Liquid Lies

by Hanna Martine

  The fact that he thought the Tedrans and the product two separate things set her blood afire.

  She slammed the key into the padlock, wrenched the lock apart, and yanked on the door handle. The trailer door rattled and clanged as it rolled up.

  She saw Reed’s boots first. Such a silly thing, but she’d know them anywhere, those beat-up workman’s boots with the fat laces and thick soles. The door kept rising, revealing him inch by inch. Powerful legs clad in dirty jeans. Expansive chest and strong shoulders covered by a black, long-sleeved shirt and an unzipped fleece jacket—what he’d been wearing the last time she’d seen him. Fists bound by neutralizer handcuffs. Sharp blue eyes staring down at her in quiet disbelief.

  He was literally an angel appearing out of the dark. And like something heavenly or otherworldly, she didn’t quite believe he was standing there before her. Her chest went tight with the sight of him. Her head spun.

  Reed jumped off the truck, a lion leaping from its trap, sprung by the mouse. Though his hands were bound, he landed easily. Straightening, they stared at each other. Less than two days apart and it felt like two years. It had been eons since they’d touched, since she’d heard his voice.

  A surge of emotion cascaded over her. As powerful as the moment when they’d lunged for each other in the lake house’s bathroom. As unrelenting as ocean waves.

  She didn’t see the same on his face. Just a hard, impenetrable expression and heart-rending wariness. God, what he must think of her.

  “Reed, about the Plant…”

  Gunfire popped all around. Reed impatiently rattled his handcuffs as he peered over her shoulder. “No time for that. Unlock me.”

  She trapped the gun between her knees and, with shaking hands, paged through the keys to find the one for his cuffs.

  “We came for the Tedrans.” She glanced up at him. He was beautiful and scary, all coiled with purpose and calculation, like that moment in the alley when she’d first seen him. “And I came for you.”

  The cuffs fell to the pavement with a clatter. His eyes flickered to his watch on her wrist and he went still.

  They faced each other, physically unfettered but a sea of unspoken words swimming between them.

  The gunfire rose and rose. Reed shook his head, focus replacing emotion. “Secure the caravan?” he said. “That’s the idea?”

  “Yeah. Disable the guards and it’s ours.” She jerked her chin to the hilly roadside. “Griffin’s up there, wounded. We only have nine total.” She remembered Zoe with a pang. “Maybe eight.”

  Reed scratched the heavy stubble on his cheek. “They’ve got eighteen.”

  Of course he’d have paid attention to that. “They’re down a few, but we’re not aiming to kill.”

  He seemed a little disappointed at that. “Got it. Weapons?”

  She loosed the one between her knees and held it out. “This one has nelicoda bullets.” Then pointed to the one in the gravel. “That one doesn’t.”

  He looked at her funny for a moment. He still didn’t know nelicoda’s purpose. Another obstacle between them. A big one.

  He checked the bullet chambers of each gun and swore. Sidling to the edge of the semi-trailer, he ventured one lightning-quick peek around the corner.

  “Don’t move from this spot until I call for you.”

  And then he was gone. Again.

  The gunfire escalated. She heard Reed shouting for Griffin, and Griffin answering. Against the truck, she squeezed shut her eyes, imagining them both safe.

  With a sickening lurch of her heart, she thought of what Griffin had insinuated back in the diner. What she’d feared even as she’d spilled everything to Reed. Her Primary didn’t just know about Secondaries now. He was a part of them. Among them.

  Her next battle would be to save his life.

  “Gwen.”

  She whirled. Xavier had come down from the trailer. She never thought she’d be so happy to see his artful good looks and mistrustful eyes. Despite what was going on at her back, she smiled, because his eyes were no longer mistrustful.

  He couldn’t speak for several long moments. “You came for us.”

  “I promised you I would.”

  All the Tedrans inside pressed to the front of the trailer, quiet in their fear of what lay outside. The little green lights of their neutralizers glowed like sickly fireflies.

  Xavier lifted his hands. “These handcuffs are new since I escaped. We didn’t know…if we’d have tried to go through with Nora’s plan, it wouldn’t have worked.”

