Liquid Lies

by Hanna Martine

  She took two deep breaths before biting out, “You’re such a liar.”

  “I know how it looks, so I don’t expect you to believe me. But I’m asking you to.”

  She raised her face to the dark roof, exposing her neck. “Why do you even care at this point?”

  She didn’t wear a necklace or earrings, so this long column of golden skin captured his attention. “Because I really was interested in you, Gwen.”

  When her head tilted back down, he found he’d moved in even closer, enough that his knee brushed hers. “I liked our connection. I liked our conversation,” he murmured. “I wanted you. And I’m pretty sure you wanted me, too.”

  “Stop confusing me. I hate you.”

  What the fuck was he saying? The wall had caved in without him knowing. That had never, ever happened before. With terrific force, he evicted Reed from his mind. Slam. Lock. Up went the wall.

  He pushed himself away and resumed his seat on the opposite side of the van. It was colder over there, but his head was clearer.

  Suddenly Adine, the driver, let up on the gas. The van slowed then swerved gently to the right, onto the highway shoulder. He’d told Gwen the truth; he had no idea where they were taking her. But he doubted pulling over on the side of the road was part of it, considering he hadn’t given another warning knock. The van stopped, the engine idling. No one got out.

  Red and blue flashing lights leaked through the cracks outlining the back doors.

  Oh shit.

  When he turned to Gwen, she was already watching him. Man, her eyes were wide. Life boiled inside her, fueled by adrenaline and determination. He recognized it; he’d seen it in the alley. She was no weak-willed onlooker and she was dying to challenge him. She’d move, and when she did, it would be fast.

  Slow footsteps came around the roadside edge of the van.

  The moment Reed edged toward her, aiming to subdue, she went for it. She threw herself on the nasty carpet and drummed those sky-high heels on the metal van wall behind her. Thrashing like a fish, she screamed at the top of her lungs.

  In his head it went on for minutes. In reality, it was more like a second or two.

  She didn’t know how to fight, but she knew how to kick. He fell on top of her, slamming her against the van wall. He clamped a hand around her mouth, the heel of his palm under her chin to keep her from opening up and going for the bite. The other hand slid around her waist, keeping her pinned between himself and metal. He threw one leg over both of hers and locked his ankles together.

  The hard, sharp breaths through her nose heated his fingers. Though her muscles slackened, there was no resignation in those huge, dark eyes. She stopped fighting because she knew she’d won.

  Fuck fuck fuck. Reed couldn’t get control of his pulse. Fifteen years and he’d never come up against anything like this. Fifteen years and he’d never once been busted. For anything.

  The cop’s muffled voice filtered into the back. He seemed calm, casual. Reed heard Xavier’s voice, too, but mostly Adine did the talking. He couldn’t make out any words.

  Any second now. Any second, those doors will open and I’m a dead man.

  The cop patted the van’s driver’s side door. The footsteps retreated. Toward the back.

  Beneath him, Gwen’s body shook and the dim flashlight beam caught the mirth in her eyes. She was laughing at him. At his demise.

  But didn’t he deserve it? After all this time, all this tempting of fate and giving in to his vice, this was what it would come down to. He’d known it for years and thought himself untouchable. Smart enough to be above it.

  No longer.

  In his panic, Reed lost track of the footsteps. Was the cop standing just outside? Was he calling in the vehicle?

  Gwen’s head, with that mass of thick, gold hair, lolled against his forearm, her face turned up to his. Never, not once, did he consider releasing her.

  The van doors never opened. The footsteps walked away. The police car’s door slammed shut, and the cruiser pulled back out onto the highway, taking the slow circle of the flashing lights with it.

  The van jerked as Adine threw it back into drive. Slowly—clearly waiting for the cruiser to get a good head start—they rolled back onto the road.

  Reed’s face dropped into the warm slope of Gwen’s neck. “Holy shit. Oh, my God. They must’ve paid the cop off.” He sagged into her, every contracted muscle losing its tension at once.

