I try to stand but am shaking too much, so I sit where I am.
Cole talks from the kitchen, where I hear a soft snicking sound that I assume is him, cutting his wrists free. “How did they find us?”
I am sitting in a room with two dead men. I hate this. I want to be anywhere else.
The woman, Casey, sits on the couch. “Keane’s got a Seer trained on you, Rafael. You’ve got to be more careful.”
Rafael sounds tired. “Okay. Does James know his father sent them after me?”
“I don’t think so. This one was secret. That’s why I couldn’t contact you—they took my cell away and didn’t even tell me where we were going until we were here.”
“But no one knows Annie is alive, right?” Sarah asks.
“Besides her.” I nod in Casey’s general direction.
“Secret is safe with me. The Seer only saw Rafael—good thing you weren’t together at the time. Well, I’m gonna have to request that someone shoot me.”
“What?” Sarah asks, her voice strangled.
“I can’t lose their trust now. The story is, we were ambushed, Darren and Mark were fatally shot, and I got away after being shot in the arm.” She takes a deep breath, whispering either a prayer or a curse to God.
I shake my head. “This is ridiculous. You don’t have to get shot. You were waiting outside in the car while they cleared the house. You heard the shots, saw someone run out with a gun, and drove away. All we have to do is shoot a couple of holes in the car.”
“Oh, I like that idea so much better,” Casey says.
“On it.” Cole walks out the front door.
“What about the bodies?” Sarah whispers, and I am so glad I can’t see what she can. I crawl across the floor to the couch, then sit and put my arm around her shoulder. She leans into me. My head still hurts where Darren hit it with the gun.
Darren’s dead now.
“Call Nathan,” Rafael says. “Tell him what happened. This house is officially closed, but he can come clean up.”
Sarah squeezes my hand, then stands and walks out of the room, her voice trailing away as she gives directions over the phone.
I shake my head, overwhelmed and tired. And then I realize that I don’t feel guilty. Darren and the other man wouldn’t have been shot if I hadn’t tackled him and given Casey an opening. I’m entirely culpable in their deaths.
“I’m confused, too,” Casey says.
“Feeler?”
“Yup.”
“Shouldn’t I feel guilty?” I remember how devastated Fia was after helping with the package bomb that killed two people. How hollow she was after killing Clarice. I just feel . . . tired. And a little bit relieved. No one I care about died today.
“I don’t think there’s any way you should or shouldn’t feel right now. I don’t know how to feel, either.” The couch squeaks as she leans forward. “Wow, I am so not looking forward to going back to work.”
“What are you doing there?”
“The usual. Human resources. Light espionage. I mostly interview employees as a human lie detector. It’s my specialty.”
“No, I mean for Rafael.”
“That I can’t tell you. I can’t even let myself think about it. I’ll have to move faster now, though.”
I nod, understanding. “Word of advice: don’t ever plan ahead.”
“Yeah, rotten Seers. No offense. But thanks. Your quick thinking back there saved everyone.”
I nod, not really sure a “you’re welcome” is appropriate with two dead men on the floor.
The front door opens. “Done,” Cole says.
“I’m off then, on my mad getaway from gun-toting brigands. Wish me luck.” She tries for perky on that last sentence, but it sounds wistful and sad.
“Good luck,” I whisper as the door closes behind her.
“We need to get out of here now. Everybody pack,” Rafael says.
I stand and walk up to my room. So much for being bored. I grab my electronics and throw them in the bag I always keep packed with my fake documents. Shove some clothes in on top of them. I don’t have much stuff.
“Do you need help?” Rafael asks from the doorway.
I lean against my closet. “No. I don’t know. I should have seen this coming.”
“Everyone is safe. That’s what’s important.”
I shake my head. “I’m tired of being safe and protected. I want to do something. Give me Adderall.”
“What?”
“I know Sarah’s taking it to give herself a boost. I want it, too. I’m the only one who can see Fia, right? But what good does that do if I never see anything? I need to see more.”
