The Last Best Lie

by Kennedy Quinn

  “What’s with you?” She glanced at me sideways, and then shot a look toward the road.

  “It was a lovely drive out here, wasn’t it? It’s the same road that Hunter and I took to find Tina. We’re, what, five miles down the road? To think we made it this far, only to have Nestor ambush us and kill himself. And then leave us alone in the woods.” I rearranged the phone covertly, aiming the microphone toward us. Hunter, I hope you’re getting this!You’ve got to know by now that I’m missing and that Lilly isn’t supposed to be here. Come on! Figure it out!

  She cocked her head, studying me, and then looked around. Was she thinking that we were isolated enough? Her hand moved toward her side. My blood pounded in my ears so hard I could barely think. My stomach churned with bile. And any second now I could die! Helpless!

  Then an invisible hand smacked me upside of my mind, which is a bad thing when one has a headache and is fighting back nausea. Inside my head, I heard Jake say, “You will not let this bitch decide when and where you die. Distract her; buy time. Do something!”

  So I threw up on her shoes.

  “Jesus!” she said, dancing back. “What the hell!”

  “I’m sorry!” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “It’s been a rough day.”

  “Damn it!” She growled in irritation as her eyes went hard.

  “Oh, man,” I said, belching. My gaze fell on a large branch at my feet. “I’m going to throw up again.” Bending low and acting like I was on the verge of vomiting, I grabbed the thick stick and clenched it tightly, shielding the action with my body.

  “On the other hand,” she said, with deadly calm, coming to within a couple of feet. “I guess this is as good a place as any.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her reach for her gun. I put my right hand out. “Like the man said, get them to look here.” She frowned, glancing at my hand. “But the action is here!” With a yell, I tightened my grip with my left hand, straightened, and swung for her head.

  And I missed.

  Completely.

  I stumbled onto my knees and we both stared, dumbfounded, at the branch in my hand.

  I mean who misses in a situation like this? Seriously!

  Lilly barked out a laugh and pointed the gun at me. “You are such a—”

  I grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it in her face. Her hand flew up to her eyes, and she stumbled back with a screech. I launched myself at her, tackled her mid-abdomen, and we fell into the thick forest peat, a tangle of limbs. Spying the gun lying in a bed of pine needles two feet away, I scrambled, crab-like, over her body. I grabbed it and whirled, still on my knees, holding it out before me with both hands.

  Back on her feet, Lilly towered over me. She smiled. “You don’t have the guts—”

  The gun went off, my wrists jerking as the recoil slammed my arms backward, the echoing crack buffeting my eardrums like a punch to the head.

  Lilly’s hand flew to her arm. The sleeve of her shirt was torn, but the blood barely trickled. She looked over at me, her eyes wide with incredulity.

  “That was a warning!” I shouted. Actually it’s a fucking miracle! A total accident. But I’m okay with that. I got to my feet, revolver straight-armed before me. “Sit down!”

  Rebellious fury blazed in her eyes.

  “Sit down or I’ll shoot you where you stand!” My words rang with power, but my knees wobbled. I was reaching my limit. If she didn’t sit down soon, I was going to fall down.

  I nearly did—with relief anyway—as Lilly slowly sank to her knees.

  “I said, sit!” I barked.

  She did.

  Yes, God. You are so my favorite entity right now! Thank you, thank you!

  I stepped forward, mostly to unlock my knees. “Put your hands on your head.”

  The hate in her gaze was palpable. Glaring, she laced her fingers on top of her head.

  I sneered at her. “You cut your hair, Lilly. I don’t think Chris would have approved.”

  She gaped at me, shock slackening her features.

  “I noticed in the car that your hair is shorter than a few days ago. It would be shoulder length now if you let it down, just like on the woman seen by the canal. And it’s the same color as the red braid in Chris’s shoe box. You were the lover. It was you he cheated on Adalida with.”

  “No!” she spat out venomously. “He cheated on me with her! He loved me!”

  “Right. Everybody loves Lilly. Or they should. Because she so deserves it.”

