Half-Truths: New York Times Bestselling Author

by Contreras, Claire

  “No.” I bit down on my lip.

  “Pick up your foot,” he instructed. I did. “One count left. Good. One more. Good. Now drop it.”

  I bit down harder on my lip. He could’ve very well been telling me to drop my foot right on a blade. Maybe that had been the challenge all along—get Amelia to slice a blade through her foot.

  “Drop it,” he said again. “If you move in any other direction, you’re fucked.”

  “What if you’re lying?” I screamed, tears wetting my cheeks. I hadn’t even realized I was crying until I tasted the salt on my lips. “What if this whole thing is designed for me to end up with no foot?”

  “I’m impressed you’re able to hold that position for so long,” he said. “Yoga much?”

  My chest shuttered with a sob. My left leg wasn’t tired yet, but it would be. I could hold this position well enough on a yoga mat or a dance floor, but out here in the slick grass, it was completely different. Thunder sounded above us. It had been forecast to rain tonight. Was that why they were making this my challenge? Because they wanted me to be a sopping, crying mess? Instead of dropping my foot, I brought it up against my left leg in a tree pose.

  “This is about trust, Amelia.” Logan’s voice rang out in the darkness. I focused on him again. “This is about trust.”

  “How am I supposed to trust you? You told me to stay away from the cloaks, yet you are a cloak!”

  “I meant the red cloaks,” he explained, as if I was being petulant.

  “You drugged me the other night!”

  “I did not drug you. I was against that.”

  “Yet you let it happen.”

  “I was late. I wasn’t there when it happened.” He paused, I thought I heard him exhale. “All that is in the past now. You have to trust that I have your back, forever, through everything.”

  “I can’t.” I was screaming and shaking and my foot was going to freaking slide off of my inner thigh any moment. “I’m scared.”

  The others laughed loudly. They were enjoying this display. I could hear them saying things about my brother and how he’d broken, and it took everything in me not to yank the stupid thing off, grab a blade, and throw it their way. Logan told them to shut the fuck up. They did, but snickered.

  “Listen to me. I know you’re scared but I’m going to get you through this.” His tone was softer now. “Set your foot down. Slowly. Slide it down your leg. That’s it. Like that . . . slowly . . . and set it down right beside your other foot. Wait! Stop! You weren’t supposed to bring it forward. I didn’t tell you to bring it forward, dammit.”

  I didn’t know why he was yelling at me until I felt a pinch over my right ankle. I yelped.

  “I got cut,” I yelled.

  “Because you didn’t follow fucking directions,” he yelled back. “I told you to trust me.”

  “Trust isn’t something you give people when they ask for it. It’s something that’s earned.”

  “I’m trying to earn it, but you’re being impossible.”

  “Impossible? It’s about to start raining and you have me out here playing with knives!”

  “Okay,” he said, and I could tell his patience was wearing thin. “Let’s finish this. You have a few steps to go. Pick up your right foot and move it two counts. Ready? One. Good. Two. Good. Drop it.”

  I did with a flinch. Then, he instructed what I should do with the left, and the right again, and left, and then, nothing. I was standing there, shaking, with my arms wrapped around myself, when I felt him walk up to me. He lifted the blindfold slowly. I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes.

  “I’m done?”

  “You’re done.”

  “I . . . I . . . ” I blinked faster, shook harder, held myself tighter.

  “Hey, Mae,” he said, his voice barely a rasp over the thunder that roared from above. My heart pounded as I craned my neck to meet his gaze. He grinned then. A slow, huge grin that I’d never seen on his face before. It felt like sunshine amidst the darkness. “You fucking did it.”

  I felt myself smile for half a second before I started laughing. He was watching me closely, an amused look in his eyes, despite his set jaw.

  “We have more to do,” he said after a beat.

  I stopped laughing. “What? Right now?”

  “The night isn’t over,” Nolan called out. “Don’t get excited.”

