False Hope

by Meli Raine

  Don’t know, I reply.

  What else could be so important that she’d hide it? Silas writes.

  I need time with her alone, I text back and then another text comes through.

  It’s from Lily.

  Quit talking about me when I’m sitting right here, she texts. An aggravated sigh ripples up from the back seat, crossing over the headrests, sinking into my ear.

  Silas and Jane start whispering furiously. Another text comes in from Lily: My mom and dad want to know when I’m going to get home.

  We’ll take care of that, I text her back. You okay? I add at the end, the question stupid and vapid. I know it’s an empty social nicety. Funny how those pop up whether you like it or not. Just when you think you’ve driven them out of yourself, it turns out social conditioning is a hell of a lot more ingrained than anyone ever imagines.

  F-I-N-E, she texts back, complete with a poop emoji.

  The car halts, tires screeching on painted concrete. I snap my door open. Gentian does the same behind me and we’re out.

  Walking down a hallway, long, bright fluorescent lights blinking like a cliché, we walk to double metal doors that open as if on command. Everything here is electronic, on lockdown, controlled by computer chips and humans watching security cameras, their eyes less reliable than the algorithms built into the systems.

  And yet, they are our last line of defense.

  The need for human beings is both greater and less in our line of work. As technology takes over more of the menial steps, the irony is that it’s in some of the most mundane work that we find deeper truths.

  Evidence is all about human error.

  Justice is as much about the smallest mistake as it is about the biggest reckonings.

  We walk quickly down yet another hallway, taking a sharp right, the doors blurring like road signs on a highway, flashing past until nothing can be read. I look down to see Lily’s calf, the fabric torn around the cut that goes down into the Achilles tendon.

  The blood is dry. The wound is superficial.

  But it’s a reminder of my failure, yet again.

  That scar on the back of her skull is an indictment.

  The fake gang shooting that just took place at the coffee shop is testimony that our systems are less foolproof than we thought.

  This isn’t a game.

  Not when lives are at stake. It is a strange sort of competition, though. The goal is to win. The goal is to stay alive. At least that’s how it works on our end. The other side has different goals. Goals that remain hidden.

  But the ends are oddly the same.

  We stop in front of a nondescript door. That’s also part of the point of all of this. Nothing stands out, especially us. The door opens and Gentian walks in, followed by Jane, with Lily right behind her. Reaching the doorway, I look in over her shoulder to see President Bosworth attempting to hug his daughter, who freezes in place, clearly awkward.

  And then it’s Lily’s turn to freeze in place as her eyes turn to the left and I spot the object of her gaze.

  It’s Romeo Czaky.

  Of course he's here.

  Lily squares her shoulders and takes a long time to inhale. The strands of her new hair brush against her shoulders. I ache to reach out and touch the long, curling ends, the locks carrying a meaning I don’t really understand right now.

  Her whole body tenses, moving with a jerky quality. It reminds me of the early days when she was learning to walk again. When she would have seizures that left a part of her body connected to the rest, but unable to do its job.

  I lean forward and whisper, “You okay?” into her ear.

  “Quit asking me that,” she mutters, her voice cold and dark.

  A chill starts at the base of my spine and works its way up and down at the same time, spreading like a fast-growing vine that seeks every spot of light it can suck up in order to build and spread and strengthen.

  Something about her words, combined with the way she’s pointedly not looking at Czaky, tells me before her mouth ever opens what she’s been hiding from me all along.

  I get it now.

  And it’s so much worse than I ever imagined.

  Chapter 4

  We move into the room and arrange ourselves around a small round table. Unlike every other meeting like this, I make sure to sit down next to Lily. I position us so that she’s not anywhere near Czaky. Jane, too, avoids him. I brace myself. I get it.

  I’ve missed what’s been in front of my face the whole time.

  Impossible.

  Impossible. There’s no fucking way that Czaky is involved in the shooting. How could my own partner have been the shooter?

