Generation of Liars (16 page)

I pounded the wall with my fist.
“That woman killed Jamie?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I don’t know about you, Mr.
CIA, but I would say Operation: Boom is certainly living up to its name and
blowing up right in your face.”

“I’d say the heat is getting pretty
hot from where you’re standing, too.” He pressed his palms to the wall behind
me. I was caged in his musky orbit.

“Do you think it’s alright if I
smoke in the library?” I was thumbing my pockets for a cigarette.

Pressley rolled his eyes at me.
“Alice.”

“What? It’s a totally reasonable
question, the Belgian are a very liberal people. Plus, I need to calm my
nerves. The voltage in that stun gun could have brought down a horse.”

“Please be serious for a minute.
You were set up. This killer blonde knew you were coming to Brussels.”

“So? Must not take much. You knew I
was here, didn’t you?”

“I have good intel. United States
Government intel. Apparently there’s an amateur out there with
better-than-government intel. We should be worried, both of us should be
worried.”

“Don’t try and act like we have a
shared interest. We are enemies, not allies.” I twirled out from under his arm,
sustaining a lingering look into his eyes as I stamped my boots away from him.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go do some damage control.”

“I’m not giving this up, Alice.”

“Stop chasing the dynamite stick if
you know what’s good for you.”

Pressley hooked my silky dress by
the collar and dragged me back into his embrace. “But was I chasing the
dynamite stick, or was I chasing you?”

With his thumbs tightening on the
place where my ears met my neck, he plunged his lips onto mine. I kissed back,
which inspired his lips to push harder against mine.  His fingers were
lingering down to my shoulders, pushing my back against the wall. His mouth was
making its way down my neck and my hands were digging his back.

“Alice?” Rabbit called from the
doorway.

I pushed Pressley off of me. My
lips felt swollen and pulsating from the dominance of the kiss. “Rabbit?” I
cried. “Where were you? Did you see that blonde behemoth take me down?”

But Rabbit didn’t respond to my
voice. He simply looked back and forth at the tight space between me and
Pressley with a trance-like look in his eyes. He backed out of the door and
sprinted away.

“See?” My eyes were piercing
Pressley’s. “Look how you’re screwing up my life? I told you to stay away from
me.”

“Are you afraid of him telling
Motley about us?”

“The last thing I need is to be
caught smooching with a CIA goon.”

“What are you afraid of? Will
Motley hurt you if he finds out?”

“It would make me a liability.”

“Alice, this is crap. What are you
doing getting involved with some guy you’re so afraid of? Why don’t you just
walk away?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not? Is he holding something
over you?”

“No, it’s more like I’m holding
something over myself.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh yeah? Try me.”

“Never mind. I need to go find
Rabbit before he tattles on me. Please, Pressley, just stay out of my life
before you really screw things up for me.”

Chapter Ten: The Vault

T
HE
HOLLOWS OF the library stacks were a dizzying whirlwind as I chased the corners
searching for a sign of Rabbit. I busted outside and traversed the gray streets
that surrounded the library until giving up and flagging a taxi to the airport.
An ungentle downpour had engulfed the city and I had gotten soaked as I rushed
from my cab to the tarmac. By the time I got onboard the plane, it had almost
taken off without me, and I had to barrel down the narrow aisle with my clothes
and hair drenched in rain and black mascara spiders painted down the side of my
cheek.

I crashed into the seat next to
Rabbit, but he pretended not to notice me. An explosion riled within me as I
thumped my wet boots off. In the process, my confession note tumbled onto the
floor and I quickly scooped it up and shoved it back inside my empty boot. I
looked over to see if Rabbit had noticed, but he had been too busy pretending
not to see me to notice the rogue note.

I could take the silence no longer.
“You son of a bitch, Rabbit!” I screamed. “You ratted me out already, didn’t
you?”

Rabbit stiffly turned to face me,
but his eyes never quite met mine. “That guy you were kissing inside the book
vault was Pressley Connard, the CIA agent, wasn’t he?”

I peeked at Rabbit’s laptop screen
and saw that he had a photo of Pressley’s face blown up on the screen.
“Congratulations, you can use Google.”

