Game of Lies

by Amanda K. Byrne

  And immediately breathe a sigh of relief.

  Here’s the command center. The room is small, like it’s an afterthought instead of an actual usable space. Four monitors are mounted on the wall, a table boasting a keyboard, a laptop, and a CPU under them. As I watch the screens, the green and white night vision pictures flit from one image to the next. It takes me almost a full minute, but I’m able to figure out the cycle. Except for the laptop, each monitor shows images from two different cameras. The laptop’s screen displays an image of the front door, the occasional passing shadow the only indication the picture isn’t completely stationary. A man strides into view and stops a few feet from the door, his face half obscured by the poor lighting. He appears to be studying the door.

  I search the other screens, looking for a second man, a woman, dog, anything to indicate he’s not alone. There’s nothing. I go back to the laptop. I can handle one man.

  First, though, I’m going to get what I came for.

  I find a small duffle bag under the bed in the bedroom and stuff a couple changes of clothes in it, then take it into the office and do the same with Nick’s clothes. I toss his prescriptions on top and zip it shut. I have no idea where we’re going to sleep tonight, but once Nick hears about this, I doubt he’s going to want to come back here.

  In the tiny room, I check the monitors. The man is nowhere to be seen. I wait through two full cycles, but he doesn’t reappear. I sit through another cycle, studying the images and mapping out a route away from the warehouse. The camera angles don’t cover every foot of the exterior, so there are blind spots. Since I haven’t had a chance to map the area around the warehouse, I’ll be relying on instinct and skill.

  I pick up the bag and creep down the stairs. No footsteps outside. I put on my shoes, slide my knife free, and grasp the bag by the handles. Easy to drop, easy to swing.

  The lock clicking open is as loud as a gunshot. At least the hinges are well oiled. I peer into the dark, searching for the corner of the building. Nothing moves. I slip out, relock the door, and start for the dark end of the warehouse. It’s the opposite direction from where I need to go, but I’ll circle around. If I’m lucky, I might see our curious friend, and I can follow him.

  Three buildings away, my luck runs out.

  The crunch of gravel is the only warning I have before he strikes, but it’s enough time. I swing the bag toward the sound and am rewarded with a grunt. Dropping the bag, I crouch low and spin around, knife at the ready.

  He blends all too well. Dark clothes fitting close to his body to minimize noise, dark hair, dark shoes. I can barely make out his face. The shadows will work for both of us, concealing movements, hiding attacks, and it’ll work against us too. Without light, I can’t see if he’s armed, so I’m forced to assume he is.

  He takes a step forward, and I tense. “Put the knife down, Cassidy.” I don’t recognize the voice. “It’s not necessary.”

  I straighten, but hold my blade at the ready. “You know, you’re the second person to say that to me recently.” Some of the tension leaves my shoulders. “If it’s not necessary, why do you people keep sneaking up on me? Wait, don’t answer that.” If I’ve got another member of the family here at my disposal, I ought to take advantage of it. “Does Andreas really want me out of the picture that badly?”

  “Yes.”

  The simple, one-word answer vibrates through me. According to Nick, I messed up, and I was slowly accepting that yes, I had. But as massive as my mistake was, he’s giving me a chance to fix it, so I assumed the rest of his family would stay out of what is, ultimately, a relationship issue.

  I tip my head to the side. “He does understand there’s a high probability that hurting me will have the exact opposite effect, right? Nick’s a grown man. If he decides he’s done with me, that’s his decision.”

  “Andreas is confident his son will eventually see reason. There’s also the matter of you being responsible for the death of an LAPD officer. You turn yourself in, this all ends.”

  A chill races over my skin. I slammed my knife into Tris’s groin in the heat of the moment, certain he was going to kill Nick. But I’m not walking into the precinct and surrendering. Tris wasn’t just dirty, he was filthy. I’m not laying myself out over his death.

  I shift the knife to my other hand and squint into the dark. “Can you do me a favor? Tell Andreas that if he wants to talk to me, he really ought to do it himself instead of sending a minion.” I point to the street behind us, dimly lit by the streetlights. “You can go now.”

