Lie with Me (29 page)

Maybe she could be happy here. He knew he could be, with her.

“Hey,” he called after her. She’d reached the doorway and she turned, leaned against the doorjamb. “Are you letting Violet fall in love?”

She laughed softly. “Well, I’m more open to the possibility of it. My editor was the one who wanted her to fall in love, and at first, I didn’t think that was such a good idea.”

“How come?”

“I never really saw love as an answer to anything. It always seemed to get people hurt instead.”

“I can see Violet falling in love.”

“You can?”

“Everyone needs someone they can let their guard down with.”

“I guess they do,” she agreed, and then turned and started toward the kitchen again.

He glanced over to where she’d left her papers, scattered, covered in black ink, with what looked like mostly cross-outs and scribbles, but there was lilting script in between.

He knew he shouldn’t—she hadn’t invited him to look—but he couldn’t help himself. But there was nothing about Violet on the pages—nothing that was a work of fiction at all. No, she’d written down everything he’d told her, about jail, about her father’s involvement with him. About his own father.

Some of it was in note form, some in neatly written paragraphs. In places, just a few words with arrows dotted the margins. But it was his life, written out like so many plot points of the latest action-adventure Hollywood blockbuster.

And yeah, it would make a great movie. Because it was all fucking unbelievable … unless you’d lived it.

Sky cleared her throat and he found her back in the doorway, a glass of juice in hand. Shit.

He put the papers down, wanted to apologize, but the anger rose up too quickly. Before he could say anything, she spoke.

“It’s the way I process things. I’m trying to make sense of it all,” she explained. “I didn’t write it to show anyone.”

He believed her immediately. “That’s what I get for invading your privacy. It’s just … It’s bad enough to talk about it. But to see it laid out there …”

“I can rip it up if it bothers you.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m just not sure how that’s going to help.”

“I am,” she said quietly. “Is it possible to check my messages?” She held up her BlackBerry, which no longer had a battery.

“I can have them transferred to my phone,” he told her. He got online, clicked a few buttons and then he was dialing his own phone, putting it on speaker.

She typed in her code when prompted and listened. He knew she was hoping for some kind of message from her father. He couldn’t blame her—a message from Gabriel would uncomplicate some things … and make others worse.

The monotone voice announced, “One new message—yesterday at twelve-forty
A.M
.” And then there was a long pause, followed by a panicked woman’s voice that made both of them jump.

“Skylar—there are men asking about you—they’re taking me—kidnapping me—I don’t know what they want …”

The woman’s voice trailed off into frantic screams that continued until the phone clicked off. Sky remained frozen in place.

He shook her gently and pressed a button so the message could be saved and replayed, if necessary. Just not in front of her. “Sky, who was that? Was it Pam, your publicist?”

“No … not Pam. That was Olivia Strohm.”

“A friend?”

“My doctor—she did my transplant. Why would they take her? Why, Cam?” She felt herself going over the edge again, the nightmare of the past days coming back to strangle her.

“It’s going to be all right.”

“Tell me why they’d take her. She has nothing to do with this, she’s just my doctor—” She stopped, because suddenly, she knew why. She broke out in a sickening sweat and Cam’s embrace was the only thing holding her up. “Whoever took her … they need her there to keep me alive, once they’ve got me.”

“No one’s going to get you. Do you understand that? Never.” Cam’s voice was fierce and she saw the warrior rise up behind his eyes. It made her feel protected as hell. And she believed him.

CHAPTER

16

A
n hour later, still shaken, Sky heard voices and knew that Cam’s friends had arrived.

She’d pulled herself together, for Liv’s sake, because her friend and doctor needed her help now. Sky showered and pulled on a too-big flannel shirt of Cam’s and some sweatpants before padding out past the small security station off the bedroom, and down the hall to the kitchen.

The man was dark-haired; the woman with him was really pretty, dark hair and eyes, despite the bruising along her cheekbone and a split lip. She was exotic-looking. Curvy. And when Skylar walked into the kitchen, the talking stopped and Cam moved to her side.

“Sky, this is Dylan and Riley.”

“Hey, Skylar.” Dylan stepped forward to shake her hand, and Riley simply nodded, her bearing more guarded than Sky would’ve expected.

Then again, she didn’t know anything about either one of them, didn’t know if they were spies or military or what. She just knew they would tell her who was after her. Who had her father. “No offense, but can we cut through the small talk? Because I’d really like some answers.”

Dylan nodded. “I understand. Skylar, the men who are after you are part of a group who call themselves Dead Man’s Hand.”

“DMH,” she whispered, her knees weak, because it was far more insidious than she’d thought. “No …”

“You’ve heard of them?” Dylan was asking as Cam steered her gently toward the couch, with a hand on her lower back. He sat next to her, a steady hand on her leg, while Riley brought her a glass of water.

She took a sip, her hands shaking. She was hot and cold at the same time, and it was like that day, that fateful day, expecting to find her mom waiting for her in the kitchen and instead being told she was dead. “My mother … DMH is responsible for killing my mother.”

“Did Gabriel tell you that?” Riley asked her.

She shook her head. She remembered that day, listening to him on the phone, talking in some kind of code when he thought she couldn’t hear.

At the time, she hadn’t understood anything except the letters
DMH
. The extensive research she’d done about the group had yielded next to nothing. A mention here and there, but mostly what came up were references to the dead man’s hand in poker … an association she’d assumed had something to do with why the group had chosen its name. “He didn’t know I overhead him talking about it. I assumed they were just a militia group my mother had been trying to infiltrate.”