  She bit his loosened hand. It didn’t have the effect she wanted. He growled and tightened his hold around her body.

  Her eyes were wild—beyond tears, beyond sorrow, beyond hopelessness. “Get. Off. Me.”

  “No.” He changed the position of his ankles, dragging her even closer. “Didn’t work out quite the way you expected it to, did it?”

  For once, she was silent, and it disturbed him more than he wanted to admit.

  “Look,” he went on. “My job is to deliver you to them safely. They’ve paid me some serious cash and they’ve promised not to harm you. I’m going to make sure they uphold their end of the bargain. But that”—he released his viselike hold on her and pushed back, coming to his knees over her body—“that little stunt won’t happen again.”

  He expected a fight, a smart remark. In a way, it was what he wanted.

  What he got were her first tears.

  ELEVEN

  Daylight outlined the van’s double doors. Gwen had fallen asleep; her body rocked with the swerving van. Reed wouldn’t shut his eyes until the job was done.

  After the cop incident, they’d climbed steadily up a mountainside and now they were descending, the vehicle making wide, gentle curves. It stopped every now and again—streetlights and stop signs. Could be anywhere in California.

  The van made a sudden sharp turn and plunged down a steep incline, so steep Reed thrust out a boot heel to keep himself steady. Gwen’s body slid toward the doors, but he grabbed her shoulders before she could hit the metal. The jolt woke her up. She looked blearily up at him as the van flattened out and came to a complete stop. Adine cut the engine.

  Reed took his hands off Gwen and popped into a crouch. Showtime.

  “Where are we?” Red streaked across her eyes. Makeup smeared all over her face.

  The Retriever shrugged. “Not my business to know.”

  “Retrieve and deliver, right?” she snapped. “And then you’re out? Must be payday.”

  Not meaning to, he frowned.

  “Having second thoughts?”

  There she went again, her presence a mighty hammer, banging away at his wall. This time it held steady. “No,” he shot back.

  The doors flew open and blinding sunlight streamed inside. Xavier braced long arms against each door and glared at Gwen. Then he snatched her ankle and pulled her out.

  Reed was supposed to step back now. Got it.

  The ground was loose gravel, and Gwen’s heeled boots had trouble finding purchase. Xavier gave her a shove but her tight skirt restricted her and she tripped. Fell. The tiny pebbles drew blood from her knees. She didn’t make a sound.

  Xavier threw Reed a confused look. Reed blinked. Looked down. He was reaching for Gwen and hadn’t even realized it. Disconcerted, he let Xavier lug Gwen to her feet, then drew back to survey the area.

  Three stories of cream-stuccoed mansion angled around a garden yellowing in late season. A four-car garage stood off to the right. The gravel drive circled in front of it then retreated back up a steep hill into a tangled mess of evergreens and other trees halfway into autumn. The drive was the only exit, as far as Reed could tell from this vantage point. A small hut sat just inside the trees, an armed guard leaning out the window, watching. The dense foliage made for a wickedly secluded location. A tall fence surrounded the premises. Cameras dangled from the house’s eaves, which meant somewhere there was a security control center. He’d seen plenty of compounds like this in his line of work.

  Xavier barked something to Gwen in that weird language. All Reed caug
ht was a name: Nora.

  Adine, the small, quiet woman who’d driven the van, shot past Reed, her sneakers crunching on the gravel. Head down, brown hair blanketing her face, she pulled aside a vine to the left of the heavy oak front door to access a small metal box. Reed shifted positions to see if he could get a better look. ADT had nothing on an Adine Jones creation. He’d learned all about her and her inventions after he’d traced the source of Nora’s down payment.

  One side of the double front door opened with a click and Adine ducked inside as though the sky threw down metal-spiked basketballs.

  As Xavier pulled Gwen inside, he threw over his shoulder to Reed, “She wants to see you, too.”

  And Reed wanted to see Nora to hammer home the “no kill” clause in their contract.

