False Hope

by Meli Raine

  “We’ll be back soon.”

  “You’re leaving now?” she says flustered. “You can’t just kiss me like that and leave and not tell us what’s going on.”

  One side of his mouth tips up. “Of course I can. Do it all the time.”

  “And I don’t like it when you do it then, either!”

  He lets out a long sigh.

  “Just because Nolan Corning, Monica Bosworth, and El Brujo are dead doesn’t mean this isn’t a hydra. There are countless tentacles left in this mess. We don’t know what’s deep state. We don’t know what’s narco trafficking. We don’t know what’s garden-variety narcissistic manipulation. We don’t know who is power hungry and who is out for even more.” Frustration infuses every word coming out of Silas’s mouth.

  Meanwhile, I look at Lily, who’s watching the whole thing with awe.

  Silas gently takes Jane’s elbow and turns her towards him. “I know you don’t like this,” he says softly. “I don’t like it, either. But everything is on a need-to-know basis.”

  “Well, I need to know.”

  I can tell this is a well-worn argument between the two of them. Again, I look at Lily. It would be a well-worn argument between the two of us, too, if we were a couple.

  A couple. The thought fills me with a grounded sense of desire, something I have no right to feel.

  Bzzzz.

  Lily jumps as if she’s been stung by a bee. Reaching into her front pocket, she pulls her new phone out and looks down. “It’s Mom,” she says. “She wants to make sure I’m okay.”

  Jane smiles at her. “Your mom’s pretty great.”

  “She really doesn’t feel the same about you.” Lily says bluntly.

  “Yeah, I figured.” Narrowing her eyes, Jane gives Silas an appraising look. “Fine. You can go.”

  “Glad to have your permission,” he deadpans.

  “But,” Jane clarifies, her finger in his face. “I’m the one who is Drew’s client.”

  “Only when it comes to Lily,” Silas notes.

  “Only when it comes to Lily,” she concedes. “But anything related to Romeo is related to Lily.” A shudder from her confirms it. “Therefore, Drew has to tell me what you know to the extent that… that he can tell me what you know.”

  “Fair enough.” Silas concedes. “You realize that’s what I was going to do all along,” he adds.

  “I know,” Jane says brightly, perking up. “But sometimes you and Drew need to be told things a few times before they sink in.”

  “Only when it comes to control,” I say breaking my silence.

  They turn and look at me. Jane’s amused. Silas is pissed.

  “We don’t pay you to editorialize, Duff.” Silas says.

  “Tell me what to do next, boss, and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  He nods towards a doorway. We walk out into a long, tiled hallway with French doors leading to a small patio outside. I follow him, my heels smacking on the stones until we’re a good distance away from the house.

  He turns around and shakes his head as he looks at Alice’s studio. “You know, the first time I came here,” he starts, “Alice Mogrett held a gun on me.”

  “What?” I say. “She was a pistol,” I add.

  “Actually, it was a rifle. You know what I mean?” He grins at me.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “You knew her your whole life?” he asks, his inquiry more human than I’m used to.

  I nod. “I did. My Gran talked about her a lot when I was a kid. And then I got home from my tours and went into private security, and after a while Alice found out. Hired me.”

  “Hired you to do what?” Silas asks, leaning in. I can tell by his demeanor that he already knows. There’s no sense thinking I can keep the truth from him.

  That’s the other problem with what I do for a living. We all have secrets. Some of them are actually top secret and some of them are just embarrassing. Some of them are personal, some are professional. Some of them are silly and trivial, and some are deadly.

  Facing a colleague who is as well-trained as you are in manipulation and control of the flow of information is hard. The problem is that you don’t know what they know. And not knowing what they know means that sometimes you can feed them new information accidentally.

  I am carrying a big secret. It has to do with Jane. It has to do with Lindsay Bosworth. It has to do with the events of just over six years ago, when Lindsay was gang raped by three people she thought were friends.