  “I did deserve him! He appreciated me! From the moment we met, building houses for charity, I knew we were meant for each other. He was only a kid then. But when he came back, I made him a man. That bitch, that spoiled daddy’s girl, Adalida, she didn’t deserve him!”

  So, that’s the daddy’s girl she’d been talking about in the hospital!

  Rage roared in my mind. Nothing—not being shot at, bombed, almost drowned, knocked unconscious, or threatened with jail; not Mr. Keeper’s death; not Jake’s death; not Nestor’s betrayal—nothing compared to the fury I felt looking at the self-righteous gleam in Lilly’s eyes.

  I breathed through my nose, fighting to keep my quivering voice calm. “I knew you had an overblown sense of entitlement, but this …” I shook my head. “I should have seen it coming, but I was so busy feeling sorry for you. No. You know what? I was feeling sorry for myself: I saw so much in common between us that I made excuses for you. I was such a fool.”

  “You’re going to be a dead fool, soon.” Her voice was ice, utterly confident.

  Chills raced over my skin like a million spiders. “I’m the one with the gun.”

  Calmly, she said, “For the moment. But your hands are shaking.”

  I stared at my fatigued, trembling hands. Adrenaline will keep you moving in a crisis, but it’s your worst enemy when you’re trying to stand still. “They are not!”

  “And the minute you let go, I’m going to take that gun and blow your head off.”

  Unable to restrain my contempt, I said, “Let me ask you something, Lilly. I mean, my gun, my rules kind of thing. Okay, your gun. But still my rules since I’m holding it, yeah? On behalf of victims of violence throughout history—prey to psychopaths—let me ask you.” I paused and looked her dead in the eye. “What is wrong with you?”

  She merely glared at me.

  “I mean, seriously! Did you miss the whole ‘thou shall not kill’ thing? Because it’s been pretty well advertised: books, movies, after-school specials. What, were you out sick that day? Confused by the concept? Because, honestly, what the fuck, bitch?”

  She smiled, evenly and coldly.

  “Your partner is lying dead,” I nodded in the direction of Nestor’s body, cringing at the memory of my heartlessness to him in his final moments. “To think that I blamed him—”

  “Oh, don’t fool yourself. He was guilty.”

  “As distraught as he was over the death of an innocent man? That’s not the reaction of a stone-cold killer, nor is suicide. That’s a good man driven to despair with remorse and shame—”

  “Ha! That’s a man who couldn’t handle getting caught. Look, I’m going to kill you, but you don’t get to die blaming me and feeling sorry for him. He meant for Cord to go down.”

  “Who?”

  “The bomber—a two-bit crook named Dennis Cord who’d been in Iraq with Nestor’s brother-in-law. They both came back screwed up: drugs, violence, petty crimes. Nestor’s pregnant sister lost her baby from the stress of it all.”

  I shrugged. “Okay. So? Then you arrest them both.”

  Sneering, she said, “Nestor would never give family up, and we couldn’t catch Cord red-handed. Hell, all Nestor would do was whine about the injustice of it all—how cops save people, but he couldn’t save his own unborn nephew. Fuck. But I figured out what to do about it.”

  I sputtered, unwilling to give ground. “You’re not smart enough.”

  “Don’t you play superior to me, you elitist whore! I f
igured out how to use Nestor’s problem to solve mine. He wanted Cord caught, I wanted that bitch’s father dead.”

  “For God’s sake! Why? What did Jake ever do to you?”

  “He let Chris die!”

  “No! Goddamn it! That’s not how it happened! Hunter told us that Jake said—”

  “Fuck Jake and what he said. I know in my heart what happened!”

  “You stupid bitch, you don’t know anything!”

  Fury blazing out of her eyes, she pushed forward as if to rise.

  I thrust the gun toward her. “I dare you!”

  She stared at me, and I stared back. Slowly, very slowly, she sat back down.

  I drew a shaky breath. “That’s better. Nice and calm. Now you don’t want to make me cranky, otherwise—” Aiming high, I squeezed the trigger. The retort scattered squirrels, birds and, almost, my wits. It was a stupid thing to do, but, hey, maybe it would draw Hunter to us.

  If he ever fucking got here!

  Affecting calm, I said, “Oopsie. Now, you will tell me what really happened.”