“I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“I want it. I’ll get it whether or not you help me.” I have no idea how to begin to go about getting drugs illegally. But I hope I sound convincing.
He sighs. “Fine. When we’re safely away from here, I’ll get some for you. But we’ll be careful.”
I nod, but it’s a lie. I don’t care about being careful. I care about being useful. And I’ll do anything to make that happen.
FIA
Thirty-two Hours Before
THERE ARE TOO MANY. THIS IS OBVIOUS. TAP TAP TAP tap the broken bottle’s flat side against my leg. My free hand is on Pixie’s arm, holding her close to my body. I edge us out the main doors and onto the sidewalk, but everything here is noisy and fast and I don’t know how to do this.
Hmm. It’s a puzzle.
Something hard jabs into my back. “I’ve got a gun on you. Try anything and I’ll shoot.”
I turn around, face-to-face with a short, stocky man. “I hate it when people threaten to shoot me. Either shoot me or don’t, but stop talking about it. Besides, you aren’t supposed to hurt me.”
I feel the twinge of error a split second before his eyes shift to tiny Pixie next to me. A smile creeps across his blocky features and he moves the gun hidden in his jacket pocket toward her. “I’ll shoot your girlfriend.”
Pixie would be dead, and it wouldn’t be by my hand. Annie’s secret would be safe again.
No. I can’t—won’t—let her die. It would be easier, but it isn’t right. I spin behind him, pulling him against my body and shoving the jagged edge of the glass against his neck. “Get that gun away from her.”
He starts to move, so I push harder. “You’ll bleed to death before you get to the hospital.”
“You should listen to her,” Pixie babbles, whites showing all around her irises, which are fixed on the outline of the gun. “She’s never wrong.”
“If you hurt me, there are more of us, they’ll shoot her. It won’t matter if you kill me.”
“But it matters to you, doesn’t it?” I rest my chin on the back of his neck. He smells like floral shampoo and terror. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to let Pixie hail a cab and get in. As soon as she is safely in the car and gone, I’ll come with you, no problem.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
I dig the glass in, because he’s annoying me and I’m jittery and anxious to see Pixie safely off. They can’t hurt her. I won’t let them. I need Pixie secure even though she holds my most precious secret in her head, and that makes her far more dangerous than I ever thought she’d be.
“What about you?” she says, looking at me now.
I smile. “I’m always fine. Hail your cab.”
The main raises his hand. “Hold on, she can’t—”
I kick his Achilles tendon. “Here’s how you know I’m telling the truth: I love this shirt and if I have to kill you, I’ll get blood all over it. Do you know how hard blood is to wash off? I do. You can never get it off. Not ever.” Never, never, never, never. Tap tap tap tap. “So you let her leave and I let you keep your blood on the inside where it belongs and we go talk to your friend who is so desperate to see me.”
Pixie looks scared. “Fia, don’t—”
“Get a cab. Now.” I glare at her
and she turns, walking stiffly to the edge of the sidewalk. Two men move to follow her.
“Tell them,” I whisper in the ear of my man.
“Let her leave,” he says, his voice tight.
Pixie looks back at me as a cab stops and she climbs in. I give her a thumbs-up with the hand I have wrapped around the front of my man. Then she is gone and that means she is safe, so I don’t really care what happens now. I’ll be fine.
I let go of the man and he jumps away, rubbing at his neck and calling me nasty names under his breath. I toss the bottle to the side with a tinkle of glass and smile cheerfully. “See? Easy! Who wants to take me to my earnest suitor?”
I follow a tall, broad-shouldered man with a gun’s bulk pushing out the edge of his sports jacket. We walk around the corner to where a car idles in an alley. “Disappointing,” I mutter. “I was hoping for a party bus.”
He opens the back door to the car and gestures for me to go in. As I slip past him my hand darts to his belt and I snatch the gun, then yank the door shut and hit the lock.
“So!” I turn and point the gun at the man sitting next to me. “Surprise!”