  It has to do with a kind of rot that comes from trying to grow anything in deep soil that’s already contaminated.

  Two truths can be plausible at the same time. You can have deeply poisoned land that produces an abundance of food if cultivated. The problem is, taking a bite of the food can nourish–or it can destroy.

  Not knowing what Silas knows about me, and not knowing what Silas knows about my mission with Alice, means that I have to parse my words carefully.

  I can’t say anything about my brother.

  No one's come back to that picture yet. Once they do, this gets even more complicated.

  I take three seconds to consider all this. We’re at a standoff. He knows I’m hiding something, and I know that he knows I’m hiding something.

  “Let’s have it,” he demands, hands on his hips, brow lowered, the power stance obvious. Unlike Drew, Silas is steadier, calmer. When guys like us play good cop/bad cop, Silas always plays the good cop. He’s smart enough not to even bother with intimidation tactics or threats. This is a guy who lays it on the line and expects me to do the same in return.

  Problem is, my secret involves his girlfriend.

  That’s when his calm, rational self is going to unravel.

  “What do you know?” I ask him. “You have access to all of Alice’s papers. You know more about me than I do.”

  “We knew from the start, when we hired you, that you were connected to Alice,” Silas admits. “I didn’t until recently but the people who vet all of our guys knew. It’s why you were assigned here.”

  “I know,” I tell him. “I was upfront about it.”

  “That was probably the only thing you’ve been upfront about.” He stares me down, expecting me to crack.

  Good luck with that.

  “What exactly do you want to know, Silas?”

  “What exactly do you want to tell me, Duff?”

  “I don’t want to tell you anything.”

  “And I want to know everything,” he counters.

  “I worked for Alice Mogrett. I work for you guys. That’s really all you need to know.”

  “What did you do for Alice?”

  “Security.”

  “But you did security for us.”

  “Sure.”

  “Why is there a picture of you and your little brother in Alice's files? A picture from twenty-three years ago.”

  Before I can form a cohesive answer that is plausible but still maintains my secret, we're interrupted.

  A car pulls up, a black SUV like all of the other ones. Drew Foster gets out of the passenger seat and snaps the door shut. As he walks towards the house, a pissed-off look settles on his face.

  That’s his normal look.

  Sunglasses cover intelligent eyes, which can be useful.

  And intimidating.

  “You,” he says pointing at me. “We need to talk.” This must be bad if he's come all the way to Texas from California and made a straight line for me.

  I hold my arms out. “Shoot, boss.”

  If he weren’t wearing sunglasses, I’d see the glare my words elicit.

  Silas leads us to an outbuilding, one that’s used mostly for grounds keeping. There’s a small office in there with electricity and the basics. Silas unlocks the door and steps in first. We stand in a small circle, two against one.

  “I don’t believe a word out of Romeo Czaky’s mouth,” Drew informs me with a cold, clinical precision that I’ve come to admire.

  I nod exactly
once.

  “But I can also tell you’re not telling us the truth about you,” he continues. “I did some digging. You started working for Alice Mogrett ten years ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why’d she bring you here?”

  “Security.”

  “Dammit. Duff, why did she bring you here?”

  “Security,” I say again.

  “And six years ago, what did she assign you to do?”

  Ice water hits my spine. Shit. He’s figured it out.

  “Six years ago I was standing outside in the Texas dust and heat, just like always, helping Alice get to a plane to some art show. Or helping guests during their arrival and their stay at the ranch,” I draw out.

  “And what else?” he persists.

  “I washed the cars, took care of invoicing, trained some of the new guys. You know. The standard.”

  Drew moves his left hand in circles as if he’s waiting for me to finish what I’m doing. It’s a mocking gesture. I get it. He’s upset and I’m toying with him.

  I’m toying with him to buy time.

  I knew this day would come. I just didn’t think I’d be facing Drew Foster over it.

