False Hope

by Meli Raine

  False Hope (False #2)

  Meli Raine

  Copyright © 2018 by Meli Raine

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  False Hope

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  False Hope

  by Meli Raine

  She thinks she’s fooled me. But I’ve known all along.

  Almost.

  Lily is hiding something, a secret so big, she came out of a year-long coma and her first instinct was to lie.

  Who does that? Someone who is afraid. No—not afraid.

  Terrified. And it’s my job to take that fear away.

  My partner and I have spent countless man-hours hunting down the cold-blooded killer who did this to her. Meanwhile, Lily’s spent her waking hours recovering. Getting stronger. Getting smarter.

  Staying beautiful.

  Never get involved emotionally. That’s my dictate. Never get attached.

  When you realize you’re caught in a triangle, it turns out there is no exit.

  Crossing a line is easy. Holding a line takes strength.

  Lily’s shooter knows that she’s my weakness.

  And he’s about to exploit that by breaking a line and escaping, claiming a hostage in the process.

  One I have to get back.

  No matter what it takes.

  * * *

  Listen to the audiobook, narrated by Audie award winner Sebastian York!

  Chapter 1

  If unicorns had a flavor, it would taste like kissing Lily.

  Her essence is still on the tip of my tongue as I watch the layered response Lily has mastered. Observe her as that beautiful mind works to line all the pieces up and execute the subterfuge, living in two selves, one ever vigilant, one struggling to stay quiet.

  For months now, I’ve felt it. Sensed it.

  Now I can taste it, too. Lies have a flavor.

  And God help me, I want more of the deliciousness of Lily.

  But those lies come with an aftertaste, a bitter acrimony that has an overriding power.

  My own words ring in the air like a gong as I wait: When were you going to tell me you've been faking the amnesia, Lily? Before or after I sleep with you?

  “Sleep with me?” she squeaks, the words catching me off guard. I assumed she’d deny the lying.

  Not talk about my fantasies.

  “You want to talk about that?” I choke out, amused and sickened. “You’ve been lying to me for close to a year and all you want to talk about is sleeping with me?”

  “You brought it up!”

  She’s got me there.

  “How about this fake amnesia bullshit, Lily? How about we talk about that before we discuss getting sweet between the sheets?”

  She blushes.

  I get hard.

  This—this is why I should have recused myself from this damned assignment long ago. I knew this day would come. I knew I’d have to call her on the lying.

  Worse than that—I knew I wouldn’t be able to help myself.

  One kiss. Then another. Then my hands all over her.

  And then more.

  She’s torn. I see it. I’m giving her everything she wants—the freedom to tell the truth. Nothing feels better than that when you’re trapped.

  Not even a great kiss.

  Unless you’re a sociopath—or worse—holding a lie for too long is its own torture. Imprisoning yourself is harder than being controlled by outside forces. Duality is inherently draining. How can we be whole and centered when our very survival relies on being split and vigilant?

  The lies in her eyes are breaking my heart. Before she even says a word, I know she’s about to snow me. That’s where she’s at now. That’s who she is now.

  A liar who lies to stay alive.

  Can you blame her?

  And for what I’m about to say to her—do to her—can you blame me?

  The blush in her cheeks matches the emotion pouring out in her breathless, rapid breathing. Lily still hasn’t answered my question.

  She hasn’t answered my question because when you lie, you buy as much time as possible.

  “Lily?” I ask her, as if the prompt is necessary. We both know it isn’t. It’s a formality.

  But it’s a formality that matters.

  “I—I—” she mutters, shaking so hard, the blood draining out of her face and pooling at the base of her neck. The flush along the V of her top turns a bright red like a sunburn, a slap, a memory.

  Her body remembers.

  And Lily is fighting her body. Fighting all the pieces of herself that tell her the lie is the only way to survive.

  “From the way you’re acting,” I point out, “it’s pretty clear. From the moment you opened your eyes, you were lying. You’ve been lying all along.”

  I push her with a look. I don't need touch. I don't need force. All I need is a tone. She'll take the accusation and convert it into shame.

  I'm just the catalyst. She does all the work for me.

  This is what makes guys like me different from the rest of the world. We’re trained in psychological techniques that you’re not supposed to know even exist. We use them, in stealth mode, a verbal judo where we turn your weaknesses against you and conserve our strength.

  Lily squares her shoulders. A shaky breath comes out of her.

  “Why do you think I’m lying?” she asks.

  More stalling.

  “I’m not going to tell you why I think it,” I shoot back. “I’m going to tell you that I know it.”

