Liquid Lies

by Hanna Martine

  Reed took her cue, though. He threw the Range Rover in reverse and jounced back onto the road. They sped a mile or so, with him muttering, “What the hell, Gwen. What the hell,” over and over.

  He almost passed a darkened strip mall parking lot, then changed his mind at the last second and squealed into a space in front of a Laundromat. The lake loomed before them, the moon painting a stripe down its center. Any other night it might have been romantic.

  Reed reached across and crushed her wrists in one hand.

  “Ouch!”

  “Oh, does that hurt?”

  He pulled her torso awkwardly across the center console and stick shift, and pried open her fingers. The napkin inside revealed her guilt. Still holding her immobile, he flattened the napkin, read it, and then stuffed it into his pocket.

  When he turned to look down at her, their faces were so close she could feel his short, angry breaths on her cheek.

  “I saw you searching the car when I was in the store. You think I wasn’t watching?”

  “And you didn’t come out? You didn’t stop me?”

  “I knew what was inside. I knew where that pencil was.”

  “Did you put it there?”

  “Yes.” He pulled her even closer. So close she practically sat on the center console. “I needed to know what you’d try to do.”

  She struggled. Pointlessly. “This was a test?”

  “You tested me, didn’t you? You thought I wouldn’t give you the shot. You thought I’d sleep with you. You thought I’d go all stupid for you and just forget my orders. But I can’t do that. I have a job to do and I’ll do it, as long as you don’t get hurt.”

  There was something else to his story, something big. She saw it lurking behind his eyes, in the way they shifted away.

  “You don’t understand, Reed.” Desperation crept into her voice. “I have to get away from them.” The plea died there. Everything she wanted to say to support her argument, she couldn’t. Not to Reed.

  She struggled again, another silly attempt, but this time he let go. She sat back on her heels on the passenger seat, hands on the console.

  “Let’s get a few things straight.” He stared at her mouth. “First, I’m doing my job. I get paid extremely well to do it and I’m really good at it. You won’t escape when I’m around.”

  God, the money thing again.

  “And second”—his voice dropped so low it hit the pavement beneath the Range Rover—“I’m very, very attracted to you.”

  Every molecule in her body stopped moving.

  “There’s something between us, Gwen.”

  “But last night. This morning—”

  “There’s something there, but there can’t be. Do you understand? It’s why I left. It’s why I pushed you away. Last night…” He scrubbed his knuckles along his jaw as his words died.

  “I wasn’t trying to use you. It wasn’t an escape attempt.” It had started off as an escape, but one of an entirely different kind.

  He didn’t say anything. Just searched her eyes. Something in them must have satisfied him, because his shoulders relaxed and he turned his big body toward her.

  “There are two separate things going on here,” he said. “There’s us like we could’ve been in Manny’s or even last night. And there’s you and me how Nora wants us to be. I see you now—the way you’re looking at me, the way you look in those jeans—and I know it’s only going to get harder for me to keep them apart. But I can’t let my guard down for you. I need you to understand that.”

  She didn’t want to nod, but she did. Because if she wanted to keep her people secret, Reed could never be brought into her world. The time to submit to the Allure had expired. Now she was dancing on a high wire over a bonfire.

  He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “But I also want you to know how torn I am. This has never, ever happened to me. Not in fifteen years. I’ve always been able to put up this wall between who I really am and who brings in the money. But with you…” He shook his head at his lap. “If we hadn’t met before I brought you here, I’d have already been gone.”

  “Reed.” She had no idea what else she wanted to say, only that his name sounded whole and reassuring on her lips.

  He looked up, his blue eyes her own personal stars. “It’s killing me not to know what they want with you. All right, there. I’ve said it. But I won’t ask.”

  Her throat constricted. “I couldn’t tell you, even if you did.”

  The heavy silence of the idling car pressed all around her. That iceman routine today hadn’t been because he didn’t want her. It was because he did. It confused her even more. And because she was a complete mess and a glutton for punishment, it pushed her closer to him. Shoved her, was more like it.

