Liars' Paradox

by Taylor Stevens

  What were you thinking? You weren’t thinking! The enemy gave you what you expected, and you were so busy avoiding the obvious, you were blind to the invisible.

  Find the trap. Seed the trap.

  No. No, no, no. Use the trap against your opponent.

  Dead again, Julia.

  Go. Do it over. Do it better.

  Jill pushed the voice away and pushed herself forward, following Robert from a distance, frustrated by the pace. They had a quarter mile to go, and at this rate, it’d be nightfall before they finished.

  He rounded a bend, and she moved in closer.

  Three feet away, so close she could nearly touch him, he froze.

  She stopped, waited for him to turn, waited for him to search out whatever noise had startled him. He didn’t, and neither did he start walking again. She was too close to call him. Too close to do anything other than prod him forward.

  She said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Rob. Walk.”

  His whole body turned, back ramrod straight, one awkward high step at a time, until he faced her. Sweat dripped from his hairline, and his knuckles were white from gripping the phone. His fear made her nervous in the same way successfully completing one of Clare’s tests made her nervous, like she’d missed something critical and the blow was yet to come.

  She took a cautious step forward.

  He flinched, and she stopped.

  He glanced down at his jacket.

  She followed his gaze and reached for the zipper.

  His head backed as far away from her as his neck would allow.

  She tugged the zipper down.

  Thin red tubes surrounded his chest, taped together and wired from tip to tip to form a crude suicide vest, which, for a second, left her hovering in the space she imagined existed between hearing a land mine’s click and obliteration.

  She knelt. Her fingers followed the wires.

  Last time she’d done this, she’d been the one strapped in, wired with just enough explosives to pop a hole in a canister of pepper spray, definitely enough incentive to make failure untenable. She’d paid attention and had failed, anyway, because, as Clare had pointed out while she lay gagging and weeping on the ground, the lesson had never been about disarming an explosive but about ensuring she knew how it felt to realize death was inevitable. She had that same realization now, in reverse.

  Admiration rose, a perverse, guilt-inducing form of betrayal.

  She wanted to meet the mind who’d assembled the contraption.

  She looked Robert dead in his terrified eyes and said, “I can’t disarm it.”

  His face went white, and it seemed for the briefest flash that he might pass out.

  Whoever had built the thing had run perfect psych ops on him, ensuring compliance, guaranteeing he’d look like a paranoid nutcase if anyone else got to him before she did. She stood and dusted off her hands. “There’s nothing to disarm, Rob. It’s just a prop. Take the fucking thing off and let’s go.”

  Robert stood, mouth open, soundless, and didn’t move.

  Hands on his shoulders, she turned him around, released the Velcro beneath the jacket, unclipped the wires that served as over-the-shoulder straps, and let the vest drop. He eyed the assembly like it was a venomous snake he wasn’t quite sure was dead. She stomped on the tubes for his benefit. Powder burst out.

  She dipped her fingers into the white and held them up to her nose. “Flour,” she said. And when he still didn’t move, she took his hand and, finger by finger, loosened his death grip on the phone and flung the eight-hundred-dollar brick into the lake.

  Mouth open, he turned toward the water in wordless protest.

  She didn’t have time to explain that the phone’s microphone and camera had likely been activated remotely so that someone could listen in and watch, or to discuss the vulnerabilities of the SIM itself and the way the networks could be tapped to use the device as a homing beacon.

  Hand on his arm, she nudged him forward. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

  His focus traveled to his jacket. Sound gurgled from his throat, revealing the strain on vocal chords that had gone unused for too long. “Wait,” he whispered. He tugged at the jacket, trying to get it off. “GPS,” he said.

  She held out her hand.

  He tangled in the sleeves and finally broke loose.

  She snagged it, and her fingers traced the seams and found the thumb-sized lump sewn in along the left side. She balled up the jacket and tossed it into the bushes.

  He said, “There’s another one somewhere in my jeans.”

  She held out her hand again.

  He looked at her, glanced around, and shook his head.

  “Jesus, Rob, it’s not like you’ve got anything going on down there that I haven’t seen before.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not taking them off.”

  She knelt and ran her hands down his legs and found the bulge on the inseam, by the hem. “Need them off.”

  “I’m not walking out of here without pants on.”

  She didn’t have time to argue with him. She ripped a knife off her belt, flipped it open and, before he could react, jabbed the point inward.

  He winced.

  She said, “Don’t move.”

  Two clean slices separated the chunk of fabric from the pants. She tossed the fragment after the jacket and folded the knife shut.

  Robert took a cautious step backward.

  He said, “This is where we part ways.”

  “Yeah?”

  She stood slowly, the way she would have in the presence of a skittish animal, and slipped the knife back on the belt. She watched him, measured him.

  She’d freed him from imagined death and freed him from surveillance, and had been so focused on keeping ahead of Christopher that she’d skipped right over the possibility Rob would turn into an ungrateful bitch and refuse to go along with the plan.

  She said, “Where you gonna go?”

  He checked over his shoulder and shuffled another six inches in retreat. “Don’t know,” he said. “Away. As far away as I can get from you and the two lunatics chasing you.”