  “You are a brat,” he mutters, and my muscles lock down. The only person who calls me a brat is Nick, because, let’s face it, I am one on occasion. I frantically search my memory for every time he’s said something. It’s never around other people. So how does this guy know about it?

  Or maybe I’m as paranoid as Nick, and it’s a coincidence that someone else reached the same conclusion.

  “Yes, and I’m his brat. Are you staying or going? If you stay, I’ll just lead you on a really long hike back to the car, and then we’ll take a nice, leisurely drive to Nick’s office.” This is such a waste of time. I could have stabbed him ten times over by now. I would except that it’s another body to worry about, and I’m trying very hard not to add to my count.

  This guy isn’t making that easy.

  “Why would you waste your time like that?”

  “Because it’s my time to waste, and until Nick decides it’s safe, I’ll do as he asks.” I risk a few steps forward and pick up the bag. I’ll have to circle back to the warehouse to clean out our clothing. We’ll have to find someplace else to stay tonight, and every night after. Nick definitely won’t want to come back after this incident.

  I sling it over my shoulder and offer a little wave with my knife hand. “Have fun following me.”

  The man shifts forward, and I tense, squinting at his face. His expression is impossible to see, but there’s no mistaking the frustration in his voice. “Cassidy. For your sake and for Dominic’s, walk away.”

  “No, thanks. I’d rather eat glass.” And I turn around and head for the lights.

  There’s several ways in and out of Los Angeles’s warehouse district. There are fewer ways to get in and out of the warehouse without being seen, though. If I want to get our stuff out as quickly as possible, I could say fuck it and bring the car around to the door, especially since the guy came too close to discovering the warehouse’s purpose for Nick ever to want to use it again.

  Another safe house burned. Maybe he can sell this one so it’s not a total loss.

  The man who tried to attack me doesn’t follow, and as I loop the car through the streets, I don’t see anything suspicious. In the end, I decide to clear out the rest of our belongings. His injury makes it difficult for him to get around the warehouse anyway. Once inside, I pull the rest of my clothing from the cabinet in the bedroom, stuff it into a couple of trash bags, and throw them in the trunk of the car, along with Nick’s duffle bag, the laptop, a couple of flash drives I find in the desk, and a gray tackle box full of first aid supplies. Overkill, maybe, but I’m not taking any chances.

  The drive to Century City is uneventful, and I manage to find a parking spot a couple blocks away. I snag the pills and hurry to the office, aware that a lot of time has passed but no way of knowing how much. That phone’s like a damn leash.

  Nick and Constantine are in Nick’s office, Nick on the couch with his laptop, Constantine at the desk. Nick has his leg propped up on the couch, his expression doing little to hide the pain he’s in. He glances up as I enter the room. I dig the bottle of painkillers out and hand them to him. “How’s it going?”

  He snaps the lid off and shakes a pill directly into his mouth, dry swallowing it with a grimace. “Haven’t been able to isolate the problem. Go home and get some rest. I’m going to be here all night.”

  I sit in the thin sliver of space next to his hip and wrap an arm around
his shoulders to stop myself from falling off the edge of the couch. The way his body stiffens at my touch stings. Time. The only thing that will repair this damage is time. Time to show Nick that I’m listening to him, that I’m not just trying, but doing. “I’ll be fine here.” I lean in until my lips brush his ear. “We can’t go back to the warehouse,” I whisper. “Someone, I think it was one of your dad’s men, was circling the place, and he caught up with me a couple blocks away.” I don’t tell him about the assertion that I should be the one to pay the price for Tris. We need more privacy for that.

  Nick nods once. “Your phone went off while you were gone.”

  Can I kiss him? Will he let me? Given his reaction a moment ago, I don’t think he will. “It might have been Denise. We’re supposed to clean out our old apartment tomorrow. I’ll leave you guys alone.”

  He stops me from getting up with a hand on my thigh. “Thanks for the pills,” he says softly. “Leg feels like I stuck a hot fireplace poker through it.” His eyes meet mine, dark and wary. “You sure you want to stick around?”

