False Hope (False #2)

by Meli Raine

  “Which part is that?”

  “It’s actually not even here in the house. It’s Alice’s old studio.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “It’s on the right side of the house, under the pergola.”

  “Wait a minute.” Lily halts as her foot hits the first step of the large entrance. “You have all this and you choose to live in a little guest house behind it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Silas gives Lily a smile. “I’ve been saying the same thing to her myself.”

  “I like what I like,” Jane shrugs.

  “No kidding.”

  The kiss he gives Jane on the temple changes the air around us. Lily tenses, but then relaxes more.

  “Let’s get you inside,” I say, my hand going between her shoulder blades. The gentle nudge is more than enough to get her to move. This place is crawling with plenty of security, but after the shooting at the coffee shop, no place feels secure.

  Having her stay at my apartment was an emergency measure. Having her here is smart strategy.

  Jane takes us through the large foyer and straight through to the back of the house. We cut to the right through a small rock garden, and then there it is: Alice’s old studio.

  The word studio doesn’t do it justice. It’s a three-bedroom guest house with a full kitchen, three and a half baths, and an enormous living room designed for large-scale painting. Alice was an oil painter. As we step into the studio, the paint smell hits me, taking me back too far.

  Way too far.

  “This is where you live?” Lily’s eyes jump between Silas and Jane, her implication clear: The “you” means both of them.

  “Yes,” Jane says, going over to the kitchen. She reaches into the refrigerator and pulls out a pitcher of lemonade with a sprig of mint floating on top. “Lemonade?” she asks Lily.

  “Sure.”

  “Vodka?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “You want a vodka lemonade?”

  Lily looks at the clock. “It’s not even four here. And in California it's even earlier.”

  “Alice always drank vodka with her lemonade.” Jane frowns. “Not always, but most of the time.”

  “Do you have to do everything that Alice did?” Lily asks. “Is it a requirement for inheriting all of this?”

  Silas bites his lower lip and tries not to laugh.

  “No, there are no requirements on the will. I inherited it all free and clear.” Jane pours a shot of vodka into two of the four glasses, and then fills them all with lemonade. She knows not to add vodka to Silas’s and mine. We’d both reject it. You have to stay sharp when you’re on duty. Silas’s passing on the vodka tells me everything I need to know about this trip.

  We’re on duty 24/7.

  Lily accepts her glass with a surprisingly steady hand and sips gingerly. Her eyes light up.

  “That’s really good.”

  “There’s lavender and mint in there,” Jane tells her.

  The domestic nature of the scene is jarring. On the surface, we’re two men and two women having a glass of lemonade as we stay out of the Texas afternoon sun on a ranch that’s as beautiful as it is functional. That’s all you would see if you looked at the surface. Underneath, the layers teem and roil with controversy, with mortality, with scandal.

  Then again, the same could be said for Alice Mogrett.

  I take in the room. The furniture is exactly as it was two years ago, though Jane has different lamps, and framed photos of her and Silas's families dot the flat surfaces. Silas's seven-year-old niece, Kelly, grins a gap-toothed smile, wet hair plastering her face as she plays on a beach. An older picture of Jane and her mother, Anya, riding horses. A picture of Linda, Silas's mother, walking hand-in-hand with Kelly. A picture of Jane, Silas, and Kelly hiking on a mountaintop.

  A happy family.

  If you didn't know the pain and loss they've all endured in the last three years, you'd think they live perfect lives. Jane's mother died in jail, Kelly's mother–Silas's sister, Tricia–died of a heroin overdose. And of course Tricia was also Linda’s daughter.

  But the photos tell a different story. A new one. One with a future that isn't suffocated by the past.

  Maybe the phoenix really can rise from the ashes, reborn.

  I blink, hard.

  Lily’s halfway through her drink before I hear her sigh. Jane leads us over to one of the sitting areas in the big, open space. She’s left all of the artwork up, including a couple of nude paintings of Jane herself.

