Liars' Legacy

by Taylor Stevens

  She’d feign sleep if it would do any good, but anyone smart enough to engage the twists these guys had knew how to time sedatives, and trying to pretend otherwise would just make her look like she was dumb enough to think they were dumb, and she had a hard enough time convincing people she wasn’t an idiot without inflicting that label on herself.

  The door slid shut.

  Kara rolled onto her back.

  The blonde stood at her feet, tray in hand, face bare and sun kissed, hair tied back in a messy ponytail bun, wearing jeans, sweatshirt, and Converse shoes, like some peppy freshman straight off the varsity cheer squad, still used to being fawned over and adored, because life hadn’t slapped a KICK ME sign on her back yet.

  She offered a hint of smile, as if to say hello.

  Kara groaned on the inside and fought the urge to roll right back over.

  After all she’d done to escape the popular girls, she’d been outwitted and grabbed by one. She’d officially reached the lowest circle of hell.

  The blonde placed the tray on the table. “I’m always thirsty after sedation,” she said. “Thought you might be, too. Wasn’t sure if you’d feel like eating, but brought a few things in case. You have any allergies? Nuts? Dairy? Eggs?”

  In her head Kara said, Highly allergic to bullshit, but that would earn no favors, so she said nothing and let silence do the speaking.

  The blonde picked up a bottle, broke the seal, held it forward.

  Kara took the water and glugged it down, and the blonde slid onto the sofa chair and tucked her legs up, like they were gal pals just hanging out, or what the ever-loving heck this was. Kara said, “Where are my men?”

  “They’re fine. Alive, I mean. They’re alive, and they’re fine.”

  “Here on the train?”

  “At the motel. There might be a concussion or two, maybe some bad bruises, but other than that, they should all be okay.”

  Kara capped the bottle, uncapped it, capped it, diverting brain resources, slowing down thought just enough to separate anxiety from relief.

  Her guys were alive. That’s all that mattered.

  But for her personally, this was bad.

  Blondie, as if reading her mind, said, “This won’t come back on you. We made sure all the evidence pointed to you as hostage, not perpetrator, and left a message for them to stand by, because we’ll be in touch for more.”

  Kara’s brain seized up.

  Blondie said, “Crap. Look, I’m sorry. I wasn’t meaning to make you beg for information. This train is headed for Chicago. We’ve still got about twenty-five hours left on the trip, and we’ll get all your questions answered soon, I promise.”

  Kara’s fingers gripped the cap and worked it right, left, right, left.

  Women who looked like Blondie did, and who held the type of power Blondie held, were only ever nice to her when they needed something or were setting her up for something. The word choices and empathetic tone set her on edge.

  Blondie said, “It’s only fair that you know up front that I’m capable of killing you and getting your body off this train without anyone knowing you were here. I don’t want to hurt you, but can, and will if you push me. Please don’t.”

  Kara twisted the cap another hard right and left.

  This made no strategic sense, no tactical sense.

  Blondie herself made no sense, abductor warning abductee the same way Kara would have begged Nick not to do anything stupid, if these had been their roles, and she’d have had to hurt him. The respect of equals messed with her head.

  She had no frame of reference for an appropriate response, so reverted to safe and social and said, “Do you have a name?”

  The blonde smiled. “You already know several. Take your pick.”

  Her warmth was infectious and alluring and made it difficult to see past the words for what she’d really done, letting on that she knew what Kara knew and prompting her for more. Skills like that didn’t come without a lot of practice working over strangers and learning how to make them like you.

  Kara stopped there, thoughts hovering over strangers.

  What had made no sense flipped upside down.

  Blondie made no sense because paradigms were contextual, and in context, mean girls and their cliques were territorial social hierarchies. Put that same behavior in a lone kid in an unfamiliar place and all you got was an immediate social outcast.

  If Steven Hayes was right about Karen McFadden, and if Blondie was really McFadden’s kid, she would have spent her entire life on the move.

  Friendships, if she’d had them, would have been temporary and fleeting.

  No territory. No social hierarchy. No queen bee.

  What you got instead was a cultural chameleon adept at reading people, quick to pick up unfamiliar social cues, capable of rapid integration. That’s what this was, and with understanding, Kara’s insides unclenched and clarity followed.

  She said, “If it’s on me to pick a name, I’ll go with Jen.”

  “I like that one.”

  Kara said, “Thank you for letting me know my guys are safe, and for explaining the rules of engagement. What I really need most right now is to use the restroom.”

  Jen nodded toward the sealed-off space within the cabin.

  “Toilet’s in there,” she said. “Shower, too, if you want to clean up. Just let me know when you’re ready, and I’ll set your feet loose.” She stood. “I’m not going to stay to keep an eye on you, so we can do this one of two ways. You can use the time alone to try to get out of your restraints and make a jump for freedom, which won’t work and will force me to hurt you. Or you can accept the situation for what it is and deal with the inconvenience as best as you can.”

  Kara said, “And what exactly is the situation?”

  “Just a long, boring train ride, unless you try to mix it up.”

