Finding Lies

by Rachel Lovise

  Although she was only wearing shorts and a tank top, they were waterlogged enough to weigh her down. Her limbs quickly turned numb and it became harder to force them to obey the messages from her brain. A wave several times her height began rolling toward her and she inhaled in preparation, sputtering as flecks of salt water jumped into her mouth. With the last of her energy, she buoyed her body upward with the sucking underside of the wave, trying to crest the enormous swell of water and keep her head above.

  But the seas were too rough, the wave too high. The breaker dragged her underneath the surface. As if gleeful for its prey, the current caught hold of her with grasping, murky hands, and forced her into the greenish depths below.

  Chapter 8

  Leah tumbled under the water, blind and disoriented, her lungs burning. This was it; this was how she was going to die. She was only twenty-eight years old and she was going to drown off the shore of Scotland because of a Taser, a motorbike, and rain boots.

  Suddenly a hand clamped around her upper arm and dragged her in what she thought was the opposite direction of the sun, but she didn’t have the energy to fight. She was surprised when her head broke through the surface. Automatically she sucked in air, inflating her lungs with precious oxygen. Salt water splashed in her mouth and she spit it out, some of it dribbling down her chin. It didn’t matter; another wave immediately crashed into her face.

  Ian’s arm wrapped firmly around her waist, pinning her to the front of his body. With a powerful scissor kick he began propelling them through the water toward the shore. Leah had a choice: she could fight him and drown now, or allow him to save her and suffer a slow death later. The choice seemed obvious, except for hope. Drowning no longer seemed like such a glamorous exit. And if she made it to shore and survived, she still might find a way to escape.

  Her choice made, Leah kicked her legs, moving her body in sync with his. They pulsed forward like a jellyfish, and when the waves came and pushed them under, he dragged her to the surface. Time and again he kept both of their heads above water, proving right her assumption that he was an exceptionally strong swimmer. It was fortunate for both of them; if he’d been anything less they both would have drowned.

  When Ian’s feet finally touched ground, he dragged Leah through the water until her toes made contact with the sucking silt and rocks of the ocean floor. Still he kept her pinned to his side until they were out of the water and had stumbled onto the rocky shoreline. Leah collapsed onto her hands and knees, retching up salt water and panting as if she’d just run a marathon.

  Ian stood beside her, his sodden jeans and t-shirt clinging to his body as he tried to catch his breath. Despite having just dragged two people from a churning ocean grave, his respiration returned to normal far faster than hers. When Leah finished being sick, Ian helped her to her feet, but his hand remained wrapped around her wrist.

  “You aren’t going to run are you?”

  “I can barely walk.”

  “Good. We’re going back to my truck, and when we’re dry, you and I are going to have a nice long chat.”

  Her teeth were chattering so hard she could only nod.

  Ian shoved his feet into his boots, wet socks and all. Leah thought the boots looked large enough to fit an elephant. They picked their way over the rocks in silence. Her legs felt like jelly, and twice he had to grab her arm and haul her up over a boulder. They stopped for her rain boots and sweatshirt, which she tugged on gratefully. She had dry clothes in the Picanto, and she kept the image of her fleece sweatpants in mind as she crawled up the embankment, her fingernails scraping into the soft mud. She was exhausted, her entire body and soul wrung dry. If she laid her cheek down in the wet, silky mud, she could sleep for eternity.

  Through sheer grit she pulled herself to her feet at the edge of the road. The scene was exactly as she’d left it: Ian’s black truck was parked behind her jacked-up car. Both drivers’ doors were open with the interior lights on, her car dinging madly into the lazy silence of late afternoon. The nosey sheep snuffled in her car footwell for food. Apparently not another vehicle had passed on the rural road the whole time she and Ian were nearly drowning themselves. Her chances of flagging down help from a passing motorist were pretty much zilch unless a miracle happened, and she wasn’t counting on any cosmic help coming her way.

  Leah walked straight to her car, and ignoring the sheep, opened the rear door and pulled free her carry-on. She rummaged inside until she found the fleece pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a pair of thick socks. Turning, she startled to find Ian standing about six inches behind her.

  “I need to change,” she snapped, mustering as much attitude as she could under the circumstances. “I could use a little privacy.”

  “You lost that privilege.”

  “Where am I going to go? We’ve already established you have a freakish level of stamina.”

  He conceded the point by saying, “You can change behind my truck.”

  It was more than she thought she’d get from him. She carried her bundle of clothes around his truck and crouched, peeling off her saturated tank and shorts. The breeze raced across her wet, chilled skin and she quickly pulled on the dry clothes. When she finished she stood. Ian leaned against the other side of the truck, his arms crossed as he scanned the road with narrowed eyes. Without turning around he said, “Get in the truck.”

  She hesitated, instinctively knowing that once she was in the vehicle her chances of escape narrowed. But she had no cell phone, nowhere to run, and no one to help her. She was out of options.

  Leah yanked open the passenger door and pulled herself into the cab. The seats were smooth leather, and the interior smelled like the pine air freshener clipped to the center vent and the salt of the sea that still clung to her skin and hair. The cab was clean and vacuumed. A rental.

