False Hope

by Meli Raine

  I’m close. I’m so close.

  “What could someone say to this woman to convince her of all that?”

  She gives a sad smile. The edges of her lower lip start to tremble. The skin underneath her eyes goes tight. Her gaze catches mine. We’re inches apart and I could kiss her again, but I know that would be a mistake.

  “You really think there’s a way out for her?” she asks.

  “I do.”

  “How?”

  “How can I help you to be safe and protect your family from the guy who tried to kill you?”

  “No,” she says, hand up in a gesture that says I need to stop talking. “That's not the question. How can you stand there in front of me after kissing me like that and tell me everything will be okay when you know there’s no way out?”

  “If I thought there was no way out, Lily, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “And if I thought there was a way out, Duff, I wouldn’t be here, either.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, hypothetically,” she says slowly, “that you’re asking me to give you information I don’t have.”

  The tipping point happened.

  I lost.

  She’s gone over the edge. Or maybe I’m the one who’s gone over the edge. There’s no backtracking here. But I’m planting seeds, and seeds, when exposed to sunlight, eventually have to grow.

  “Lily, you don’t have to tell me anything.”

  “I know.”

  “But if you did, if you were going to give me one shred of information, I would ask this: Is the person who tried to kill you standing in this stairwell with you?”

  I just handed her my heart. Pulled it straight out of my chest and held it up, waiting for her to take it.

  She kisses me instead, a quick press of the lips, like signing a contract.

  Lips still on mine, she murmurs, “No.”

  Chapter 11

  “These muscles aren’t gonna fix themselves,” Lily says to me, pushing past me on the stairs, the change jarring. “Let’s go to physical therapy. Rhonda’s waiting, and besides, they have crap coffee there.”

  I play her game. I groan and hold the door open for her.

  Early morning sunshine, not quite blinding, greets us as we head out into the short corridor before turning into the parking garage.

  “Why would you drink that crap at PT?”

  She shrugs. “It’s a caffeine delivery system.” We’re both trying to find our way out of what just happened. I get that. It’s fine. What’s more important than the actual result of our conversation is that she starts to trust me even more.

  The kiss was a fringe benefit.

  It’s a short drive to the physical therapy unit where Lily gets her treatment. I pull into the parking lot. The same space I always take is available.

  “Why do you park here?” she asks.

  “Because in the beginning you were in a wheelchair, and then the walker. It was easier to get you into the building through the handicapped section.”

  “But you had a handicapped sticker back then.”

  “I did, and then when we didn’t, I just parked in the same spot.”

  She twists in her seat and faces me as if she’s going to reach to touch me, but she doesn’t.

  “Don’t do that anymore,” she says, her voice dismissive, as if I’ve offended her. “Don’t park here. Park as far away as possible in the lot, and make me work for it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  We get out and walk into the building. She peels off to go to the women’s locker room. I stand around and try to pretend I’m useful. You don’t work out after a three-mile run, so I get to be decoration.

  As expected, old Clem is there. He waves to me. I nod back.

  Lily comes out and asks, “Do you remember the name of that sports cream we learned about, the one that’s so good for dealing with sore muscles?” She bends down, massaging her right calf, looking up at me in a way that is achingly vulnerable.

  “No.” It takes everything in me not to kiss her.

  “It’s on the tip of my tongue,” she says as she straightens.

  “I got something that would love the tip of your tongue, sweets!” Clem shouts.

  “That’s enough,” I growl.

  “Hey, man, at my age, all I got is words.”

  “You’re gonna lose teeth if you keep that shit up, Clem,” I add.

  Lily gives me a wry grin. My tone is light but I can tell it bothers her to have Clem making jokes like that. Just because he isn’t directly threatening doesn’t mean he isn’t gross.

  And way out of line.

  “Hey, you,” says Rhonda, coming from around a rack of weights. “What are you doing here?” she says to me. “I thought you were being reassigned.”

  I halt. “Reassigned?”

  “Yeah. That’s what Romeo said.”

  “Romeo was here?” Lily’s question echoes mine.

  “Yeah. He came in a couple of days ago. Said Duff would be reassigned. Checked out the security, and said something about a shooting. You okay?” she asks Lily.

  “I’m fine. Long story. It turns out there’s a reason I’ve got a security detail,” she says looking at me with a sheepish grin.

  “Wait. You mean someone tried to kill you again?” Rhonda clarifies.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re this calm?”

  “I’m either calm or shell shocked, I’m not sure which one.”

  “She’s calm,” I tell them both. “A little too calm.”

  “What does that mean?” Lily protests.

  “It means for someone who isn’t in the field, you’ve got a really good hold on your emotions.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “It’s just–”

  “Weird,” Rhonda interrupts. “Emotions get stored in the body, Lily,” she elaborates. “You need to get this stuff out.”

  “I need to get what out?”

  “You need to get your shock, horror, gratitude, your...” Rhonda thinks for a minute. “All of it. I can sit here with you and give you rotational movements and specific exercises that can help you to take care of the body’s trauma from the shooting two years ago, but none of that will make much difference if you don’t process the emotions.”