  Kara parsed the words for source and context, searching for completeness and meaning, just as she would have if they’d been handed to her as a transcript. Within the many unknowns, this much she knew:

  Her captors were capable of inflicting great harm but preferred to avoid it.

  They responded to violence with violence but didn’t initiate it.

  They were rational, methodical killers averse to killing, willing to take prisoners, but not sociopathic, ideological, or even evil—though morality was wholly defined by who did the moralizing—and try as she may, she couldn’t get this to fit the narrative headquarters had handed her. Not that she discounted the narrative entirely. Political assassination might very well be the end goal, but that assessment was oversimplistic.

  From nearly the beginning she’d known there was more.

  More was why she’d been grabbed.

  Kara said, “Are you planning to let me go?”

  “When this is over, yes.”

  Kara snorted. “As long as you’re wanted, this will never be over, and you’ll always be wanted.” She laid back and stared at the ceiling. “You don’t strike me as someone who’d struggle to understand the long game.”

  Jen reached the door, waited a beat, and slid it open.

  “Have a little faith,” she said.

  The door rolled closed. The latch was secured. And Kara could have sworn Jen had whispered, “In yourself,” and left that addition hanging in the air.

  CHAPTER 33

  McLean County

  Illinois, USA

  JILL

  SHE WOKE IN THE DARK TO THE AMBIENT GLOW OF THE LAPTOP screen, train still rhythmic and rattling, Holden still watching the camera feeds, and no recollection at all of having drifted off. To fall under like that while they’d been talking meant she was still running a serious sleep deficit. She’d done what? Thirty-six, forty hours awake?

  She groaned upright, eyes burning, body protesting.

  Holden pulled the headphones off. Tone hushed, as if speaking normally might formalize things, he said, “You’ve still got forty-five minutes. Go back to sleep.”

&
nbsp; There were too many pending pieces to just let go.

  She said, “Has John found her yet?”

  “Yeah, looks like it. I’ll show you later.”

  “What about girl next door?”

  “Reading. I’ve got this. Go sleep.”

  She tipped back over, her eyes closed against her will, and she drifted down again, strategy and conversation, the things she had done and still needed to do, playing and replaying until dreams and reality blended.

  Nearly thirty hours they’d been riding the rails.

  She’d brought Kara warm meals from the dining car and handed off abandoned books and magazines she’d found, and stopped by just to sit and talk, entering and exiting at will courtesy of a conductor’s key, but the key was an illusion. Kara’s sleeper cabin, like every sleeper cabin, locked and unlocked from the inside. Shackles alone weren’t enough to stop her from trying to walk out on her own. But she hadn’t tried, and wouldn’t. Not because she was too dumb for it to have crossed her mind, but because she was smart enough for it not to.

  Jill knew this, because she knew people.

  They’d put the cameras in, anyway, and kept an eye on her in alternating shifts. The miles had dragged on, and Kara still hadn’t touched the door, and they were almost to the end, almost, almost, and there was coffee....

  Jill’s eyes opened again.

  A steaming mug sat on the table, not far from her head. Holden glanced her way and smiled. He was still at the computer, still watching the cameras, but the headphones were off. He said, “Good morning.”

  She dragged her feet from bed to floor, rested her arms on the table, and dropped her head onto them. Eyes closed, she said, “On which continent?” and then, “How close are we?”

  “Couple more hours.”

  She felt for the mug and dragged it to her face, summoned the energy to get her lips to the rim, and took a sip. Neurons lit up inside her head.

  Holden slid a tablet across the table in her direction.

  A bottle-enhanced redhead filled the screen, late forties to early fifties, pantsuit, minimal makeup, hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun, caught mid-stride on her way to a black sedan. She was a picture of power in motion.

  Two men in suits walked beside her. Another waited at the rear passenger door. Jill pinched and zoomed and assessed the accoutrements.

  Radio earpieces. Service weapons.

  By all appearances, John had found what they were after.

  The strategy now rested on her getting the confirmation.

  For nearly thirty hours she’d been laying that groundwork, every conversation and every visit to the cabin next door, practicing an art that Jack, for all his brilliance, had never fully appreciated.

  He thought she manipulated people to get what she wanted. He was wrong.

  People manipulated themselves. If you acknowledged their deepest desires, guarded their secrets, soothed their hidden shame, and reaffirmed their worldview and self-image, they tripped over themselves in a race to their own doom while thanking you for the favor. She’d first internalized that insight as an eight-year-old in Sofia, Bulgaria, after their apartment had been burgled and Clare, being Clare and refusing to accept it as a random act of thievery, had hunted down one of the men who’d cleaned them out and had positioned her kids where they could watch the interrogation.

  She’d never threatened, never raised her voice.

  Instead, she’d cut the man loose, straddled a chair facing him, handed him a beer, and drunk with him. He’d talked—cautiously, at first—and she’d listened and empathized, and by the time she’d sent him on his way, she’d mapped the entire hierarchy of a local ring of thieves.

  Not that he knew that’s what he’d done, exactly.

  “I could have hurt him,” Clare had said. “People will tell you anything they think you want to hear if it will make the pain stop, but they’ll tell you what you need to hear if they like you and if it’s in their own best interest.”

