True Lies

by Ingrid Weaver

  “I know that.”

  “You want to get the bad guys, I want to get my brother. We're stuck together now because we're using each other, that’s all.”

  “We can’t get past that, can we?” he said. “We can lie on a rock and watch the sun come up, we can share memories, we can understand each other to hell and back, but we're still the same people, aren’t we?”

  “The same people, the same problems.” She took a deep, unsteady breath and blinked rapidly. “Go ahead and ask your questions.”

  “Will you answer them?”

  The mournful cry of a loon warbled over the lake. The breath of wind that had accompanied the sunrise strengthened, stirring up tart odors from the traces of wreckage and spilled fuel. Reality had returned, whether she wanted it or not. “My deal with McQuaig blew up with my plane. I've got nothing to lose by being honest.”

  At least a minute passed in silence before Bruce walked across the rock point and squatted down in front of her. “Okay. No more lies. Why does McQuaig want you dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must have some idea.”

  “I don’t know why they want me dead. Maybe it isn’t me. Maybe it’s you. They might have found out you're a cop, and they saw me leave with you. They might have guessed we’d struck a deal.”

  “Did they have any reason to think you’d go to the police?”

  “No. They knew I wouldn’t. They knew I’d do exactly what they told me.”

  “You've said before that they think you'll do what they say. Why? What’s their hold over you? It couldn’t be the money, you've got plenty of that. And you don’t intimidate easily.” He reached out to grasp her chin in his hand and tilt her face up. “It takes a lot to force you to do anything. You weren’t even afraid of a bomb. If I hadn’t thrown you out of that plane, you would have gone up with it. I've never known a more stubbornly courageous woman, or man for that matter. You’d only risk your life for something or someone you truly cared about.”

  She was looking into his eyes, so she could see the exact moment when he began to realize the truth. It gave her no satisfaction. It was too late for that.

  “They're not threatening you, they're threatening your brother,” he said. “You're doing this for Simon. You were desperate to make sure that nothing interfered with this run you were supposed to make, and yet you didn’t care what we did to everyone afterward as long as you and your brother got away. But why would they want to get rid of their regular pilot—” He drew in his breath. “That’s it, isn’t it? You're not their regular pilot.”

  “I've never run drugs in my life. Last night was the first time. The day you found me crying on the dock I had just found out what Simon was doing and had told him to stop. He tried, but Harvey beat him up, phoned me and ordered me to take Simon’s place or they would kill him.”

  He straightened up and kicked a loose rock into the underbrush at the edge of the clearing. For a minute he simply stared at her without speaking, squeezing his fists until his knuckles went white. “Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?” he asked between clenched teeth. “After we left the warehouse, why didn’t you tell me?”

  Her reply was brutally simple. “Would you have believed me?”

  He had to look away. “No.”

  “That’s your answer.”

  “There’s more to it, isn’t there? Lying to a cop is a knee-jerk reaction with you, isn’t it?”

  “Right. Just like not trusting anyone and not dropping the cop role is a habit with you.”

  “You were willing to do it again, to take the blame for something your brother did in order to protect him.”

  “It had worked out before.” She pushed to her feet and brushed off the seat of her jeans. “I took a chance. If everything had gone as it was supposed to, it would have worked out again.”

  “Worked out?” He waved his arm toward the remains of her plane. “Didn’t you realize the danger you were putting yourself in? That I was putting you in? You were innocent all along. I never would have forced you to make that flight if I’d known—”

  “You were using me even before you’d decided that I was guilty, Bruce. You deceived me and manipulated me, so I think it’s a bit late for conscience pangs.”

  “I was only doing my job.”

  “That’s right. And I can’t forget what you are. Maybe for a few stolen moments in the dark I could, but not anymore.”

  A muscle twitched in his cheek. “You were way out of your league with McQuaig, Emma. I know people like him. I've worked with them. They would never have intended for you to take Simon’s place. They saw you as a threat to the nice little setup they had going, and they wanted to eliminate you. Once they tell Simon what they did, he'll be too scared to try breaking away ever again. The threat to his life had been a bluff. They wouldn’t have gotten rid of their pilot.”

  “Then he’s safe. He’s alive. They won’t hurt him. At least I accomplished that much.”

  “Why don’t you worry about yourself instead of your brother? He’s a grown man. He dug his own hole. When are you going to stop being the one to pull him out?”

  She paced across the clearing to the shore. Crossing her arms over her chest, she watched the merciless rays of sunrise slice through the wisps of mist. She had asked herself the same questions only four days ago. She hadn’t had the answers then, either. “You won’t be bringing charges against my brother when we get back to civilization, will you? That was part of our deal.”

  “Everything’s changed, Emma. If you had been honest with me at the start—”

  “Don’t give me that bull. You wouldn’t have believed me. We still have a deal, don’t we?”

  “I won’t lie to you. Not anymore. I can’t guarantee anything as far as Simon is concerned. If he wants to cooperate himself, that’s a different matter.”

  “You’d go after my brother? After what we did together, you’d still—”

  “You said it yourself, Emma. What we did together doesn’t change who we are.”

