Perfect Lies
Page 7

Oh, no, please no, please no no I didn't mean to I didn't want to-
I see her chest move and I lean back, exhaling with relief. She's not dead.
I'm grabbed roughly from behind. Elbow to the nose, turn, knee to the crotch, I am a fury of fists and knees and elbows, but there are a lot of them. I don't know why I'm fighting them, I don't need to fight them except they won't leave me alone.
They have stun guns. Now I want to fight them. I break a nose, pop an arm out of its socket, fight my way into the corner. Two left. Two on one. Not fair.
Not a problem.
"Stop! Get off her!" James shouts.
The security guard immediately in front of me pauses. I slam my head into his nose and he stumbles backward, clutching it.
Good. Now no one is touching me. I don't want anyone to touch me. I smooth down the front of my black tee, then finally take in the room. Several men in various stages of shock sit around a large oval table. The table I slammed the woman into. She's still lying on the floor, but James is crouching next to her.
"She's not dead," I blurt, needing to say it and needing him to confirm it. "I didn't kill her."
James finally looks up and meets my eyes. I can read the panic hidden there, but his face is carefully composed. "She's unconscious."
"Why did you attack her?" a handsome older man with salt-and-pepper hair asks, and when I look at him I feel
nothing
nothing
nothing
so much nothing I worry that I will lose myself in it.
I shake my head, trying to snap out of it. He is worse than the distraction of the wrong feeling. There is something so strong in the way I react to him that it goes beyond right or wrong. I can hardly breathe. "I needed to."
"She's worked here for five years."
James stands, holding a handgun. "She had this. I think Fia saved your life."
The man's expression doesn't change. He doesn't have an expression. He's not a person. For the first time in my life I think I know what fear-true fear-feels like. Because everything about him is off, so far off I don't even know how to process it.
"Aren't you going to introduce us?" he says, and I think he is smiling, but it isn't a smile because he isn't a person. My instincts made me run in here, my instincts made me stop whatever this woman was going to do. But this man can't be right, can't be.
James sets the gun on the table. "Fia, this is my father, Phillip Keane."
I smile because there is no other option. It is all I can do to hold in a burst of laughter, because this is the funniest thing that has ever happened to me and I am broken, once and for all, completely broken.
I just saved the life of the man I've vowed to destroy.
Chapter Eight
ANNIE
Two and a Half Months Before
"FIA," I MUTTER, STOMPING INTO MY ROOM AND throwing open my closet door. "You'd better be having the time of your life to make up for abandoning me and forcing me to figure this all out on my own."
When I agreed to talk to Mae, I didn't realize they'd track her down within a day. I wanted to be useful, I did, I do, but this feels fast. I'm not sure what to say to save this girl. But it should work out, shouldn't it? Since I'm doing the right thing?
There is the tiniest hint of an exhalation in the room and I spin around, clutching my things to my chest. "Who's there?"
No one answers.
My heart racing, I edge toward the door. Now that I'm listening I can hear all the little sounds a body makes when it is trying its hardest to be silent. I open my mouth to scream, but . . . I know everyone in this house. I'm not going to be scared in my own room.
I plaster a smile on my face and shake my head. "You're going crazy, Annie." I let my shoulders relax, hum, and toss my clothes toward the bed, then walk out into the hall and close the door behind myself.
I count to twenty, then throw the door open and scream "GOTCHA!"
I'm answered by a shriek. A guy's shriek. "Adam?"
"I'm so sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to-You came in, and I didn't want you to know-I was looking for something but then it was too late to let you know I was in here, and then once I was quiet for a few seconds, it felt too weird to suddenly announce myself, and . . . I am so, so sorry."
I frown. This is unlike him. He always lets me know when he comes into or leaves a room. "What were you looking for?"
"Umm. The phone. I was checking the phone. Rafael found a lab for me, so I won't be here when you get back. I wanted to make sure we hadn't missed any contact from Fia."
I walk and sit down on the edge of my bed. "You could have asked."
"Are you sure there's no other way she might try to contact us? Email? Anything?"
"I would tell you if there were."
He exhales heavily. "I thought she'd be back by now. I'm worried."
My heart feels heavy in my chest. All Adam's careful attention, all his kindness. He's been good company, but now I know it has nothing to do with me. It's about Fia. Everything always is, even when she is nowhere near, even when she left all of us. We still orbit the brilliant, chaotic burning of her star.
"You really care about my sister, don't you?" I don't want him to. He's so sweet. I can't imagine anyone loving Fia without being hurt by it.
I love her more than anyone, and it's killing me.
He sits next to me. "I lost everything and everyone. I haven't even been able to contact my family. They think I'm dead, Annie. My mom, I can't even imagine . . ." His voice breaks, and I reach out for his hand. It's not, I note with no small amount of relief, the hand from my visions. "Fia's the reason I'm here, and I can't believe that there isn't a purpose behind it all. Not with what I've seen, not with what you all can do. There has to be a reason we met. A reason that makes everything worthwhile."