  “I am processing the emotions. I work with psychiatrists and psychologists. You guys know that.”

  “You worked with a psychiatrist,” Rhonda says pointedly, “but you rejected that doctor on the grounds that you don’t need psychotropic drugs anymore.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But you need a therapist.”

  “I don’t,” Lily digs in. “Anymore.”

  Rhonda’s palms go up in a gesture of placating. “Look, Lily, I’m not here to argue with you. I’m sorry. I’m just here to work with you. But if people are still shooting at you, I think that alone is enough to qualify as trauma, whether you’re hit or not.”

  Lily’s face hardens. “Just tell me how you’re going to torture me today.”

  Rhonda grins. “There’s always the really bad coffee.”

  That gets a smile out of Lily. “I started my day with really good coffee, actually. Duff gave me some of his.”

  Rhonda gives me some attention. “You know a good place?”

  “I know a good machine.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Lily chuckles. “You don’t want to know.”

  “What? Do you use old underwear as a filter for making your coffee, Duff?”

  Lily grabs a kettle bell, smirking, as my phone buzzes. Rhonda laughs and joins her, starting warmup exercises.

  It’s a text from Romeo. What the hell was yesterday about? he texts.

  Only getting back to me now? I reply.

  The president has questions about you, he texts back.

  Oh, I’m sure he does, I reply quickly. Does he want a meeting with me? I hear he's hiring.

  You wish, Romeo sends back. You need to keep
that girl on a leash.

  What girl? I text back.

  You know exactly who I’m talking about is his reply.

  “Duff?”

  I look up from the text stream to see Jane Borokov standing there. “Jane. What are you doing here?”

  “I came to talk to you.”

  I shove the phone in my pocket. Suddenly Romeo isn’t a priority. Having Jane appear at the physical therapy center for Lily is odd, to say the least.

  “Come over here,” I tell her, pulling her into a little alcove off the main exercise-equipment area. “What’s going on?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about what happened in that meeting.”

  “Fertile ground, huh?”

  “No kidding,” she says with a long sigh. “But what I really want to talk about is Romeo.”

  “What about him?” The guy is everywhere.

  “Keep him away from Lily.”

  That's blunt. And revealing.

  “Why?”

  “Can’t you tell?”

  “You mean, the way she went off on him yesterday? Talked about how he was treating her family?”

  “That. And more.”

  She’s nervous, and that’s not Jane’s normal demeanor. Ever since she inherited an enormous amount of money from her art professor, Alice Mogrett, and since she fell out of the media spotlight after Monica Bosworth tried to kill Harry and took the focus off Jane, she’s been more confident, more herself. The person in front of me is jumpy and timid.

  And she’s talking about Romeo.

  I don’t think the two are unrelated.

  “Something happened with Romeo that I think you should know about,” she says softly. “I was telling Lily this story when the gunman opened fire in the coffee shop.”

  “Really?”

  “I know. The timing’s bizarre. That’s why Lily thinks someone’s bugging her. She can’t believe that it’s unconnected.”

  “What were you talking about?”

  “I was telling her about the night in the sex club.”

  I bristle. I can’t help it. “Are you sure we should be having this conversation?”

  “It’s not that kind of story, Duff. I’m talking about when I was kidnapped and almost assaulted by Nolan Corning.”

  “What about it?”

  “Romeo was there.”

  “Yeah, I know. He helped.”

  She blinks over and over, as if in a trance, and then looks at me.

  “He helped? That’s a funny way of saying it, Duff. Who do you think he helped?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who do you think he was helping? Was he helping me, or was he helping Corning?”

  “You’re alive. You’re standing here in front of me asking me questions two years later. I have to assume that he was helping you. If he wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”

  “When you say 'he,' who do you mean?” she asks softly. “Nolan Corning or Romeo?”

  “Who do you mean, Jane?”

  “You’re evading my questions, Duff.”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not evading them. I’m simply making sure I understand where this conversation is going.”

  “This conversation is about making sure you know about him.”

  “Him?”

  “Romeo. I was hiding in the room that night. Silas had left me in there and locked me in. Someone turned the key and on instinct I tried to hide. There was a curtain with an opening behind it. Kind of a secret passageway, only I didn’t know it at the time. I hid behind the curtain and waited. And in came Nolan Corning. He had a key. I didn’t know where he got the key. Corning walked into the room and just before he reached me, Romeo appeared right behind me.”

  I interrupt her. “I’ve read the reports.”

  “What I’m about to tell you isn’t in any reports, Duff.”

  I roll my shoulders and lean in. “Go ahead.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lily racking weights, Rhonda talking to her, pointing. The two are engaged in the standard back and forth of physical therapy. I’ve seen it a hundred times in recent months.

  But in these moments, as they unfold with Jane’s story coming out, it seems so domestic, so normal in its simplicity.

  Whatever Jane’s about to say isn’t normal.