  The vehicle shifted as Ian leaned over the side of the truck bed and hauled out a black duffle. In the side view mirror she watched as he stripped off his wet t-shirt, exposing an expanse of muscle in his chest and arms. Her eyes fell to the jagged, puckered scar that ran the length of his side from armpit to hipbone. She didn’t even want to think of how he’d earned it.

  Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, Leah flipped through the contents of the already opened glove box. There was a rental registration and insurance card, a complimentary map of Scotland, and a pen. She secured the pen up the sleeve of her sweatshirt and shut the glove box just as the driver’s side door swung open. The beginnings of a gold and russet sunset silhouetted Ian’s imposing form. In his hand were two water bottles.

  “Water?”

  She was surprised by the offer, but nodded eagerly and he passed one to her. She drank down half the contents without pausing to breathe. Ian slammed his door shut and started the engine.

  “You’re lucky my keys didn’t fall in the ocean,” he said as he reached over and turned the heat dial to full blast.

  Leah’s hair hung in wet ropes down her back, soaking patches into the back of her sweatshirt, and her fingers were so icy they felt numb. She held her free hand in front of the vent, grateful for the warmth. “Why does that make me lucky?”

  “Because it would have made me very unhappy to lose them.”

  She had no reply to that, and silence fell over the cab. Ian made no move to put the truck in gear or lock the doors. Instead they sat, the engine idling, until the tension grew so oppressive that she had to break it. “What do you want with me?”

  His cool blue eyes shifted to her face, making her feel as if she were a mouse pinned beneath a night owl’s gaze. He replied with his own question. “Who are you?”

  Her instinct was to lie. “Leah Fischer.”

  Ian shot forward like a snake, snatching her wrist and pulling her halfway across the bench seat. She cried out, spilling water on her lap as he hauled her to within an inch of his face. His eyes locked on hers, cold and unrelenting. “Strike one. You lie to me again, and this conversation is going to take a turn you�
�re not going to like. I don’t have a lot of compassion for murderers.”

  Some of the fear that had washed away with exhaustion returned at full force. Vincente had warned her Ian was astute and would know if she was lying, but she hadn’t really understood how far out of her depth she was. Her throat worked around a dry lump. “We weren’t trying to murder you.”

  A flicker of annoyance crossed his face. “I’m going to ask you again. Who are you?”

  “Leah Parker.”

  “Where’s Sokolov?”

  “I . . .” she blinked. “I don’t know.”

  He searched her face for a moment and then released her. She scooted as far from him as she could, pressing herself into the opposite door.

  “You’re his associate?”

  “No, I’m his ex—” she stopped, unsure if it was wise to tell him she used to date Vincente. Used to, as in so past tense she couldn’t even see it in the rearview mirror. She hadn’t even begun to process the fact that Vincente had abandoned her. All she knew was that the next time she saw him she was going to give him a solid kick in his baby maker. If she saw him again. If Ian didn’t have other, more unsavory plans for her.

  “You’re his ex-girlfriend.” Ian finished the sentence for her. His gaze ran lazily down her body, taking in her wet frizzy hair, the oversized sweats, and her blue lips. For a moment she felt self-conscious about her appearance and went to smooth down her hair before remembering she didn’t give a hot damn what Ian Haugen thought about her. His mouth lifted at the corner, telling her he was far too aware of her thought processes. “He left you behind.”

  “I noticed,” she snapped.

  “You must not have been a very good girlfriend.”

  She glowered, indignation crowding out her fear. “I was an excellent girlfriend.”

  He lifted a taunting brow. She crossed her arms and said nothing else. He was baiting her.

  “Maybe your ex abandoning you is one of those things that happens when you date a heartless bastard.”

  “We both know who the heartless bastard is.”

  His lip curled and she suddenly realized what he was doing. By alternating awkward silences and goading, he was masterfully controlling the conversation—no—interrogation. He’d already pulled more information from her than he should have. She should have played dumb, pretended not to know what he really was. But then he would have known she was lying, and who knew what his reaction would be? Frustrated, she felt trapped between terrible options no matter what way she looked at it.

  Something caught Ian’s gaze and he looked down at her arm. “U tebya yest' pauk na ruke.”

  She tilted her head. He was watching her face closely. “What?”

  “I said you have a spider on your arm.”

  She jerked and was brushing off her sleeve before she realized nothing was there.

  “That’s the reaction I was looking for,” he said. “I guess you’re not Russian.”

  Crafty sonofabitch. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him Vincente wasn’t really Russian either, that he was in fact CIA, when she caught herself. Would divulging that sort of information to an ISIS agent put Vincente—or more importantly the U.S.—at risk? She decided it would be safest to stick to her own truth. “No, I’m not. I’m American.”

  “Sokolov has been in America, then.”

  “Why do you keep calling him that?” She thought of the blind hatred with which Ian had fought Vincente. By the way he continued to refer to Vincente by his Russian cover name, she suspected she was missing a key piece of the puzzle. Clearly the two had met in the past. A line formed between her brows. Why had Vincente acted as if he’d never met the man before?

  Ian narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who he is.”

  Unsure of what to say, she remained silent.