  He stepped from the bright, crisp, early autumn day into the pages of an upscale home decor magazine. The marble foyer dropped into a sunken living room. Wide, white-carpeted stairs extended up to his right, an archway into the immense kitchen on his left. The entire back wall of the house was made of glass, twenty feet high, and it framed a view of a cobalt blue lake, expansive and glittering in the early sunlight. A few boats drew foamy lines across the water. On the opposite shore rose white-capped mountains.

  A stone terrace wrapped around the back of the house, a cold, oval fire pit in its center. On that terrace stood a tiny, white-haired woman. Had to be Nora. Her appearance matched the voice. Nora turned from her place at the terrace wall and shuffled inside. In silent but obvious fear, Gwen watched Nora approach. Xavier gazed upon Nora with a perplexing sort of reverence.

  Nora came up the few steps from the living room, her knees shaking. She wore a billowy tunic and wide-legged pants over a bony and frail body. Her white hair was cropped close to her head, flattened on a severe side part. Wrinkles made deep crevices in her face, and loose skin hung below her chin. She stared at Gwen with eyes as hard as black diamonds.

  Xavier shoved Gwen yet again and said something else in that language.

  Nora raised a terse hand to stop him mid-sentence. “Gwen Carroway,” she began in the raspy voice Reed recognized. Nora talked more in the foreign tongue, her light tone filling the quiet in the cavernous room.

  Gwen exploded. Streams of ugly, rage-filled, indecipherable words spewed from her lips. Nora took the attack unperturbed.

  Reed realized, with a great deal of shock, that Gwen had no idea who her captors were or why she’d been taken. There were too many questions in her eyes, too much panic. And when Nora had first entered, Gwen had looked upon her in utter bewilderment. Again, the script didn’t match the action. Almost everyone he’d been paid to retrieve was fully aware of the reasons behind his or her extraction. They’d feared it, expected it even. But Gwen…she was completely lost.

  He didn’t like that. Not at all.

  Nora turned to Reed. “You.” She waved a finger at Gwen. “Remove the ropes.”

  He moved behind Gwen, who stiffened. He picked methodically at the knots, knowing exactly which loop to loosen to make the whole thing fall apart.

  As the ropes fell away, she let out a small cry of relief. She winced as she brought her arms to her front and rubbed at her elbows. Reed backed away until his heels hit a wall.

  Nora barked something else to Xavier. Xavier grabbed Gwen again and tried to steer her toward the stairs, but with her arms free now, she fought him. She lashed out in English, “I don’t want to take a fucking shower. I want to know what you want with me.”

  Nora’s eyes narrowed, no longer diamonds, but icicles sharpened to deadly tips.

  Another wave of her skeletal hand and Xavier clamped his arms around Gwen from behind and dragged her up the stairs.

  Reed really, really didn’t like that.

  Any other job he’d turn his head and go back to his employer, hand outstretched for the cash. This time, he watched the whole scene—Xavier hauling a wriggling, shouting Gwen out of sight—with bile in his throat and a clamp fastened around his heart. Xavier hated her. Men who hated women gave them the worst punishments.

  What the hell sort of kidnapping was this? Ransom most likely. Gwen clearly either came from money or had made a ton on her own. If she was upper-level corporate and made international sales, maybe her company had a hefty insurance policy on her.

  It was the only explanation Reed could come up with, but it didn’t make much sense given what he’d dug up about Adine. He hadn’t been able to find anything about Nora or Xavier. It was like they didn’t exist. And he excelled in finding people who supposedly didn’t exist.

  “So,” Nora turned to him, “I finally meet the mysterious Retriever.” She smiled, but it was calculating, not remotely warm. “Or should I call you Reed. Reed Scott.”

  With that revelation, Nora snatched the playing board and tossed all the pieces in the air. He had no idea what game they were playing now, and he’d dragged Gwen into the mayhem.

  “Come.” Nora beckoned to the terrace. “We have a lot to discuss.”

  “You want to know what this is all about, don’t you?”

  Nora stood next to the raised fire pit, spotted hands laced at her waist. Her body was still as an iron rod, her mouth quirked knowingly.

