“Your previous information was correct, then. The Breeds transporting me in the heli-jet had no information on me. I know they weren’t Council, though. They were mercenaries. They intended to collect a bounty being paid for the woman I look like, just as they intended to collect a fee for the woman they were picking up in the desert.”
He made a quick note on the pad before lifting his gaze back to her.
“What is your name? Your full name,” he asked her without emotion, without any sort of interest really.
She inhaled slowly, deeply. She hated questions.
“Mackenzie Elizabeth Deacon.” And she knew the questions would just become harder to answer.
“Birth parents?” he asked.
She glared at him, hating him, hating the questions.
“I didn’t ask to come here,” she reminded him. “Your people brought me here against my volition.”
“Shall I ask the question again?” He stared at her again, green eyes surrounded by heavy, thick lashes, his tone so cold she’d probably get frostbite.
“Dane and Elizabeth Colder,” she answered, fighting to push back the resentment and pain at the thought of them.
“Known siblings?” Rhyzan asked in that hard, brutally cold tone.
“Cassandra and Kenton Sinclair.” She stared over his shoulder now, concentrating on the mirror behind it, trying to distance herself from the “interview.”
“Known genetic status?”
Known genetic status. Human or Breed, and if Breed what designation. She knew what that question meant.
Her lips thinned. “Coyote.”
Her interrogator paused then. “You mean Coyote and Wolf.”
She turned her gaze back to him. “No, Mr. Brannigan, I mean Coyote. My genetics weren’t mixed, only Cassie’s. I’m the throwaway child. The one they didn’t want.” What had happened to the Wolf child, though?
He said nothing for a long moment, then placed the stylus on the table and watched her clinically.
“Answer this one question and you can walk out of here now, and just disappear if that’s what you want,” he told her then. “The moment I confirm the answer and have what I want, then you can leave.”
Kenzi nodded hesitantly.
There were strings attached. She knew there were. Freedom could never be that easy.
“Where is your sister, Cassandra Sinclair?”
She blinked back at him, not certain what he meant. Confused, she gave a short, quick shake of her head.
“What do you mean?” she asked, frowning at the flash of retribution in his gaze.
“I mean, Cassie disappeared just before your arrival here, in this building. Tell me where she is, and you can go.” His expression didn’t shift an iota, but his voice had a terrifying harshness to it that had her heart jumping in fear. “If you don’t tell me, then I’ll throw you in the deepest, darkest fucking cell I can find.”
Cassie was gone?
Kenzi could feel the fear beginning to tear through her, panic surging past her fragile control as her heart began racing, pushing the adrenaline-laced terror straight to her mind and freezing her with the implications of what he’d just said.
“I don’t . . .”
“Tell me you don’t know, and I’ll drag you to that cell right now,” he growled, and she believed him. She could see it in his face, see his desire to do it, hear it in his voice.
Kenzi jumped from the chair, the panic rioting through her making her sick to her stomach, threatening to make her heave on the beautiful carpet.