  Doesn’t take long for Lily to notice.

  Her eyes go wide, lips parting. She can’t help but stare. Her hand holds the thin iced-tea glass full of lemonade. She fixes on the large painting in front of her, her head tipped up to the sky like a child enjoying a sudden rainburst. She’s too polite to ask, and Silas and Jane share an amused look.

  “Like the art?” Jane asks in a voice that’s half joking, half embarrassed.

  “That’s you!”

  “Yes.”

  “Alice Mogrett painted you?”

  “You knew that, didn’t you?”

  A head shake. More wide eyes. “I know who she is. I know she was your teacher and friend. But you never mentioned...” Lily points to the painting, “...that.”

  “Does it make you uncomfortable?” I ask her quietly.

  “No. It’s beautiful. The naked body is a joyful playground,” Lily whispers to me.

  And just like that, I can’t breathe.

  Chapter 15

  “Here,” Silas says to Lily, handing her a thin, black phone. I watch, the rest of them oblivious to the internal torture I'm experiencing. That's fine.

  That's how it all works.

  My emotions don't matter. They never matter. In fact, they get in the way of my mission.

  “We got you a replacement,” he tells her. Smart man. He didn’t have to give her the device right at this moment, but it breaks the tension.

  Or, at least, my tension.

  “Thanks. I shouldn’t have thrown my other one. How much do I owe you?” she asks him, suddenly frowning as she lets money enter her list of things to worry about.

  Silas smiles at her. “There’s no bill for anything we do for you, Lily. You know that.”

  She looks at Jane, suddenly helpless. “I don’t have a blueprint for any of this.”

  “Blueprint?”

  “You pay for everything. You paid every extra expense above basic care for fourteen months of my hospitalization. And every penny of my rehab. Mom and Dad said you offered a blanket of money.”

  Jane lets out an embarrassed huff.

  “No–really. Those were my mom's exact words. 'It's like she's giving us a blanket of money.' It covered everything, comforting and private. How can I ever repay you?”

  “Repay me?” Jane gasps. “It's my fault you're in this position in the first place.”

  “No, it's not. It's the fault of the man who shot me.”

  “We keep coming back to this loop. Over and over. I feel guilty. You feel guilty. When are we both going to let this go?” Jane asks Lily.

  “When he's caught,” I say. They turn and look at me.

  “When he's dead,” Silas adds.

  I didn't say it. He did. The boss has more leeway.

  And now I'm not on the record with that incendiary statement.

  Jane studies Lily, looking at her like her skin will magically display the answers to all the mysteries, like a tattoo that only shows when you watch it. “Romeo?” Jane asks.

  Lily doesn't react.

  But we all know.

  “I've got calls in,” Silas says, using a soothing voice, one designed to convey truth. “We're investigating.”

  “You've been doing that for more than two years,” Jane reminds him.

  “No amount of work is ever enough until the full picture is shown,” he replies. “We never would have figured out the Monica Bosworth/El Brujo connection if you hadn't found the papers in Ali
ce's personal effects.”

  “True,” Jane concedes. “Speaking of which, the papers never end. I'm still going through everything.”

  “Why?” Lily asks, clearly relieved to have something other than Romeo to talk about.

  “Donating Alice's papers to Yates University. Their archive wants them. I can't give them over until I've vetted everything.”

  “You can't hire someone to do that?”

  Grief floods Jane's face. “I–I could. But this is a way to get one last feel of Alice. It's like I'm spending time with her, right here, when I read her papers. She's in there. It's my last little bit of her.”

  Lily takes Jane's hand in her own and squeezes. “I understand.” She looks around, eyes dancing on one of the photos of Kelly. She brightens. “How is my little unicorn princess doing?”

  Silas smiles. “Second grade now. Loves the weekly spelling bee. Mom's got her settled in back home. Kelly even has the same teacher I had, back in the Dark Ages. Mrs. Monticelli.”