  “Here’s how this is going to work: you’re going to tell me everything I want to know. You’re going to tell me how you met Sokolov, where he lives, and what he does. You’re going to tell me what his plans are and how the hell you knew where I’d be. If I want to know what his favorite fucking ice cream flavor is, you’re going to tell me. Got it?”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why am I going to do that?”

  Ian leaned forward and a muscle ticked in his jaw. “Because it’s your only option.”

  “I’m more use to you alive than dead,” she said recklessly. “It’s why you saved me from drowning.”

  Ian buckled his seatbelt and shifted the truck into gear. “Darlin’, you’re only useful to me if you talk.”

  Chapter 9

  Ian pulled a flip-phone from his pants pocket and scowled at Leah. “You ruined my phone.”

  She gestured to the phone that he was in the process of dialing. “Looks like your 2001 phone is working just fine to me.”

  “It’s the burner I keep in my kit.” Then into the phone he said, “Hey, what’s up?” Leah shifted subtly, hoping to hear the person on the other end of the line. Was it someone who, if she screamed for help, would dial 911 on his friend? Ian tucked the phone between his shoulder and ear as he did a four-point turn in the narrow road. “I need you to come collect the client. Something else has come up that I have to deal with.”

  Ian listened to the other person speak for a moment, but try as she might, Leah couldn’t make out the words. She thought the caller might have been male, but she wasn’t even sure of that.

  “Orster Inn, Loch Lomond, Scotland. If you catch the next flight you should make it in time. Nah,” he said in response to a question. “A rat from the past. I’ll fill you in later.”

  He ended the call by slapping the phone shut and sliding it into his pocket. They were headed back down the winding road away from the inn. Leah watched out the window as the sunset gilded the gently lapping sea. The ocean looked so peaceful now, with orange and gold light glinting off the peaks of waves and dusk toeing the rocky shoreline. Fields dotted with hay bales dimmed with the light, leaving darker splotches where sheep stood munching late into the summer evening. When Ian cracked the windows, warm air rushed into the truck and brought with it the chorus of grasshoppers and the scent of wet hay. Now that Leah was getting the chance to actually look at her surroundings instead of gripping a wheel with white-knuckled intensity, she thought the western coast of Scotland was one of the most beautiful places she’d ever visited.

  Too bad she was riding shotgun with a killer.

  Ian entered a roundabout and took the road headed south. Leah considered her options. The fading light was a major disadvantage since it killed her opportunity of flagging down a passing motorist or somehow alerting a car behind them to her distress. If she could just get a hold of his cell phone . . . she glanced from the corner of her eye at the bulge in his thigh pocket. Yeah . . . that wasn’t going to happen either. Short of throwing herself out of the moving vehicle, she’d have to wait until they reached their destination to make any further escape plans.

  The worst part was that no one knew where she was. She’d told Amanda she was visiting her mother in Pennsylvania, and she’d told Destiny she’d be somewhere in Norway, and the last she checked Scotland was definitely not Norway. She’d lied to everyone on Vincente’s request, and now no one knew where she was except for freaking Vincente. By the time they found her body—if they found it—it would probably be so long after she disappeared there’d be nothing left but bones.

  “What’s on your mind?” Ian asked conversationally, as if they were besties on their way to dinner.

  “Just wondering if anyone will ever find my body.”

  He glanced at her as the first car she’d seen in hours passed by, its headlights flashing across the windshield. Was that amusement on his face? “At least someone thinks this situation is funny.”

  The humor in his eyes faded. “Nothing about Sokolov coming back from hell amuses me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Exactly how well d
o you know your ex-boyfriend?”

  She wrestled with the idea of stonewalling him. Should she withhold as much information as she could to protect the United States’ interests? Ian was skilled at detecting lies, but would he be able to detect an omission while driving in the dark? She thought not. “We dated for six months.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “We met at a children’s benefit gala in D.C. over the winter. I’m a paralegal with the DA’s office and Vincente is a marketing consultant. We hit it off straight away since we have a lot of the same interests.” She left out the part where Vincente had actually wanted to hook up with Amanda, making her second string. That still stung.

  “Interests such as?”

  Why did he care what their interests were? “Um . . .” She thought about it. Well, it had seemed like they had a lot of similar interests at the time. She’d told Vincente she wanted to travel and he’d said he wanted to as well. In fact, she narrowed her eyes as the memory returned, he’d said the one place he really wanted to visit was Russia. “We both like Chinese food,” she said lamely.

  Ian appeared unimpressed. “Is a mutual liking for Kung Pao chicken all that it takes to get you into bed?”

  She pursed her lips. “You’re exactly as Vincente described you. And I’ll have you know that we only slept together—” She cut herself off, but it was too late. He’d goaded her again and she’d said too much.

  Again.

  “We’ll come back to the fact that you almost never got laid by your boyfriend. What is it exactly that Vincente told you about me?”

  Leah worried her bottom lip between her teeth. How would he react when he discovered she knew his ISIS secret? She slid the pen from her sleeve and noiselessly uncapped it. If he made a move for her, she’d jab him in the eyes. “You’re going to make me say it?”