  Two lunatics. That was a nice touch of intel.

  She moved in closer.

  He scooted backward, jumpy and primed for flight.

  She said, “They’re not going to be happy with you, not after you ignored their instructions. They’re gonna come after you. You’re safer with me.”

  “You?” He spit the word with spiteful sarcasm. “Is that some kind of sick secret-agent, spy, assassin humor?”

  “Longer we stand here, the closer we get to dying.”

  “Oh. Dying. Let me tell you about dying. The police have a warrant out for my arrest for your murder. School administration is throwing around words like liability, misconduct, and expulsion. My parents are blowing up my phone, wondering why they can’t reach me, my friends are starting to think I’m guilty for the same reason, and then two special ops guys kidnap me, tack explosives to my chest, and send me out as bait to pull you in.” His tone tipped toward hateful. “Thanks for the offer, Agent Salt, but you’ve already ruined my life. I’d appreciate if you just got the hell right out of it now.”

  “I can fix all that,” she said.

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  Tone soft, even gentle, she said, “Come on, Rob.”

  She reached for his arm. He batted her away.

  “Stop that,” he said. “Just quit, okay? I liked you, Jen, the person I thought you were, but that wasn’t you. You’ve done nothing but lie since we first met, and if I never see you again, it’ll be too soon.”

  The words stung a little, mostly because they were true, and she wasn’t used to rejection, but he’d earned the right to say them. She said, “After tomorrow you never have to see me again, but right now you need to come with me.”

  He glanced over his shoulder again, searching for his escape. “No,” he said. “No, I really don’t. What I need is to get as far from you as possible
before you wreck my life any more than you already have.”

  She watched him go for a step or three, torn between making the effort to charm her way back into his good graces or taking the easy road of force.

  Unnatural noise in the near distance settled that for her.

  She went after him, grabbed his shoulder, and gripped hard.

  He recoiled, and she dug her nails in. “Don’t fight,” she said. “I’ll knock your ass out and drag you with me if I have to.”

  “You hit first, I’ll hit you right back.”

  She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “You’d never have the chance.”

  He smiled, sarcastic, mocking, and she saw the party girl reflected in his eyes.

  Didn’t matter how much he’d learned or what he’d experienced in the past week. He’d never take her seriously or see her as a physical threat, and she couldn’t blame him for that. She’d worked hard to perfect that persona, and she’d done a good job.

  She said, “I gave you fair warning, but I’m not gonna do it a second time.”

  “Whatever.” He started walking again. “I’m done being your pawn.”

  She quick stepped and blocked his way.

  He moved to get around her.

  She grabbed him. He shoved her.

  She two-knuckle punched him in the throat.

  He dropped to a knee, gagging and gasping, and when he could breathe again, he tipped his face toward her and said, “For God’s sake, why can’t you leave me alone?”

  The words gurgled out in equal parts accusation and plaintive plea, and on some level, not wanting to see him hurt, she wished she could give him what he wanted right here, right now. She hooked an arm in his and helped him stand.

  To her left—far, far left—the undergrowth shifted with a hint of blur.

  She swore under her breath, spun him in the direction she needed him to go, and quick marched him forward, trusting Jack to guard their backs the way he’d promised because she had no choice.

  She passed the trunk of a two-hundred-year-old oak and changed her mind. Trust was fine when the plan went right. Blind trust in the middle of change got a person killed, and something had changed.

  She pushed Robert up behind the tree.

  The noise was there again, wind through the leaves, moving stealthily in their direction, and this time Robert heard it, too. She covered his lower face with her hand and leaned up close beside his ear. “If you want to stay alive, don’t move, don’t say word. Don’t even breathe.” He nodded.

  She took her hand off his mouth, dropped her backpack to the ground, and dug for the handset and checked Jack’s GPS position.

  He was off route, had stopped moving, and was nowhere near close enough to get between her and whatever stalked her.

  Clare was in her ear again.

  The trap you can see isn’t the one to fear.

  This was the jungle forest. This was life with Clare.

  She’d been here before a hundred times, and she could beat this. She reached for the semiautomatic, held a finger toward Robert, and shook her head.

  Not a sound.

  CHAPTER 33

  JACK

  AGE: 26

  LOCATION: SPRING, TEXAS

  PASSPORT COUNTRY: USA

  NAMES: JASON FRANCIS WHITE

  HE CHARGED TOWARD THE OPEN TRAIL, RUNNING FOR WHERE THE foliage was thinner and he could move faster, and ran parallel to the trail, weaving into camouflage and out again. A splash of color change within the green tripped him into a fast trajectory change and then plunged him to a stop. Dead ahead, branches whispered against nylon.

  He crab crawled in the direction the color had been.

  Blood in his ears played a bass-line beat to the soft patter of moisture falling from leaves, and the scent of loamy earth filled his nostrils, taking him back to nights he and Jill had spent crawling through the dark, facing off against a small army they couldn’t hear or see.

  The stakes had been lower then—pain, not death. Torture, not bullet holes—but for a twelve-year-old, they weighed about the same. And, in answer to every wound and bruise and broken bone, Clare had told them if they were lucky, they’d never have to thank her.

