Liars' Paradox

by Taylor Stevens

  Jill pulled her hand free and put breathing space between them.

  Clare let her own hand drop. “You wanted to know your father, wanted to live with him, demanded it really. I’ve looked for him over the years, tried to find answers for both of us, but like Ray said, it always ended badly, and asking questions put us all at risk. Keeping you alive, protecting you, that was my priority, so I waited as agencies changed hands and the years ravaged memory and priorities, waited until you didn’t need me anymore, and waited until time and luck started running out and I couldn’t wait any longer. I’ve lived enough, seen enough, and escaped death enough, so yes, I let the past find me, and yes, it has something to do with your father because I’m not capable of going to my grave without putting the lies to rest, but I never intended for it to rope you in the way it has, never imagined we’d be having this conversation.”

  The weight of knowledge returned the room to silence.

  Sunlight crept beneath the curtains, hinting at morning’s arrival and the need to clear out and keep moving. Jack uncrossed his arms and returned to the foot of the bed, as if Clare’s explanation satisfied his need for answers. He shoved the items he’d taken out of his bags back in. Jill watched him and then glanced at Clare and back at him, and frustration and pain and memories wrapped around her throat, making it impossible to breathe or speak or think and, most impossible of all, to understand how this was enough, how it was okay.

  The question, so strong in her head, came out as a plaintive cry.

  “How?” She cleared her throat. “How could you possibly do what you did to us and claim it was love?”

  CHAPTER 42

  JILL

  AGE: 26

  LOCATION: LA PORTE, TEXAS

  PASSPORT COUNTRY: USA

  NAMES: JENNIFER WHITE

  THE WEARINESS OF TIME BLED INTO CLARE’S BODY, AND THE ROOM’S shifting light added twenty years to her tired face. Hands slack at her sides, she said, “I’ve hurt you, Jillian. Made undoable mistakes, and I am truly, genuinely sorry.”

  Jill stood in mute silence and, when the tumult of emotion finally settled into coherent thought, said, “You don’t get to do that. You do not get to deprive a child of approval and motherly love for twenty-six years and then, with a few hugs and a sentence of apology, get to pretend it’s all better.”

  Clare’s head shook slowly, sadly. She said, “I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’ve hoped I might find it one day, but I have no right to ask. I just want you to know that I’m aware of how wrong I was and that I own it.”

  Jill turned away and turned back. She wanted to believe, wanted so badly for this to be real, would have accepted the apology for what it was if Jack, the favored child, Jack, who had nothing to lose—who’d never had anything to lose—hadn’t been standing five feet away, watching the whole thing. She said, “You seem to forget there were two of us. All this talk of love and protecting might make sense to John, but all I hear is noise. I worked so damn hard for a smile, Clare. For a touch of approval, for you to tell me I’d done well. I killed myself to please you and was never fucking good enough.”

  She swiped a hand toward her brother. “I outperformed him ten to one and still failed, but John? Oh, you loved him. And when I cried for fairness, you told me I was petty and egotistical and narcissistic, imagining things, and full of self-pity. You told me I was the problem and to stop whining. So don’t come to me now and offer bullshit and call it love.”

  Clare’s expression made another rotation through the revolving door, and it took a second for Jill to realize that this new thing was pain, genuine pain. Clare reached for Jill’s face, cradled her cheeks in her palms and, so earnestly the words hurt, said, “There was never anything wrong with you, Jillian, nothing you’d ever done to cause me to treat you the way I did, and although it’s difficult to believe, I loved you more than life.”

  She let go of Jill’s face and grasped her arms. “The world out there is a hard, hard place for a woman. Out there we have to be twice as good to be considered half as capable as a man, but this world”—her forefinger drew a circle in the air—“this world is so much worse. It attracts the worst, and I was terrified for you, terrified of what I’d brought you into and the abuse you’d suffer for no other reason than your sex. You had to be stronger, smarter, better than the best, and I had to be the one to get you there, even if it meant driving you away, even if it meant shutting myself off and letting you suffer. I didn’t know any other way. I pushed you harder than anyone had a right to push, and by the time I realized the damage done, you hated and despised me, and I hated and despised myself, and we were too far gone to undo everything and start over, so I did the only thing I could and removed myself to set you free.”