  “You're not that old,” Lily says to him with kindness. “I'm so, so glad she's doing well. What a sweetie.”

  “Kelly's been through the wringer. No kid should have to go through all that. Linda's made such a difference in her life,” Jane adds. “It was bad enough when my mom died, but I was an adult. I can't imagine being five and…”

  Lily puts her hand on Jane's shoulder, silent but soulful.

  Compassion. Presence. Sweetness. All the pieces of her that make me want to get closer to her are here on display, in the aftermath of Lily being shot at.

  She's taking this all better than I'd expected.

  Moving to a safe house. Being sequestered. Not seeing her parents or siblings. Not having any of the creature comforts of home. Field agents lose their center sometimes, spending too long away from a place that signals their core identity.

  Same with victims.

  Two years ago, Jane started to unravel when we had to move her from place to place for her own safety.

  Jane nods at Lily, then turns to the kitchen. “I’m going to put on a pot of coffee,” she says.

  “Do you want some help?” Lily asks, her voice tipping up. The question is less an offer and more a plea. Please give me something to do, that voice begs. Please keep me busy, that question implores.

  Please give me purpose.

  “Of course,” Jane says, giving Lily a smile that makes it clear she understands completely. If anyone knows what it’s like to be unmoored, it’s Jane. She’s been shot at, kidnapped, coerced into helping violent psychopaths in a deadly cat-and-mouse game. She’s been spat on, forced to leave public spaces, shamed, and wrongly accused. She’s been falsely arrested and her apartment has been set on fire. Through it all, she’s kept her humanity.

  That much is on display now as she talks to Lily.

  “Lindsay helped me sort some of the earlier boxes of Alice’s papers,” Jane explains as she wraps an arm around Lily’s shoulders and directs her down a hallway. “You can take her place, even if you just keep me company. We started this ritual involving coffee.” Jane’s voice gets softer as they walk away, until finally I can’t hear either woman at all.

  “She’s good,” Silas says, smirking. “That was a smooth exit.”

  “Do you mean Jane or Lily?”

  “Jane. She could tell I needed to talk to you alone.”

  “I’ve got a question for you, boss.” I lean towards him, dropping my voice out of habit. “Why did you let Lily come here?”

  Shorthand happens between people who know each other so well in the locus of a tightly knit community or experience. He knows damn well what I mean; I don’t have to say it in any other way.

  Silas nods, a series of brief up-and-down jerky movements that look like I’ve hit a nerve. “Jane insisted.”

  I shake my head. “You’d override that if you wanted to.”

  “I could’ve,” he admits. “But I didn’t.”

  “Because you want to observe Lily?”

  “No. I mean, yes,” he concedes, “but no, that wasn’t the driving force. It was Jane.”

  “Her guilt’s that bad?” I ask.

  His eyebrows go up. “Yeah, it is.”

  “Bringing her here, though, puts the entire ranch at risk,” I note.

  “Leaving Jane in the coffee shop to be riddled with bullets by guys pretending to be gang members in the middle of some battleground is pretty damn risky, too, Duff.”

  He's right, but there’s something about the ranch that makes me nervous. Raised in the city since Gran took me in when I was eleven, I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t like wide-open spaces. Never liked being on assignment in them, hated doing overseas tour duty in them, and definitely don’t like wide-open spaces inside my mind. When you don’t know where the lines are drawn, that’s where anarchy brews.

  In quiet moments, though, I have to admit the real reason why I hate the country.

  Because that's where we lived when my mom and dad died, and when my little brother disappeared.

  “See anything of note?” Silas inquires, referring to the coffee-shop scene.

  I shake myself out of the distant past. “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  I know exactly what he’s asking. Unfortunately, I have exactly nothing to give him. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Just looked exactly like what they set it up to look like–a gang-related shooting.”

  “Forensics is running tests,” he tells me. “Nolan Corning and Monica Bosworth have been dead for almost two years. El Brujo’s been dead even longer. All the major players who could have been part of this died long enough ago that their power networks should have unraveled. At least enough to slow all this down.”

