A Shameless Little LIE

by Meli Raine

  And yet this is his job. His life’s mission.

  “This-this is doing wonders for my ego,” I finally stammer.

  “I’m stating the truth,” he counters. “You’re already an outcast. Why would someone have a motive to make you look like you have your finger in every destructive pie?”

  He asks me the question like I’m supposed to have the answer.

  Silas interrupts, his voice low and filled with hidden meaning. “Who has something to gain by setting Jane up?”

  “My mother,” Lindsay says with a snort.

  And there it is again. A look between Drew and Silas that I can’t figure out. My father and Silas shared a similar look earlier.

  What is going on regarding Monica Bosworth?

  “Why aren’t you laughing?” Lindsay asks her husband, who suddenly makes eye contact with the napkin holder and no one else.

  “Because nothing about your mother is ever, ever funny,” he says.

  “Drew.” Silas’s tone makes it clear he’s not letting this go. The two make hard eye contact, Lindsay raising one eyebrow at me. “Why is someone pointing all these fingers at Jane? She didn’t kill Tara. She didn’t set up the car bomb and she didn’t give the code to the shooter at The Grove. Someone else did.”

  A look of dawning comprehension spreads over Lindsay’s face. “You two know. You know who is setting Jane up.”

  “No,” they say in unison.

  “But you have suspicions,” I clarify.

  They go mute.

  Drew sighs, sucking down the last of his coffee then leaning toward me. “I got the report on Tara. Local police department is dropping it. You’re cleared.” He looks at Silas. “Your timing was impeccable with the body cam on Jane.”

  Silas gives a slight nod of acknowledgement.

  Drew continues. “Our guys are working on figuring out how someone got in there and killed her so quickly and so cleanly.”

  “She bled everywhere. There was nothing clean about it,” I counter, my stomach squeezing at the memory.

  “I mean in and out. Not tracked. No video.”

  “Oh.”

  “The official story is suicide.”

  My stomach goes sour and twists, the coffee sitting in there like a pool of blood and acid.

  “Thank God,” Lindsay says, squeezing my hand.

  “Good,” I say quickly. “That’s one less thing to worry about. But poor Tara. Can you imagine being in the bathroom and having someone slash you like that? Imagine those last seconds as she–oh, God.”

  Silas leans in, his face so close to mine. I can feel his body heat. “Yes. I can. I imagine you being in that bathroom and her killer getting you. I don’t want to, but I can. And I’m going to make damn sure no one ever gets a chance to do to you what someone did to Tara.”

  No amount of coffee can warm my chilled bones. “When you put it that way... ”

  Drew frowns at Silas. “It still doesn’t add up.”

  “No. But I’m focused on keeping Jane alive. I expect you and the rest of the team to figure out the mystery and get to the heart of this evil beast. We need to find the puppetmaster. Once we know that, we can end the show,” he tells him.

  “Puppetmaster,” I say, drinking a sip of coffee just to break through the numb feeling in my face. “But who are his puppets? I feel like one.”

  “You’re a target. Not a tool,” Drew says to me, serious and evaluative. “Or are you? I still don’t know which side you’re on.”

  Prickly heat shoots up the back of my neck. In a perfect world, Drew would be one hundred percent on my side. He obviously isn’t. I have Silas now, and Lindsay, too.

  But Drew Foster could turn out to be a very difficult obstacle in getting my life on track if he doesn’t find a way to realize he’s being played by the puppetmaster, too.

  Silas is about to reply to Drew when both men look sharply to the left. Movement, men in black suits, and the subtle change of atmosphere make me realize someone important is here. The kind of person with an entourage. Maybe a celebrity, or a rapper. Both tend to flock to our little town to get out of the spotlight.

  But no.

  It’s not a celebrity.

  It’s a politician.

  My father.

  Chapter 11

  “Jane,” he says as he strides to the end of our four-top booth. He gives Lindsay a tight smile and ignores Silas and Drew.