  Movement outside the window to my left catches my eye. Jane is walking next to Lily, the two of them on a path, the white rocks crunching beneath their feet.

  I can’t actually hear them. They’re too far away, but my brain takes the imaginary sound and plants it there. Furtive glances towards our windows tell me that Jane knows exactly where we are. I suspect she knows exactly what we’re talking about.

  How much of that was theater back there, how much of it is theater right here, right now?

  “You ever work on the El Brujo case?” Drew asks.

  “No.”

  “But you knew who he was before this last case?”

  “Sure, I’d heard of him. Everyone has.”

  “Alice Mogrett ever talk about El Brujo?”

  “Not with me.”

  “Alice Mogrett ever talk about Nolan Corning?”

  “Not with me.”

  “What did Alice talk about with you, Duff?”

  “Mostly she ranted about needing a security team and how much she hated it.”

  “That include you?”

  “No, sir. I was a special hire. You know that.”

  Drew leans in, eyes piercing. Commanding officers have a way about them. It must be in their blood. They hold their spines differently than the rest of us. Their legs move with a kind of authority few people possess. Doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. Doesn’t matter if you’re from the South or the North. Doesn’t matter if you’re fifth-generation military or a first-generation immigrant.

  If you've got that in you, you can’t hide it.

  Drew Foster definitely can’t hide it.

  I suspect he can’t turn it off, either.

  His eyes turn deadly. “I’m going to ask this exactly once, Duff, and I expect a full, truthful answer: Did Alice Mogrett hire you to help set up the gang rape of my wife?”

  Chapter 19

  Some questions must be answered with a question.

  Like this one.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” I respond, puffing up in fury, the accusation so big, so horrible, it cannot be allowed to stand. My shout comes at the exact moment that Jane storms in, Lily at her heels.

  Great. An audience.

  “Maybe I am,” Drew says. “Maybe I’m out of my fucking mind knowing that one of my top security guys has been embroiled in a secret network right under my nose.”

  “It’s not like that,” I insist. Here I am on the defensive again. “I worked for Alice long before I worked for you,” I start to explain.

  “You’ve been double dipping?” His voice goes up in a mocking anger that I don’t understand, but I know it’s treacherous. “Lay every bit of it out for me now,” he demands.

  I look at Jane. Silas picks up on it. His eyes narrow. My pulse pounds in my temples. My mouth goes dry. Muscles twitch, readying for a fight.

  Our physiology is designed to react to whatever data we are receiving. Emotions are data. I’m cornered. I have ways to get out, but they’re all inelegant and inferior. Computers can process data at extraordinary speeds.

  The human brain can, too.

  Unfortunately, most of the processing takes place in parts of the brain that aren’t revealed to me in this moment. They’re all subterranean, and Drew Foster is nothing but surface right now.

  Lily is watching and waiting along with Jane, who doesn’t look at me directly, but instead blinks rapidly. Her gaze is fixed on a corner filled with light in the back of the room. She doesn’t know it, but what Drew Foster is asking me to tell goes back to the very essence of who she is.

  Who she's been forced to become.

  “I had nothing to do with the events of six years ago, Drew.”

  “Sir,” he snaps.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s ‘sir’ to you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I spit out. Any other guy did that and I’d think he was being petty. Drew Foster is reminding me not just of my place in the pecking order, but that what’s about to come out of my mouth is a security matter, not a personal one.

  Given all of that, I know how high the stakes are. Alice gave me a mission. That mission is technically complete, but as Lily and Jane hold their space in the cloud of tension that envelops us, I realize the mission never had an endpoint.

  At least, not the one Romeo has in mind.

  Just like Lily, I’ve been holding a secret. It’s a secret I can’t tell. Not because the secret itself is dangerous to me. In that way, Lily and I differ.

  I haven’t been able to tell the secret because the lens through which so many people in–and outside of–this room view their lives would change so dramatically that the ripple effect would lead to a tsunami.

