Finding Lies

by Rachel Lovise

  To hell with it, she thought, sitting up. She wanted Ian more than she’d ever wanted any man, and he wanted her. Besides, they were both grown adults completely capable of entering a physical relationship with the understanding that it wasn’t permanent. It was true the timing wasn’t ideal, and yes, there were a thousand reasons why it would be wiser to keep it purely professional between them, but that ship had sailed the moment Ian had kneeled down beside her and put his hand in her panties.

  Besides, wasn’t her new motto Live Passionately? She was going to throw caution to the wind and go after what she wanted, starting right now with Ian Huagen.

  Her mind made up, she pulled on her bra and the flowy green dress and went to find him.

  When she reached the clearing he was assembling dinner out of the paper bag. He looked up when she approached, his expression completely blank. As if she were a guest at a B&B he said, “Dinner is almost ready. You’ll want to get dressed.”

  Okay, so after dinner she’d make it known to him she was open to that affair he’d suggested in the truck. She crawled into the tent where she’d left her carry-on and pulled on a ribbed maroon tank top, a pair of shorts, and white tennis shoes. She considered wearing her flip-flops, but if they had to make a quick escape she didn’t want to be running through the campground with two pieces of flimsy foam slapping against her heels.

  When she emerged from the tent she found Ian peeling a cucumber with a knife and two paper plates loaded with food beside him. She picked up one of the plates and sat down. Supper was potato salad with enough dill to ruin the flavor, hunks of rye bread, and cucumber that Ian sliced into a small jar of vinegar. They ate sitting on the tailgate, her legs swinging in the air and his boots planted firmly on the ground.

  “Let’s play a game,” Ian said.

  She set down her plastic fork. She hoped it was a let’s-get-naked type of game. “What kind of game?”

  “An association game, like the ones psychologists have clients play. I say a word and you blurt whatever associated word pops into your head.”

  Disappointing, but Leah was up for it. “Like you say cat and I say dog, that sort of thing?”

  “Exactly.”

  She pushed a slice of cucumber across her plate with her fork. “Why?”

  “Just play along.” He didn’t exactly snap at her, but he also wasn’t the tender post-coital lover, either. “Norway.”

  “Beautiful.”

  “Lawyers.”

  “Smart.”

  “Your apartment.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Small.”

  “Pigs.”

  “In a blanket.”

  He laughed, and she found she liked the sound of it. She wished he did it more often.

  “Sokolov.”

  “Killer.”

  “Sunshine.”

  “Warm.”

  “Vincente.”

  “Boring.” She frowned. Had she really thought he was boring? If so, why had she never noticed when she was dating him?

  In typical unnerving fashion, Ian seemed to catch her train of thought. “Why was he boring?”

  “I don’t know. I guess because he didn’t really have a personality, or at least he didn’t act like he had one around me. For example one time we went on a picnic at the National Mall in D.C. where you can see the Lincoln Memorial and the WWII Memorial. We were staring into the Reflecting Pool and I made a comment about how incredible it was that we got to live in a city that symbolized everything our forefathers and foremothers had dreamed of and fought for and sacrificed for, and how honorable the men and women were who still represented those ideals and dreams today. I was feeling really deep at the moment, and when I looked over at him expecting him to have a thoughtful comment to add he said, ‘Do you want spaghetti for dinner?’ I remember thinking, jeez, does this guy ever have a thought in his head that isn’t about food or designer clothes?”

  As she spoke the echo of a memory tapped at the edge of her conscious mind. She seemed to recall something else happening that day, something odd enough that it stood out at the time. Had it been something Vincente had said? Something he’d done? But the harder she tried to remember the more elusive the memory became. Shaking it off she said, “The most interesting thing I ever heard him say was that he thought antique chairs were poor choices for overweight people.”

  Ian’s lips pressed together. “Okay. Let’s do a few more. Hidden.”

  “Secrets.”

  “Love.”

  “Hurts.”

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  “It’s an expression,” she said defensively.

