False Hope (False #2)

by Meli Raine

  Lily looks at President Bosworth. “Maybe he’s just doing that work for you?” Her voice goes up, the question like a burn. “Maybe he’s just doing his job?” she asks, giving Silas a similar look. “But all it feels like is a creeper coming along when I’m disabled and barely finding my way back to living after some asshole decided that he had the right to take my life. I don’t care that he thought I was Jane. Jane doesn’t care that he thought I was Jane. None of that matters. What matters,” she says, her finger out, pointing directly at the president of the United States, “is that the head of your security team is creeping on my fifteen-year-old little sister, weaseling his way into my life, all because he’s convinced that I remember a traumatic event that I have no way of remembering because I was shot in the back of my fu–my head.”

  Her fingertips go to the edges of her lips. “Pardon the profanity, Mr. President.” Pink cheeks and lowered eyes make it clear she's really embarrassed.

  The room is filled with nothing but the sound of our collective breaths. No one is in sync. It’s a cacophony of hushed sounds as we wait to see what the president says.

  Slowly, hawk-like, he turns and looks at his head of security. “Czaky,” he says, his tongue moving to the edge of his mouth, rolling slightly into a tight ball, “you pick her little sister up from high school and give her rides home?”

  “Sir, I’ve taken her mother to the dry cleaners to pick up suits for funerals before. I've even purchased tampons for female clients. You know how this job is. We do whatever it takes to get the information that we need. To serve our mission.”

  “And your mission includes my little sister?” Lily pipes up.

  “Your little sister is part of your family. Your family is at the center of one of the biggest violent mysteries in modern politics. And you weren’t there,” Romeo says, taking one step closer to Lily.

  She doesn’t flinch.

  I nearly do.

  “You weren’t there,” he repeats, “to watch your brother and sister cry their eyes out every night while your parents slept by your bedside in that hospital.” He starts to shake with emotion.

  Too bad it’s all manufactured.

  “You weren’t there, Miss Lily, when Bee wailed and sobbed in your father’s arms, while I got cups of coffee to keep them going through the night. You weren’t there for the thousands of man-hours that I put into this case to make absolutely sure that Jane, the president’s daughter, was as safe as possible from the corrupt network of people who somehow made a decision that she needed to be annihilated.”

  Jane bristles at the mention of her name.

  “And you weren’t there,” Czaky says, looking at me, “the day that I saved her from Nolan Corning. So, sir,” he says, turning back to Bosworth, “yes, I gave a fifteen-year-old girl rides home from high school to her house, or to The Thorn Poke, so that her parents didn’t have to spend as much energy worrying about her as they did about the daughter who was shot in the back of the head in a case of mistaken identity, where the killer was trying to kill—” His words cut off as he looks at Jane, standing over her, their eyes connected in a creepy dance.

  “To kill the daughter of the president of the United States.”

  Chapter 6

  A slow clap, sickening in its mockery, greets his words after a few beats. It’s a cleansing sound, like hitting reboot after a computer crashes.

  “You’re right. I wasn’t there. Except I was.” Lily's mouth curls up in a snarl. “I was there, in the room, in a coma. I was there, on the bed. I was there. Maybe I was nothing but a surface to you,” she spits out. “An assemblage of pieces of meat kept alive by blood pumped through me. My breath had to come from a motorized machine, but by God, I was there.”

  Jane reaches for Lily’s hand in a gesture of support.

  Lily snatches her fingers away.

  “Don’t you dare lecture me about who was there!” she shouts at Romeo. The two Secret Service agents exchange glances. Shuffling sounds in the hall make it clear the president's other guards are deciding what to do next. Romeo looks up and gives them some kind of signal through the glass panel.

  They back away.

  “You don’t care about me, or my mom and dad, or my brother and sister. You care about your mission, don’t you?” Pure, righteous glory radiates out of her. It’s blinding.

  So blinding, President Bosworth narrows his eyes.

  “And you, sir,” she says to him. “Were you the one who directed Romeo's mission?”

  Pandemonium kicks off, the sound of Romeo shouting at Silas, of Bosworth’s now-chief of staff, Marshall Josephs, coming into the room. The blond ex-basketball player is a formidable opponent in an argument. He’s got a soft paunch and a hard face. In seconds, he assesses the room, takes a seat next to the president, and whispers in his ear.

  Bosworth freezes.

  Then looks right at me.

  “Who do you really work for, Duff? My son-in-law tells me you’re a bit of a chimera.” Drew's his son-in-law, not Marshall, so whatever the man just hissed in Bosworth's ear has come through quite a few people in the network.

  “I’m not fictional, sir.” I pinch the skin on the back of my hand and hold it up. “See?”

  He doesn’t laugh. “You joined the firm with a background that’s pretty extraordinary. Sent into combat at eighteen. A kill number that raises eyebrows. Military intelligence and then you disappear off the map for seven years.”

  I just stare at him.

  He’s right.

  “And now you’ve been working for Drew for three years. You’re the quiet guy who might as well be a curtain panel. You fade into the woodwork perfectly.”

  “Thank you.”