  I’m not just some guy Alice Mogrett hired because of a connection with her former maid. On the surface, sure. But this one goes so, so deep.

  Because I’m indirectly responsible for Harwell Bosworth becoming the president of the United States.

  A guy like me isn’t supposed to have that kind of power. And now, that same president’s son-in-law is staring me in the face, his jaw clenched, nostrils flared, face red with fury, and he’s demanding what he thinks is the truth.

  Do I give it to him? There is a point where holding onto a secret has less value than revealing it. Knowing when that tipping point occurs can take a lifetime to master.

  I don’t have a lifetime.

  Seconds pass as I weigh my options, Foster’s body language increasingly aggressive.

  “Duff,” Jane asks, “what is it? Lay it out. Tell us.” Her voice has more compassion than I have a right to expect. It derails me. Incoming data needs to be clean for robots to process it and act accordingly.

  Emotional data is never clean. Never has been, never will be.

  But it’s not Jane who sets me askew. It’s Lily. Every breath she takes as the tension thickens makes me feel more hopeless. The minute I admit what I’ve been hiding, I become Jane, Silas, and Drew’s opponent. When you’re on the other side of someone, there’s no room for trust. The sharp edges are how we survive. Lily hasn’t been part of the mess that Drew and Lindsay and Jane have spent the last six years living.

  But she’s the biggest victim of it.

  “You know that Alice had Monica Bosworth surveilled by a private investigator,” I start, my words more halting than I want them to be. This is being pulled out of me. I have to give them enough truth to sound believable.

  But I have to hold back my truth. They can't know why I'm really here.

  Not yet.

  Hopefully, not ever.

  “And so,” I continue, “once Alice connected so many of those dots, she decided to keep the surveillance going. Privately,” I add, in case there’s any ambiguity in Drew and Silas’s minds. “It wasn’t constant and it wasn’t obvious. When I c
ame out of Afghanistan, I needed a job. Gran helped me connect to Alice. It wasn’t part of some grand conspiracy,” I inform them. “It was just dumb luck.”

  “And?” Drew says, impatient.

  “And, six years ago, Alice started to get reports hinting at a plot.”

  Jane’s eyes go dark, her mouth tightening. “A plot?”

  “There were rumors flying that one senator with power was unhappy with a California senator who wasn’t playing ball when it came to some legislation that would help a notorious narco trafficker.”

  Lily looks utterly confused. “Can you guys break this down for me? I don’t understand.”

  Jane freezes. “You’re talking about Nolan Corning, Harry Bosworth, and El Brujo, aren’t you, Duff?”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  Jane turns to Lily. “Monica Bosworth was tangled in a mess with El Brujo. Trying to work with him and Corning so she could boost Harry’s power,” she says slowly. “It was all a scandal that started right around the time that I was born.”

  “Oh, I know about that,” Lily says. “But what does Duff have to do with any of this?”

  “That’s exactly what I want to know,” Drew spits out. “What the hell did you have to do with the plot?”

  “I had nothing to do with it. Not directly. But indirectly, Alice brought me in as the rumors began to fly.” I steel myself and look Drew straight in the eye. How do you tell a man this? How do you tell anyone this?

  His arms cross over his chest and I receive the deadly glare he's known for.

  “Alice’s private investigators were bringing scraps of information that didn’t add up,” I try to explain. “We didn’t understand what we were learning and hearing.”

  “Just spit it out. Enough with the pussyfooting,” Drew says.

  “We knew less than thirty minutes before it happened what was about to happen to you and Lindsay and Jane. No, I had nothing to do with the gang rape of your wife. Alice Mogrett had nothing to do with the assault on you and Lindsay at the hands of John, Stellan, and Blaine.” I pause and look at Jane. “Or the assault that almost happened to you.”

  Her eyelids close in misery, as if blocking out pain.

  “We spent two weeks piecing together bits of evidence and figured it out.” I look down at the ground, feeling something way too close to shame.