by Tina Whittle
“I figured as much. Of course, so was Addison. And Quint. Nick’s trailer was Grand Central Station that afternoon.”
Trey nodded. The security cabin was quiet this time of night, silent except for the hum of electronics. No footsteps, no cars, no conversation. Softly lit and spare, it felt like an outpost on the very edge of civilization.
“What about tonight? Do they suspect her of arson?”
“Attempted arson. And I don’t know.”
“Whoever did it knew there were no cameras out there. And they knew enough about Nick to frame him for the deed. They left his cigarettes on the ground. Used acetone as an accelerant, just like he keeps in his make-up kit.” I sat on the edge of the desk and pointed to a different card. “My money’s on Oliver. Why else would he be making a break for it at midnight?”
“I agree that his behavior is suspicious. But I can’t think of a motive.”
“Do the cops have any ideas?”
Trey put his hand to the back of his neck, rubbed out a knot. “If they do, they are withholding them from me. There’s a BOLO out for him regardless.” He kept his tone mild. “Quint, however, suggested that you and I might be responsible.”
I stared at him. “You and me? Seriously?”
“Yes. He suggested we’re working together to sabotage…something. He wasn’t very clear about that, only that everyone was working against him—”
“—and he was going to sue, right.” I shook my head. “Quint is suing us, and Nick’s been playing us. The Talbot brothers have been one complication after another.”
Trey didn’t contradict me. He continued placing his index cards on the desk in rows and columns, a portable version of the wall of his apartment. Means, motives, and opportunities, suspects and victims, like a crime and punishment bingo card. Trey stared at the data as if some answer might bubble up. I looked over his shoulder, following the various lines and annotations…
And something did bubble up.
Something I had never considered.
I pointed to Nick’s suspect card. “You were there when he said Addison was at home the night of the shooting. Remember? During our second visit to the makeup trailer?”
“Yes? And?”
“You didn’t catch it.”
“Catch what?”
“The lie.” I got a light untethered feeling in my chest. “He lied to your face and you didn’t catch it.” And then I remembered. “I lied too.”
His forehead wrinkled. “You did?”
“Yes, earlier, when I made the joke about my shocking past. You didn’t catch it. It’s been happening a lot.”
“It has?”
“Yes! I just thought you were deciding not to call me on it. I mean, nothing serious, just jokes really, but still…”
Now he was really confused. “What? When? I—”
“Look at me.” I blanked my expression, which never worked, not on Trey. “I have seven dollars in my wallet. True or false?”
He watched my mouth the entire time I spoke. Lies lay heavy on the mouth, I’d discovered. I could make my eyes sparkle as needed, my mannerisms as smoothly deceptive as required, but my mouth always gave me away.
He blinked at me. “Say it again.”
I did. He shook his head, but didn’t say anything.
I got lightheaded. “My wallet is empty, Trey. Utterly empty.”
“Oh.” He frowned, nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“Okay? I just told you—”
“I know what you told me.” He got to his feet, but didn’t start pacing. He simply stood there, eyes cast to the side, arms folded. Seemingly calm, except that his respiration was becoming shallow. “I’ve always told you I wasn’t infallible.”
“This is different. You’ve been off your game with everyone.”
“It’s not a game. It’s not on or off. It’s…not that.”
“And not just me. Finn—”
“I’ve never been able to read Finn.”
“No, but we assumed she was an aberration. What if she’s not? What if you haven’t been able to read any of them?”
He still wouldn’t look at me. “I don’t know.”
“We’re here because you looked Nick Talbot in the eye and said he wasn’t a murderer.”
“He’s not.”
“You don’t know that!”
I saw the first flare of panic in his eyes. He smothered it as I watched, replaced it with the cold impenetrable withdrawal. I could feel the invisible wall coming up between us, and when I reached for his hand, he snatched away as my fingers brushed his wrist.
He ran both hands through his hair, let them rest on the back of his neck. “I’m very tired. I can’t think clearly. I need to get some rest and then we’ll reevaluate.”
“Trey—”
“Not now. I can’t. I need to rest. Can you take the cameras until Jonathon returns?” He gestured toward the bank of video monitors. “Two hours. I only need two hours.”
He needed more, much more, but he’d have what I could get him.
“Of course,” I said.
Trey closed the door behind himself, and I sat down at the array. Jonathon had brewed up coffee—strong and sweet, his secret to the night shift, he said—and I poured a cup. Wished I’d had whiskey to put in it. Wished I still had Nick’s half-smoked cigarette.
I could see his cabin on one of the screens, guarded now by the woman who’d pretended to be the bartender. No more pretense from her, although everybody else was still spinning webs of deceit. We thought we’d been cleaning house of such, but we hadn’t. That had been a pretense too.
I leaned back in the chair. Our entire justification for taking the case—that Nick was telling the truth when he said that he hadn’t killed his wife—could be wrong. We’d been trying to keep a murderer out, and chances were good that a murderer was penned up with us. All the people we’d cleared of this misdeed or that—Nick, Addison, Portia, Quint—were suddenly suspicious again.