  That was the difference between her and her brother.

  She caught on to self-interest a whole lot faster than he did. Faster than Holden, too, it seemed, because that first short conversation after Kara had woken had been enough to get her started. Holden, who’d been listening and watching, had still needed an explanation. “Look at it this way,” she’d said. “Here’s this woman who’s been chasing John for over a week. He’s the one who led her team into the trap in Prague. He’s the one who led them to the motel. By any measure, he should have been the one to walk through that door. But she wasn’t surprised to see me. She was irritated, maybe disappointed, but not surprised. What’s that tell you?”

  “She knew you were part of the trap at the motel.”

  “Yeah, and I’m betting she knew you were there, too.”

  Holden had scoffed. “That was the shittiest attack strategy known to man if they thought they were going after more than one person.”

  “I’m not saying they knew. I’m saying she knew.” Jill paused. “And then there’s that bag of stuff John set up for us. Nobody randomly provides women’s clothes instead of men’s, especially not him. He knew she was running that team and that she’d be there looking for him and he just supposedly accidentally forgot to mention it?”

  She swung her feet off the bed and sat.

  “No,” she said. “Those two have met. Maybe not, you know, actual conversations or anything, but for the past week it’s been his brains against hers, and she’s given him a run for his money, so, yeah . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Holden said, “I’m missing whatever your real point is.”

  She smiled at the floor.

  Jack had always been insanely private when it came to things like feelings. He’d had to be, she supposed, to protect himself against a meddling mother and a sabotaging sister, but as a result, it’d been twenty years at least since she’d had an inkling of who he was interested in, or whether he had any interest at all.

  That he deliberately let on now was his version of an apology.

  Like the photo of the macaques, it was something only she’d understand.

  “John likes her,” she said. “I think the feeling might be mutual.”

  “Because of the clothes?”

  “Because of the silence.”

  She didn’t want to go into the history, so she went back to what had driven the point in the first place. “A woman in Kara’s position doesn’t withhold that kind of information without a damn compelling reason,” she said. “And it doesn’t take Jack’s level of genius to figure out what that was.” Like Clare had said, people would tell you what you needed to hear if they liked you and if it was in their own best interest.

  One quick conversation had given her that.

  Jill had slept, just enough to take the edge off, and then returned to Kara with a change of clothes and sat back on the sofa chair, legs tucked up in that same friendly pose, and she rambled like someone who hadn’t had a friend to talk to in years, which was true, but like so much else, beside the point.

  She talked because Kara was content in silence, and because Kara wasn’t a game player, which made straightforward and unpretentious truth far more effective than any lie. She spoke about the places she and Jack had traveled to as kids, and the increasingly strange people Clare had left them with, and the hijinks they’d gotten up to when, as kids with kid brains and adult skills, they got bored.

  All of it was a vehicle to talk about Jack, so much about Jack and the training that had made him what he was, and she segued from there to the strategy that had brought them to the motel and from the motel to the attack itself. “You knew it was a trap,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out why you kept that information to yourself.”

  “Everyone knew it was a trap,” Kara said.

  “Yes, but everyone else believed they were hunting just one person.”

  Kara was slow to respond. “I don’t always catch subtleties,” she said. “Are you asking me to tell you how
many of you I thought were there?”

  “Nope.” Jill smiled, and she pushed. “Just trying to avoid feeding you information you might not already have.”

  The corners of Kara’s lips turned up, and with the same confident, almost cocky tone Jack got when he knew beyond all doubt and in the face of contrary evidence that he was right, she said, “There were three of you. Christopher Holden confused me at first. I thought he was competing with us to get to you. But by the time we made it to Cleveland, I understood. Your brother had already pinged in Texas, so the rest was easy to deduce, but by then I was just better off not knowing anything.”

  Jill said, “Do they know?”

  Kara shrugged. “Who’s to say?”

  Fatalism filled her tone, her posture.

  She went back to staring out the window, and Jill sighed in commiseration. “You remind me so much of my brother,” she said. “You’ve got that same crazy, wicked smart way about you, but, if your world is anything like mine was, it doesn’t really matter how smart you are, it’s some idiot guy who’s gonna get the praise and promotion.”

  Kara winced ever so slightly.

  Jill, slipping through that opening, asked what being a woman in a bureaucracy was like, and she listened and empathized. Having never had female coworkers other than her mother, she was authentically curious about the drama.

  Stories and examples followed, and those produced names, and of those names, Liv Wilson kept coming back.

  She was the redhead whose face filled the tablet screen right now.

  Wilson didn’t hold the most senior position in the kill-team hierarchy, but as second in command and the one responsible for so much of Kara’s current predicament, she would be the easiest for Kara to give up without violating her conscience, and conscience mattered. Karma could be a bitch like that.

  Jill drank down the last of the coffee and carried the tablet next door.

  Kara looked up, closed the book she was reading.

  Jill said, “We’ll be arriving in Chicago in a few hours.”

  “Is that where you plan to let me go?”

  “It’ll be another few days before this is over.”