  “Russian.”

  “Mafia.”

  “Boyfriend.”

  “Lies.” The air fell silent between them and her cheeks heated from how easily she’d believed those lies, how naïve and blind she’d been. “I’m done with this game.”

  He gave a nod. “It was worth a shot.”

  She lifted her fork again but wasn’t sure she could choke down any more of the potato salad. “So what’s the plan, Ian? What are we doing?” She wasn’t sure if she was talking about them or Sokolov.

  Ian assumed she was talking about Sokolov because he said, “Tomorrow we’ll head out at first light. I’m taking you to one of Northern Wolf’s safe houses a few hours north of here. We’ll spend the night, and the next day Svein will arrive to guard you while I go hunting.”

  Her stomach twisted into a fist. She was afraid for his life and frustrated that she had to wait in protective custody while he sought out a psychopath. And maybe there was a teeny part of her that felt as if a fragile opportunity for something incredible had just been lost.

  “Why isn’t Svein going with you? It seems to me he’d want a shot at Sokolov more than anyone.”

  “He’s not happy about it, but he knows I’m better at tracking people than he is, and I work alone. He agreed to guard you because—” Ian cut himself off, but Leah was no fool.

  “Because if Sokolov finds me first, Svein will have his chance at revenge after all,” she finished.

  Ian’s eyes narrowed. “He won’t find you first.”

  “And if he does?”

  “Then you’re in good hands with Svein.”

  It wasn’t the answer she wanted, and he must have known it. He rubbed his palm over his face and sighed. “Listen, I don’t want to leave you with anyone else, but I’ve looked at all our options and I don’t see any other way around it. I can’t allow Sokolov to keep calling the shots, to continue to have the advantage of being on the offensive. The more time we spend running, the easier it will be for him to take another stab at you. He needs to know I’m out there, and I’m coming for him.”

  “What about you? Who is going to keep you safe?”

  He turned his shoulder to her, blowing off her concern. “Don’t worry about me,” he said flatly. “You need to worry about yourself.”

  She was taken aback by the coolness of his tone and the obvious distance he was trying to put between them. Did he regret what had happened on the beach? Or was he trying to nip any further romantic interactions between them in the bud? If he thought she was the type of woman to go all starry-eyed over a one-time tryst and start thinking they were best boyfriend and girlfriend, then he was sorely mistaken. She may not have had a lot of practice with affairs, but she would show him she could be just as aloof and casual as anyone.

  Chapter 32

  After eating they put their garbage in a plastic bag and tied it off, then re-packed the truck so all they had to do the next morning was dress, take down the tent, and go.

  “Do we have to worry about bears?” Leah asked, glancing nervously at the truck.

  “I put the food inside the gun locker in the truck. We should be fine. There aren’t as many brown bears around as there used to be.”

  The knowledge that there were fewer bears around wasn’t all that comforting, because that meant there were still some.

  “Go ahead in and change.
I’ll be in in a few minutes. You’ll have to use your sweatshirt as a pillow; I didn’t think to ask for any.”

  Leah nodded and ducked inside the tent. The green nylon had trapped the heat of the day and she crawled over the hard floor to zip down the window before unrolling the sleeping bags. There was just enough room for her and Ian to lie side by side. She wanted to see him try and avoid her now.

  She changed into a pair of navy silk shorts and a matching tank top and tied her still-wet hair in a loose topknot. Then bunching up her sweatshirt to use as a pillow, she shimmied into the sleeping bag.

  A few minutes later Ian entered the tent. Even kneeling on the floor his head almost touched the top of the canvas. He stripped off his shirt without any sense of modesty, baring his broad chest. She tried not to stare, but it was a tall order. The man was ripped. Her gaze drifted to the nasty, puckered scar that ran the length of his side and she swallowed hard.

