I walk onto the stage with my hand in my father’s, my step-mother is at his opposite side, as is my step-brother, and the crowd roars at the sight of us. My father kisses my hand and then that of my step-mother dearests before he claims the podium and his acceptance speech begins. He’s now the candidate of his party. I’m numb. I feel nothing. I barely hear anything. I go through the motions as I have for months, sticking with Jake while he works his plan. Terrance is working with him. Others are too, though Drew never showed up and while it’s doubtful he will, it could still happen. The time to end my father is not yet. As Logan suggested, it’s after the primaries.
It’s hours later when I’m finally back in my apartment building. Security escorts me to my door because that’s how this works. We have Secret Service. I walk in the door and shut it, the sound of silence welcome but inside I’m screaming. He’s too close to winning. I push off the door and walk to my bedroom, reaching under the mattress to the phone I keep there, the one that has Logan’s number inside. I want to turn it on. I want to call him and tell him I haven’t forgotten him. Because he’s not a part of this place, this world, and I want out so badly. But that’s just it. That would seem like the reason I’m calling is because I want an escape, not him. I said I didn’t want us to be about wanting something from each other and I don’t. I can’t have him right now, anyway, even if he still cares. There’s a knock on the door—actually three fast knocks—which means Jake. I stick the phone back under the mattress.
I hurry to the door and open it, and he grabs me, pulls me to him and kisses me. I sink into the kiss, because the thing is, he’s a part of this world, and this is my world. And we both want something from each other and we know it. It works.
For now.
***
NOVEMBER, TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE ELECTION…
Jake and I are sitting on my couch eating pizza, waiting for the bombshell to hit the news. When it finally happens, he turns up the volume on the television, as the announcer says: The bombshell dossier on Monroe is filled with troubling information that is most scandalous and criminal, if it proves true. Allegations of an affair with his daughter’s best friend, who was murdered last year, insider trading, offshore accounts, payoffs and more.
Jake turns off the sound and we just look at each other, the sense of an end coming, for us and my father, in the air. It’s surreal. It’s sad. It’s pure joy. I will miss Jake, but I always knew he was temporary, and he knew the same of me. I will not miss my father, but I’m not yet convinced we’ve won.
Election night says it all.
***
TWO WEEKS LATER, ELECTION NIGHT, CAMPAIGN HEADQUARTERS…
After hours of watching the polls, of close calls, of narrow wins and losses, I’m standing backstage when my father pounds a wall and drops his forehead to the hard surface. Step-mother dearest touches his shoulder and he shoves her hand away, turning to face forward. “We’ll be back,” he says, as if he didn’t just melt down. Let’s go tell them we’ll be back.”
He’s lost, and I happily follow him onto the stage to revel in this moment. This time when we walk the stage to the cheering crowd, my heart is filled with joy. It’s over. He’s lost. It’s not true justice, but to my father, it’s the ultimate torture. I stand on that stage and listen to him deliver his speech, congratulating the new President who is not him, and when it’s over, he leaves without even saying goodbye to me.
I exit the stage and Jake is waiting at the bottom of the steps. He kisses my hand. “We did it.”
“We did.”
“I have to go,” he says. “I need to know what he does next.” But he’s not talking about tonight.
“I know,” I say. “We were good together.”
He gives me a nod. “Maybe one day we will be again.”
“Maybe.”
But we won’t. We both walk away and I hurry through a curtain to a private area, digging out that phone Logan gave me from my purse and now I turn it on. I dial and hold my breath. He answers on the first ring. “I wasn’t sure you’d answer. I’m free now.”
“And I’m here.”
“What? Where?”
“The back door. Come to me.”
I hang up and hurry that direction, cutting through people and rounding a corner for what feels like an eternal walk. I reach the back exit and push through the door to find Logan standing next to a black sedan, looking his perfectly handsome self in a black suit. I rush toward him and him toward me, and there is no question what comes next. We kiss, of course, because now I’m free to be in his world, or rather, make his world my world.
My father’s reign has ended.
***
THE PRESENT...
And that was almost the end but of course, you know that my father doesn’t live. He’s not dead, and my world isn’t really all rainbows and roses, so the story isn’t over.
PART THREE: THE END
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
We’re back to almost present day, six years after my father’s big loss. I didn’t go to law school, I now own an art gallery in Cherry Creek, and my work has become quite in demand. I, of course, married Logan but my father was not invited to the wedding. It was small, cozy, and in the art room of the coffee shop.
Logan is good for me. I was right about his calming effect. He soothes that dark part of me that is far too much like my father. Between him and my art, I am able to forget, that the old me even exists. The girl that found her way to trouble at a party and lost her mother. The girl on the mountainside with Danielle. The girl that lied for her father and herself. I really have become the girl who is an artist and a wife. Someone who loves, in the only way I can love, which I’m not sure is the way Logan loves, but maybe one day.
It was perfect until the day my father showed up at our apartment door…
***
THE PAST…
I’m sitting at a canvas in my studio that Logan has built for me in our apartment, right off the kitchen, when he appears in the doorway. “I need to run downstairs to the office to finish up some work. How about dinner at the new Italian place?”