  For the third time since Clare had walked through the door, Jill pulled away, but the words had sucked oxygen out of her mental fire. She whispered, “I didn’t hate you. You hated me.”

  Clare shook her head, and tears welled. “No.” She reached for Jill’s hand, and when Jill refused to let her have it, she withdrew. “Not then, not now, not ever,” Clare said. “Every step I’ve made, everything I’ve done has been to protect you and keep you safe, you and your brother.” She sighed, and she sat. “There were so many things I couldn’t tell you, and the more danger I faced, the farther away I had to put you to keep you hidden. It killed me, destroyed you, and yet here we are, anyway, my greatest fear fully realized in flesh and blood. I’m so incredibly sorry.”

  Jill sat on the bed, three feet from Clare, as close as she was willing to get to her for now.

  Years of anger and hurt were impossible to rewrite in a single conversation, but the effort mattered, Clare acknowledging her faults mattered, and on some level, she understood that as fucked up as things had been, as twisted as it seemed, in her own way, Clare had meant well. She stretched her hand across the sheet, touched Clare’s fingertips, and pulled away.

  Jack said, “The guy who came after you, is he part of your past, too?”

  Clare’s face changed again, revolving from emotion to business. “Contractor,” she said. “I know him only by reputation. He started young, real young, does the work because it’s work—isn’t one of the head cases in it for the thrill—and he’s good, probably the best on the Broker’s call list. He’d be a tough matchup, would push your training hard, I think.”

  “He already has.”

  The old Clare, the strategic Clare, swung around to face front. “He’s coming back,” she said, “and he’ll keep coming back unless he’s stopped.”

  “Not just him,” Jack said. “There’s a third party in this mix now. Was a third party. They killed his partner, and almost got him.” He paused in slow contemplation, then paced toward the front door. “Something’s off, something we’re missing.” He turned and stopped. “This guy had me, had me right there, and didn’t take the shot. He didn’t want me dead.”

  “A temporary truce to fight the enemy of his enemy doesn’t make him your friend. Just means he had something more pressing to deal with and already had a line on you, knew how to find you when he was ready.”

  Jill’s hand went for the burner pieces in her pocket.

  Jack said, “You called from the room?”

  She said, “Couldn’t risk Robert running off.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You should have told us as soon as we got here.” He knelt and pulled a pair of Jill’s pants and one of his shirts from a bag, tossed the clothes to Clare and, to Jill, said, “Tell me how the contracts work. Christopher knows he’s got a hit out on him now, knows we’re one of two, possibly more, parties looking to kill him. What would drive him to pursue us instead of hiding?”

  Jill said, “Contract fulfillment.”

  Clare said, “A bounty on his head doesn’t cancel payout on his own agreements. He probably thinks he’s smart enough to get to you first, collect, and then reverse roles on whoever else is sent after him. He very well might be.”

  Jack shoved the l
ast of what he’d removed back into his bags. “So do we run, or do we hunt?”

  “You might not have a choice.”

  Jack stopped. Jill turned. They both stared at her.

  Clare had said a lot of strange things in the past, but nothing so strange as extricating herself from a scenario she’d caused and handing the fight off to them with the word you.

  Jill said, “Where are you going?”

  “Even if we win this one, it won’t stop. There was big money behind the hit, and my escape creates a failure the Broker can’t tolerate. He’ll spread the word that I’ve surfaced. Bigger money will follow. We could divide up here, and I could draw the heat, but there are pictures of you circulating now, not great pictures, but pictures, and soon enough there’ll be seekers looking in your direction. We’d win the first rounds and the legacy would grow and the prices would go up, and then the big-game hunters would come, the crazy ones who don’t know shit about shit, and would cut a swath of destruction that makes it impossible to hide.” Clare sighed. “I’m tired of running,” she said. “I’m done. The only way to make this stop is to cut off the source before it gets out of hand.”