  “Hello. Get a craving for a good cortado?” I ask. “I recommend the one without the shot of deception. Tastes less bitter, Senator.”

  “How are we not blood sisters?” Lindsay asks out of the side of her mouth.

  “I want to speak with Jane alone,” Harry says to Lindsay, Drew, and Silas in a careful, neutral tone.

  Lindsay looks up at him while drinking her coffee, then carefully sets the cup down, blotting the corners of her lips before saying, “And I want to know who my biological father is, but Mom won’t tell me. You can’t always get what you want, Daddy. Don’t you listen to that old rock band?”

  I swear he flinches at the word old.

  “It’s not a request, Lindsay. Jane and I need to have privacy.”

  “Just think, Daddy.” She’s using the term with great affect. “Now both of your little girls are with you, together. Isn’t that sweet?”

  His features sharpen, his attention on her in full. “Your bitterness isn’t going to work. Being direct will.”

  “I’ve tried being direct, but let’s go for it again. Tell me the name of my biological father.”

  Drew stretches his arm across the back of Lindsay’s booth, a claiming gesture that gets past no one.

  “I don’t know who it is, Lindsay. Ask your mother,” Harry insists.

  “She refuses to tell me.”

  “Then we’re at an impasse.”

  “I am not some negotiating point that is a source of conflict!” She slams her palm down on the table. “I am a human being who has been tortured for being your daughter.”

  My skin begins to crawl, my ears suddenly, furiously hot.

  “They would have done that to you either way,” Harry says calmly, as if being told such a thing washes all the pain away.

  “That’s your answer? That? You need to hire better image managers, Senator Bosworth,” she says in a sharp voice. “Because your answer sucks donkey balls.”

  His phone buzzes and he pulls it out of his front pants pocket with a pinched look of annoyance.

  “Lindsay.” He taps on his phone. I’m stuck. I don’t think Lindsay’s doing the right thing, but I’m cheering her on deep inside me.

  He doesn’t say anything more, letting her name hang in the air, treating her like a bratty child.

  Lindsay rides out the silence, defiant.

  I’m in awe.

  Harry Bosworth scares the crap out of me now. Knowing he’s my father changes how I look at him. Talk to him. Hold myself around him. I feel very self-conscious and incredibly angry, but I don’t have a right to my anger. I’m not allowed to feel it.

  I’m supposed to be grateful.

  I’m supposed to be humble.

  But most of all, I’m supposed to be discreet.

  Lindsay’s emboldened, empowered, filled with righteous anger at the paternity testing and its results. She’s been raised by two people she isn’t afraid of. At least, not now.

  And people with power don’t like it when the people they manipulate lose their fear. It makes them dangerous.

  It makes us dangerous.

  Prey aren’t supposed to be bold.

  Prey are supposed to cower.

  How can you define yourself as the dominant predator if people don’t fear you? It’s the ultimate betrayal. Victims are supposed to fold. Power brokers don’t care about people.

  They care about order.

  Stay within the lines they draw, do their bidding without question, and sacrifice every piece of yourself so they can prop up their reality. That’s all they ask.

 
Just give us your soul, they say. Why are you arguing? they ask. You’re so selfish, they chide.

  The best among them make you agree.

  And make you give until all that’s left is the memory of your own volition.

  And even then, they demand that, too.

  Lindsay, though–Lindsay’s not buying it. She’s not giving in to it. She’s not anything-ing it. Transgressions from her parents rise so far above the fray. They violate so many standards of decency that she’s breaking out of their forced reality.

  I’m watching.

  And damn it, I’m taking notes.

  “Jane,” he snaps. “Perhaps you can talk some sense into your sis–”

  Lindsay’s snort cuts him off.

  Drew and Silas are basically ceiling supports at this point, like columns designed to make sure the building doesn’t crumble. Ever observant, they just watch. Although Drew’s got a vested interest here that is way deeper.

  “Your friend,” the senator amends.