  He’d lost many times over as she’d pushed them ever harder, but he’d never lost by making the same mistake twice.

  Burn him as it might, he thanked her now.

  He’d played this game before.

  He slid forward, belly to the ground, head covered, fingers probing the earth, collecting stones and pebbles. He edged against a fallen log.

  A twig snapped somewhere to the left.

  He tossed a pebble against a tree trunk. Waited.

  He pitched a second to its right.

  An amateur would have fired at the noise and given away position, but even crazies weren’t that stupid. No, just as he and Jill had originally planned to use Jill as a decoy to lure Christopher, he used himself now, drawing attention to himself like an idiot, providing the enemy a source to bead in on. This was what Clare had trained him for. All those years of sneaking through forests and across rocky terrain, of running with Raymond through the Louisiana bayous, days and nights and weeks and years of life ruined and wasted for this—a variant of this—because she believed a day like this would come.

  The fourth pebble brought him the movement he wanted.

  The hiss-pop of suppressed fire followed.

  A bullet hit the log to the right of his shoulder. He tracked the position in his head, rolled, and pulled the trigger. The rifle crack split the empty morning.

  He ran the bolt, moved to his knees, and fired again—movement, motion, controlled repetition—unmistakable noise until he’d emptied the rifle’s small magazine and the woodland sounds hung suspended between the church-bell gongs ringing inside his head.

  His senses stretched, desperate for feedback.

  He was vulnerable, was in the critical moment when perceived success could so easily reverse to deadly trap. He crawled forward again, past silence, past stillness, crawled right into a body shaking and drowning in its own blood.

  The guy was early twenties, maybe six feet, a smoker with skin that had seen sun and teeth that had seen meth. He wasn’t Christopher and wasn’t the face in the game camera picture, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out which team he belonged to.

  Jack smacked his weapon out of reach, grabbed hold of a foot, and dragged the guy backward to where trees and underbrush sheltered him from another distanced shot.

  He searched legs and torso, tossed knife, handgun, and cuffs aside.

  Precious seconds fled. Desperation rose. He straddled the guy, gripped his shoulders, and shook. “How many?” he said. “How many of you are there?”

  The throat gurgled what sounded like “Fuck off.”

  An earpiece dangled from behind the guy’s collar. Jack ripped it from the shirt, found the receiver, plugged the audio jack back in, and shoved the bud into place.

  In his ear a male voice called for a check-in.

  An older voice replied.

  Semiautomatic fire chimed in from the near distance, three quick taps.

  Jack paused. His head ticked up.

  The first voice requested a response.

  None arrived.

  Monologue sputtered into swearing and then went silent.

  A wave of cold, clean relief breathed into him.

  Whoever had been following Jill wasn’t following anymore.

  Jack rushed through pockets and moved to shoes. The bleeding body beneath his hands trembled harder.

  A bullet to the head would have been the merciful thing. With Raymond dead, Clare kidnapped, he and Jill in the cross fire, and his body covered in dirt and running on exhaustion, he was two days and one position giveaway tapped out of mercy.

  He gripped Ray’s .308 and backed away.

  A hint of shadowed movement sent another adrenaline spike coursing.

  Jack dug into his pocket for ammunition and slowly, soundle
ssly, chambered a round. In his ear, the radio remained silent.

  Leaves rustled to the right. A light breeze covered the movement.

  He inched backward along the ground to where he’d left his kit, shifting, scanning, searching for whatever watched him now.

  Ten yards out, a blur straightened and lengthened.

  Low light distorted facial features, but even in the dim Jack knew him.

  He glanced toward the X-Caliber, measuring distance, speed, seconds. By the time he grabbed the weapon, Christopher would be gone.

  Jack rose, rifle stock to shoulder, and they stood, weapon against weapon, target against target, killer to killer.

  Need and loss clashed in a fight over Raymond and Clare and Jill.

  Voice raised for distance, Jack said, “I didn’t kill your friend.”

  The shadow said, “Just as I didn’t kill your mother.”

  The words sent strategy colliding against time.

  Jack sighted on Christopher’s thigh. Desperation tangled in probability and threatened to break through resolve. Inside his head, his own voice begged the man to move, to do anything that invited a kill shot.

  He said, “Is my mother alive?”

  “I hope so.”

  The syllables tripped over each other, bouncing around Jack’s brain like words spoken from a marble-filled mouth.

  “Where did you take her?”

  Christopher lowered his weapon until his arms hung loosely at his sides. He said, “It’s an ugly day to die. For us, there’s tomorrow.”

  “Just tell me where you took her.”

  “Houston.”

  “Where in Houston?”

  Christopher turned without answering.

  Jack dove for the X-Caliber and swung back. Eye to the scope, he searched through empty space and pressed forward, chasing a phantom.

  He stopped at the spot where the enemy had stood, and he turned.

  Christopher had had a clear line of sight to him but hadn’t taken the shot. Could have, but didn’t. Jack continued the circle, searching through the fog and dim.

  This hadn’t been a handshake, or a truce, or even an enemy who’d killed an enemy becoming a temporary friend.