The resort lay quiet and still around us. A deer picked its way along the perimeter, a big eight-point buck. It wasn’t yet the rutting season, so it was calm, interested in feeding not fighting. The wrangler had found the other animals and corralled them for the night, far away from the reeking barn.
Eventually Jonathon returned and took over the monitoring duties. I stepped into the night and called my brother. “I know it’s two a.m., but it’s kind of an emergency,” I said.
“What’s happened?”
I told him. Clouds had moved in, and now the moon shone behind a gauzy veil. Eric listened while I explained.
“Are you sure?” he finally said. “He really can’t tell?”
“I’m sure.”
Eric’s voice vibrated with excitement. “This is amazing, exactly what I hypothesized!” I could hear him rummaging through paperwork. “The research has been clear, that this particular ability is linked to verbal expression, or the lack thereof, to be exact. Aphasia. Which Trey had, right after the accident. But since then, he’s recovered much of his verbal ability. I know you’ve noticed.”
I had. Over the year and a half that I’d known him, he’d grown quicker with words, more expansive in his vocabulary. He still hadn’t lost the clipped cadence or the monotone delivery. But his sentences were more fluid now, often laced with a dry sense of humor, deft and self-aware.
“But what does that have to do with whether or not he can detect lies?”
“Nobody knows. Researchers have noticed the correlation, but that’s as far as science has gotten.” He paused. “I know this puts you in a challenging situation now—”
“No kidding.”
“—but it’s a good thing, really. It’s healing. It’s progress. And he’s worked hard for it.”
“Yes, but—”
“I know, I know.
He’s gotten used to being able to judge people pretty instantly. He’s going to have to use his instincts now, just like the rest of us. But it means he’s got a filter now. It means he’s capable of interacting with people and environments, even stimuli-rich ones, without shutting down.” Another pause. “You’re responsible for that, you know.”
“Me?”
“Yes. He’s adapting to being with you. You totally overwhelmed him at first, but he persevered. Because you matter.” A hesitation. “Because he loves you.”
I remembered everything at once. Trey tending my wounds. Trey with the list of why he was with me. Trey handing me the keys to the Ferrari even though his heart had been thrashing around in terror.
My voice cracked. “Why me?”
“I could theorize—neurological completion, say, or the attraction of complementary personalities. Gabriella says it was destiny, that you two were meant for each other.” Eric’s voice was soft. “Does it matter?”
I tried to speak and couldn’t. Trey had taken a massive blow, but was still trying, so hard, to do right by truth and justice. He believed in those things. And in me.
“You okay, sis?”
I wiped a tear from my eye. “Yeah.”
“I know it sounds rough, but he can do this. He’ll have to rely on his judgment now.”
“But he doesn’t have any! That’s why he won’t wear his gun, because he doesn’t have the judgment to—”
“But that is judgment, don’t you see? He trusts his own instincts. That is huge progress, Tai, huge.”
It was. I knew it was. But all this progress was coming at a damned inconvenient time. I tilted my head back and stared at the shifting cloud-hazed sky.
“I’d better get back inside,” I said. “Thanks for talking to me.”
“Don’t mention it. Just…can you get him back in my office when you’re done with whatever it is you’re doing? I’m dying to arrange some further testing.”
I assured him I would try and hung up. Then I squared my shoulders. We had a mission. And we were going to finish it come hell or high water. I eased myself into Trey’s room and lay down next to him on the narrow cot. He shifted to accommodate me, not waking, and I stretched out against his back, my face pressed into the nape of his neck. He was in the valley of deep sleep, his breathing steady and regular.
I closed my eyes and tried to join him there.
Chapter Forty-nine
I woke to an empty bed. This was no surprise, but it took me a second to get my bearings in the dusky gray light. Trey had left me a note—checking the perimeter, it said, back at eight. I pulled on my shoes, ran my fingers through my hair. I needed a bath, clean clothes, a toothbrush. I tried to lick my lips and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Definitely a toothbrush.
Jonathon still sat at the video monitors. He looked up when he heard me. “Good morning, ma’am. Would you like some more coffee?”
“That would be a lifesaver. Thank you.”
I poured myself a giant cup, letting the first hot swallow burn my mouth. Jonathon looked as on point and professional as when I’d last seen him, his posture military straight, dark eyes clear and observant.
“Had any visitors?” I said.
“No, ma’am. Once the detectives left, it’s been quiet.”
“The main resort too?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The grounds looked calm on the monitors. The gardeners raked straw in the front flower beds, and a pair of runners loped along the nature trail. Otherwise few guests stirred, none at our end of the resort. Rolling mists and a low gray sky warned of rains to come.
“If Mr. Seaver gets back before I do, tell him I went to get a shower.”
Jonathon nodded, his eyes glued once again to the monitors. “Yes, ma’am. Will do, ma’am.”
I closed the door behind myself, feeling the first wet drops against my forehead. The walk was short, a hop and skip from the check-in station, and I’d pulled out my phone to punch in the security code when I heard a leafy rustle. A quick scan of the shrubbery revealed a figure hunched beneath a crepe myrtle.
