Page 49 of From the Noblest Motives
Cyril's gaze bored into Damien before he nodded. "All right. I think it's time. Where would you like to start?"
"Hillary's bracelet? The image of my mother?"
"I needed you looking for the students again, needed you to find them. Your mother… I'm sorry. That must have been a shock. But would you have met with me if I'd simply contacted you without something so unexpected?"
"No. Probably not." Damien shook his head. "But this… doesn't make sense. This convoluted route to lead me to the students."
"I could have told you, yes." Cyril hoisted himself up on the counter, his feet swinging. "I could have sent you a message. It's time to be honest, Damien. I needed to understand you before I could allow you this close. You have, almost exclusively, worked for government agencies. Perhaps you understand my reticence."
Damien leaned his pipe against the door, not trusting himself with it. Anger hissed and popped in his brain on a slow boil. "It was all a test?"
"Observation. An experiment." Cyril rubbed both hands over his face. "I know that sounds cold. My own son. My only child. But a lot of people depend on me to keep them secret and secure. By observing where your priorities lay and how you handled them, it became easier and easier to lead you here and to at least this answer." He waved his hand to indicate the kids.
If there hadn't been teens present, Damien might have punched his father. Every step of the way, their movements had been reported to Cyril somehow. Or pieced together after the fact. That seemed more likely. Still—their movements traced, Damien's intentions tracked by someone he was now supposed to trust? It was nearly too much to process in any calm, sane way.
His audience stayed completely still, regarding him with expressions that ranged from hopeful to wary. Damien found an empty chair by the door and took a seat, concentrating on counting his breaths in and out. He could not allow himself to be overwhelmed here. In the midst of betrayal and anger seething inside him, he clung to that. With no one at his back he could trust, no buffer to calm him, he had to rely on himself to stay present and aware.
"Damien, I'm sorry. I am." The anguish in Cyril's voice did more to calm him than any explanation.
They weren't finished with this, but at least Damien felt he could remain human and professional. This was still his investigation. That was the most important part in all this. His own erratic and unreliable emotions had to be set aside.
"I'd like to talk to the kids." Damien held up a hand when Cyril moved to leave the room. "Outside. One at a time."
Cyril remained on the counter, his smile crinkling his eyes. "Entirely up to all of you. If you're willing, Maia, why don't you go first?"
The youngest of the four, Maia's eyes went comically wide as she mouthed,who me?
"Go on, bug." Hillary made a shooing motion. "Damien rescues kids. He's one of the good guys."
Damien struggled not to react to the unexpected endorsement. He didn't have enough pieces of this puzzle yet to let anything show. Instead, he strode back through the laboratory and up the basement stairs with light, hesitant footsteps following him.
At the top, Damien sat in the grass so he wouldn't loom. Maia remained standing, running her fingers through the long grass by the door. She was a small thirteen with deep-brown eyes and her tightly curled hair worn in a natural halo. On her jeans, she'd made pen drawings of flowers and something that looked like an owl.
"You're very angry," Maia whispered.
"Yes. I'm sorry about that. I'm not angry with you." Keeping his gaze on the grass at his feet, Damien began with the obvious. "How did you get here, Maia?"
"Cyril brought us."
"Hmm, yes." Damien nodded, watching a ladybug navigate the surface of a dandelion. "Did he pick you up at school?"
"No. Hillary said we had to go. A lot of kids were missing." Maia sighed, and whether that was sadness over missing people or frustration over the situation was hard to tell. "She—Hillary—she'd talk to Tara, who said to head for a certain place. Deshaun and Danilo came with us."
"But you never got there. To Tara's certain place."
"No. These men in a black van found us and tried to make us go with them. But then Cyril came and he used a, um…" Maia hesitated, then said the words carefully as if trying to remember correctly, "A pinpoint, ranged microwave weapon to, you know, knock them out. And then we went with Cyril."
"He brought you here."
"Yeah." Maia's tone edged toward cautious, suspicious.
"Maia." Damien let the ladybug crawl onto his finger. "Do you feel safe here?"
She let out a huff of breath. "Oh, sure. Lots safer than school."
"Don't you want to go home to your family?"
"I don't really have a family. My aunt doesn't care if I'm there or not."