“I’d love that,” I say, and he crosses to inspect my work, which is a depiction of the Cherry Creek neighborhood I’m unveiling in a show next weekend.
“Stunning Hailey,” he says, and I beam. I love when he loves my work.
He kisses me and heads to the office, and I must be painting for another hour when the doorbell rings. Assuming it’s my supply delivery, I hurry to the door, and when I open it I suck in air at the sight of my father. The years have been kind to him, his hair a little grayer, his eyes a bit more lined, but he’s fit and handsome; his suit, of course, is expensive. “What are you doing here?”
“I want to see my daughter. Can I come in?”
A dark sensation claws at me, but I back up and allow him to enter. I don’t wait on him. I turn and walk toward the kitchen and head straight to my gallery. I sit down at my work area, and he appears in the doorway where Logan was earlier. He glances around at my room, the mural I’ve painted on the walls, a fancy paint-splattered floor beneath our feet. “Nice setup,” he says. “I’m going to make some coffee. You want some coffee?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. He enters my kitchen, and this infuriates me. This isn’t his home. I don’t get up. I tell myself I won’t, but I last about two minutes.
I follow him, which is what he wants, but I am still his daughter apparently. He offers me the cup in his hand. I ignore it. “Why are you here?”
He sets the cup down. “Right to the point. Okay. I’m running for office again. I’d like your support.”
I laugh, my head tilting backward with the force before I look at him. “That is never happening, though I’d almost like to help just to watch you suffer another loss.”
“You liked seeing me lose?!” he demands.
“I loved it. You are a horrible person.”
“You,” he says, walking toward m
e. “Are a spoiled brat that—” He grabs his chest and grunts. “You,” he tries again, but his eyes start to roll back. “I’m—I need—help.”
“So you said,” I say, turning away and walking into my studio where I sit down and stare at my work.
“Hai—ley,” he groans and I’m pretty sure the thud that follows is him hitting the ground, but there is this tiny imperfection on the painting. It’s driving me nuts. I pick up my brush and dab at the spot.
“Hai-ley.”
This time my name is a whisper. I puff out a breath and set down my brush before I stand up and walk to the kitchen. He’s on the floor, on his back, and there seems to be foam coming out of his mouth, which I think I read means heart attack. I walk back into the art room, grab my phone and dial 911. “My father is having an event. He needs help.” I give them the address and I don’t wait for instructions. I hang up. I seem to blackout, but I haven’t had a drink. It’s just like when those old blackouts happened though. I completely lose time. I don’t remember what happened between the time I make the call and when finally, they are covering his face, pronouncing him dead.
***
THE PRESENT...
And so, the story ends. Do I feel bad about waiting so long to call that ambulance? No. It was finally poetic justice. I painted and he died. It was his time. He was going to die. That’s the point. The story is already written, so just live it while you can because one day, you’ll be dead too, and it might be sooner than you think.
THE END
WANT MORE LISA RENEE JONES MYSTERY?
Check out my Lilah Love series!
As an FBI profiler, it’s Lilah Love’s job to think like a killer. And she is very good at her job. When a series of murders surface—the victims all stripped naked and shot in the head—Lilah’s instincts tell her it’s the work of an assassin, not a serial killer. But when the case takes her back to her hometown in the Hamptons and a mysterious but unmistakable connection to her own life, all her assumptions are shaken to the core.
Thrust into a troubled past she’s tried to shut the door on, Lilah’s back in the town where her father is mayor, her brother is police chief, and she has an intimate history with the local crime lord’s son, Kane Mendez. The two share a devastating secret, and only Kane understands Lilah’s own darkest impulses. As more corpses surface, so does a series of anonymous notes to Lilah, threatening to expose her. Is the killer someone in her own circle? And is she the next target?
TURN THE PAGE TO READ CHAPTER ONE OF BOOK ONE: MUDER NOTES!
CHAPTER ONE OF MURDER NOTES
There is blood in the ocean.
I don’t notice it at first, but then, most people don’t. It’s called denial. We refuse to see what we eventually have to cope with, or perhaps even confess. For the innocent, they don’t expect the brutality of the actions required to take a life, so they simply cannot process the inconceivable. For the guilty, it’s all about denying your own ability to do such a thing, and denial can be a slow, brutal sword that carves you inside out. Though there is another class of people that are more animal than human. Those so sick, so demented that they feel a fleeting joy from death, and then seek more joy by doing it again. And again. You won’t find guilt in their eyes. You won’t find remorse. There are times when I’ve felt like one of those animals, but then the guilt starts again.
But you see? There is no remorse. I’m not sure what that says about me.
And so I walk on the beach, not seeing what is there, and it’s like so many other walks along East Hampton’s Beach. Cool sand between my toes. The taste of salt on my lips. A gust of wind lifting my long brown hair from my neck. I see it happening, like I’m above the scene, looking down. Like I’m dead and that other person on the beach is alive. Sometimes I can almost hear that wind whisper my name, too: Lilah. Lilah. As if it’s calling me to a place it knows I must travel, but I continue to refuse. It is a gentle, soothing caress of a whisper, a seductive promise that acceptance will bring relief, even forgiveness.