I peered closer. “Oliver?”
Oliver held both hands in front of him. “Please don’t scream! I won’t hurt you! You gotta help me!”
He was still in his natty suit, but it was torn and dirty, his face a welter of scratches and mosquito bites. His voice was graveled, quavery, barely above a whisper.
I stepped closer. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“We need to talk.”
“So talk.”
“Not here. Inside.”
I looked up at the security camera in the corner. Approximately twenty seconds had passed since I’d stopped. Either Jonathon or Trey could already be on the way. Or not. Depending. I didn’t have my app turned on, so my phone wasn’t recording the audio, which meant that Trey couldn’t hear our conversation. But his personal video feed was functioning, and if he looked at his phone and saw Oliver on camera, if he thought I was being threatened…
I made my voice stern but calm. “I want you to listen to me very carefully, Oliver. You know who Trey is, so you know his background. You know he can blow your medulla oblongata out the back of your skull from half a mile away. You won’t even draw a last breath, you’ll just drop like a puppet with the strings cut.”
Oliver was breathing heavy, his hair matted on his forehead. “I know.”
“So tell me the truth, for your own good. You don’t have a weapon, do you?”
He choked on a sob. “No.”
I punched in the security code, and the light blinked clear, simultaneously dismantling the alarms and turning on the interior audio and video systems. I also turned on the recording app. If Trey had his earpiece in, he would hear everything Oliver and I were saying.
I held the door open. “Get in.”
Oliver scurried inside, eyes skittering all around. As he passed me, he left an odoriferous wake of stale sweat and old cigarettes. He made straight for the armchair in the corner and sank into it, pulled a pack of menthols from his pocket.
“Where have you been?” I said.
“In the woods. Hiding.” He lit up with trembling hands, the cigarette shaking as he held it to his mouth. “I want immunity. I want to go into Witness Protection.”
“Why?”
“I’m not talking until I get into the program. Trey has the connections to make it happen, I know he does.”
I didn’t tell him he was wrong, that Trey didn’t have the power to get anybody into anything. He did have connections, though, and if what Oliver had to say was important enough, he could work them. Regardless, I needed to keep Oliver talking, which he only seemed inclined to do if he had protection.
I sat opposite him. “I’ll do what I can. If you tell me what’s going on.”
He glared at me, his bravado coming back. I was about to explain things more clearly for him when the shadow appeared on the patio, cool and smooth and noiseless. I had a moment of panic, but then the shadow knocked. Oliver jumped, and I exhaled in relief.
“That’s Trey,” I said. “And if he’s knocking, he’s coming in peace. So you sit very still while I let him in, and we’ll see what he has to say.”
Trey was remarkably calm, considering. He’d given up on the cheap jacket and had his white shirt unbuttoned at the throat, no tie. Sleep had restored his cognitive capacity, and even if his temper remained prickly, he was willing to hear Oliver out. I knew this was only because every word of the conversation was being recorded, but still.
He put his back to the wall and faced Oliver. “What happened last night?”
Oliver shook his head. “I’m not talking until I get WITSEC.”
Trey’s jaw tightened. “I told you, I cannot—”
“Then you get nothing. And the bad guys keep on being
bad.”
“Mr. James—”
“Mr. Seaver. I know my rights. WITSEC or nothing.” He smiled behind the wreath of smoke. “Tick tock.”
Trey started to reply, but I held up my hand. He inclined his head, shifting the lead my way.
I smiled at Oliver. “In that case, it’s nothing. You know why? Because we don’t need you or your testimony. We already know everything we need to know, and we learned it from the Buckhead Burglar himself, who knew more about this mess than anyone imagined, and who is now in the custody of the Atlanta Police Department. You can check yourself, if you wish. But while you waste your time verifying things, the bad guys are, as you explained, out there cooking up badness. And while you do have some leverage, it’s got an expiration date.” I smiled wider. “So tick tock yourself, Oliver.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trey fold his arms. He said not one word, knowing better than most how to work a silence.
Oliver closed his eyes and sighed. “The men who stole the cars work for the men who run the underground poker game we go to.”
“We?”
“Quint and me.” He sucked at the cigarette. “Quint’s deep in the red, and not for the first time. Last year, he decided to cook the Talbot Creative books to relieve some of the heat. A series of fake vendors, one of the older tricks in the book. I spotted the ruse instantly.”
“And you blackmailed him?”
He looked stunned. “What? No! I never blackmailed anybody! I did, however, let him bribe me to keep quiet. And I taught him how to work the numbers with more finesse.”
“What about your own debts?”
“I played for fun, cut my losses. Quint? He chased it like heroin, right down the rabbit hole. Atlantic City, Reno, Vegas. Atlanta hit him hardest. Six figures.”
This was a common occurrence, and not just in Atlanta. Big city rollers came down South thinking the tables were run by hayseeds. They figured it would be easy pickings, maybe a little low-rent, but profitable. They usually got their asses handed to them.