  This time, he does laugh. “You knew that was a compliment. Good. But here’s the rest: you have a mission within a mission. It’s becoming increasingly obvious.”

  “Sir, we all have a mission within a mission unless we’re Secret Service.” I look at Romeo. And even then...

  Silas squirms in his seat.

  I just told a truth I shouldn’t have.

  But it’s one we all know.

  Lily is still waiting for a direct answer to her question to the president. He doesn’t look like he has any intention of responding. He’s fixated on me, for reasons I don’t understand. I look at Romeo.

  Then again, maybe I do understand.

  “I have no mission other than protecting Lily and other clients who sign on with Drew Foster’s company,” I say, laying it all out. “I watched Jane before Lily, and clients I could name with permission before Jane. My job is to be a grunt, sir. I make sure people’s hearts keep beating.”

  “Then we have very similar jobs, Mr. McDuff,” the president says to me.

  “You have about three hundred and twenty-five million more clients than I do, sir.”

  That gets me a sarcastic curl of the lip.

  “Who ordered someone to kill Jane?” Lily asks, cutting through the bullshit in the room.

  Jane looks up at her, gratitude in her eyes for making her a priority again. At the same time, there’s a rueful look on Jane’s face. She knows that there will be no answer to Lily’s question. She knows that there is an answer.

  It’s just not coming out right now.

  “I don’t know,” the president lies.

  I know it’s a lie because if anyone knows, he does. He may not know who the killer is, but he knows who hired the killer.

  My blood runs cold. Lily's words echo through me.

  Were you the one who directed Romeo's mission?

  What if she didn't mean picking up Gwennie, inserting himself into the Thornton family’s lives?

  What if she was asking the president of the United States if he ordered a hit on his own daughter?

  “The mess involving my wife,” Bosworth starts, his voice halting as a pained expression pinches the corners of his eyes. “My wife was involved not just in the scandal that you read about in the newspaper, Lily. She had conne
ctions going back decades to some rather unsavory characters in government and in narco trafficking.”

  Nothing he’s telling us is anything we haven’t read about in the news or seen in documentaries thrown together quickly by production companies looking to make a dollar. But Lily takes it all in with a wide-eyed absorption that makes a part of me ache on her behalf.

  “Do you really think that Duff was part of it?” she asks Bosworth, leaning towards him with an earnestness that only a naïve young woman could have.

  I look at her and then I look at Jane. They’re the same age. Before the shooting, Lily did look just like Jane, at least from behind. That’s what the killer thought. And as long as he got the target, the mission was complete.

  Is that what’s going on? He needs to complete the mission? Except Lily was never the intended target. Jane was.

  Which one was the target today?

  President Bosworth watches me for the few seconds it takes to process all of this. Without looking at Lily, he addresses her question. “I don’t know who is involved in what. Part of the problem, Lily, is that when you’ve been in politics long enough, everything gets blurred.” His tone changes to one of wistful nostalgia that sounds brutally fake to my ears. “People betray you,” he continues, “and they save you.” He smiles sadly. “They go behind your back and they dig knives into your shoulder blades. Hopefully a metaphorical knife in the back, but sometimes a real one, or a bullet or,” he gestures to her, “worse, what happened to you. I’m so sorry you had fourteen months of your life taken away by an act that was intended for someone else.”

  He looks at Jane.

  Silas goes tense.

  “You were both there,” the president says to me, then Romeo. “Duff was closer. Romeo was seconds behind, from what the report says. Of course, you, Lily–and you, Jane, were there as well. It’s only you four who know what really happened.”

  “And the fifth,” Lily adds. “Don’t forget the fifth person in all of this.”

  I force myself to keep my eyes on Bosworth and not look at Romeo.

  This situation has become a strange math equation. When does five equal four? Apparently it does now. But that’s the kind of math that makes me suspicious. Men in Bosworth’s role don’t make mistakes like that.

  Marshall whispers in the president’s ear, sliding a piece of paper across to him. It’s half written on, with extremely slanted, almost horizontal cursive in the margins. “We have other meetings to attend, sir,” he says to Bosworth with a raised eyebrow. “You’re already late.”

  Bosworth looks at Lily. “You really have no more memories?”

  “No, sir.”

  He looks at me. “And no new evidence?”

  “No, sir,” I echo. He doesn’t ask Romeo the same question.

  Turning to Silas, the president gives him a meaningful look. “What are you doing to prevent another shooter from trying to kill my daughter?”

  “Everything in my power, sir,” Silas says.

  It’s a standard answer. It’s what everyone wants to hear.

  Best of all, it’s true.

  “This does not look good,” Bosworth says to Silas.

  Marshall nods, a short, staccato movement. Bosworth catches it, face filled with chagrin.

  “It’s not public knowledge yet that Jane’s my daughter. We need to keep it that way,” Bosworth says, glancing at Lily, who nods.

  “Of course not, sir,” she says. “I would never say a word.”

  “But if it did get out there, it would be even worse, knowing that someone is trying to kill her again,” Bosworth says, looking up at Romeo. “Maybe I should assign you to cover Jane.”