  I know what he’s doing. Pivot the emotional tension so I’m the one dealing with Lindsay. Pit us against each other. Turn me into the person smoothing out her edges and trying to make her see reason. And when she doesn’t?

  Make that my fault.

  I struggle to come up with the perfect words, verbal judo that stops him and uses his own power against him. My head is ringing and my skin feels like a suit I put on this morning, baggy in places and too tight in others. No mental playbook has prepared me for this. How do I spar with my own father as he tries to shut down my not-quite-sister, who has every right to challenge him?

  I wrack my brain for an answer, and settle on the most dangerous.

  “No.”

  His eyelids lower halfway, jaw going slightly slack. “Excuse me?”

  “No,” I repeat.

  If I wait him out, I can survive this. Panic pours through me like a broken dam, debris traveling along the raging river, sludge and water spilling out, relieved as the pressure seeks to even out and stabilize, spread itself out over the vast expanse of its new space.

  Transition is the most difficult stage in labor and delivery, my mother told me once. It’s the moment you lose all your confidence and think you’re going to die. But it’s not reality. It’s the body and mind fighting the momentous change that is inches away.

  I feel like I’m going to die as Senator Harwell Bosworth stares at me, clearly stunned by my resistance.

  Lindsay grins.

  Drew and Silas don’t react.

  The grey at his temples is clipped close to his head, the line between brown and distinguished fade so perfect. It could have been drawn by an engineer with a straight-edge and a pencil. His eyes are the same color as mine. Wrinkles flirt with the edge of skin around his eyes. His eyelashes are short and stubby, while mine are long, curling up like my mother’s. He has an aquiline nose and small moles that cluster near one nostril, a light, flat smattering of melanin that gives him character.

  I stare. I observe. I collect details. It’s all I have of him.

  My heart zooms, unaccustomed to being looked at so closely at by someone with so much power. The senator barely gave me two glances most of my life. His full attention is a threat, an intimidation, an inevitability that says I’d better fall in line.

  Or else.

  I swallow hard, my throat dry, and ride out or else.

  “Jesus. You’re just like Lindsay. I thought you were more–”

  “Invisible?” I accuse.

  “Sensible.”

  “You want me to go away.”

  “No.” He gives me a look filled with a strange compassion mingled with anger. “No, I don’t. But I don’t have a plan for you. We’re inventing the plan hour by hour, minute by minute.”

  Silas slowly slips his hand over mine, threading his fingers, squeezing hard, then releasing, our skin still touching. His message is loud and clear.

  My relief is evident, my body relaxing instantly. I’ve been holding my breath and tightening my shoulders without realizing it. Now that Silas is here, biology kicks in. It overrides psychology. The body knows.

  The body can’t be lied to.

  “Silas, would you, Lindsay, and Drew leave?” Harry says again.

  No one moves.

  Silas looks at me, then Lindsay, then back to me, studying my face. “I’ll stay.”

  “No one gave you permission. Get out. And take Lindsay and Drew with you,” Harry snaps.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “That’s a direct order.”

  “I’m not here on official business, sir. I’m off duty.”

  Harry’s eyes ping quickly between Silas and me. He scoffs. “Drew and Lindsay are bad enough. You two?” He gives Silas a cold, even stare. “Given your background and your sister’s drug addiction? Marshall is going to need to add an entire team to manage your relationship with my daughter.” He lowers his voice on the last two words. It’s really, really weird that the senator is doing this in a public place.

  So weird, I start to get paranoid. For a man shrouded in secrecy, this feels off.

  The words my daughter make me jolt. Lindsay is his daughter. I’m just Jane. Anya’s daughter, Lindsay’s friend.

  You know. The extra young woman.

  The extra.

  At the words “my daughter,” Lindsay gapes at Harry. And then it hits me. This is what it takes to make her leave. He’s doing it on purpose. I almost feel bad for her. Almost. I’m too busy trying to manage my own internal chaos. I have no energy to help her.

  Lindsay and Drew suddenly get up, sliding out of the booth and standing.