“You were right.” Riley moved with a quiet grace that didn’t hide the fact that she was just as deadly as the two men. “DMH are terrorists. Killers. And they’ll sell their services to the highest bidder, as long as that bidder isn’t the USA. The man who runs it is an expatriate who took a grass-roots extremist group and turned them international.”

Sky pulled her sweater tighter and Cam’s hand on her leg steadied her, made her feel safe even as her world got more out of control. “They sound horrible—much worse than I thought.”

“DMH is involved in everything from selling U.S. secrets to child trafficking,” Riley continued. “They’re like an octopus, constantly branching out in different directions, too slippery to catch. Their operatives are nearly impossible to trace—many of them are disposable, used for specific jobs and then let go … or killed. Getting close to the inner circle is nearly impossible.”

“And you think my father has.”

“I know so,” Riley confirmed. “Cam and I have as well—we just didn’t know it at the time.”

Cam’s head snapped in Riley’s direction. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m assuming Sky knows … about the work you did for Gabriel?” Riley asked, and Cam nodded slowly. Tension rose to a palpable level in the room as they waited for Riley to explain.

Riley faced Sky when she spoke, but her words were meant for Cam. “I have reason to believe that most of those missions involved taking down DMH.”

Cam stiffened and rose. “How the hell can you be sure?”

This time, Riley looked at him. “The last man you were sent to kill was Bullet, aka Elijah Killoran. He’s the ringleader of DMH.”

Riley was referencing the job Cam had told Sky about, the one where the boy was killed.

“I was that close to the head of DMH and I let him go.” Cam’s fists clenched, his voice tight as he stared out one of the windows, not making eye contact with any of them. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? And because I didn’t do my job then, this is coming back to bite Sky on the ass.”

“How could you have known that?” Dylan demanded fiercely and Cam turned to look at him. “Jesus, Cam, you can’t take the weight of the world on your shoulders. Besides, sometimes when you cut the head off something, the body still functions.”

“Gabriel had already started his plan to infiltrate before your mission failed.” Riley perched on the edge of one of the chairs across from the couch as she spoke. She rubbed the side of her bruised face gingerly. “As far as I can tell, he officially went in about three months ago, although it seems he was making inroads well before that.”

“I’m confused,” Sky said. “If my father’s working undercover … then am I not really in danger?”

Riley smiled, but there was not a lot of warmth there. No, she looked … nervous. Took her hand away from her face and abruptly stood, paced a few steps. “You’re in danger. DMH made your father. Because of me. I turned him in to them.”

“And you brought her here? Are you crazy?” Cam demanded of Dylan. “She let DMH know about Sky.”

“I didn’t do that,” Riley told Cam, then turned to Sky. “I mean, yes, I turned Gabriel in but I never thought any further than that, that they might use his family. I thought … I thought they would kill him and that would be the end of it,” Riley said, the pain shining behind her imploring words. “Skylar, I was trying to avenge my father’s death. I don’t expect you to understand—”

“Get her out of here,” Cam told Dylan through clenched teeth, but Sky stepped in front of him.

“Stop, please. It’s done. She’s here now—and if Dylan, your friend, the man you most trust, trusts her, then we have to. The most important thing now is what we do next.” She paused, letting her words sink in. Cam held up his hands in a silent surrender, but he didn’t look happy. “Why does DMH want my father alive so badly?”

“They could use him to gain access to places they couldn’t get—he knows how to work the system,” Riley offered, but Sky shook her head.

“There’s more to it.”

“He’ll never tell them anything that would compromise American lives, Sky. Which is why it’s so important for them to get to you—you’re the only reason Gabriel might possibly spill what he knows. Like the safeguards he helped design and put into place working alongside Homeland Security to make sure something like 9/11 never happens again. If he knows the safeguards, he knows the flaws. Intel like that is worth billions on the open market, and DMH would be only too happy to sell it to the highest bidder. Even a small amount of true intel from your father would be invaluable.”

She’d paled at Dylan’s words, but they were what she needed to hear. It was real. She understood. “They want to use me as leverage to make my father talk. They want to threaten me and see if he’ll spill his secrets when my life is on the line.”

“Yes.”

She swallowed. Hard. Not doing a great job of pretending she didn’t care, that she wasn’t scared.

She’d been pretending for so damned long that it had become second nature. And somehow, Cam knew that, because she’d been stupid, had let him in that first night and he hadn’t let go since.

“Why should we go to DMH?” Sky asked, holding up her cell phone in one hand and the battery in another. “Why not put this back together and let them come to us? To me?”

“Because I won’t risk that.” Cam’s voice shook from anger and the strength of his resolve. “They’re going to want to bring you to your father—torture you in front of him to make him spill whatever secrets they think he has.”

“But they would take me to him—and you could follow me,” she insisted. “And you can save my father from DMH, then report him to the CIA, or whatever you want to do. But I won’t leave him in the hands of killers.”

“Sky, you don’t understand,” Dylan said gently. “The only way DMH will ever leave you alone is if your father’s dead.”

S
ky let the truth of the words sink in—and they did, slowly and painfully—and for a second she was sure her throat was closing.

Her father’s life for hers. Another risk he’d take for her.

He’d done bad things. She knew that. Was under no illusions that he’d abused his power in terrible ways and had damaged at least two people she knew of because of his need to avenge his wife’s death.

Her mother’s murder.

“So we let DMH kill him?” The words came out as more of a challenge than a question. Cam and Dylan looked somber.

“He would never want you given to them, Sky,” Cam told her.

“Are you sure they’ll kill him?” she persisted. “You said yourself that he’s valuable. That they’d keep him alive until they found a way to make him share his intel.”