  She smiled snidely. “You want to know how clever I was? Fine. I’ll tell you. Yeah, I persuaded Nestor to catch Cord in the act. That was easy. And I convinced him we needed a go-between, so Cord wouldn’t know he was involved: a hooker who didn’t want to go back to jail.”

  “The woman who pretended to be Lathos’s wife?”

  “Yes, but I hid that connection from Nestor. He thought she was hiring Cord to bomb a warehouse. He didn’t know she was pretending to be Lathos’s wife, and that I was working directly with Cord. How’d you figure it out?”

  “It makes sense in retrospect. You must have kept tabs on Chris’s sister, so you knew about Lathos. Then, what, you used their dalliance to base a fake case around, to set Jake up? So, where is the ersatz wife now?”

  “Hmm. Given the speed of the current, about the middle of Lake Michigan, I’d say.”

  I exhaled, trying to process her utter lack of scruples. “It doesn’t bother you at all?”

  She didn’t flinch. “It was her fault! All she had to do was call Jake. Of course, when the bomb didn’t go off, I had her follow behind after Tina and Lathos snuck into the back room and put the note on the door. But that whore took up with Cord and stole the pictures I took of Jake and tried to shake me down. She even brought Lathos in, thinking he’d help her.”

  “That’s how Lathos got the pictures of Jake and me. So, you killed him, too?”

  She glared resentfully at me. “I had to. Why can’t you see that? They left me no choice.”

  “You had choices; you chose evil. I mean, why set a bomb if you were going to shoot Jake anyway? An innocent man died! An innocent woman still might!”

  Disgust twisted her face into a sneer. “Shooting Jake in the alley was plan B. If that stupid, idiot Cord hadn’t fucked up the timer on the bomb, I wouldn’t have had to resort to it.”

  “And the wife’s call was timed, so Jake would be in place when the bomb went off?”

  “But the stakeouts had to be real or Jake would get suspicious. I thought of everything.”

  I shook my head. “And you had Nestor buy the ingredients, so that he’d get blamed if it was discovered. But how did you get the resin and soot on you? You helped build the bomb?”

  “In the empty building across from the alley. We could only work a little each day, to keep our actions hidden. But at least, I got to gloat over Jake as I helped Cord build his death!”

  I had to bite my lip to keep from rising to the bait. “And so that’s how, when the bomb failed, you knew where to go to get a clear shot at Jake.”

  “I’m bored with this,” she said disdainfully. “Enough talking.”

  I grunted, as much because my biceps burned as from frustration. I saw the alert glimmer in her eyes as she watched my hands sway and knew I had to distract her until help arrived.

  Okay, she wants superior? I’ll give her superior! “Granted, your pedestrian logic is an interesting diversion. But even given your mediocre intelligence, having Cord steal the file and lockbox, and then leave the evidence behind, was especially moronic.”

  “That wasn’t my fault! He was only supposed to get the file, in case there was anything incriminating in it. But the dumbshit thought the box was petty cash and couldn’t resist a chance to score. He dumped them out the window to retrieve later. But when the bomb didn’t go off, he ran. So, I told him to finish Jake, or I’d finish him. I don’t think he believed me, but he went to the hospital for Jake anyway. I guess he believes me now.”

  “Because you killed him, too? Oh, so that’s the dead man Nestor said had receipts on him. Then … then Nestor knew Cord would die?” My heart fell.

  “Sure, maybe he told himself we’d catch Cord before anyone got hurt. But, he knew me better, knew I wouldn’t go halfway. I never let go. Pit Bull Killrain, remember? He knew.”

  I paused, remembering the hopelessness, shame, and agony in Nestor’s eyes. Resolutely, I said, “Maybe. But I saw his hands shaking at the canal and his flushed complexion, the uncharacteristic violence, poor judgment. They’re classic signs. He was addicted to pain pills.”

  Grinning, she said, “The extras I slipped him now and then might have helped.”

  “You fed his addiction and his paranoia. Ah! And you tried to goad Nestor into killing Cord in the parking lot to tie up loose ends. Surely, he became suspicious seeing Cord there.”

