first visit had been plagued with a combination of nerves and fear. This one she was trying to stonewall…but there was again fear. If she were trying to play him, she would be doing her best to lead him on. And while he thought he detected a spark of interest, she was doing her best to ignore it—which pissed him off.

“If we’re done here,” she drew his attention back to her face. It was professionally impassive once more. “Willis will show you the way out.”

“We’re not done.” He walked back to her, leaned a hip on her desk, invading her personal space with his knee.

Her head jerked toward him, her nostrils flared, and she drew herself up straighter. “And what will it take for us to be done?”

He leaned in slightly, so his breath wafted a loose strand around her face. “Oh Aria, I wouldn’t bet on us ever being done.”

She sucked in a breath.

“But for now?” He sat back up. He couldn’t take being so close to her. Whatever scent she wore drove him crazy. “I’ll be satisfied with taking you out to dinner.”

“Dinner?” She blinked, her brow furrowing. She looked genuinely taken aback, like being asked to dinner wasn’t something men normally asked her to do. It certainly wasn’t something
he
should be asking her to do. But he could make the excuse that it was in the name of information gathering.

“Yeah. Dinner.” He picked up a music box, cracked the lid open. Some sort of famous classical tune drifted out into the room, the tin notes pinging in the silence. Her eyes narrowed dangerously. He smiled, closed the gilded lid and set the box back down. “You know, good food, good company.”

“Not interested,” she said coolly, setting the tablet on her desk.
 

He glanced at it, but all he saw was Braille lettering. Curious, he reached out and touched the smooth surface. Little bumps immediately rose under his touch. “This is neat. I love gadgets. I bet you have a ton.”

“Hmm.”

He studied her. She moved a case of data chips to one side of her desk, changed her mind, put them in a drawer. Her hands slid over the surface, found the tablet, put that away, too. Worried he’d steal something, or avoidance behavior? She moved the music box he’d been playing with, carefully adjusting it back to the exact spot it had been in when he started, then opened her drawer and picked up her tablet again.
 

Teigan, smiled. Busy work.

“I think you’re lying,” he told her. Her back stiffened; any stiffer and she’d be a wooden soldier. “I think you are.”

“Are what?”
 

“Interested.”

She huffed. “And you’re arrogant.”

Teigan bit his lip to keep from chuckling. “So do you have a preference as to where we go for dinner?”

“What?” she snapped sharply.
 

He half expected fire to flash at him from her sightless eyes. No, not completely sightless. She admitted to seeing changes in light. But though her face showed her annoyance, there was no fire in their hazel depths.

“You just admitted you’re interested.”

She bristled at that, but he thought more for show than anything else. “I said you were arrogant.”

“But you
didn’t
deny you were interested,” he pointed out.

Her mouth opened and closed, a wealth of emotions flashing across her face in rapid succession; too rapid for him to isolate just one—damn he wished he could read something in her eyes. Her face settled on thoughtful: her brow slightly drawn, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth. He wanted to nibble on that lip. Unable to sit any longer—it was uncomfortable given his state of semi-arousal, and he was tired of this verbal fencing they’d been doing—he stood.
 

Her head snapped up, following the soft shuffle of his movement.

“Come on, Aria, give me another chance,” he coaxed, holding out his hand. “Take my hand.”

Tentatively her hand reached out, inches from his it stopped, clasped into a fist. “Where do you plan to take me?”

“Trust me, Aria.” His hand slid beneath hers, offering, without forcing. “I won’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go.”

Chapter Five

Trust me Aria, I won’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go.
She should have been alarmed, she should have been angry, affronted. She’d been none of those things. Oh no, she’d been… aroused.

She was surprised he hadn’t pounced, given the surge of pheromones she’d given off. Obviously they had the ability to override her common sense. It had taken her about 1.5 seconds before she’d taken his offered arm, using the excuse of her blindness to lightly trace the ridge of muscling in his forearm, secretly basking in the heat of his body inches from hers as he led her through the halls and out to his car. And when her sensitive nose picked up a faint waft of arousal from him in response to their closeness? There had been an answering gush of heat in her center. God! She didn’t even
know
this man, not really. And she’d gotten into his car with him, alone.

Willis had even tried to talk her out of the adventure, in that subtle disapproving manner he had. “As you will, miss”, Willis code for “Mighten you want to reconsider that?”
 
Ha. If Garret turned out to be as “imbalanced” as the Head Director of Military Affairs files she’d hacked into suggested, and the ex-V-10 took her off somewhere isolated to rape and murder her, it would be her own damn fault.