A smile slides over his face like oil pooling on water and I wasn’t ready for this, because I’m back—I’m back—oh no I don’t want to remember what he makes me remember. Lips and hands and a dance floor and—
“Hello, Sofia,” Rafael says.
I lean back against the plush leather seat and sigh, still training the gun on his head. “I didn’t miss you.” (His lips on mine, the first lips on mine, my first kiss, oh I want to be sick.)
He laughs, and his teeth are white and his throat is tan and I want to cut break cut smash it. I hate him. He is as slickly beautiful as ever, and I don’t know what he’s doing here but it’s twisting my stomach and making the space behind my eyes heavy with the insistent pressure of wrong.
“How do you like New York?” he asks.
“If you brought me here for small talk, you could have used fewer guns. Just a thought.”
“I was actually hoping you could help me with something. See, I had a bit of a disappointment today. Something I’ve been working on for a while fell through.”
The would-be assassin. “Whoops.” I flash him an off-kilter grin, but inside the spinning needle whirls faster. I cannot believe I stopped her. I cannot believe it was right. I hate Rafael, hate his smell and the feel of him near me.
But maybe Rafael is the only person doing the right thing.
My stomach drops as I realize . . . oh, no.
Oh, no.
Lerner. Casey was working for Lerner.
She was working for Rafael.
Rafael is with Lerner.
Maybe not. Maybe she was so good she could think about Lerner to frame them. It’s not right, I know it’s not right, but I cling to it. She didn’t think about Rafael, she didn’t!
He smiles and everything buzzes, feels off, more off than ever before. “You win some, you lose some. And when I heard you were finally in deep with Daddy Keane, well, that changed everything. Let’s talk about how you’re going to help me.”
“Why would I help you?” I whisper.
“James was.”
“Liar,” I snarl.
“I didn’t tell him about Casey. Shame, really. You would have liked her. She was my fail-safe, put into action because James broke his promises. We were supposed to build our own army together—him on the inside, me on the outside. Take down his father. Lately, however, I think he likes being daddy’s pet more than he wants revenge. Does that feel familiar to you, Fia? Promises strung out along months, tentative ideas for a future that never seems to get here, no matter how close you keep getting?” He leans forward intently.
No. No no no. James wouldn’t back out. Rafael is a liar. I can only trust James. If James is wrong, if James is lying to me, then I am wrong and if I am wrong, nothing is ever right again. If I cannot trust myself to love the right person, what can I trust?
Rafael can see that I’m wavering. He sits back, pulls out his phone as though he can’t be bothered to pay full attention to the conversation. “We have another friend in common. Sweetest girl. She’s like a sane version of you. Goes by Annie.”
The world drops out from underneath me.
Annie.
There’s a rather insistent-bordering-on-panicked tapping; Rafael opens the window and I realize the tapping this time wasn’t in my head. I can’t always tell.
The man who escorted me here is red-faced. “You okay, sir?”
Rafael waves a hand dismissively. “Relax. Sofia and I are old friends. Isn’t that right?”
Rafael’s man has his arm through the window, trying to unlatch the door. I let him, then kick it open, slamming it into his stomach. I pull it back shut, then smash the gun against the side of Rafael’s head.
“Annie is dead,” I hiss. I hold the gun to his temple. There’s a trickle of blood running down and the barrel disrupts its path. I wonder how the blood would have fallen if I didn’t get in the way. I change things. All the time. I change them to be how I want them to be. “I killed her.”
Rage is written into the lines of his mouth, but he peels his lips back into a smile. “Here.” He holds out a card between two fingers. “My number. You’ll call.”
I take the card. His smile grows bigger. He knows he’s won. I lower the gun and shoot the seat directly between his legs. He jumps, slamming himself into the corner of the seat, cursing me in fluid Italian. The scent of gunpowder assails my nose and I breathe in deeply, letting it settle in my sinuses.
I climb out of the car, pointing the gun at the men outside. “It’s okay!” Rafael shouts, and they lower their guns. I turn and walk down the alley.