  Slowly she turned to face him. He was standing in a pose almost identical to hers. His long legs were braced apart, his arms were crossed defensively. Even across the space that separated them she could feel the impact of his intense blue eyes. The tenderness that she’d felt when he’d touched her hair was gone. The vulnerability that she’d seen on his face when she’d awakened this morning had disappeared. The splendid, savage lover who had made her claw and scream had vanished with the dawn. He’d drawn into himself, slipped back behind his professional barrier. He was as handsome and compelling as he’d ever been, with the slanting, golden sunlight caressing his face and the awakening breeze stirring his tousled hair. Yet his sculpted masculine beauty was that of a statue. Cold. Distant. Untouchable.

  Not yet, she cried silently. Let’s go back, just once more let’s forget who we are...

  “I hear an engine,” he said.

  It took a second for the words to penetrate. “What?”

  “It’s probably someone from McQuaig’s group checking their handiwork.”

  Over the dawn sounds of the awakening birds and stirring trees she heard the low drone of a plane. She turned back to the lake and her gaze dropped to the water. The wreckage of the Cessna hadn’t drifted far. A large part had sunk, but some of it bobbed near the shore, more lay scattered across the surface, glittering in the slanting sunlight.

  “Better get under cover.”

  “Maybe it’s someone else. We could be rescued, flown out of here—”

  “What are the odds that someone else is flying the route they gave you at this time of day?”

  “Not good.”

  “Let’s get our gear out of sight.”

  Reality. It wasn’t going to change simply because of her own wishful thinking. Hurriedly she picked up the sleeping bag and stuffed it into its nylon sack.

  Bruce tossed the things they had salvaged back into the center of the canvas tarp and quickly rol
led it up. The sound of the plane grew louder. “This way,” he said, loping toward a break in the underbrush.

  She tucked the sack under her arm and ducked past the spruce bough he held aside for her. Fallen needles crunched under her boots. Draping branches wove a dark canopy overhead. “How far do you want to go?”

  “This should be good enough. No one will spot us from the air.” He set his improvised bundle down beside a mossy log. “I want to see what they do.”

  The plane was close enough now for her to distinguish the sound. “It’s a twin engine, bigger than my Cessna.”

  He dug through the bundle and came up with his gun and holster. With the smoothness of a motion done thousands of times, he shrugged into the straps and steadied the holster at the small of his back. “Keep your head down.”

  A squirrel scolded suddenly from the pine beside her and Emma jumped. She grabbed on to a branch, barely noticing the sharp pricks as her fingers snapped off the dead twigs. She kept her gaze on the diamond-shaped patch of sky that showed through the trees. “They're coming from the south. Flying low.”

  “Right. It fits. They're tracing your course.”

  Something glinted in the distance. Sunlight flashed from the windshield and all at once a plane took shape. “It’s a Beechcraft. No pontoons. They won’t be landing.”

  The plane roared over the trees. They both ducked reflexively. The pitch of the engines lowered as it receded to the north. Emma pivoted to follow its progress. It had barely reached the end of the valley the lake nestled in when wings flashed in a sudden bank.

  “They must have spotted something,” Bruce said.

  The noise approached once more. “It really might be someone else. Anyone would investigate if they thought they saw debris from a crash.”

  The plane came in even lower this time. It circled the lake in a tight, skidding turn to follow the curve of the shoreline. Emma pressed back against a tree trunk. It was heading straight for them. It passed overhead close enough for her to see the rivets in the fuselage. And the markings on the side. The engines roared again as the plane climbed to clear a hill. It banked more quickly this time.

  Bruce crouched down and worked his way back toward the clearing.

  “What are you doing?” she called.

  “Getting a better look. Stay there.”

  She dropped the sleeping bag beside the rolled tarp and ran after him. They stopped at the edge of the underbrush where they would have a better view but would still be hidden by the slanting shadows. “That plane belongs to McQuaig.”

  “Yeah, I saw the CM logo on the side, too.”

  “I didn’t know he had access to his own plane.”

  “It’s registered to one of his legitimate businesses.”

  “But he could have...I mean, why force Simon and me—”

  Bruce caught her arm and tugged her down to kneel beside him. “He knows the feds have been watching him, so he wouldn’t risk using it for those midnight runs.”

  The plane swooped over the rock clearing and made a sudden bank at the edge of the trees. For a split second, for a space of time no longer than a heartbeat, the glass cockpit tilted toward them and the occupants were visible. It was only a flash, a quick impression, but the image burned its way into Emma’s brain. Her breath whooshed out and she sat back on her heels. There were two men in the plane. She recognized the gleaming bald pate of one of them. And the other—

  “I guess they're satisfied,” Bruce said. He released her arm as the plane skimmed across the trees on the far side of the lake. The noise of the engines faded gradually. There was a suspended pause of silence, then the air was filled once more with the twittering whistles and rustlings of the morning.

  Emma stared numbly at the empty sky.

  His thigh brushed her shoulder as he stood up. “We’d better plan our route. There’s no reason to hang around here any longer.”

  “You saw, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were right. About everything. They came to check just like you had said. They really did want me dead.”