  “I seriously need to do something else?” I crossed my arms. “This wasn’t enough?” I lifted my leg to where I’d been feeling liquid crawl into my socks. “I’m bleeding.”

  “You’ll live.”

  “Says the guy who didn’t get cut.”

  Logan’s eyebrows rose. “You wouldn’t have gotten cut if you’d followed my exact directions.”

  “I would have followed directions if you’d . . . ” I struggled to find blame to pin on him.

  He cocked his head, waiting, amusement touching his lips. I turned around and walked toward the others, arms still crossed. I’d do another weird mission impossible thing, but I wasn’t going to do it with him as my partner. Just as those thoughts entered my mind, the skies opened up and it started pouring down on us.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Now what?” I yelled over the rain.

  “Now, we scale the falls.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “There’s an old research lab behind the falls. The only way to get there these days is by scaling it.”

  “I . . . I’m not even wearing shoes with grip.”

  One of the guys walked up, waving a pair of shoes.

  “I’ve never climbed before. How high is it?”

  “Look for yourself.” Nolan walked in the direction where there was a trail, we all followed. I lifted a hand to shield my eyes from the rain, and squinted. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the view in front of me. There were lights coming from below, illuminating the falls, and beside it, I could see holes on the rock wall.

  “I can barely make anything out. How do you expect me to climb that?”

  “We’ll provide all the equipment.”

  “And the weather? It’ll be too slippery.”

  “I’ve done it.” Nolan shrugged a shoulder, his chin jutted toward Logan, beside him. “He’s done it.”

  “Congrats, but I’m not willing to die for this.” My eyes went back to the falls. There was no way in hell. “What is the alternative to this?”

  “You sure you wanna know?” Nolan grinned. I wanted to punch him.

  “Obviously.”

  “It involves stealing.”

  “Does it involve jail time if I get caught?”

  “No.”

  “So, I’ll do it.”

  “Just like that?” Nolan chuckled and looked at Logan, who looked completely unamused by this entire exchange.

  “You don’t want to know what you’re stealing?” Logan asked, frowning. “Or from who?”

  “I definitely don’t want to scale that.” I pointed toward the fall. “So I don’t really care.”

  As I followed behind them to the closest building, I realized I did care. I wanted to know at least who I was going to steal from. Maybe I could conjure something bad about them in order to avoid feeling guilty about taking whatever it was I was taking. I wrapped my arms around myself, teeth clattering as we walked through the building, in the back and out the front. It had stopped raining, but we were still soaked.

  “Where are we going?” I managed to ask.

  “You’re going to The Tower,” Nolan said.

  “What tower?”

  “The only tower you’ve heard of. I can tell by the expression on your face.” That was Nolan.

  “The one you guys have not-so-secret meetings in?” I looked at the lot of them. None of them seemed to be cold and if they were, they weren’t showing it.

  “We don’t have meetings in there.” Nolan chuckled.

  “Wrong cloaks,” Logan added.

  “The red ones meet there?” I picked up the pa
ce until I caught up to them.

  “Yes.” That was the third guy who was there, who I hadn’t been introduced to.

  “If you can get in and get through without someone spotting you, there’s a painting up there,” Nolan explained.

  “A famous painting,” Logan added.

  “Are you familiar with Caravaggio?” the third guy asked.

  “No.”

  “He’s from the Baroque era,” the guy added.

  “Okay, I’m not an art major, I’m freezing my ass off, and you’re speaking a foreign language,” I said. “Please get on with it and tell me what painting to look for.”

  The guy searched for something on his phone and showed it to me. It was a painting of people around a baby who lay on the ground. It was titled Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence.

  “What do I do once I have it?”

  “Pray you survive long enough to get it to us,” Logan said.

  My eyes widened on his, his tone dead serious. I wiped my forehead, unsure if it was the water dripping from my hair or sweat forming.

  “Just so I know what the stakes are here—who am I stealing this from and why is this painting so important?”