  “Nah.” Reed leaned a knee into the stone and pretended to gaze out at the lake. “Not my business to know.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She barely came up to his chest, but man, did she carry her weight. “What’s going on here is highly guarded information.”

  “Told you. Don’t care. I just want my money.”

  She picked at a loose piece of rock on the pit wall. “The Retriever,” she said absently. “The dog.”

  Maybe clients had thought that before, but no one had actually ever said it to his face. Even if it were true.

  “Do you want to know how I found out your real name?”

  Couldn’t lie about that. “Yes.”

  “You made a mistake.” She lifted her black diamond eyes to him. “While you were running from Tracker.”

  Jesus, she knew about Tracker? Don’t react. Don’t tense a muscle. Don’t look away from her for a millisecond.

  “He wants you. Or more accurately, he wants the million you took from him. And then he wants your skin on his wall. But I told him he can’t have you until you’re done here.”

  How in the world could Nora and Tracker know each other? Was there some sort of twisted Yahoo Group?

  Come to think of it, this job stank of the same strangeness the Tracker job had. The same uncomfortable mystery that had made him bail with Tracker’s deposit now shrouded Nora’s job. Only he couldn’t bail. They had Gwen.

  The muscles in his jaw began to ache, and he realized he was clenching his teeth. When he unlocked them, all that came out was, “Tracker.”

  “I didn’t tell him the whole truth,” she added.

  “Oh?”

  “I’m not an evil person, Reed. What Tracker wanted with that boy was…disgusting. I don’t blame you for taking his money and skipping out. But the thing is, I can’t have you running loose. You’ve seen us.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of people. I don’t talk. Ever. Since you found me through previous clients, you know that.”

  She pursed her lips and tilted her head. “I’m willing to believe you, given your record, but I need assurance. Keep quiet and loyal to us, and Tracker won’t ever know your real name.”

  Sounded so easy. But not quite. “I need assurance, too,” he said with a nod toward the house, “that the target won’t be hurt.”

  She thought him a fool; he saw it in the condescending flash in her eye. Let her think he was stupid hired muscle, that he didn’t know what he was doing or talking about.

  She pressed a hand to her chest. “We have a contract. That was one of your stipulations. I promise Ms. Carroway will get through this alive. She’s no use to us dead.”

  He hid a smile. Nora had no clue he knew about Adine, the weight and value of the information he held over their little group. If an
ything happened to Gwen, he’d have Nora by the balls, so to speak.

  “Good. So with that in mind,” he added, because he wasn’t about to let her have the last say, “I have a proposition.”

  TWELVE

  Xavier released Gwen at the end of the long second-floor cor-ridor. A small set of winding stairs led up to the third floor. The Tedran blocked the way back downstairs; the only way to go was up.

  On the third level, two doors stood on the same side of a narrow hallway. It’d probably been an attic at one point, because the slanted walls cramped in tightly. Tiny metal boxes served as the door handles and Xavier moved to the first one. Instead of using a key, he slid his watch into a square slot on top of the box and a light on the side clicked green. Before Gwen could get a better look at the watch, he tugged down his sleeve.

  “In,” he ordered with a terse nod.

  She just stood there, gazing into the plain room beyond. The steep slope of the roof made it feel smaller than it was. The floors were wood and covered with colorful, mismatched throw rugs. A double bed was shoved against the far wall, just under a triangular window that looked out over the glittering lake. Bleach-white linens, white iron bed, white dresser, white walls and trim…the decor gave her cell this false sense of little-girl innocence that made her want to vomit all over again.

  It smelled of new paint. So they’d prepared this place just for her. How hideous. She reached up and ran a hand down the steep slant of the ceiling.

  Xavier hovered in the doorway. Not even his big toe crossed the threshold. “Clothes are in the armoire. Shower’s through there. Knock when you’re done.”

  Though it was warm in that uppermost floor, Gwen wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. Her voice sounded as ragged as she felt. “How’d you get the cop to leave us alone?”