  I’m surprised he’s willing to consider letting me out of his sight. I don’t want him out of mine. “I’m sure. There’s this neat thing called the Internet, and it’s full of cat pictures and K-pop videos. I’ll just pull some of those up on my phone.”

  He groans. “K-pop? No. You can use my tablet if you get tired of such a tiny screen. But no K-pop videos.”

  The thread of relief in his voice is thick, and I force myself to hold his gaze. All that worry, all that fear, for me. I need to come back to him. Somehow. Somehow I’ll break down the cold and stop running from the fear of what will happen once I do. I work up a smile. “I think I’ll take you up on that.”

  Chapter 12

  “It’s clean. Like, actually clean.” Denise stands with her arms wrapped around her stomach, studying the living room.

  “Nick and I came in here a couple weeks ago to pick up a little,” I lie. There’d been fingerprint dust all over the place when I moved back in, and I never bothered wiping it off. Nick must have scrubbed down the furniture one evening and I never noticed, though trace amounts of the black powder remain.

  Cleaning off fingerprint dust was one of the many things I Googled last night. Apparently, it’s a pain in the ass. The New Zealand police even made a handy PDF of instructions.

  Denise shudders. “This place gives me the creeps.” She drops her arms. “Bedrooms or kitchen?”

  “Bedrooms. You’ve moved most of your stuff already, right?” I hand her a box.

  “Except the furniture. We’re trying to figure out where my desk will fit, but I’m getting rid of the bed.” She starts across the living room. “What do you want to do with the couch and stuff?”

  The couch was new when we moved in—a present from my parents. Her parents donated the TV. The rest of the furniture consists of a coffee table, a bookshelf, and a couple of lamps that we pooled our money to buy. “Do you want to take the TV?” I ask. “I’ll take everything else, if that’s okay.”

  She points at a lamp curved over the end of the couch. “I could use that lamp, but yeah, everything else. Don’t need the TV. Charlie’s is bigger.”

  I shrug. “Okay.” I can always buy another lamp.

  We split off into our rooms, and I bump my door closed behind me. There’s more evidence of Nick’s caretaking here in the neat stacks of books and papers on my desk, the lack of clothing littering the floor. The bed is unmade, and there’s an ugly, jagged cutout in the carpet where Josef bled out after our fight all those months ago, but otherwise, it’s relatively clean.

  I set the box on my desk, grab a stack of books, and stick them inside.

  I fill the box with books and papers, then go out and snag another box. I pack more books. Blankets. The few clothes left in my closet. I make piles of papers and texts I hung on to for some reason but don’t actually need. I strip the sheets from my bed and carry them to the washer, only to discover we’re out of detergent.

  I always assumed when this day came, it would be much, much harder. There would be tears, maybe laughter, everything tinged with sadness. I can’t feel anything. Certainly not sadness. And I know, I know, if Denise had any idea how remote and cold I am inside, she’d worry and ask how she could help. She can’t. I can’t tell her how to help if I can’t figure out how to switch this off.

  I fold up my comforter and try to stuff it back into the plastic wrapping it came in. I’ve had moments over the past few weeks where my emotions approached the expected range for someone who’d lost a loved one. All of them involved Nick.

  That greedy, slippery need for revenge lurks at the back of my mind, waiting for a chance to rear its ugly head. But there’s no one to take revenge on. And without that lust sated, it’ll fester and spread, destroying everything.

  I need to get out of my own head.

  I leave the comforter half in, half out of the wrapping and hurry into the living room. The book case doesn’t have much in the way of books on it—who has time to read with all the work to be done for classes?—but there’s a few favorites along with a couple of DVDs, framed pictures, and a handful of random items. I pick up a snow globe and shake it. White flakes fall on the Statue of Liberty, swirl around its torch, and settle at the base.

  “I can’t believe you kept that thing.”