  Wide eyes meet mine, her eyelids fixed, her expression half dazed, half panicked. “I told you everything I know. Everything I remember about the shooting.”

  “Except for one little detail, Lily. You forgot to mention that you know who the shooter was.”

  “I swear, Duff. I swear,” she says in a voice that begs me to believe her. “I swear I told you everything I know.” Her fingers fly to her mouth, the tips of her index and middle fingers brushing against lips I just kissed.

  I can take a lot in the line of duty. My tolerance is sky high. What I didn’t know until now is that I can’t handle being lied to by a woman who just kissed me like her entire life depended on it.

  “Who are you protecting?” I demand.

  “Protecting?”

  “Yes, protecting. The only reason you won’t cough up a name is because you’re protecting someone. Who are you working for?”

  “You think I’m working for someone?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think I’m a spy? One of you?” Her shaky hand moves, arm outstretched, index finger pointing at me like an accuser at a witch trial.

  “I’m not a spy.”

  She snorts. “You’re not not
a spy.”

  “You’re avoiding my question, Lily.”

  “Which is?”

  “Why have you been lying since the moment you regained consciousness?”

  Rapid blinking is a sign of stress. Stress is a signal that someone is lying. Lying is a strategy used to get your own way.

  Being lied to by a woman I’ve come to admire and want desperately makes me want to blink, too.

  I don’t.

  I don’t because I’m well trained. Then again, no one trained me for this scenario: how to handle falling for a client. The only “training” we received on that was one word:

  Don’t.

  The car lurches, swerving slightly. Mike's doing a great job as driver. The barrier between the front and back seats is thin and although the glass is smoky, I know Mike saw that kiss. Kisses. Plural kisses that will come back to haunt me if I don’t construct a damn good cover story for why I’m making out in the backseat with a client who was just nearly murdered in cold blood in a coffee shop by a guy pretending to be a gang member.

  “I don’t have an answer,” she says.

  Finally.

  A little honesty.

  “You do,” I contradict her, my own voice going gentle. Anger permeated everything I said after that kiss, a kiss that was hotter than I even imagined. For the last few months, every fantasy I’ve had has involved kissing her. Lily’s innocence and pain is at the forefront of what I want to soothe.

  What I never anticipated was her heat. Her passion. That underneath the strong, determined woman I’ve been shadowing these last nine months, there was a fully formed, full-fledged being with needs. Wants.

  Desires.

  And the way she kissed me back tells me she wants me, too.

  What the hell am I supposed to do with that when she’s looking me in the eye and lying?

  “What’s my answer?” she challenges.

  This verbal ping-pong game is killing me.

  “You know who tried to kill you at your parents’ shop nearly two years ago. You’re not telling anyone because you’re terrified.”

  She doesn’t move a single muscle.

  Doesn’t breathe, either.

  “I need to know why you’re terrified,” I press.

  The change in her expression is extraordinary. I’ve done it. Mission accomplished. By moving the conversation from who to why, I’ve cracked open the steel drum of Lily.

  She sighs.

  Palms up, I give her my best I’m on your side look and say, “I don’t need to know who. Not yet.”

  The suspicious look she gives me is well deserved. She knows I’m bullshitting. That’s fine.

  It’s just a step.

  “But I need to know why, Lily.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  Aha. Pay dirt.

  “Because it’s critical to saving you.” I run my fingertip along a line of dried blood on the back of her hand. “If you don’t trust me, then this is going to continue.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  The chill in her voice gives me goosebumps. Damn. I’ve radically miscalculated her.

  Who is manipulating whom?

  “Why would you ever think I would threaten you?” I ask her, unable to keep the emotion out of my voice.

  Unable to keep my emotions out of my blood as well.

  In this business, we don’t get surprised very often.

  But Lily’s surprising me–left, right, and upside down.

  “You’re telling me that if I don’t trust you, then people are going to continue trying to kill me,” she says through gritted teeth, snatching her hand away.

  Intensity isn’t generally one of Lily’s character traits. Right now, I’m seeing parts of her that I didn’t know were in there.

  My bad.

  I’ve radically underestimated her, and now I’m going to pay the price.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I protest. I hate being defensive.

  It's my own fault I'm here, though.

  “Then say what you mean,” she demands.

  The defensiveness fades, my training kicking in. I have to think of her as a client and not as someone I just kissed.

  “Has it occurred to you that the reason people are shooting at you is because you’re lying to everyone?”

  Her face goes pale.

  More pay dirt.