  Jack said, “Alone?”

  “It’s the only way.”

  He said, “You’ll lose what you were chasing in the first place.”

  Clare smiled in wan self-chiding and pulled off the scrubs that worked as her top. “Every decision has a cost,” she said. She tugged the clean shirt Jack had given her over her head. “If I don’t put this to rest now, it’ll never end, which makes everything else meaningless. That’s the trade-off.”

  Jack tossed a handful of one-way pagers on the bedspread.

  Clare leaned over, picked one up, rolled the plastic between her fingers, and Jill followed her hand. The technology, big when they were babies, had mostly been put out of business as cell phones got smaller and cheaper, but it still had a thriving niche market supported by doctors, firefighters, and emergency personnel. Pagers were reliable in ways cell phones weren’t, and the batteries lasted weeks, if not months. But that wasn’t why Jack had reverted to old-school tech. Unlike cell phones, pagers didn’t store information and couldn’t be tracked. If Clare was going her separate way, he wanted to be able to reach her, and her to be able to reach him.

  Clare handed the device back. “Can’t take the risk,” she said. “If I make it out, I’ll post on Craigslist.”

  Jill struggled to produce an argument against Clare leaving. She finally had a mother, a real mother, had had her for a whole fucking hour, and just like that, everything she’d wanted her whole life was about to disappear in a fight against the impossible.

  She opened her mouth in protest. A jolting buzz cut her words short.

  They all three looked toward the nightstand, at the telephone beside the tattered lamp. Jill, closest to the handset, leaned over and picked it up.

  Robert’s voice said, “Sorry for calling this way. Your cell keeps going to voice mail, and I didn’t have any other way to reach you. There’s a problem with the car, something about them not wanting to take it back at this location.”

  Jill glanced at Jack.

  He didn’t need to be a mind reader, he already knew what this call was about.

  She said, “You’re a grown man, Robert. Figure it out.”

  “Jen, this is your problem. For God’s sake, just come help me out.”

  “I’m busy,” she said. “Call my cell in exactly ten minutes.”

  She dropped the phone into its cradle, and said, “Well, fuck.”

  CHAPTER 43

  HOLDEN

  AGE: 32

  LOCATION: SPRING, TEXAS

  PASSPORT COUNTRY:PAPERLESS

  NAMES: NAMELESS

  THE MILES TICKED OFF IN ACCUSING SILENCE, A SLOW DOG-LEGGED route past headlights and streetlights, away from the car rental return at George Bush Intercontinental, where he’d collected Robert, and into the outer stretches of suburbia. The kid sat beside him, jaw clenched, fists clenched, body poised somewhere between fight and compliance.

  It hadn’t taken much to get him into the car.

  A nod. A welcome.

  You know the drill. Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be.

  They were nearly to the trip’s midpoint when Robert, voice low and not quite flat enough to hide the mix of fear and anger, said, “What is it you want this time?”

  Holden checked the rearview. “Need you to make a call.”

  Robert waited, tense with the expectation of more, and when Holden gave him nothing, he said, “That’s it? I make a phone call and you let me go?”

  His tone had way too much hope, the crazy kind of hope of a guy who’d blown a grand on scratch-offs and was down to the last ticket.

  Holden put the blinker on and changed lanes. “Depends,” he said. “Depends on how well you do on the call. Depends on what you’d do if I let you go.”

  Hope deflated.

  “What would you do, Rob, if I let you go?”

  The kid studied his knees.

  “It’s not a trick question.”

  “Go home,” Rob said. “Keep my mouth shut. Pretend this never happened.”

  “Take it you’ve already had this conversation at least once tonight.”

  “Pretty much.”

  Holden waited for the light and turned into a Whataburger lot. “There’s the phone call, and I also need a favor.”

  Robert coughed out a laugh. “Oh, a favor. That’s rich. And by the way, while we’re at it, that was a real dick move, making me believe I was wearing a bomb.”