  I set it carefully in a box before I pick up the next item, a miniature Eiffel Tower. “I can’t believe you kept this.” The silver paint’s chipped off in places, and the top point’s long gone, a victim of an unfortunate incident involving Denise, Charlie, and a tickle fight.

  She takes the miniature from me and cradles it to her chest. “Don’t be talkin’ ‘bout my tower like that. You might hurt its feelings.”

  The snort escaping my lips is so goddamn normal, it brings shocked tears to my eyes. I blink them away and reach for a book.

  “Cass?” She stops me with a hand on my arm, and I let the book fall to the shelf. “Can we take a break for a minute?”

  Here it is. The I’m worried about you, let me help you speech. I drop onto the couch, my eyes on the blank TV. “How are things with Charlie? You guys ready for classes?”

  “Charlie’s driving me a little nuts. I guess he’s not as far along on his senior thesis as he’s supposed to be, and he’s freaking out.” The weight of her gaze is heavy and suffocating. “Truth, Cass. Are you okay?”

  Truth. I am not about to tell her the truth, at least not all of it. “I don’t know.” Truth. “Do you think grief is supposed to look like something in particular?”

  “No. And that’s not what I meant. I don’t expect you to be okay. I do expect you to talk to me about it. You used to, you know. How many times have you talked about your dad?”

  Another truth. Denise is familiar with my ongoing problems with Turner, though she doesn’t know what those problems are. “I don’t know,” I repeat. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about this.” Something clenches tight and then shatters, deep inside. I suck in a breath and turn to her. Worry darkens her eyes, pulls her mouth down.

  “I can’t talk about something if I don’t have the words for it.” I push to my feet. “Let’s take care of the kitchen.”

  Boxing up plates and glasses is painful because we don’t talk. I try to get Denise to tell me about her post-graduation plans, but after a couple of pitiful attempts, she lapses into silence. We finish off by dumping the silverware into a box with a musical crash and hightail it out of the apartment and down to the street.

  “Have you found a place to live?” she asks.

  A car rolls by, bass thumping, and I wait for it to pass before answering. “Yeah, actually. A two bedroom on the south side of campus. So the furniture will come in handy.”

  She points down the block. “Did you… Did you still want to get coffee? I don’t have anywhere else to be, and I could use some.” I nod, and we start toward the coffee shop.

&nbs
p; “A two bedroom? Who are you living with?”

  I chew on the inside of my cheek. Denise’s reaction to Nick has been all over the place. I think she likes him, to a point. “No one. Nick’s paying for it.”

  “Whoa. Wait.” She stops in the middle of the sidewalk and turns to me. “You’re letting your boyfriend pay your rent. And you’ve been together how long? Three months?”

  “Just about.”

  She blows out a breath in long stream of air. “Okay.”

  And she continues walking.

  Once we’ve gotten our orders and made ourselves comfortable at a table next to the window, she cups her hands around her mug. “He’s good for you.”

  He’s better than I deserve. “Yeah.”

  “And you’re happy?”

  Before my life crumbled around me, I was. I nod, not trusting myself to speak.

  “Okay.” Her lips curve in a half smile. “If either of those changes, I reserve the right to go medieval on his ass.”

  * * * *

  Nick’s sprawled on the couch in his office, one arm thrown over his eyes, crutches on the floor next to him.

  He doesn’t wake as I shut the door behind me or when I move his crutches out of the way and kneel next to the couch. If this is the first sleep he’s gotten since this whole mess started, I don’t want to wake him, but he’s bound to be more comfortable sleeping in a bed. He was glued to his laptop when I left to meet Denise and muttered an incoherent response when I told him I was leaving. He and Constantine worked through the night to pinpoint the issue with the app. They hadn’t been close when I finally dropped off to sleep, curled up on the couch, and they weren’t doing much better when I woke and dragged myself to shower in Nick’s private executive bathroom.

  Stretching up, needing the connection, I press a kiss to his jaw. “Nick?” I whisper.

  His response is to grunt and shift onto his side.

  The movement must trigger some pain, since he wakes on a muttered “fuck,” face pinching tight. He slits open an eye. “Cass?”