  He lay down and lifted his hips to drag off his jeans. She closed her eyes, but the vision of him in black boxer briefs was burned into her brain. There was shuffling and movement, then the zip of the sleeping bag. When she rolled over to face him she found he’d moved his duffle and her carry-on so they created a barrier between the two sleeping bags. What the hell? He’d been all over her on the beach, and now he couldn’t even sleep next to her without building a wall between them?

  Offended, Leah huffed and turned her back to him. It annoyed her that she’d finally made the decision to sleep with him and now he was trying to cool it between them. She liked the uncontrolled, passion-driven Ian far more than the sensible and rigidly in charge Ian.

  Even with the side panel open, the air in the tent was stifling and it was still obnoxiously light out. Leah kicked her legs out of the sleeping bag and tried to ignore the lazy drone of flies outside the tent and the scent of piney cologne that clung to Ian wherever he was.

  Within moments she heard steady, rhythmic breathing from his side of the tent. The poor man was exhausted. She turned back to face the bags, waited a moment to make sure her movements hadn’t woken him, and then lifted herself onto her elbow so she could study him.

  He was sprawled across the floor, his big body taking up every spare inch of space in the tent. The boxer briefs clung to heavily muscled thighs dusted with blond hair. Her gaze traveled from the briefs to his hard, flat stomach, and then to his chest and arms, which were defined in a way that suggested they were regularly used, but not in a gym. There was a leanness to him that reminded her more of an athlete’s build than a bodybuilder’s. For the first time she noticed a tattoo on his upper left arm. The black ink was faded, which meant he’d had it for some time. In block letters it read: HUSKE. She made a mental note to ask him what it meant later.

  Her eyes swept over his face, relaxed in sleep. His jaw was shadowed with beard growth, and with a thrill she remembered the rough rasp of it on the sensitive skin of her neck when he’d kissed her at the water. She wanted to reach out and stroke his jaw, feel the bristles on her fingertips. One of his hands lay palm to his chest, the other flat on the ground with the fingers curled in slightly. They were so innocuous—just hands—and yet they were capable of both great violence and incredible tenderness.

  Flopping back to the hard ground, Leah wiggled in the sleeping bag and tried to make herself comfortable. She’d had significantly more sleep than Ian and was having trouble quieting her thoughts. She turned on her left side and then her right as she thought about Svein, Sokolov, and what lay in store for her at the safe house.

  Mostly, though, she worried about Ian. She had no doubt that if Sokolov had the opportunity to take a cheap shot at him, he would.

  It wasn’t until the light outside the tent began to fade that she finally drifted into a restless sleep.

  Chapter 33

  A sharp, feminine scream awoke her. Leah bolted upright, her hands flailing for anything she could use to defend herself.

  “It’s okay.” Ian’s voice was heavy with sleep. “It’s an owl.”

  Leah’s heart pounded. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  She lay flat on her back while her scrambling pulse slowed. She lifted her wrist and tilted it so the time on her watch flashed on. It was four in the morning and it was already becoming light out. They’d been in bed for more than eight hours.

  Ian began rustling on his side of the makeshift barrier and sat up. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m awake now,” he said. “Go ahead and sleep more if you’d like. I’ll get you up in half an hour.”

  She heard the soft whisper of fabric as he pulled clothes from his pack and rolled his sleeping bag, and then the teeth of the door zipper as it opened and closed again. His footsteps leading away from the tent were silent. How a man so large could move so quietly was beyond her. A few minutes later there was a splash of water and Leah knew he was taking a sunrise swim in the fjord.

  She wasn’t going to fall back asleep, so she used the small pocket flashlight Ian had left her to choose clothes from her bag. At such an ungodly hour there was a nip to the air, so she dressed in skinny jeans, her white tennis shoes, and a fitted gray t-shirt with the phrase SAVE THE OXFORD COMMA scrawled across the front. She left her hair in the slept-in topknot and didn’t care if she looked like a hot mess, although she did take a few seconds to finger comb her bangs into place.

  By the time she’d rolled her sleeping bag and dragged both it and her carry-on out of the tent, Ian was dressed and opening the truck door. The interior light shined over his wet hair and cast a V of light across his black t-shirt.