The wind lies. It always lies.
But then, that’s why it wants me. Because of my lies. Because it knows how they haunt me. It knows my secrets when no one else knows. Only that’s a lie, too, and I blink to find the only other person who does know in the distance and closing in quickly.
He walks toward me, graceful and good looking, his suit ridiculously expensive; the wet sand beneath his black lace up shoes impossibly smooth everywhere he steps. But then, he’s a man who easily convinces people he walks on water, so why not sand? A man whose accomplishments are second only to his arrogance, while his charisma is just one of his many weapons. He can kiss a woman and make her crave more–he certainly did that to me–but I remind myself that this does not make me naïve, as he also has the power to utter only a word and have grown men follow him. He is the picture of perfection that very few see is framed with broken glass. But I see. I know things about him no one else knows.
Like he does me. And therein lies the problem.
Rejecting him, I turn away from his approach, facing the ocean, a new dawn illuminating the sky, a strange red spot tainting the deep blue of the water. It begins to grow, and grow some more, until the lifeblood of someone gone, and possibly forgotten, spills through it like oil, set on destruction. Blood is now everywhere. There is nothing else but it and the guilt that I’ve tried to deny.
And suddenly he is behind me, his hand on my shoulder, and I shiver with that touch. He did this. He spilled this blood.
Only…no. That doesn’t feel right. I think…I did this.
I wake from one of my freak-show nightmares, which I thought were finally over, to a dark room, my cellphone ringing on the nightstand and my body aching from the need for sleep.
“Rich,” I murmur, shoving against the big, hard body that has managed to drape over mine. “Get off. My phone’s ringing.” He doesn’t move, which is a problem that reaches beyond this moment, and more directly to us working in the same field office and hopping into bed together. “Rich, damn it.”
He gives a groan and rolls in one direction while I go the other and grab my cell, glancing at the caller ID. It’s the local PD. “Special Agent Love,” I answer.
“We’ve got a body off the Santa Monica Pier and need your assistance,” the man on the line says. “Early morning jogger made the discovery and called it in.”
I glance at the clock, five AM, and wonder what idiot jogs at four in the morning, in the dark, on the beach, but this isn’t my job anyway. “That’s the local authority’s territory. You’ve got the wrong girl.”
“You are Special Agent Lilah Love, correct?”
“You knew that already,” I say irritably, and since this clearly isn’t going away easily, I sit up, preparing to fight for my need to sleep.
“Then you’re requested by name. Director Murphy sent the directive.”
My boss is meeting me there? This is more than me lending my profiling skills to the locals if he’s joining me, and my exhaustion fades into concern. “I’ll be right there.” I end the call and throw off the blankets, grimacing when I realize I’m wearing Rich’s shirt, which is not sending him the non-committal message I need to send after dodging last night’s “talk.” But it smells good, the way he always does, I think as I push myself onto my feet and stumble toward the bathroom.
Stepping into the tiny bathroom, a cracked tile scrapes my foot, and I grimace, taking up residence at the equally tiny, ancient sink and grab my toothbrush.
“When are we going to finish that talk we started last night?”
At the sound of Rich’s voice, I start brushing my teeth, making sure I’m as incapable of talking about moving in with him now as I was when we were having sex last night. “Lilah,” he says impatiently, my reprieve lasting all of ten seconds.
I glance over at him through the long drape of my messy dark brown hair to find him leaning on the doorway. Naked. The man is all kinds of blond, hard-bodied goo
dness, but still. Good grief. “Why don’t you have clothes on?” I ask, though I’m not sure he can understand me with my mouth full of foam.
“I’m serious, Lilah. We’ve been hot and heavy for six months. We need to have this talk.”
“You’re naked,” I say, yanking the toothbrush from my mouth, since clearly he didn’t hear me the last time. “I’m not talking to you naked.” I go back to brushing my teeth.
“You aren’t naked. I am.”
“Aren’t you funny,” I say, turning on the water and rinsing my mouth, and since he’s still standing there when I’m done, I face him. “I’m serious, Rich. You’re naked. I have a dead body waiting on me. The two do not compute. Now is not the time.”
“You’re one of the top FBI profilers in the country,” he states. “You always have a dead body waiting on you. Which is why we never talk.”
I turn and press my hands to the sink, showing the white ceramic more interest than it deserves, while his naked body might deserve more than I can afford to give it right now. “Everyone has their fetishes, I guess.”
“You don’t like dead bodies. Why do you say shit like that?”
Because I want to scare you off, I think, and I might actually really freak him out if I insist I do have a fetish for dead bodies. Of course, as logical as Rich is, he'd know it's because they help me catch killers. Instead, I just say, “I’m getting dressed,” and hope he takes a hint and does the same, I turn to walk into the closet. Thankfully, his sound of frustration is followed by a shift in the air that tells me he’s finally gone to dress. Wishing for the shower I don’t have time to take, I yank a pair of faded jeans and a black V-neck t-shirt from their hangers, get dressed, and then lean on the wall to pull on black combat boots.
A Perfect Lie Page 27