  I’m jumping to conclusions that I have no evidence to support. It’s just gut instinct now.

  And that’s another hard part about this business.

  You go with your gut a hell of a lot more often than you go on hard evidence.

  The president has his own private security team, Secret Service on standby, two of them in the room watching everything.

  The chain of command is obvious. So is the pecking order in this room. I’m the lowest of the low. At least I’m right there with Czaky.

  “Gentian,” says the president. He looks at me. “McDuff.” Then he looks over at Romeo. “You both know Czaky. He’s working security with me now.”

  “You're Secret Service now?” Gentian asks Romeo.

  “No,” the president answers. “Romeo's leading it. Privately.”

  A ripple travels through the air in the room like a breath pushed out too fast, like water swallowed in a bolus that sticks in your throat, unable to move in either direction, causing pain and discomfort, an obstacle that you just have to ride out until you can figure out the way through.

  “Congratulations,” Gentian says in a calm, even voice that I know damn well I need to emulate within the next two to three seconds.

  I grunt in Romeo’s general direction, “Good job.”

  Lily looks down at her hands, splayed against the tabletop. Jane makes a strange, strangled sound that would have meant something else a few minutes ago.

  Now I understand exactly what it means.

  How could I have been so stupid?

  “I know all of you know each other,” President Bosworth says as he looks around the room. “And I know everyone here except for you,” he says, looking and speaking directly at Lily.

  “But of course I know who you are.” His smile almost reaches his eyes. If it went all the way, I’d be able to see his resemblance to Jane. Remaining cold, he looks nothing like her.

  Lily looks right back at him, swallowing hard but maintaining her composure. “And obviously I know who you are, sir,” she says, with a nod of her head, more wry than her usual demeanor.

  President Bosworth lets out a laugh. It’s a chuckle that recognizes the last two years. Two years since his life blew up. Two years since his own wife, Monica, tried to kill him. The event made international news, especially when it all shook out, the truth of Monica Bosworth’s deception and involvement in dirty political games that led to bloodshed and worse.

  Somehow though, Harwell Bosworth, the senior senator from California, made it all the way to the White House in a contentious election that no one really expected him to win.

  But he did.

  My grandmother used to say that in the end, after nuclear war and pestilence, after Revelation and the world coming to an end, the only thing left would be the cockroaches. As I look at Harry Bosworth from across the table, a man I can only refer to as Mr. President or sir, I see that cockroaches come in all shapes and sizes.

  “You’re obviously both fine,” Mr. President says, looking at Jane and Lily for confirmation.

  Jane gives him no quarter. Lily just nods.

  Fine, I think to myself. That’s right. They’re both just fine.

  The president turns to Gentian and asks, “Any idea who did this?”

  A curt nod followed by a head shake from Gentia
n. “No, sir. We have our suspicions.”

  It takes everything in me not to look up at Czaky.

  Lily tenses as Jane turns to her father and says, “Do you know who did it?”

  The president seems to expect the question. He gives a nonchalant shrug, one almost designed to piss her off. I know immediately that there’s a good chance that the guy does know.

  “No idea,” he says.

  That’s the right answer, of course. We don’t give information in this job. Not even to our daughters.

  “Even if you knew, you wouldn’t tell me,” she says, her bluntness appealing.

  Like Lily, she’s been through hell and back.

  That prickly feeling takes over along the edges of my spine. There’s something else Jane and Lily share. Czaky was with Jane the night she was assaulted by Nolan Corning, President Bosworth’s biggest enemy.

  The day that Lily was shot at the florist shop, Czaky was there, too.

  How the hell did Czaky work his way up to the president’s personal security team? He’s not Secret Service, so this is deep-state shit. There’s no way Drew Foster is providing Czaky’s services to the president directly. A million questions race through my mind.

  I can’t ask these questions, though. Can’t probe. Can’t dig.

  I’m just a grunt.