  “You’re up,” he said.

  “We’ve got things to do. We can’t be lying around in forests all day.”

  He shifted, giving her a side view of his grinning profile. “Hungry?”

  “Not yet. But I could really go for some coffee.”

  He made a noise that was a cross between a groan and a sigh. “You and me both. The safe house will have a coffee maker. If we leave soon we can be there by seven.”

  He took the sleeping bag from her arms and packed it in the truck before reaching for her carry-on and doing the same. It took him less than five minutes to disassemble the tent, which told her he’d had an awful lot of practice over the years, and ten minutes after that they were back on the road.

  They were silent for most of the two-hour trip north, but it was a comfortable, early-morning sort of silence. As they drove the sun splashed the ocean with gold so brilliant and beautiful Leah’s heart ached. A soft, gray mist hung in the low valleys of the forest, gradually burning off as the sun ascended higher in the crystalline sky.

  The farther north they drove the less traffic there was—not that there had been much to begin with. Just over five million people lived in Norway, a country larger than the entire U.S. eastern seaboard. That meant there was a lot of unoccupied space.

  Space, for them anyway, meant fewer prying eyes.

  They arrived at the safe house at seven-thirty, their time slowed by having to wait for a herd of caribou to clop across the road in front of them. The house was tucked in a copse of trees on the outskirts of the village of Korgen, population 875. The town was so small that Ian had to point out they were in one when they drove through.

  To Leah’s surprise the safe house looked like every other two-story Cape Cod they’d passed on the way, although she wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, an underground bunker? The exterior was painted white and sported crisp blue shutters and an attached two-car garage. The nearest neighbor, Ian had informed her, was half a mile away.

  Ian parked in the garage, and after he turned off the security alarm, he and Leah entered the house. She’d assumed it would be dusty and bare of supplies, so she was pleasantly surprised to find that it was both warmly decorated and clean. Unlike the minimalist and elegant offices of Northern Wolf Services, the safe house looked as if her grandmother had decorated it. There was wall-to-wall shag carpeting, floral curtains at t
he windows, and kitschy knick-knacks propped on every shelf.

  Ian kept her close to his side as he drew his weapon and went through the house from top to bottom. Satisfied they were alone, he returned the gun to its holster and led her to a kitchen with rose-printed wallpaper and a white granite counter. Although the decor was outdated, the appliances were stainless steel and top of the line, including the coffee maker.

  Ian pulled a tub of coffee grounds from a cabinet and started the machine while Leah prowled the kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers. Everything was well stocked and organized, even the fridge.

  “Who bought all this food?” she asked.

  “We keep a local woman on our payroll. She cleans the house every other week and stocks it with food when we call ahead. She thinks she works for an eccentric writer who only visits Korgen to write his mystery novels.”

  “Will she come by while we’re here?”

  “No. J.B. Dunn, the enigmatic author of The Shelf series, does not like interruptions.”

  She smiled. She had to give Northern Wolf credit for creativity.

  After a few minutes the rich aroma of coffee filled the kitchen. Leah pulled two mismatched mugs from the cabinet and filled them. “Cream or sugar?”

  “Neither.”

  She drank hers black as well. They stood against the counter in companionable silence, sipping the life-sustaining brew as the sun filled the curtains with a soft glow. After they each finished their first cup and she had poured them a second, they brought in their luggage from the truck.

  The lower level of the house consisted of a small living room, kitchen, and a wood-paneled dining room. The upstairs had a bathroom and two bedrooms with the sloped ceilings that were typical of a Cape Cod. Leah told Ian to take the larger of the two rooms since it had a king-sized bed, which he clearly needed more than she did. The smaller room was painted a dusky rose and was furnished with a queen-sized bed, an old-fashioned wood armoire, and an antique mirror with tiny rust spots. If she hadn’t been staying at a safe house because her ex-boyfriend was trying to kill her, Leah might have enjoyed the quaint accommodations.