  “Sir,” Silas says, his voice firm. “I’ve already got it covered.”

  “You had it covered today, and look what happened,” Bosworth says, his arm going out in a gesture that seems to point to me.

  “Harry,” Silas says, breaking protocol and calling the president by his first name. “We lost a man out there. This was designed to look like a gang shooting. It was a set up. It wasn’t a mistake on our part.”

  “I don’t give a shit whose mistake it was or what kind of set up it looks like, the bottom line is that my daughter almost died yet again today. Lily almost died again today, and all of this is somehow connected to the mess Monica created and left for me.” He stares Silas down. “Fix it.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “I don’t care how simple or how hard it is. Fix it. That’s your job, and if you can’t fix it, I’ll find people who can.”

  Romeo smirks at me as he, Bosworth, and Marshall file out of the room.

  I reach for Lily’s shoulder. She’s shaking.

  “Well, that was fun,” Jane says under her breath.

  “You and I have a different idea of fun,” Lily says.

  Jane snorts.

  “Is he always like that?” she asks, beseeching Jane with a look that says Please tell me no.

  “Are you always like that?” Jane replies, giving Lily a once-over that says she’s re-evaluating her. “That was one hell of a speech.”

  “What speech?”

  “The way you talked to Romeo. Good for you.”

  “What do you mean, good for me? I was just trying to tell the truth. The guy’s a jerk and then he’s accusing Duff, like it’s Duff’s fault that I got shot.”

  “He had a point,” Silas says.

  All of us turn and look at him. But I’m the one he’s looking at. “You were there. You think I don’t know that?” Our eyes meet.

  He's feeling me out.

  “Of course I know you know that. Bosworth’s going to evaluate that when he’s looking at the whole situation. I know you've already examined my role. Romeo appeared out of nowhere during the shift change at the flower shop and he came in time to help. That’s all I know.”

  Lily studies me like she knows I’m lying.

  I look back at her.

  That makes two of us.

  “Do people really suspect Duff?” Jane asks, looking at Silas like his face will reveal the truth.

  He shrugs. “People suspect everyone. That’s how this game works.”

  There’s that word again: game.

  Except this time it’s a false game and it’s all based on a false memory.

  But here’s the deeper issue: As Lily walks out of the room ahead of me, I watch the way her hair rests against the nape of her neck. How she moves, just slowly enough as she sets pressure on her right foot, to make me remember how injured she was.

  Here’s the other issue: that kiss.

  I should be worried about Romeo pointing the finger at me. I should be worried about Bosworth interrogating me. I should be worried about the shooter randomly targeting people and setting everything up to be fake. I should be focused on my job. And I am.

  That kiss—that kiss was part of my job.

  But it was also part of me.

  Bosworth and Romeo are worried about memories. Lily’s running around like she has no memories, or worse–false memories.

  And me?

  What if it turns out I’m just living with false hope?

  Chapter 7

  The ride home is long and cold, like the air changed after a freak rainstorm. The kind you expect to cleanse and renew but instead it leaves messy yards, hail damage on cars, and flooding that wreaks havoc.

  Silas took Jane home in a separate vehicle. I’m taking Lily wherever she wants to go. She’s so quiet, the hug goodbye from Jane lingering in the way she holds her body. Her limbs look like they’ve given up. Like everything good in the world is long gone.

  Her stillness is a problem.

  Lily is the epitome of movement. All those long months in that hospital bed were an anomaly.

  “You want me off your detail?” I ask again, making sure she understands I’m not the enemy as we drive in the direction of her house. I shrugged off Mike, the driver assigned to us. It took some arguing, but once we got to the outer gate
of the president's private home, this place they call The Grove, I won.

  “I should.”

  “Do you?”

  “No. I trust you more than Romeo.”

  “That’s not saying much.”

  “Good of you to realize that.”

  “Are we going to talk about that kiss?”

  “What kiss?”

  She makes me laugh. Only Lily could make me laugh at a moment like this.

  A part of me feels like I should apologize. I don’t. Apologizing could make her think that I’m taking back the intention.

  And that’s the last thing I want.

  That kiss was full of crystal-clear purpose. The lingering question is: was her purpose the same as mine?

  “Do you really think I might be working for someone?” she asks. I pull the car over to the curb, leaving the engine idling. “You know I’m not a spy. I don’t do what you guys do.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why would you question it?” she asks.

  “Because we have to. That’s how it works. And because of what happened to Gentian.”

  “What happened to Silas?”

  I know Jane knows what happened to her boyfriend’s fiancée, but sitting here in the car, I realize Lily has no idea. Is it worth breaking confidentiality to explain that the man fell in love with a woman who turned out to be a double agent?

  That he had to kill his own fiancée in the line of duty to save high-ranking government officials?

  The thought freezes me. Not much sends me into a state of paralysis, but this does. For a split second I am Silas Gentian. I am staring at the woman I’ve fallen for. I am holding a gun to her head. I am pulling the trigger in order to save other lives.

  How did he do it?

  How does anyone do it?

  As Lily stares at me, how does she entertain the thought that I’m the one who held a gun to her head? Who pulled the trigger?