  And just like that, they’re gone, leaving me alone with Silas and my father. My father, who has just hit Silas with one hell of an offensive statement.

  “Have some respect,” I challenge, speaking over the lump of fear in my throat. “Silas’s sister just died.”

  “Of an overdose,” Harry snaps. “We can’t have that kind of event contaminating you now, Jane. We were barely able to get the Tara issue under control. The media is howling about your role in it. The camera footage makes it clear you didn’t do it, so law enforcement isn’t breathing down our necks, but Jesus Christ, Jane, you’re at the center of yet another spectacle. We don’t need to add a drug-addict death to the roster of people who seem to mysteriously die when they’re connected to you, however fleetingly.” His eyes flit to the main door, emotion trying to escape from whatever crevice in his body it can. I look at his hands. They don’t shake.

  How do people control their insides? All the internal overwhelm and looping can’t be contained in me. It comes out. How does my own father–my flesh and blood–not feel it like I do? Stopping the internal calamity would be akin to God reaching deep inside my chest and suspending every part of me, frozen in a single moment of ultimate power.

  Maybe that’s what I’m seeking.

  A god who can do that. When I was little, my mother could do that. Make the world stop hurting me. As I grew older, her power diminished.

  Or so I thought.

  It turns out the world is just more evil than any parent’s goodness.

  So where is my father’s divinity?

  I break through my whirling-dervish state and tell him, “You sound like Monica. Now I know where she gets it. I always thought she was the one being cruel and horrible with Lindsay, treating her like a knick-knack you put wherever you want it to try to impress people. But you’re part of it, too,” I marvel. “I may be your daughter, but I won’t let you treat me the way you’ve treated Lindsay all these years. I am not an object. I am not a chess piece you move around a board at your leisure to gain power.”

  Silas just watches us, a sentry, a soldier, a presence.

  A historian of my journey to uncover secrets.

  Harry looks at one of his security people, who immediately walks to a small door I hadn’t noticed before, and opens it.

  “Jane,” Harry says, yet again pretending Silas isn’t t
here. “Let’s speak in private.” He doesn’t wait for my answer, instead going into a tiny room, one that seems to be for conferences here at the coffee shop.

  I follow. I’m not sure why, but I do.

  Hope springs eternal. Or maybe I’m just an emotional masochist.

  Sometimes hope is the most toxic substance on earth.

  “Lindsay has been a lightning rod in the middle of a mess created by Nolan Corning,” he tells me as Silas and I enter the room. Silas pivots to shut the door without being asked.

  Harry is completely unflappable. Not one damn word I just said to him is having any emotional impact. “You have no concept of how complex my campaign really is. Whether you like it or not, you’re now part of it,” he starts.

  “I am absolutely not. You don’t get to parade me around and turn me into some–”

  “Parade you around?” He lowers his voice. “Absolutely not.” The mimic of my own words is jarring. “It’s the opposite. We need to keep your paternity status under wraps. Tight wraps.”

  “Then why would you care about Silas’s family? His sister’s death? It has nothing to do with me.”

  “Because if the media ever did get wind that you’re my daughter, every person you’ve ever screwed is about to become an open book. You think you’re being pursued now? Just wait.”

  Screwed comes out sounding like an accusation. An insult. A moralistic, condescending word designed to put me in my place. Silas’s entire body goes tense at the word, his breath picking up, anger and defensiveness kicking up quickly.

  “My sex life is no one else’s business.”

  “It is when you’re my daughter.”

  “I should think you’d be more concerned about your wife’s sex life,” I spit back, all caution thrown to the wind. Mythology books are filled with tales of the children of gods discovering the bitterness that comes with fallibility.

  And the reckoning never ends well.

  He doesn’t get the implication for the first few seconds but when he does, I receive a nasty, caustic look. I probably deserve it. I don’t care.

  Because my words are true.

  “Lindsay’s biological father is none of your business.”

  “Apparently, my own biological father is none of my business, either! If you had it your way, at least.”