  Without thinking, Gwen touched his arm. When he didn’t recoil, she gave him a reassuring squeeze.

  A lithe figure in loose, pale clothing stepped to the edge of the trailer bed. Chin lifted, Nora looked down her nose at Gwen, as if they were back in the lake house and she still had the right.

  Gwen looked her former captor right in the eye and pointed to the hilltop. “Genesai is up there. Waiting to take you home. All of you.”

  “The fighting? What’s going on?” Xavier asked.

  She thought back to their conversation on the terrace steps, where she’d confronted him about buying into Nora’s my-way-or-the-highway bullshit.

  She looked up at him sadly. “I’m as much a pariah to my people as you are. But I’m going to change that.”

  “You think you’ll change,” Nora spit. “But you won’t.”

  The gunfire abruptly stopped.

  “Gwen!” Reed’s voice cut through the night.

  She scrambled for the key to Xavier’s cuffs and pointed to the wounded Ofarian guard on the ground. “Bring him,” she told Xavier, then dashed out onto the battlefield, not thinking to check if it was safe, trusting Reed implicitly.

  The Ofarian guards had been herded up against one of the SUVs. The barrier of the skewed Mendacia truck kept them packed tightly together. Most clutched their wounded parts, moaning. Some sat with hands behind their heads, glaring. Xavier added the one Gwen had shot to the pile, then backed away fast, watching the scene with wide eyes.

  A pile of confiscated weapons and radios lay in the roadside ditch. Other Ofarians—Gwen’s Ofarians—surrounded the captives. Seven of their original nine. She didn’t see Zoe. But David was there, and Griffin, pressing his wounded arm to his side. He needed to get to a doctor, but the Ofarian ones were all back in San Francisco. The Plant had had doctors, but they weren’t among the captured guards or sitting with the Tedrans in the semi.

  Gwen smelled a hunt to come.

  Reed stood before them all, legs spread, hand clutching the one gun she guessed hadn’t run out of bullets. He glanced her way, the mask she recognized as belonging to the Retriever firmly in place.

  A surge of elation flowed through her, making her light as air. All the desperation and isolation and fury she’d felt in Nora’s captivity—and the uselessness she’d despaired over while trapped in her father’s manor—all seemed so very far away. Victory was within her reach. They just needed to get to the lake.

  She nodded at Reed, so very, very grateful for everything he’d done. All that he’d sacrificed. But he just tightened his lips and returned his attention to his targets.

  And she realized, with a suddenness that sent her reeling, that she had used him. Why else would she have asked for his help in the first place, if she hadn’t wanted his strength, his abilities?

  “What now?” Griffin asked behind her.

  Inventory, she thought. She headed for the Mendacia van.

  She never actually got there.

  One of the caravan guards grabbed her as she passed. He was fast, too fast even for Griffin and Reed. The guard rolled to his feet, smashing her body against his chest, a knife point pricking the skin just below her ear.

  Reed’s gun swept around, but it was too late.

  “Stay where you are,” snapped the guard. “We don’t want you. Just her.”

  There was something familiar about his voice. She didn’t have time to think on it, however, because he whistled and t
he rear doors of the Mendacia van opened.

  Her father stepped out.

  THIRTY-NINE

  “Gwen.” Keep her calm, Reed thought. She needed her head to get out of this, and she had one of the best minds he knew. “Gwen.”

  Her eyes finally found his, but she still clawed at the arm of the guy holding a knife to her throat, panic twitching through her body.

  “That’s it,” Reed told her, nice and easy. “Keep looking at me. Keep it together.”

  She didn’t let go of the asshole’s arm, but the longer she looked at Reed, the easier and steadier her breathing became.

  Jesus, what she’d done tonight…She’d escaped from Nora, gone back to San Francisco, been reunited with her people, and then risked her life to go against them and do what she believed was right. He’d never doubted her conviction, just his role in her plan, especially since she’d kept him locked in the Plant.

  And what had been the first thing she’d done when Griffin and his team teetered on the brink of defeat? She’d come to Reed looking for help. Is that all he was good for to her?