“You need me,” Rafael yells after me. “You’ll call. James betrayed us all. But you and I still want the same thing.”
I throw the gun in a trash can, my fist clenched around his card. “I don’t know what I want,” I whisper, and it’s true.
ANNIE
Six Weeks Before
I THROW A PUNCH. I MIGHT AS WELL THROW IT AWAY, because as usual it sails wildly through the air, connecting with nothing. “Do I look as stupid as I feel? Because I really can’t imagine how that’s possible.”
Cole doesn’t answer, but I hear a muffled laugh.
“Fia is the one who got trained to fight. For rather obvious reasons they didn’t bother with me.”
“I’m very familiar with how Fia fights.”
I smirk. “I’m so glad one of us kicked your butt.”
“I didn’t say that.” He sounds decidedly grumpy.
“Didn’t have to. Fia’s got perfect instincts. Never hesitates. Operates on pure impulse. Blah, blah, blah.” I throw my arms in the air and then sit, defeated, on the floor next to the wall. If Fia were here, I wouldn’t need to learn how to fight.
It was supposed to be the two of us, hiding, on the run. We would have made a good team. Wouldn’t we? Or would she have felt like she used to feel, like she had to take care of me all the time? Maybe if she were around, I wouldn’t mind. I let people take care of me as a default.
I’m sick of it.
My thoughts drift to the bottle of pills buried in the bottom of my bag upstairs. I still haven’t started taking them. I wanted to ask Sarah what it was like, if it helped, but she and Rafael left as soon as we got to this tiny house in Tennessee. They said it was to muddy the trail, and they’ll meet back up with us when they feel like it’s safer. So I’m stuck here with only Cole.
A foot nudges my shoulder, hard, and I twist and shove it away. Cole? Not such pleasant company.
“You have strengths, too. Good balance,” he says. “And you recognized the Keane employee’s voice after years.”
I stand, trying not to groan. “It’s not like I have superhearing or some sort of bat sense. No mystical blind-person powers.”
His voice is dry. “Other than the whole seeing-the-future thing.”
I flip him off
.
“Put your hand on my shoulder. Notice anything?”
I frown. I do, actually. His shoulder is covered with muscle. My shoulders do not feel like that. “Umm, it’s very . . . shouldery?”
He shoves lightly against my hand. “Think of the angle.”
It takes me a few more seconds, then I laugh. “You’re short!”
“We’re about the same height, which puts you at five foot six. Average for a girl. Small for a guy.”
“So you use this to your advantage?”
“Nobody suspects the little ones. I also have a very charming smile.”
I snort. “Doubtful. Does anyone ever even see it?”
“Sometimes. Now. You’re going to be best in close quarters. Let’s work on judo techniques. Fast and dirty throws, maximum pain, and then you run.”
“Okay. I’m ready. What do I do?”
“Stand there and look defenseless.”
I kick at his shin, but miss. As usual. So I opt to stick my tongue out, and then I stand still and look defenseless. It’s easy.
He grabs me from behind, locking his hands around my waist and pinning my arms at my side. I’ve never noticed how he smells before. It’s soft, barely a trace, but he smells like . . . soap. It’s a clean, honest scent, not advertising anything but the truth.
“Help, help,” I say, raising my voice an octave. “I am so defenseless. Woe is me.”
“What do you have free?”
My feet, my head. Without stopping to think about the consequences, I slam my head back into his face.
He lets go, swearing and stomping.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.” I turn around, hands over my mouth in horror. “I didn’t mean to! I should have warned you! Or said what I should do instead of actually doing it. Did I break your nose? Are you bleeding?”
His voice is strained and muffled, but I think it’s amused. I hope it’s amused. “No, that was good. Noses are always good. Groins, too. If you can find his legs, you can hit his groin.”
I feel myself blushing, but I nod. “Done?”
“No, not done. I’m going to grab you and you’re going to get away. However you need to.”
He doesn’t wait for me to agree.
Perfect Lies Page 7