  “The red cloaks,” Nolan said. “Don’t worry, they’ve stolen shit from us in the past. At this point, it’s a game we play. Think of them as the stepchild we don’t want but have to keep around.”

  “It’s important because it was painted in sixteen hundred and after being in Sicily for that long, it suddenly vanished. Poof. They say the Sicilian Mob carried out the theft. We know for a fact it’s hidden in the tower,” the third guy said.

  “If it’s there, how has nobody noticed? They do tours in there all the time.”

  “How do you think we know about it?” The guy said, raising an eyebrow. “The tour guide happens to be my girlfriend. I saw it when I was helping her clean the chimes before the tour one day.”

  “So she knows it’s there?”

  “I didn’t call attention to it when I was in there. That thing has to be worth at least fifty million.”

  “Do I get a cut if I steal it?”

  “We’d have to split it between all of us,” Nolan said. “But yeah, you’ll get a cut at the end of the year.”

  “Meaning, us right here or the entire society?” I asked. “I’m assuming there’s some kind of alumni association that delegates where the money goes.”

  “Good question.” Nolan raised an eyebrow. “And smart fucking girl.”

  “Obviously.” My teeth were chattering. “Can we just go and get this over with? I’m going to catch a cold or worse.”

  We walked out the front door. They went ahead, Logan idled behind them with me.

  “I can’t believe walking around knives wasn’t enough for you idiots.”

  “Believe it.”

  I lifted my leg up and pointed to the cut I had over my ankle. The blood had already dried, but it still hurt.

  “What’s left after this?”

  Nolan piped up again. “After what you just did, and what you’ll do next, it’ll be easy. You fall back and let Fitz catch you.”

  I blinked. “What are we, in church?”

  “Basically.”

  “God, this is so stupid.” I brought my hands to cover my face and dragged them down.

  I probably looked like utter shit right now, wet hair and wet face. I’d just survived walking around sharp knives and the only thought running through my mind was thank God I’m not wearing mascara.

  “Do we take turns? I catch him and he catches me and then we sing kumbaya?”

  “You think you can catch me?” Logan’s lips twitched. Not a smile but close to it.

  “Are you willing to fall back and let me try?”

  “Sure, why not?” He eyed me up and down.

  “You’re insane.”

  “So I’ve heard.” His lips spread into a wolfish grin that set my insides ablaze. He turned his attention to the rest of the guys. “Amelia has a point. She gave us enough of her trust out there and if she’s willing to risk her life stealing that painting, I don’t think a fall backward is going to change that.”

  “So, we skip it.” They all exchanged looks and shrugged. “Let’s go to the tower and call it a night. We’ll link up at The Lab tomorrow for the initiation.”

  I froze at his words. The Lab. That was what my brother told me with his Morse code. He wanted me to find these people. For what though? I looked at the three of them. They were my brother’s friends, his brothers at one point, before whatever happened had ruined it, yet they all went to his mass. They all went to show respect. I pushed the thought aside for now. I had another mission to get through today, and that was exactly how I was thinking about them—as missions, like in a Mission Impossible movie or 007. The tower was right by us. Thankfully, the rain stopped completely. Not that it did anything to help with the cold. If I didn’t die trying to steal this thing, I would die from hypothermia. All for $50,000 and loyalty I wasn’t even sure I wanted. I did want to find out the truth about what happened to my brother though, and Lana, if they even knew that much. What if they didn’t know anything at all and this was all a ploy? I closed my eyes briefly, please don’t let this be a ploy.

  “The lights are off, that means they’re not there,” Nolan said.

  “Good,” the other guy said.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Marcus.”

  “Marcus.” I nodded. “I like to know who’s fault it’s going to be when I die.”

  They laughed. I didn’t.

  “You’ll go up the winding stairs where the organ is. You’ll see a small door in front of it, it’s so small, you can miss it, so pay attention and use your flashlight. In there, you’ll see the painting. Roll it up and bring it out.”