  She leaned in. His lips parted; he sucked in a breath. She wanted to taste him again, this time slower, savoring. Just for a little bit, to soften the bite of what had happened between them last night. Something soft, to let him know that she was torn, too. To let him know that as much as she wanted to claim it was gone, the Allure hadn’t died.

  Closing her eyes, she went for it.

  “No.”

  Her eyes flew open to find him tilted so far back his skull touched the window.

  Her ass hit the passenger seat fast, like he’d physically shoved her away. “You think I’m trying to trick you? Use you?”

  “I don’t know,” he snapped. “Are you?”

  “No. I wasn’t. I’m not.”

  She said it, but did she believe it? To work any sort of plan, she had to get around Reed.

  “I’ll keep you alive,” he said, pushing the stick out of neutral and into reverse. “But that’s it. Nothing more.”

  So he couldn’t let his attraction interfere with what he’d been paid to do, and she couldn’t let her attraction distract her from figuring out how to save and protect all Secondaries.

  “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” She sank deep into the seat and stared, unseeing, out at the lake. “You need to keep your head and so do I.”

  “Okay, so it stops.”

  “Okay, then.”

  They hadn’t mentioned trust. He didn’t trust her not to try to use him. Her blood forbade her to trust anyone not like her.

  Big difference.

  TWENTY

  They returned to an empty, dark lake house around eleven. Reed used his scarily complex watch to open the front door. If only she could get her hands on that thing…but it was practically molded to his skin and she’d have to get close to him to do it. That definitely wasn’t happening.

  What the hell was going on at the Plant? Why were the Tedrans still gone? She wondered—hoped?—if they’d been caught. So, so much could change. She wouldn’t mind Nora being captured, but Xavier and Adine? The thought of the two of them in Jonah’s hands made her gut twist, and she wrestled with the conflicting emotions.

  Upstairs, Reed stood in the threshold to her bedroom cell as she wandered inside, feeling strangely empty.

  “Still hungry?” he asked, hand on the doorknob.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded and left, the door locking behind him. She unzipped her sweater and removed Genesai’s papers. They’d crinkled during her and Reed’s little tussle in the car, and she tried to smooth them on the edge of the dresser. The mysterious scribbles and shaky drawings stared back at her. Not knowing what was written made her want to scream. She’d never been lost before, not when it came to languages, and she wondered how in the world anyone could stand it. She lifted up the mattress and slipped the pages underneath.

  Her clothes reeked of the mustiness of Genesai’s cabin and the unpleasant smell had transferred to her skin. She stripped on the way to the shower. After she’d scrubbed herself clean, she threw on one of the supplied T-shirts and the lone pair of sweatpants, and went back into the bathroom.

  The door to Reed’s bedroom was unlocked.

  She listened for any footsteps on the creaking, narrow stairs
and, when she didn’t hear any, pushed open the door and stepped into Reed’s half of their tiny little world. The bedroom mirrored hers: dramatically sloped ceiling, secondhand furniture, frayed rug. She went through every drawer, ran her hands over every crack. There was nothing in there to do with her or Nora, and very little, in fact, to do with him.

  Packages of new white men’s T-shirts and giant sweatshirts with the tags still attached lay crumpled near the foot of his bed. A pair of jeans had been thrown across the crooked chest of drawers. The bed was a messy pile of sheets and blankets that made her twitch. She tugged a corner back into place. Leaned down. Inhaled. How could she know his scent so distinctly already?

  Don’t go there, Gwen. She backed off and tried the hallway door. No luck.

  In the bathroom she grabbed the green toothbrush she’d appropriated as hers and went at her teeth until her gums were sore. Bending over the sink, she swished water around and spit it out several times. She straightened, and almost jumped out of her skin. “Don’t do that!”

  Reed filled the doorway to his room. He held a tray piled with plates of food. “Find anything interesting in my room?”

