Faceless by Jus Accardo Page B

picnic area of Memorial Park back home. When I opened them, we were seated on a blanket surrounded by sandwiches and cold soda. The crisp air smelled of fall, colorful leaves littering the ground all around us. They twitched in the breeze, tumbling across the blanket and dancing away.
    “What—how did you do that?”
    I winked. “I’ve got moves like Jagger. Now why would you say you’re a horrible person? What happened to your father was his fault, not yours.”
    “Shortly after the accident, a man came to see my mom and me. He said he could help us—help me .”
    “Help you, how?”
    “He knew about the accident. He knew about Josh . And…he knew about my ability to mess with computers.” She picked up one of the sandwiches and pulled off a piece of the end. “Of course, Mom totally freaked. She denied it till her face turned blue, and finally the guy left. The next day, he caught up with me outside of school. I don’t know how, but he knew our money was running low, and Dad’s care was killing us. The bills were piling up, and the mortgage was late. He offered to help.”
    And I had my answer. That’s how Denazen had secured Devin’s trust. By swooping in and playing the White Knight. A part of me felt vindicated. I knew she wasn’t being manipulated for anything as trivial as greed or power. Devin wasn’t the standard Denazen material. They’d snowed her. Manipulated her into service by offering something she wanted. Something she needed . “Pay for it, you mean?”
    She let her head dip low, hair falling like a curtain to hide her face. With a deep breath, she said, “He said he’d have my dad moved to a special facility and promised he’d get the best care possible. Then he said he could give me a fresh start. A chance to put Josh and the whole mess behind me…”
    “What did he want in exchange?”
    “Me,” she said simply. “They wanted me to work for them. Some special place where people like me—I guess there are more of us out there than I thought—help them…do things.”
    “Do things?”
    Her face fell. She hesitated, looking from me, then down to the sandwich. Picking off another piece of the crust, she sighed and flicked it away. “They want me to steal information from this company.”
    “What kind of information do they want you to steal?”
    She shrugged. “They want everything I can find on something called the Dromin12 serum. And the worst part? They’re pitting me against one of the other guys at the boarding house.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “They’ve made it a race. Sent two of us in—but not together. The first one of us to get the information wins.”
    I’d never been a good liar, so I hoped I was doing a convincing job of acting like I had no idea what she was talking about. “Wins?”
    “If I find the information first, he says he has someone that can heal my father. I guess he made a deal with Cain, too. He’s the other one they sent in.”
    “So what, like a game?” I hoped the disgust in my voice masked the guilt. She needed to find the formula before me to save her father, and I needed to find it before her to save Dez and the others, as well as keep it from Denazen. As far as twisted, this pretty much took the cake.
    She reached out to grab a bright red leaf as it blew past. Picking it up, she twirled it between her fingers for a moment before the wind took it and shifted the edges of her gown. I could have imagined her in something more practical when I changed the scenery. Jeans or something functional, but the truth was, she looked amazing in that dress. I didn’t want to miss a minute.
    Frowning, she said, “Yeah. That about sums it up.”
    “So this Dromin12 thing he wants you to find—what is it?”
    “I don’t know, but this place they want to steal it from? It’s a genetic research facility. Anderson…I don’t trust him. I don’t know what they’ll do with this stuff if I get it for them.”
    “So you haven’t found it