“Alice, what the hell do you think
you were doing kissing Pressley Connard? He works for the government. Do you
really think it’s okay to suck face with him? What side are you on, anyway?”

“You don’t know anything about what
you saw, Rabbit, so butt out.”

“Well, it’s too late, because
Motley already knows about it. I called him and told him.”

“Rabbit, remember the other night
at my apartment when you asked me why I didn’t want to be friends with you?
This is exactly why. You’re a freaking snitch.”

“Don’t try and guilt me. You
crossed the line tonight when you kissed him.”

“Rabbit, why are you so offended by
who I kiss?”

“Because, Alice, he is the
enemy
.”

“You’re acting awfully possessive.
Are you jealous?”

“Jealous? Alice, don’t be crazy,”
Rabbit said, tucking his hands under his chin, and I thought I detected the
slightest hint of broken-heartedness in his eyes. “Stop talking to me. I’ll
just let Motley deal with you.”

“I’ll handle Motley. You just stay
the hell away from me.” My phone rang and I sprang to my feet and booked to the
bathroom so Rabbit couldn’t hear my conversation. “Hello,” I answered, while
pressing the bathroom door shut behind me.

Motley’s voice was eerily calm when
he spoke at me. “Alice, you blew another job. Maybe I was right that night you
fell out of the Eiffel Tower when I said you might be slipping.”

I paced the tiny, modular airplane
bathroom and exclaimed, “I’m not slipping. This couldn’t be helped. Someone
else was after the dynamite stick, and they got there first. Jamie was dead
before I even landed in Brussels.”  

There was a long pause from
Motley’s end, so I bit my lip against the silence. Finally Motley asked the
question that had been lingering. “What about kissing the enemy?”

“You mean Pressley Connard? Did
Rabbit tell you that? You can’t listen to Rabbit. He’s probably just jealous.
You should see the way he violates me with his eyes when I’m wearing anything
tight.”

“I don’t care what Rabbit is. What
I want to know is if you have a way to explain yourself, Alice.”

“The truth is I was just kissing
that government blowhard to screw with him.”

“Screwing with him seems to be the
problem, now doesn’t it, Alice?”

“What I mean is that I was using
the kiss to see if I could get any information off the lips I was kissing. I
was simply using his attraction to me as a tool.”

“Alice, let’s put the matter with
Pressley aside for now. You are going to have another opportunity to work on
your gift of
persuasion
very soon. Moments ago, I contacted the pilot
and told him to reroute the plane away from Paris.”

“You’re rerouting us? Why?”

“A new challenge has sprung up and
it demands our full attention.”

“What is the challenge?”

“Something called Project Nine.”

“Project Nine?” I repeated. “I’ve
never heard of it before. Who are the players?”

“There is a hardware company called
Cibix, which manufactures thumb drives, disks, and other computer devices.”

“I’ve heard of Cibix, of course,
everyone has. I mean, I’ve seen the label on lots of thumb drives. A squiggly
tornado, right? But why would they be a problem?”

“Recently, Cibix entered a contract
with the United States Government. They are in the process of developing a
program that could be very dangerous for us. When completed, the program will
be able to covertly scan computer hard drives for numerical combinations of
nine.”

“You mean Social Security numbers?”

“Precisely. After finding the
numerical combinations, it then scans the surrounding words, up to a thousand
at a time, in order to capture a name associated with that nine-digit
combination. The program can be spread like a worm from user to user, so that
it will infect users just as the virus from the November Hit did.”

“So it’s like a reverse of the
original virus?”

“That’s its function essentially.
Alice, what the government plans to accomplish with Project Nine is to uncover
a cache of any and all Social Security numbers ever entered into an existing
computer. Virtually any computer that has ever had a Social Security number so
much as typed onto it before or after the November Hit is a target. This is how
they plan to restore the identities of every last rogue citizen of the United
States, one by one.”

I slumped down on the floor beside
the toilet and tucked my knees under my chin. “This is dreadful, Motley. This
could shut us down.”

“Alice, I am flying you and Rabbit
to the offices where the program for Project Nine is being developed. You are
going to sabotage it.”