  “Since you asked, nope.”

  He studied her in that disconcerting way, his gaze sweeping across her face and down her body. Not sexual. Assessing.

  A tiny lift of the tray. “Mashed potatoes, sliced turkey. Some carrots. Sound okay?” After she nodded, he nudged his chin toward her bedroom. “Go over there.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just to the doorway. This bathroom, it’s the demilitarized zone for us from now on.” When she just stared, he added, “You stay there. I stay here. We’re separate.”

  “So am I North or South?” She ambled to the threshold.

  “North,” he mumbled. “Definitely North.” He took one plate off the tray and stepped into his room.

  She came forward, feeling silly, and slid the tray off the counter. She backed into her room and hooked a toe around the door to pull it shut.

  “I need to watch you eat,” he said from across the DMZ.

  “Sorry?”

  He gestured with a utensil. “The fork. The knife. I need to see them.”

  She held his eyes for a long moment, then sank to the floor, ass in her room, legs crossed on the bathroom tile. He did the same. They ate in silence, silverware clanking. They stole glances at each other between bites, the dim bulb over the sink the only light.

  Halfway through his mashed potatoes, the screen on his watch lit up. He frowned at it, tapped a button, and resumed eating.

  “Nora’s back,” he said, mouth full.

  Gwen slid her plate up on the counter next to the sink and gestured to the Tedran device wrapped around his wrist. “That thing’s pretty amazing.” He merely grunted. “I liked your other watch.” That got him to look up in surprise. “The Cartier. I noticed it in the bar. It made me wonder about you.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “That was the first thing you wondered about? Considering how we met?”

  Her mind circled back to the alley. “Not the first. Just one of many.”

  Another bite of potatoes. “I thought at that point we were past wondering.”

  Everything had stemmed from her wonder. She’d been ready to dive headfirst into the Allure. “I was trying to figure out why a guy like you had such an expensive watch.”

  He set his plate down, the fork clattering. “A guy like me?”

  “Well. You know. A guy who looks like you.”

  Both sandy eyebrows shot up. “Do tell.”

  She gestured vaguely, thankful for the weak lighting so he couldn’t see the heat creeping up her neck. “That body. The tattoo. The permanent scowl. The hair.”

  “And? Your point?”

  “And…so you’ve pretty much cornered the market on badass.”

  “For the record…” He kicked aside his plate, leaned back onto his hands, and stretched out one leg far into the DMZ. “I shave my head because I don’t want to look like my eighth-grade science teacher with the horseshoe hair. Been doing it since I was twenty-five.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Horseshoe hair? Okay, I get it now.” Under her stare, he ran a hand over his bald top. His sudden, weird shyness made him seem like that twenty-five-year-old who’d first taken a razor to his head.

  She turned sideways, pressing her back to one side of the doorway, her toes to the other, and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Know what else I wondered about that night?”

  His eyes flashed. Even in the pale light she could tell. “We’re not going there, Gwen.”

  “I know. I wasn’t.” Maybe not in her words, but definitely in her mind. “I wondered about the museums. You said you liked them, that you liked to learn.” He nodded. “That surprised me. You surprised me. In a good way. I never knew I’d like being proven wrong so much.”

  “That damn painting on your phone.” He blew out a breath and lazily shook his head. “Started a lot, didn’t it?”

  She could argue that whatever it was had started before that, but like he said, they weren’t going to go there. He was right, though. Damn that Ed Ruscha and his crazy-good paintings.

  She planted her chin on her knees. “Why do you like to learn?”

  “Oh, boy,” he said, chin to chest. Just when she didn’t think he’d answer, he took a deep breath and added, “Because I didn’t before. Education wasn’t really my thing when I was younger. I wish it had been. Things might’ve been…different.” He blinked away a far-off look. “Anyway, when I have downtime in a new city, I go to museums.”

  “Wait, I’m confused. You say you like to learn but education isn’t your thing?”