  At least, it’s my job to make them all think that.

  So far, so good.

  “Excuse me, but why are we here?” Lily asks the president, her head tilted in a way that is so innocent. She expects a direct answer. That’s the part that’s so naïve.

  “You’re here to be debriefed,” he says, looking at her head on, reading her. He looks away quickly, dismissing her. To him, she’s just a distraction.

  I wonder, too, why we’re here. If he wanted a meeting with Jane, wouldn’t he just ask for that?

  “Lily,” the president says, leaning forward, “do you remember anything new?”

  Czaky’s face is blank. Too blank.

  That tingling sensation takes over my body, but I don’t show even one neuron’s worth of activity on the surface. My body must be self-contained and under complete control at all times. Any hint that I see that Czaky has moved up into echelons of power that give him leverage against Lily is a death sentence for her.

  The complexity of her ongoing silence unfolds, layer by layer, inside me. I want to reach out and put my hand on hers. I want to wrap my arms around her. I want to be a shield. The enormity of what she’s holding inside her rolls out like an algae bloom taking over.

  She’s right.

  She’s been right all along not to trust anyone.

  Including me. Czaky’s partner.

  The room is pregnant with expectation as the president stares at Lily, clearly expecting a response. You don’t get to that level of power and ask a question and not get an answer.

  “No, sir. I don’t remember anything about what happened the day I was shot. At least, not the part where I was shot.” Her voice warbles a little, filled with the kind of nervousness that you expect in someone who is normal.

  And by normal, I mean part of the masses. Someone who isn’t in the security field like me, like Czaky, like Gentian. Someone who actually cares what other people think.

  Her performance is masterful. It’s a performance, though. Make no mistake about that. So far, the president seems to be completely snowed by it. An imperceptible tilt of the head, the president turning towards Czaky, makes me realize that they’re closer than I ever imagined.

  I look at Lily with even more admiration.

  Because her instincts are dead on.

  Whatever she knows will get her killed.

  How deep does Czaky go? How involved is President Bosworth? Did he order the hit on Jane? Would a man hire a hitman to kill his own daughter?

  Maybe.

  Maybe if she’s illegitimate and her very existence threatens his ability to become president of the United States.

  That would be a great theory if it weren’t for one pesky little detail: Jane is still alive.

  A determined, cold-blooded man on the rise to the White House would have had his hired help finish the job. Jane was a target for reasons that aren’t important to Bosworth. Might never have even been on his radar in the first place.

  Which means Monica Bosworth is the one who hired the hit on Jane.

  Romeo came to The Thorn Poke nearly two years ago to kill Jane, on Monica’s orders. Then Monica died, shot to death to defend then-senator Bosworth. Their daughter, Lindsay, threw herself in front of Harry to save his life, even after she learned he wasn’t her biological father.

  Even with her own mother’s gun pointed at her.

  My mind is nothing but threads, all weaving together, the pattern ugly but starting to emerge as a whole, a picture, a snapshot.

  One I don’t like.

  Czaky was there in the sex club the night Silas and Jane were attacked.

  Czaky calls Bee and Tom regularly to pump them for information under the guise of caring.

  Czaky was there the day I found the poisonous spider on Lily’s arm.

  Czaky was there the day Lily was shot.

  Czaky was there at The Thorn Poke and rushed into the store... with a red rose petal stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

  Why does that matter? Because there were no red roses in the front of the store that day. The shipment had come into the back. Which means he tracked that petal in from the back of the store by... racing around to rescue Lily from the front.

  That detail has stuck with me these two years, unanchored to anything else.

  And there’s one more detail I don’t like:

  Czaky is now on the president’s personal, off-the-record security detail. Who is pulling this guy’s strings now that Monica is gone?

  “Isn’t anyone going to say something?” President Bosworth demands, the silence after Lily’s words eating away at the thin veneer of civility.

  “What do you want to hear?” Romeo asks. “Lily answered you. Do you believe her?”

