The pretty news correspondent beamed at the silver-haired man in the expensive suit as he tugged self-consciously at his jacket hem. Not a man comfortable in front of a camera.
“Yes.” He cleared his throat and tried for a stronger start. “We at Phoenix Biotech believe in making an impact not only in life sciences, but with humankind. And so we polled our employees to determine what charities mattered to them, taking a vested interested in their cares, their hopes for their families.”
Grand words but they dripped with honey. Lizzy narrowed her eyes. Not all sweet things were actually good for you. Antifreeze, for example.
The man continued with his goodwill-toward-all-men speech until the news correspondent asked him directly about the slender Asian woman and teen standing to one side. “Ah yes, this is the first family of several we’ve extended the hand of sponsorship to. The young man has key talents and will be attending a university here in the US on scholarship. His mother has accompanied him. We’re hoping to reunite them both with his uncle, her brother, once we’re able to locate him. They’re wonderful people. I’m sure it would just kill them if we’re not able to find him. “
Uh-huh. Cue dramatic music. Three guesses on who they were looking for, considering the way Kyle surged to his feet and started to stalk around the bed. Since he stayed in the bedroom area and didn’t seem to be heading to the door, she didn’t stop him. But she did stand up and move into the sitting area to give him room, and give her time to respond if he did decide to go charging out of here.
“So are you the kid’s real uncle?” Could be his son. There was family resemblance in the lines of the kid’s face, his bone structure.
“Yes.” Kyle was apparently still struggling with his responses because he’d gone terse. She sort of missed his lengthier conversational habits. It wasn’t often she got to be around a man who could converse with more than four-letter words and the occasional grunt.
Not fair. The Centurion Corporation, her fire team in particular, tended toward the more intelligent. But they’d all developed a habit of short sentences.
“Did you know they were in the States?” Keeping him talking was the best idea for now. She needed to know what he wanted to do, whether she was going to have to subdue him to keep him safe, and what could be done about them. If there should be something done.
Even family could betray a person.
“No.” He stopped and dragged his fingers through his hair. “Not yet. I knew they were requesting visas. I was helping them prepare to come here. They were supposed to wait until after all of this was resolved and I could make permanent arrangements for us all to live together.”
Part of her melted a little. The battle-ready part of her tensed. All the more reason for him to go rushing out there to attempt a save he wasn’t equipped to manage.
And damn but Phoenix Biotech had some serious reach if they could find and pluck his family out of a different country to use them as bait.
“This is a trap. You understand that, right?” She was sure he did, but best to get it out in the open. Sometimes forcing a person to speak the words out loud helped them think more rationally. He wasn’t doing badly so far.
He only nodded at first. “Douglas worded his message to be incredibly obvious. I imagine he’s expecting me to call the office, contact him via his direct line. I have it.”
Tempting. “Let’s wait until we talk through the options first.”
“We?” Hope made his voice crack. “I had expected to have to argue with you, find some way to get past you to help them.”
Not a bad guess. “I haven’t said I’m letting you go anywhere. But we can talk about what options there are too because I’m not the sort to leave the situation as it is. First, do you really think they’d kill your family?”
He stood perfectly still.
“Think. Rationally. As public as this interview was, nothing could happen immediately. Someone would notice somewhere that the two of them disappeared.” Most likely.
“Not so.” He resumed pacing. “It might be a national news channel, but this was broadcasted for the local feed. Hard to say what level of exposure the cast had gotten outside the Seattle area. Truly, fairly few people will remember this beyond the brief feel-good moment any other charity news spot would engender. Even fewer would think to inquire or research what happened after the moment in the spotlight.”
He had a point. A reasonable one. This wasn’t reality television and there wasn’t a follow-up episode to see how the people were doing a few months later. Some news stories had follow-ups but plenty didn’t.