  Holden parked the car in a bath of orange and white neon. He shut off the engine and glanced right. “Duly noted,” he said. “Next time I’ll use the real thing.”

  Robert went back to studying his knees.

  Holden shifted in the seat, propped an elbow on the wheel, and waited until the kid looked him in the eyes. He said, “Let me explain how this usually works. I kidnap you, you see my face, listen to me talk, and you know too much. That makes you a threat. So I use you, and when I don’t need you anymore, I kill you. Nothing personal. It’s to protect myself. You with me?”

  Robert didn’t answer. Holden offered him a phone.

  The kid didn’t take it.

  Holden said, “You’ve got to know you’re not the first—not the first to die, not the first to plead or promise or beg or lie. You know I’m not stupid, and yet you’re already prepared to say yes to anything you think will keep you alive, figuring you’ll run as soon as my back is turned.” He shoved the phone in Robert’s hand.

  The kid took it like it might bite.

  “Call Jen.”

  “Are you going to kill her?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “She’s not going to do it. She won’t walk into another trap for me.”

  “No,” Holden said. “But she’ll come for me.”

  Robert’s expression clouded. His mouth opened in protest, and he stopped and went back to staring at his knees. “What about the favor?”

  “First the call. Then we’ll see.”

  Robert’s thumb hovered over the pre-dialed number.

  Holden cut off the last hint of rebellion. “I like you, kid,” he said. “It’s not your fault you got roped into this—wrong girl, wrong time—but if it comes to you or me, I won’t lose a minute’s sleep over putting you down. Follow?”

  Robert gave him a side-eye glare and punched the call button.

  Jen picked up—Holden knew she would—and Robert performed well enough, with bullshit about rental cars and problems, that she’d hear both truth and lie. She’d come. Holden took the phone back and set an alarm.

  Jen had said to call again in ten minutes.

  In thirty, a long enough time gap for anxiety to rise and Jen’s questions to multiply, his new best friend would make one final plea.

  Twenty was what it took to reach the room where Baxter slept, a room that was dark and quiet, exactly as it’d be
en when Holden left but for the quart of ice water, now a few inches emptier. That one small change gave Holden his own form of crazy hope.

  Robert shuffled toward the bed. Voice thick, concern almost genuine, he said, “Did Jen do . . . ? Will he be . . . ?”

  Holden said, “Wasn’t her, and I hope so, but I just don’t know.”

  Robert stopped by Baxter’s side. His fingers reached toward the sheets and then stopped. “I should be glad,” he said. “I should hate you guys, I really should, and this should make me happy.” His brow furrowed. Sorrow mixed with disgust. “He never hurt me, never raised his voice. We just sorta chilled the whole time.” Carefully, almost reverently, he touched Baxter’s arm. “He’d have killed me, though, if it had come to that.”

  Holden said, “It’s not—”

  “Yeah, I know. Not personal.”

  Holden’s pocket vibrated with the alarm’s call reminder.

  Baxter’s eyes twitched behind their lids, and his lashes fluttered, and the first two fingers on his right hand rose an inch off the bed. He might as well have stood and grabbed Holden in a bear hug.

  Crazy hope burned that much hotter.

  Holden squeezed the big guy’s shoulder.

  The war wouldn’t allow him to stay, and this was as close to a permanent good-bye as they’d ever get. He whispered, “See you on the other side, my brother.”

  Holden handed Robert the phone and followed with a slip of paper.

  The kid glanced at the handwritten scrawl, comprising hours of scheming, scouting for a plan B location in case the play at the preserve failed to net them what they wanted, all condensed into a single address and a few lines of instruction.

  Holden said, “Just read the script.”

  Robert dialed.

  Jen’s voice assaulted the air with irritation and questions.

  Robert, in a monotone, pronouncing each word as if he feared she’d pay a price for him missing even one, spoke over her. The other end went silent. Holden waited until the kid reached the final line and, script unfinished, plucked the phone from his hand and killed the connection.