  “I said it wasn’t my thing. Not when it mattered, at least.” He drew a slow thumb up and down the leg of his jeans. “Sometimes I think about college. What I missed. Where my life would be if I’d done that instead of…other stuff.”

  Oh, this was fascinating. He was fascinating. “You could still go.”

  He made a sound of exasperation. “And do what?”

  She shrugged. “What do you like to do?”

  He pondered, opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind, shaking his head.

  “It’s possible, Reed. It’s always possible.”

  “Yeah? Well, the idea of going back to school scares the crap out of me. More than extracting. Can you believe that? I’m scared of starting over.” He gave a wry grin. “And the homework. Can you imagine me doing homework?”

  She smiled, and to her pleasure, he echoed it, the dimple making a cameo.

  “Seriously,” he said, “it’s so different now. I don’t know how well I’d do out there in the real world.”

  Such true words, she could have spoken them herself.

  “So,” she said, sensing he wanted to change the subject. “You just like going to art museums?” She couldn’t dare to hope.

  “Nah. All sorts. Started a few years ago when I got sick of hanging out in bars. I’m thirty-seven. That shit gets old real fast. I started with the Tate in London and, I don’t know, I kind of got hooked.” His lips tightened. “Obsessive personality that way, I guess. Anyway, there’s a whole world out there I’d always ignored before in favor of…other things. I just started to pay attention.”

  Excitement burbled inside her. Reed was talking. About himself. She wrestled with why she enjoyed it so much. Was it more because he was giving her clues about his identity, so she could gamble with it later? Or was it more because his words had hit several marks all over her body? Her mind. Her heart. That place he’d almost buried himself in last night.

  “Where else have you been?” she asked, to keep her brain from traveling down a path it shouldn’t.

  “Museums? Let’s see. The Barbed Wire Museum in Kansas.”

  Gwen snorted embarrassingly.

  “The Louvre, which was amazing. Spent two days in it. A couple of really interesting sex ones in Amsterdam.”

  Did he have to say sex? Because
the way he was sitting back, his T-shirt stretched gorgeously across his chest, wasn’t doing much to help derail her thoughts.

  “How about you?” he asked after clearing his throat. “Do you get to go to museums a lot?”

  “No, unfortunately. That’s why I have all the books.”

  “Oh yeah. The books.”

  She couldn’t decipher the meaning behind his frown. Then she remembered their conversation in Manny’s and the fact that he’d been inside her apartment when she wasn’t there. How could she have forgotten?

  It’d been three days. What were her dad and Griffin doing now? Were they clearing out her apartment? Were they planning a funeral? An investigation? A war?

  “So,” she said, because the sudden silence placed terrible pressure on her ears and tear ducts. “You know where I live. You’ve seen my place. Tit for tat. Where do you live?”

  “Live?”

  She nudged her chin at the outer wall. “Live. Out there. When you’re not working.”

  “Um…”

  “Not Washington, I bet.”

  “You’d win that bet.”

  “Aha. We’re getting somewhere. So where do you sleep at night when you’re not”—she opened her arms—“here.”

  He tilted his head. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Then he rapped his knuckles twice on the doorjamb. “Check.”

  A poker player, eh? “Seems a bit unfair.”

  “Does anything about you and I seem fair?” His stare bored into her, frustratingly hot. She couldn’t look away. And no, he wasn’t being remotely fair, ordering them apart and then looking at her like that.

  “Maybe I’ll tell you.” He sat up. “Someday. If you’re a good girl.”

  Oh, God.

  He looked down first. He ran a big hand up his forearm, using his fingernails to test the snaking lines of the vine tattoo that strayed out from under his shirtsleeve. Such a tease. She wanted to do that with her own nails, to know the texture of each and every leaf. Saliva filled her mouth. In her palms the phantom hardness of his body burned.

  He looked up at her from under his lashes. “You want to ask me about the tat, don’t you.”