  “It has slowed down,” I argue.

  “Not enough.” His voice is so close to being despondent. I have to shake my head a little to make sure I actually heard what I heard. “None of these operations really fell apart,” he says, expanding on his point. “New people move up. Power stays coalesced. You know how it works.”

  I nod. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

  He doesn’t laugh. “We’ve got security at Lily’s parents’ house and at the shop, guys stationed at the school her brother and sister attend. Whoever is after her is good,” he says to me, his voice mournful, soulful. Scratching his chin, he feels his own stubble and gives a wry grin.

  “I hope you don’t like sleep, Duff.”

  “Sir?”

  “Because we’re not getting much for the next few weeks.”

  “Weeks?”

  He makes a huffing sound. “That may be conservative. I have no idea how long this is going to go on.”

  “We never really do. People who use death as an answer don’t look at strategy or end game in the same way you and I do.”

  “Death can be a pretty powerful answer,” he insists. A haunted look crosses over his eyes, the shine of a light against his cornea otherworldly and alien.

  Furious whispering comes from down the hall behind the partly closed door. Silas hears it, too, and turns. His look is as perplexed as mine. Lily and Jane are hissing in harsh, pointed tones that imply they’re fighting.

  “What’s going on back there?” Silas mumbles.

  “Don’t know.”

  The door opens and Jane walks out, red faced and livid. She is clutching a batch of papers in her hand. Light-blue writing paper, the kind used for sending airmail decades ago, is twisted in her hand. Her eyes are completely fixed on me. Silas might as well not even exist.

  When a woman looks at you like that in the presence of her boyfriend, you’re dead meat.

  “When were you going to tell me?” she practically screams as she storms down the hallway and gets within inches of my face, Lily at her heels.

  Lily holds up a handful of glossy photos, the kind of prints made in the 1980s and 1990s. The one on top shows two little blond kids.

  I know that picture.

  Oh, shit.

  “Tell y
ou what?” I ask, stalling, heart pounding until my ears ring. Where did that picture come from?

  I know what she’s going to throw in my face, but she'll have to toss it straight at me. I’m not making any mistakes. I’m not accidentally giving her any information.

  Jane thrusts the blue papers towards me, the thin, onion feel of the dry parchment brushing against my knuckles. I feel a sharp pull and look down. A paper cut has split the skin above the second knuckle of my ring finger.

  “When were you going to tell us, Duff?” she says, her voice so low that I can barely hear it. She is shaking with fury.

  Lily points to the photo. “This is you?” Jumping between the photo and me, her eyes take in the contrast. My eyes are drawn to the port-wine stain on the littler kid's neck.

  I'm the older kid. I look nothing like myself from twenty-three years ago.

  Who does?

  Jane blocks me in, inserting herself between me and Lily.

  “When were you going to tell us you’ve been lying all along?”

  Chapter 16

  “You’ve known the Mogrett family for decades?” Jane demands. Her voice is shaking with anger. “I had to find a note from Alice explaining all of this. Notes, plural. She wrote to someone I don't know. But she never mailed these.”

  Her eyebrows knit as she looks at the paper, anger etched into her brow. “You've been working for Alice?”

  “I—it—” I stammer. I never stammer. “It’s not like that, Jane.”

  “Then what the hell is it like, Duff? Because it sure looks to me like you’ve been lying to everyone here for years. From this letter, it almost looks like you’re part of some deep-state conspiracy–and so was Alice.”

  “No, no. It–” I’m caught off guard and so I falter. I falter more than I want to, because damn it, I’m shaking on the inside, too. “If you give me a chance to explain, I’ll lay it all out for you.”

  Silas moves closer to Jane, protective.

  “But I need to talk to you alone first,” I tell her.

  “Hell, no,” Silas says under his breath.

  I'd do the same in his shoes. I make a split-second decision and err on the side of confession.