I'm the reason they met. Not fate. I created this future with my stupid reaction to my visions. But I don't think Adam would see it that way. Clinical, brilliantly medical-minded Adam believes in fate. A fate with Fia.
"We change the future with every choice we make," I say softly. I don't know whether I mean it to encourage or discourage the torch he carries for my sister.
Something thuds outside the bathroom. I leave the shower running but climb out, curious. The stone tiles are cold under my feet as I pad across them and put my ear against the door.
"If you so much as look in her direction again, I'll kill you." Cole. He insisted on coming with me to North Carolina on the Mae trip, so Rafael sent him and Nathan. It was the most awkward car trip in the history of car trips: Nathan with his terrible choice in music, Cole silent and fuming.
Nathan answers. "Relax! I was just in here for-"
"I've seen you watching her when you think no one notices. One more time-" Something thuds against the wall and I jump back, nearly slipping on the tiles. "One more time and I'll break your neck."
Well then. Horrified, I climb back into the shower.
After my hair is dry, I dress in the bathroom, now hyperaware of who might be hanging around my room in the hotel suite unobserved. At least I can smell Nathan coming from several rooms away. Sure enough, as I walk out into my bedroom the sharp stinging stink of him lingers.
The television is on, too. "Hello?" I say.
"It's me," Cole answers.
"And if I had walked out na**d?"
"My eyes are closed. Can I open them now?"
I walk to the bench at the foot of the bed and sit down. "Yes. Why are you in my room?"
"Bored."
"So, slamming Nathan into the wall isn't enough to keep you entertained for a few minutes?"
"Ah." He makes a small, regretful noise with his mouth. "You heard that. Sarah says I don't play well with other boys. Oh, your phone kept beeping while you were in the shower."
My heart skips a beat-what if it was Fia?-but I try to sound casual. "Who is it? You can check, I don't mind."
Cole gets up and then says, "Adam. Five texts. I can read them to you." He pauses. "Unless they're personal."
I roll my eyes. "Not that it's any of your business, but I'm pretty sure he's desperately in love with my sister."
Cole snorts. "He's crazy."
"He'd have to be, right?" I stop, horrified with myself. Cole bursts out with a shockingly staccato laugh and then I can't help but laugh, too. Maybe it's betraying Fia, I don't know, but it feels good to be able to laugh about her with someone who knows her, or at least has met her. Makes me feel less alone.
I twist my hair up into a bun, a smile lingering on my face. "Oh, speaking of crazy, do I need to be concerned about Nathan?"
"No."
"Because you're watching him?"
"Because if he tries anything, you can handle yourself."
I jerk my knee up, then pantomime grabbing my groin and falling to the floor in pain. I'm rewarded with another bark of laughter.
Pushing myself up, I sit on the floor and pull out my hair, redo it. "Did Rafael call?"
When Cole says Rafael's name, it sounds like he's bitten into something bitter and wants to spit it out. "No, Rafael didn't call. But Mae works at a restaurant and has a shift this afternoon. It might be an easy way to meet her and establish contact-less threatening than showing up at her house."
"It's a plan. You coming with me?"
"I think it'd be better for you to be alone, but I'll be close by."
"Fair enough." I can handle this. I can.
But by the time he drops me off at the cafe I'm a raging bundle of nerves.
I sit in booth, nervously tapping on my plate until I'm hit with a sudden longing for Fia. I adjust my sunglasses, then fold my hands in my lap.
I put my elbow on the table and lean my chin against it. Mae, Mae, Mae, I think. Where are you, Mae? I want to talk to you. I feel like an idiot, sending out thoughts to the cafe when I have no idea if she's even here. What if she didn't show up for her shift today? What if it's the wrong Mae Rubio?
Someone sits across from me with a huff. "Will you stop it? You're giving me a headache with all that shouting. It's creepy."
I sit up straight and smile. "Mae?"
"No, the other mind reader you've been screaming at for the last thirty minutes of my shift. What's your problem? And how do you know about me?" She sounds young, but with a hard edge.
"I'm Amy." I hold my hand out straight, but she ignores it, so I drop it and fiddle with my cutlery.
"Wonderful, Amy. That explains everything."
"I know about you because I work for a group dedicated to protecting women like us."
"Like us?" She's quiet for a little bit, then she snorts. "No reaction. Obviously you are not like me."
"No, not exactly. I'm not a Reader, I'm a Seer. I see things before they happen."
I gasp as a glass of ice water is thrown in my face.
Mae laughs. "Guess you didn't see that coming."
I fumble for my napkin, knocking a spoon or fork off the table with a metallic clatter that makes me cringe. "It doesn't work like that. I don't see everything before it happens, just like you don't hear every thought anyone ever has."
"Pretty close," she says, and I'm surprised to hear a tinge of-sadness? Wistfulness? "Though I can't figure you out. You haven't had one snarky thought about me. Most straight girls think mean things the second they see me. You aren't going to comment on my hair or my clothes? What about my boobs? No boob judgery? What are you, a robot?"
I push my sunglasses to the top of my head. "I tend not to care what people look like."