  The adrenaline must have still been coursing through me because none of this seemed difficult and I was still one-hundred-percent game for it. I’d go in there, go up the stairs, steal the painting, and get out. I could do this. Totally.

  “How will I get in? Do you have a key?”

  “Let me worry about that,” Logan said.

  “You’re coming with me?”

  “Everywhere you go, I go.”

  I would’ve found it sexy, if he didn’t look like he wanted to rip my head off. I ignored it because I didn’t want to go in there by myself. Nolan held his finger up for us to wait and ran somewhere. When he came back, two seconds later, he threw each of us a big black T-shirt. I thanked him, put mine over my head, and slipped the wet one through one of the sleeves. Logan peeled his wet T-shirt off, tossed it at Marcus, and put the dry one over himself. The luxury of being a boy.

  We made our way over to the tower, walking nonchalantly, as if we were just walking through campus.

  “I can’t believe you lied to me about the secret society,” I said as we walked.

  “I didn’t lie.”

  “You didn’t say anything when you clearly knew that the flower and card I’d received was about this.”

  “That doesn’t mean I lied.”

  “Whatever. For the record, I think all of this is dumb. I’m only doing it because . . . ” I hesitated, peering up at him. He was busy looking around and didn’t seem like he was paying much attention to me at all.

  “Because?” he asked, or rather said, in a stern tone.

  “I want answers.” I shrugged.

  “About Lincoln.”

  “And Lana.”

  “What makes you think we have anything to do with Lana?”

  “The other day, when you drugged me, you showed me pictures of them together.” I raised an eyebrow.

  “I didn’t drug you.” He scowled, then pointed at the side of the tower.

  I headed there, but Logan reached for my hand and held it in his, steering me in the direction he wanted. My heart skipped.

  “What are you—”

  “Just play along.”

  “Oh. Okay,” I whispered as he pulled
me onto the side of the building, beside the door.

  My back was against the wall as he caged me in with both arms on either side of my head. A few people walked by, talking and laughing. My eyes widened on Logan’s. He was looking at me but didn’t say anything. More people walked by. He rolled his eyes, exhaling.

  “You’re going to have to move and press yourself against the door,” he said.

  I was only two steps away from it, so I moved in that direction. One, two. Logan moved with me as if we were in the middle of a dance. I felt the cold surface of the metal door behind me as I looked up at him.

  “Wrap your arms around my neck.” He leaned forward, making it easier for me to reach. I did as I was told, ignoring the way my heart galloped as I wrapped my arms around him and he hoisted me up slightly with his knee between my legs.

  His eyes were on the door as he pulled something out of his pocket. I couldn’t make out what. I looked beyond him, watching the people as they walked back and forth, keeping a lookout in case anyone walked too close to us. It was too dark beneath the tower for them to see what we were doing. We probably looked like two horny college kids, not two thieves who were about to steal a painting allegedly worth millions of dollars.

  “Keep your eyes on me, sweetheart. Don’t worry about everyone else.” His voice was gruff as he concentrated on the lock behind me.

  “If I don’t worry about everyone else, I’ll focus on the fact that your leg is between mine and I look like I’m about to kiss you.”

  “Is this turning you on?” His lip turned up, his gaze flicking to mine.

  “No.”

  “Liar.” He chuckled darkly, going back to the task at hand.

  “Aren’t you getting tired of having my weight on you?”

  “Nah. I can carry you all night long.” His gaze was on mine again.

  The way he said that, with that undeniably sexy undertone, made my stomach flip. I licked my lips. He kept staring, his hands working on the lock. It made me wonder what else those hands could do if given the task. I needed to stop. My overactive imagination and libido needed to simmer down. Yet, I couldn’t stop looking at his lips and wondering just how soft they’d be against mine. It was the situation we were in. It was. He was mean and rude, and he didn’t like me.