  Yet she was wearing his watch.

  “Dad,” Gwen begged the man who’d emerged from the van. “Dad, you don’t have to do this.”

  An eerie quiet fell over the scene. Every Ofarian—those captured, those holding guns—watched Gwen’s father in expectation. Reed got the feeling that in any other situation, they might have bowed. Even Griffin looked doubtful. Fearful.

  Strange, but the Chairman looked incredibly young, late forties at best. He took a few steps toward his daughter, hands in his pockets, the corners of his eyes drawn down in distress. “I did listen to you, Gwennie. And now I’m doing what’s best for our people. That will always be my priority. As it should be yours.” The look he gave the soldier holding Gwen was filled with regret and heartache. “You were right, Jonah.”

  The soldier said something in that strange, rolling language Gwen had used back in the lake house bedroom, the one that reminded Reed of water tripping over stones. The soldier’s body and face shivered, shifting between illusion and reality, the way Gwen’s had done that night when she’d revealed everything. The soldier disappeared; in his place stood a middle-aged man in sleek trousers and a pricey sweater.

  The sight of this guy—Jonah, apparently—lit a fire under Gwen’s ass. The fear in her expression switched to loathing, and she started to struggle again. Jonah said something in Ofarian in her ear. The knife pricked her skin, drawing blood, and she went still. The fight burned strongly in her eyes, though. Good girl.

  “Right about what?” she spit at her father.

  “I told him you’d pull in Griffin,” Jonah sneered. “That Griffin’s pathetic love for you would obliterate any intelligence or Ofarian loyalty.”

  Reed snuck a glance at Griffin, whose face had gone red with rage.

  The Chairman held up a hand. “I had to know if we could trust the protector of the Translator—and head of my security force—to not let his emotions get in the way.” He slowly came forward, and he did not look happy about this scene at all. Not angry, just sad and disappointed. “I would not call it pathetic, but love is the reason why we rely on our marriage system. Love is too unpredictable. Marriage is deliberately based on advantage, not emotions.”

  “You can’t just ignore emotions,” Gwen said.

  The Chairman gestured to the hill. “And look how you’ve compromised Griffin and David, and all the others.”

  “I’d do this again,” Griffin said, shifting his gun from Jonah to the Chairman, “knowing what I know now. Gwen is better than all of us combined.”

  Reed searched Gwen’s face for a reaction, but she was focused solely on her dad.

  Jonah started to wrangle her backward toward the van. He’d been hit in the leg during the firefight and limped. “I was wrong about one thing,” Jonah said to her. “I thought you’d go for the kill.” He used his chin to indicate the injured Ofarian soldiers still writhing on the ground. “You know, eye for an eye.”

  “I’m not like you,” she snarled.

  Jonah was trying to get Gwen into one of the SUVs, Reed realized. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

  Reed inched to the right, improving his target angle on Jonah. “Stop. Right now.”

  Jonah raised his eyebrows, his tanned skin wrinkling over his forehead. “Shoot me and the knife goes in.”

  “Jonah, no!” The Chairman thrust out a hand.

  “You won’t hurt me,” Gwen blurted. “I’m the only Translator you’ve got.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Reed told Jonah. “I’m just one of the people here with a gun and they’re all on you. You’re outnumbered. Let her go or this ends badly for you.”

  The Chairman reached for something in his pocket. Reed swiveled, barrel aimed at Gwen’s dad.

  “I’m on Jonah,” Griffin said behind him.

  Good, because Reed wanted the man who’d manipulate and sell out his own daughter.

  The Chairman whipped out a phone. “I didn’t want to do this, Gwennie. I really, really didn’t.” He pressed a button. “Reinforcements.”

  The Ofarian called David pivoted and ran a short distance up the hill, binoculars to his eyes. No headlights yet, but they’d come.

  “So this was all a test?” Gwen’s voice had evened out into the deep, hard tone of someone seriously pissed off. She’d gotten her spark back, that defiance he’d witnessed the night he’d tied her up in the back of Nora’s van. Hold on to that, Reed silently ordered her. Use it.