  I’ve hit a nerve. Causing her pain is the last thing I want. On the other hand, if causing her pain keeps her alive, then bring it on.

  Even if it feels slimy and cheap.

  “I’m not lying,” she shouts, the sound bouncing off the barrier between us and Mike. Any doubt he hears everything is long gone.

  “Yet you’re not telling the truth.”

  “Why did you just kiss me?” she demands.

  The question should rattle me more than it does. Some part of me is prepared for it, knowing she’s just deflecting.

  “Because I knew it would be the fastest way to get the information out of you.”

  Her mouth trembles. It tightens, the skin around her eyes going soft, emotional, filled with betrayal. Embarrassment.

  Hurt.

  I can feel her thoughts. They echo in my mind. Learning how to read someone means taking on their emotions. Doing it in a calculated way to analyze what you need to know in order to act means keeping your distance.

  Kissing her violated that rule.

  “Then that kiss was just part of work.” Her question isn’t a question. It’s a knife through my heart.

  A heart that's not supposed to exist right now.

  I shrug. “Think what you want.”

  “That’s not what I want to think,” she grinds out, her voice going low and hard.

  “And I don’t want to think you’re a liar who’s been stringing me along for the last nine months, either, Lily. I don’t want to think that you can’t trust me. I don’t want to think that you’ve been putting your own life in jeopardy, your parents’ lives in jeopardy–hell, even Bowie and Gwennie. I don’t want to think that you’ve been deceiving every single person on your security and medical team for all this time. So it looks like we both have things that we don’t want to think about.”

  “It’s not like that,” she protests.

  “Then what is it like?”

  When people are really close to cracking, they develop a vibration. It almost has a scent. I can feel it radiate off the subject.

  The subject.

  Sounds brutal, doesn’t it? She’s a twenty-five-year-old woman who experienced a traumatic brain injury when someone shot her in the back of the head, from behind, in a case of mistaken identity. I’m falling for her, a slow burn that I keep trying to extinguish, the embers roaring to flame before I can catch my breath.

  And here I am calling her the subject.

  Reduce a human being down to a single word. And then take what you need from them.

  That’s my job.

  Lily is my job.

  She can’t be anything more.

  But if I don’t get this right, she becomes something less.

  “Why are you so afraid?” I ask again, moving towards her, letting my muscles go loose at the same time they gear up to protect. She inhales slowly, watching me as she judges, taking in information to form a conclusion. As long as her eyes stay on me, she can analyze whatever she needs to process her decision.

  Decisions.

  I know she's making plenty of them about me.

  The car comes to a complete stop. I look up. We are at a small airport, parked behind the building. Gentian’s here, with Jane, the door cracked open. Mike gets out and leaves us alone, the car stifling as it idles, oblivious to the drama unfolding within its doors.

  “We’re alone now,” I assure her. “No one’s listening. No one’s watching.”

  “How do I know that?” she asks. “For all I know, I’m being bugged.”

  “I told you, you’re not
.”

  “Then why did someone try to shoot me and Jane the minute we started to talk about—” She cuts her words off.

  “Talk about who?” I ask her.

  “Talk about that day,” she says, eyes unfocused. She’s breathing through her mouth and trying to regulate herself. It’s damn hard to do that when you’re recovering from a brain injury. But somehow, Lily manages.

  Lily always manages.

  “We were talking about that day,” she says slowly, remembering. “The day I was shot. And then suddenly the bullets started flying.” Her eyes met mine, pleading with me to make it okay to tell more.

  “Someone must have a listening device on me,” she continues, “because the minute we started talking about hi–” her words cut out again. I swear the word she was about to say was him.

  “You know exactly who tried to kill you, don’t you, Lily?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper. Frustration makes me want to shout. Instead, I go quiet.

  Calmness can be more unsettling than direct confrontation.

  “Who are you really working for?” she demands, changing the subject. Pivots like this don't work on me. She doesn't know that. “It’s not Drew Foster, and it’s not Silas Gentian.” She takes a few breaths. She waits.

  I let the silence yawn between us.

  “I work for Drew,” I finally reply.

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And who else? Who’s your real boss?”

  “Who’s yours?” I ask.

  “Mine?” Her voice goes up, high and reedy, surprised by the question. “I don’t work for anyone, Duff. I’m just what you see. I’m just a twenty-five-year-old woman who was working in her parents’ flower shop when some guy came in and shot me in the back of the head. I’m not the one here who’s pretending to be someone other than who I am. Who’s your real boss?”