  “I convinced him Cord was there to kill him. Now, Cord never knew Nestor was involved: I hid that until the end. But a man of his description was seen at Jake’s office, so …”

  “Nestor knew there had to be a connection; knew Mr. Keeper’s death—”

  “Was as much his fault as it was Cord’s!”

  “He started to lose it, rationality already compromised by the Percocet …” I sighed.

  “You can make all the excuses you want. He’s still guilty. By his own deliberate actions, he was responsible for the death of an innocent man. You don’t get to let him off the hook.”

  I thought a while and then said, “He was content to leave that to God. I guess I am too.”

  “He deserved what he got!” she yelled. “He was supposed to support me, but all he ever did was criticize. He turned them against me, he must have! Why else didn’t I get promoted?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because you didn’t deserve it?”

  “Don’t you dare dismiss me! They all disrespected me and now—”

  “This isn’t about you! It’s about the people you killed! Lathos, Cord, the chauffeur—”

  She snorted. “That wasn’t my fault! He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “And Tina? My God, she was Chris’s sister. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Honey, I was aiming at you.” Her eyes glittered cruelly.

  My finger gave a serious twitch on the trigger just as a car skidded to a stop on the road above. Pebbles scattered down the incline toward us. I groaned in relief.

  Lilly glanced over her shoulder then turned quickly back to me. I saw her tense for action. “Don’t!” I said, leveling the gun at her.

  Hunter appeared over the top of the rise and came toward us, gun in his hand. Laughter burbled in my chest. I was so damn happy to see him.

  “What kind of a bullshit message—” He halted when he saw Lilly. “What’s going on?”

  A broad smile split my face. “It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay now.”

  He scowled at me. “What are you talking about? What’s she doing here?”

  I huffed out a breath, trying to regain control. “She told me she came up with Voltaire.”

  “Not likely. Voltaire’s helicoptering in now.”

  I looked at Lilly. “That’s why you came to get me. You knew you were out of time.”

  Lilly said nothing. She stared over her shoulder at Hunter.

  Worry etched Hunter’s brow in long tense lines. “Whatever’s going on, this is not a
good place for an interrogation. We’re too much in the open. Let’s get out of here.”

  I pointed to Lilly. “On your feet.” She stood and brushed off her backside.

  Hunter looked confused, but pointed his gun at her as she rose.

  I walked past her, smiling up at Hunter. “After this, you won’t be calling me a naive—”

  Hunter’s eyes shot wide. “Don’t cross between us!”

  But it was way too late.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Lilly grabbed me from behind, one hand around my waist and the other on the gun in my hand. She squeezed off four quick shots and blood exploded from Hunter’s leg. Another mist of red erupted from his chest. He hit the ground.

  Lilly threw me to the dirt and pointed the gun at my head. I swept her feet out from under her. She plummeted onto her back. I jumped on top of her, grabbing for the gun. She jabbed me in the stomach, and I fell back, all the breath knocked out of me. Somehow I managed to hold onto the gun. It went off again, the retort echoing through the air as a flock of birds took off in a frenzy. We held tight, rolling in the forest debris, battling for the gun.

  We slid, faster and faster, down the steep slope. I slammed into a large rock and the spiny limbs of a low bush scratched my face. My hand shot up protectively, and I let go of Lilly. We both tumbled down, out of control.

  I flailed, trying to find purchase. Dirt flew up, choking me. I finally found something solid and grabbed the sapling with both hands. It bent, nearly to breaking, but held. Scrambling to my knees, I coughed out dirt. I didn’t see Lilly anywhere.

  Pulling myself up the treacherous slope by saplings and branches, I raced to find Hunter. I caught sight of his custom leather shoes, soles pointed at me. Huffing, I pushed harder, using all my strength to get up the hill and finally falling on my knees beside him.

  He lay on his stomach, his face turned toward me, eyes closed. He didn’t seem to be breathing. I gasped, fear choking me so hard I couldn’t swallow.

  Two puddles of blood, one from his chest and one from his right thigh, swelled away from his body, seeping into the still hungry black earth. I brushed dark strands of hair away from his neck and felt for a pulse. It was there, weak but steady. Thank you, God.