  “Yes,” Jonah said, sweeping a satisfied look over Griffin and his team. “To weed out the traitors.”

  The Chairman moved closer to his daughter. Reed could see the emotional battle in her expression: disgust fought with love.

  “The protest ends tonight, Gwen,” the Chairman said. “You will come back to the city with me. Be a part of the people you love. Lead them. If you do that, we’ll pardon the treason. Please. Please don’t make me lose a second daughter.”

  The Chairman looked on the verge of tears, but Gwen was spitting mad. She struggled again. A stripe of blood wept from the cut by her ear and stained the neck of her sweater. Jonah clung to her, clearly vacillating between wanting to hurt her and appeasing his Chairman.

  Through it all, Reed watched Gwen make her move. Her struggle masked the movement of her hand as it worked its way into her pocket. Man, she was brilliant. Courageous. What did she have in there? Gun? Knife?

  “Mendacia is wrong.” She pulled hard against Jonah’s clutch. Whatever she had in that pocket was now in her hand; Reed could see the bulge of her fist through the cream-colored knit. “Everything about it is wrong. Don’t you have any sense of guilt? That truck is filled with people, not product.”

  The Chairman’s face frosted over. “They’re paying for their ancestors’ atrocities.”

  “You believe in lies!” she shouted.

  If there had been an Ofarian on that road who hadn’t already been staring at the Chairman and his daughter, they did so now.

  Gwen looked into the upturned faces of the soldiers. Her voice carried easily, surely. “We’ve all believed the lies. Our ancestors saw in the Tedrans the same thing you see now: profit. Even on Tedra we used them. No, we were not their slaves. No, we did not revolt and instigate the war. It’s always been the other way around. Our people rewrote history to satisfy themselves.”

  No one moved. Not the Chairman, not Jonah. Now, Reed wanted to shout to Gwen. Get away while he’s distracted. Reed would shoot Jonah if he knew that was what she wanted, but this was her op and she clearly had a plan.

  She gazed into the eyes of the guards. The injured men and women exchanged questioning glances and looked up at the Chairman. They wondered if his own daughter spoke the truth. She’d planted the seed of doubt and Reed thought it was a clever strategy.

  “Shut up,” Jonah said, regaining his focus and pulling her back toward the van.

  But her dad edged closer, eyes
narrowed. “Why should we believe you? Why should we believe what you say over what’s been passed down through generations? What gives you the right to question what can’t be proved?”

  “There’s a woman in that truck who remembers. She was on Tedra when it all happened. She was part of the immigration here. She knows.”

  Jonah snorted. The Chairman went eerily still. Several Ofarian soldiers craned their necks toward the semi.

  “That woman kidnapped me,” Gwen said. She was so strong. So lovely. “She wanted me to destroy you and the Board to bring about change. But I believe in our ability to change ourselves. No more death. No more lies.”

  “Our people have built their lives around Mendacia,” the Chairman said. “You can’t just rip it away from them.”

  “Wrong. Our people have built their lives around what makes us different from Primaries. We want to be special. We want to be proud of our culture and uphold its secrecy. We can do that without Mendacia.”

  “No, Gwen. It’s the cornerstone of our existence.”

  “You and the Board have used our fear of the Primary world to lasso us into your control. You’ve allowed so few Ofarians to work in the Primary world, and those that do still answer to the Company. You’ve arranged it so the Ofarian teachers and bankers and construction workers are all dependent on the success of Mendacia. Only when the Company did well, did they do well, too. And you think that because of this, we will throw our conscience into the gutter to maintain the status quo. But do you know what I think? I think that the Board has kept the secret behind Mendacia for so long because you knew that if the Ofarians ever found out, they’d turn on you. End it all.”

  “No. They’d turn the other cheek and hold out their hands for their paycheck.”

  She gasped. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

  The Chairman lifted his chin and Reed saw where Gwen had learned that little gesture.

  “Well,” she said. “Let’s test that theory.”

  Jonah chuckled and glanced down the road. “That’s the best part of your little speech. They’ll never find out.”