  “It was the way he grabbed me, Duff. He grabbed me from behind and covered my mouth. His other hand–well, it’s just… Look,” she says staring up at the ceiling, avoiding eye contact, “I know the difference between a security grab for the sake of keeping me safe and hands like that. And it was his words. He said things that you could take in multiple ways.”

  She sighs.

  “Like what? This is the first I've heard about what he said to you.”

  “I know. I didn't even say anything to Silas for a long time, because it's–what he said, his words were innocuous. It's how he said it that was so horrible.”

  “Go ahead. I won't judge.”

  “I can't remember it word for word, but it went something like this: I don't want what happened to Lily to happen to you.”

  My eyebrows shoot to the moon.

  “He said that? What else?”

  “And then he said: I’m here, sweetheart. I’m here to do my job. Don’t move. It will all be over soon.”

  “Holy shit. No one told me this.”

  She gives me the same look I've given people a thousand times.

  “I’ve been driving myself nuts thinking about those words, because I still have no idea which side he was on.” Scared eyes meet mine. “Was he protecting me?”

  After a short pause, she asks:

  “Or something else?”

  Chapter 12

  “What are you implying, Jane?”

  “I’m the one Lily’s shooter was trying to kill. I’m still alive two years later, and it’s not just because of Silas. Something is going on beneath the surface here that no one understands.”

  “Right.”

  “Let me be clear,” she says, leaning forward, putting her hand on my elbow. “I don’t think you did it. I know that there are people who think you did it, but I’m not one of them. I also think, after that meeting with the president–”

  She cuts her words off.

  I notice she doesn’t call him her father.

  Continuing, she adds, “I think there’s something really suspicious going on with Romeo.” Concern floods her features. “And I think we need to talk about getting Lily out of here.”

  “Out of here? The gym?”

  “No. Out of town. I’ve already talked to Silas and Drew about this. I want Lily to come to my place.”

  “The ranch? In Texas?”

  “Yes.” Her brow furrows as she looks around, furtive and worried. “I’m still in the process of going through Alice’s old papers.”

  As she speaks, I have to keep myself completely self-contained. Can’t show any emotion.

  “There’s a lot of work to do on the ranch, and it’s quiet. A haven. Lily needs a haven right now. She needs a place where she can just rest.”

  “If anyone knows about that, it’s you.”

  “No kidding.” She relaxes a little. That helps.

  “Why should Lily come to the ranch with you?” I ask her. “She has a place to live. She has parents, a sister, a brother, and a whole host of medical professionals here who are helping her to recover.”

  Jane gives me a twisted smile. “You know exactly why.”

  “I do?”

  “Lily may need to recover, but what she needs more is a break. Right now, her entire identity is wrapped up in being Trauma Girl. She’s got paparazzi following her for a photo of the miracle woman who recovered from a shooting to the back of the head. There are tabloids talking about her alongside me, and conflating the two of us for click bait. She’s got an actual killer on her trail, trying to cover up his tracks and still threatening her. I think a ranch in Texas that’s used to high levels of security and that is about as locked down as you ca
n get is the safest place on Earth for her. Plus, Duff,” she says with a long sigh, “I feel awful.”

  I stare at her. Guilt unites Jane and me.

  “If she and I didn’t look alike, if there hadn’t been this mistaken identity, or if I’d been the one at that counter when the guy came in to kill me, n-none of this would’ve happened to Lily.” She stammers. The sudden shift to an emotional plea throws me off guard.

  “Got it,” I say, buttoning up my emotions. “You’re making good points.”

  “Whether I’m making good points or not doesn’t matter,” she says quickly. “Because it’s a done deal.”

  “What do you mean it’s a done deal?”

  “We’re going. Lily is coming with me right after this.”

  “Wait. Have you cleared this with her?”

  “No.”

  “Have you cleared this with her mother and father?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you saying it’s definitely happening?”

  “Because I’m about to go over to her and convince her to come.”

  “You think you’re going to change Lily’s mind?”

  “I don’t think I have to change Lily’s mind. I think I just have to lay it out in a way that makes her see reason.”

  I make a dismissive noise before I can stop myself. “She’s not seeing a lot of reason these days.”

  “Maybe not, but she’s seeing an awful lot of clarity.”

  I have to agree with that.

  “Fine,” I tell her, “I’ll get ready. We have to do a background check on some of the security.” I stop myself. “Wait, no, we won’t. It’s already been done by Gentian and Foster.”

  “Right. It’s perfect,” she says. “Lily gets a break, I get to spend some time with her, and we’re both sequestered in a place that someone would have to be insane to try to breach.”

  This time, my laughter is bitter. “Remember the shootings at The Grove? Do you remember the shooting in your father’s townhouse in DC? If you think there’s any place, anywhere, that’s unbreachable, Jane, you’re naïve.”

  “No, Duff,” she says softly, “not naïve. Just hopeful and trusting.” She moves her hand off my arm. “The safest place on Earth is one with you, Silas, and Drew in charge, and that’s my ranch in Texas.”

  She turns and walks away, leaving me with those final words: my ranch in Texas.