“Sabotage?” I took a peek at myself
in the mirror and ran my fingertips along the rim of my eyes to wipe off the
ribbons of black mascara. “This sounds dangerous.”  

“Rabbit is in his seat right now
downloading and reviewing instructions I sent him. I will need the both of you
to collaborate closely in order for this to be a success. It’s a high risk
prospect and it has to be seamless or it will blow up in our faces. Everything
is at stake, Alice.”

I pushed open the bathroom door and
poked my head out so that I got a clear view of Rabbit down the aisle. He was
hunched over his laptop, his eyes engrossed in scanning the data on the screen.
“You can count on me, Motley. You know you can.” The plane jerked violently and
I steadied myself against the corner of the sink to stay upright. “I think I
just felt the plane reroute. Where are we headed?”

“Right into the thick of it, Alice.
The Cibix world headquarters in New York City.”

I felt my heart clock to a stop.
“New York City?” I stammered out. “Do you really think it’s safe for Rabbit and
I to return to America for the first time? To be back so close to home?”

“Alice, nothing is more dangerous
for us right now than doing nothing.”

I felt the plane’s cabin make an
uneven jerk and my stomach dropped. “Okay,” I said. I hung up the phone,
letting it drop from my hands so that it spun across the hard floor. I doubled
over the toilet.

A moment later, I stumbled out of
the bathroom wiping my chin.

“I take it Motley informed you of
the job?” Rabbit asked with his eyes deployed on me as I plopped onto my seat.

I had to sedate myself from
entertaining wildly violent fantasies about harming Rabbit. I wanted Rabbit’s
skin under my nails for ratting me out, but I knew I had to tolerate him if
this mission was going to work.

“Yup.” I pretended to be busy with
picking at my nails, which were brittle and unpolished.

“Well, how do you feel about going
back home to the good old USA?”

“How I feel doesn’t matter. It’s
part of the job and I don’t ask questions.”

“I could puke from nerves,” Rabbit
revealed. “I’ve been enjoying being an unknown in Paris. New York seems risky.”

I didn’t want to give him the
satisfaction of knowing I was just as nervous. I peeked at what appeared to be
a series of maps and blueprints he had downloaded onto his computer screen. “So
what’s the plan? Motley told me you would know.”

“Cibix is located on Avenue of the
Americas. The plan is for us to sneak you inside with a phony employee badge.
Then, we get you into the research and development server area and have you
smoke the joint. I’ll be guiding you using an earpiece from a car parked around
the corner.”

“Hold up,” I demanded. “I am not
smoking a building on Avenue of the Americas, and I sure as hell am not blowing
up a building in the heart of New York City. I’m not a terrorist, Rabbit.”

“You won’t be blowing anything up
with a bomb. You’re going to use an acid pour which will sizzle the servers
from the insides out.”

“No explosives?”

“No explosives. Nobody gets
injured. This is going to be a clean hit. Cibix won’t even know it’s happened
until you’re long gone.”

“And you’re confident that I’m
going to break into a high-profile company, within a high-profile city, and
wreck high-profile servers, all without getting caught?”

“Or so the plan goes.”

“What happens once we land in New
York?”

“This airplane is scheduled to land
in New York in four hours.” He glanced at his laptop to confirm the time.
“Tonight is easy, we simply check into the Hilton down the street from Cibix
headquarters. Tomorrow, we strike.” He gave me a satisfied smile and then he
raised his headphones to his ears and returned his attention back to his
laptop.

I pivoted towards the window to
look out over the Atlantic as my stomach banded into knots. I never wanted to
return to America until every last potential trace of my secret was gone. Now I
was in a position where the only way to make sure my secret stayed hidden was
to go to America and destroy Cibix’s research. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

I closed my eyes and told myself to
think soothing thoughts. The first soothing thought that popped into my head
was Ben. Then I remembered I had told him I would call him as soon as I got
back to Paris. That was looking longer now, so I would have to reschedule our
date. I pulled out my phone and looked up the number for the hospital, and when
the ER receptionist picked up I asked her to page Ben.