  Silas gives me a sharp look, eyes moving, face staying still. Don’t argue, those eyes say. Meanwhile, my legs tense, quads and hamstrings ready to leap. To lunge.

  To take down.

  “Why wouldn’t I believe her?” Bosworth asks, turning to Romeo with a puzzled look.

  Because she’s lying, I think but cannot say.

  Will not say.

  Ever.

  Chapter 5

  “I asked Romeo to be here,” President Bosworth says, leaning forward and spreading his arms out on the conference table. It’s a power play, one that’s beneath him.

  You don’t need to position your body like a silverback gorilla when you’re already head of the band. It makes him look weak. He doesn’t seem to realize it, but Gentian gives me a look that says he caught it, too.

  “I assumed that having him here would help all of you,” the president continues, as if we’re all supposed to be grateful.

  It’s Jane who allows her face to move, eyebrows shooting up. “You thought having Romeo here would help us in a way that having Silas or Duff here doesn’t?” she asks, her voice halting and curious.

  “Romeo and Duff were the only ones present at the shooting,” Bosworth says to her, his eyes narrowing, features going soft, as if remembering the horror that didn’t materialize. “They’re the closest thing we have to eyewitnesses.”

  Lily blinks exactly once.

  “That’s right,” Romeo says, standing. He sticks his left hand in his pants pocket, turns, and walks two or three steps before pivoting and giving me a standard bureaucrat’s granite face. “It was you and me, Duff.” He frowns, his mouth pursing slightly. “Actually, you were the first one on the scene.”

  “We’ve been through countless meetings about this,” I say slowly. “What’s new here today?”

  If you watch Lily at the level of detail that I’m trained for, you can see she's struggling. If you pay attention to every single
breath she takes, you see how much internal glue she's using to keep herself from falling apart.

  I’m pretty sure Romeo sees it, too.

  But here’s the part he doesn’t know–all that effort she’s putting forth has to do with him. With protecting herself and her family from him. And that glue? That glue is part of a completely different system inside her.

  One that he can’t possibly understand.

  Guys like him never have someone worth protecting. It’s a force they simply don’t understand.

  It’s a lack of understanding that comes from living a life without an anchor.

  It is their weakness.

  “Sir,” I say to President Bosworth, standing and giving him a soldier’s posture as well as a grunt's level of respectful attention. “If you’d like me removed from Lily’s detail, I absolutely will recuse myself.” I look at Czaky. “I’m done with this bullshit.”

  The use of profanity makes Silas clench his hands. In an informal setting, he wouldn’t care.

  But this is the president of the United States, after all.

  Jane laughs. Lily blushes. Bosworth just stares at me. “Why would an innocent man recuse himself from her detail?” he asks, eyebrows going up, the question pointed.

  I just stare back.

  And wait.

  “This is all a distraction,” Romeo breaks in. “A convenient one.” His eyes go to Lily. “I understand you are remembering more and more.”

  “Says who?” she challenges him. “Who told you that? You’ve become a creepy stalker who keeps following me, bothering my family, calling my mom and dad.” She starts to rant. “It’s like you’re making things up just to have some reason to slither your way into my life.”

  If I thought the president’s eyebrows were raised with my use of the word bullshit, I had no idea how high they could really go.

  Until now.

  Lily’s words clearly catch him off guard. She’s on the attack, standing and walking behind Jane’s chair, moving close to Romeo to get a good eyeful. Her posture is aggressive. Challenging.

  In charge.

  “My mom keeps telling me I’m supposed to remember more because you keep calling her and telling her that I should be remembering more. My dad had a heart attack while you were there, pushing to interrogate me when I had barely come out of my coma. My little sister tells me that you go to her high school and offer her and her friends rides home, and that most of them don’t accept. But Gwennie does sometimes. And when Gwennie does accept your creepy ride home, all you do is pump her for information about me.”