  “And as far as they're concerned, you'll stay that way until we can put them behind bars. They're going to carry on with business as usual, and that will give Xavier the chance to shut them down for good.”

  She thought of the other face she had glimpsed in that cockpit, the one whose boyish charm was buried beneath aviator sunglasses and the crumpled contortions of grief. “Simon thinks I'm dead, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “We have to get back.”

  “We will.”

  “We have to help him, Bruce. After you contact Xavier again, when you find out how things stand...”

  He reached down to cup her elbow and lift her gently to her feet. His voice was soft, his eyes filled with regret, but his jaw was firm. “We've got enough problems ahead of us, Emma. Let’s not talk about later, okay?”

  Chapter 11

  It was late afternoon when Emma felt the blister pop. Somewhere between one step and the next, the skin that stretched over the sharp bone on the side of her ankle finally gave up. It hadn’t been weak to begin with, but it had reached its limit. Damp socks, damp boots and six and a half hours of hiking over hills and through spruce thickets were what did it. The discomfort—she wouldn’t let herself call it pain—was like someone jabbing a needle into a half-healed burn. She wasn’t about to ask Bruce to stop, though. They hadn’t yet covered the ten miles they’d agreed to do today.

  Whatever he’d done with those park rangers in Alaska had more than prepared him for this pocket of wilderness in Maine. Before they’d left the lake this morning, he had spread out the map he’d salvaged and asked her to point out exactly where they were. Then he had handed her the sleeping bag and had fastened everything else into the canvas tarp, tied it securely, and slung it over his back. He was matter-of-fact about giving her less to carry, not out of any patronizing big strong male attitude, but out of respect for her size and gender. So far she could find no fault with anything he had done, from the route they had decided to follow, to the pace he was setting.

  The weather was clear and warm, the bugs practically nonexistent this late in the summer, and the view from the last ridge they had climbed had been spectacular. Thanks to the emergency supplies in the first aid kit, they had enough dried food packs and water purification pills to last them at least two days. Under other circumstances, this hike might even have been an enjoyable challenge.

  She slipped on a piece of moss as she followed Bruce around an alder grove and another hot needle jabbed her ankle. Other circumstances? Enjoyable? The tension must be getting to her. This was no stroll through the park, this was a trek for survival. Not only hers and Bruce’s, but Simon’s. The popped blister was nothing but a minor annoyance. She wouldn’t even let herself think about it. They had to do the ten miles they’d planned so that by tomorrow they would reach the trail that had been marked by the broken black line on her map, which would lead to the logging road, which would lead to a telephone and Bruce’s colleague Xavier and the chance to help her brother.

  Since the twin engine Beechcraft had disappeared over the southern horizon, neither of them had mentioned Simon again.

  Neither of them wanted to talk about “later.”

  A burst of slanting sunshine made her squint as they reached a flat outcrop of glacier-scarred rock. At the crest of a hill a row of leaning white pines stood like windblown sentinels silhouetted against the hazy blue folds of distant ridges. Bruce stopped and shielded his eyes to look over the next valley. “How are you hanging in?” he asked.

  “Fine. No problem.” She eased the string of the sleeping bag from her shoulder. “How about you?”

  “Can’t complain.” After a careful survey of the area, he took the compass from his pocket and held it in front of his chest. Moving only his feet, he turned until he lined up the direction he wanted. “We'll have to swing around to the north a bit more.”

  Since s
he had been the one to lead the way in the morning, Bruce was taking his turn for the afternoon, and he was demonstrating a quiet competence with the task. Although she didn’t want to, she couldn’t help feeling a grudging admiration for him. “Did you learn about orienteering on that bear gall bladder job?”

  “Nope. This is pure Boy Scout.”

  She let the bag drop by her feet. “You've been leading us for the past four hours from something you learned in the Boy Scouts?“

  Pushing the compass back into his pocket, he looked at her over his shoulder. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened. “Don’t worry. I got a merit badge.”

  The glimpse of Prendergast’s gentle wit startled her. Who was he today? she wondered.

  He turned back toward the valley, the plaid flannel of his shirt clinging damply to his broad shoulders. Since noon she’d watched those shoulders shift and flex as he moved. He’d rolled up his sleeves, and the hair on his arms glinted golden in the sunshine. His loose shirttails fluttered around his hips, revealing the outline of Primeau’s tight buttocks under his worn jeans. Who was he now?

  Bruce. Simply Bruce. The cop who had tricked her, used her and intended to put her brother in prison. The man who had watched the ducks and untangled her hair. The lover who...

  The sky blurred as her eyes filled with tears. They’d had a tendency to do that today. She didn’t want to admit that this lump in her throat was more than worry about her brother, and about the whole complicated mess with McQuaig. Had she thought that she could simply dismiss what had happened with Bruce? Had she really believed that she could decide it was honest and natural and then get on with her life? She might have moved in the sophisticated, jaded levels of society where sex was as shallow and as meaningless as the phony smiles, but she had never been like that. And she had left it behind. At least, she had believed that she had left it behind. Or was she only trying to soothe her belated sense of morality by considering there might have been more than blind, physical desire involved in what happened with Bruce?