Perfect Lies (16 page)

“Brown hair, running down the sidewalk toward us, looks like he’s going to murder me?”

“Annie? Annie!” Cole grabs me around the shoulders, twisting me away from Eden’s hand. “She said—Sadie woke up and said you were dead. She said Sarah was going to—I thought I’d be too late, I thought I’d lose you.” He pulls me close, holding me tighter than even Eden did. “Where’s Sarah?”

“She’s gone,” I whisper. I have nothing else to say.

“
AND YOU’RE CERTAIN IT WAS THE LERNER GROUP
who grabbed Sadie? And you couldn’t stop them?” the Feeler asks. She’s new. I don’t know her. I don’t care.

I nod, channeling anger, which isn’t hard. I am angry. I am so angry I don’t know what to do with it. I wanted to help her, wanted to keep Sadie safe. I was going to keep her safe, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t fix it.

I couldn’t do anything to change what happened.

I don’t tell her why we couldn’t stop them. That they threatened to hurt Annie so we couldn’t save Sadie. Because Annie is dead, SHE IS DEAD WHY IS EVERYTHING SO COMPLICATED SHE IS DEAD.

I frown, realizing the Feeler has been asking more questions. “Look. I recognized the guy. Sandy blond hair, face I want to smash. I fought him last spring when I was out on a hit, and then again when Lerner kidnapped me and I broke out. I don’t forget people I beat the crap out of.”

“No, I would imagine you don’t.” I don’t know if her smile is amused or terrified, and I don’t care. I’m done.

I stand and stomp out of the room. The one bonus to all this is that we didn’t have to lie. Pixie and I decided not to tell them exactly what Sadie could do, just that we saw the tail end of her being forced into a car and couldn’t stop it.

Couldn’t.

COULDN’T.

I
hate
couldn’t. I hate it so much I want to hurt someone. I want to hurt Sandy blond who threatened Annie. I want to hurt everyone associated with the Lerner group, everyone I trusted. I trusted them! It was right to trust them! And trusting them meant Sarah died, meant she was destroyed. Trusting them means Sadie still isn’t safe, won’t ever be safe.

I gave Annie to them. Maybe even to Rafael, if he wasn’t lying.

I gave Annie to
Rafael
. No I didn’t. I KILLED ANNIE. I KILLED HER.

I walk into the women’s bathroom. Kick a stall door so hard it cracks.

Scream.

Slam the heel of my palm into the mirror, watch it shatter, watch my reflection break into pieces. A slivered and silvered distortion, all broken and jagged and ruined.

“Fia!”

I turn to see Pixie staring at me. I don’t know how long she’s been in here. “Fia,” she says, her voice careful. “You need to calm down, okay?”

“I’m calm,” I answer, raising an eyebrow at her. “Why wouldn’t I be calm?”

“It’ll be okay.”

I laugh, and it is broken and jagged like the mirror. “No big deal. I’m pissed because this failure will probably cost me employee of the year. I really wanted a plaque. My name etched on it next to a bad picture.”

She opens her mouth, and I want to shove my bloodied hand over it, want to smash her into the wall, want to keep her from saying whatever soft things she wants to say. She is just like Annie. She is a liar. She will tell me and tell me and tell me and tell me that everything will be okay, and it’s a lie, it’s always a lie.

She takes a step back, pain and hurt written around her eyes. She wears leather and metal armor, but she’s a kid. She’s a stupid kid, and she doesn’t understand any of this and she doesn’t know anything, she doesn’t know.

She can never know.

Actually, no. If she stays here long enough, she’ll know. She’ll know, and then she’ll be the broken doll she already looks like. You want to play here, Pixie? You want to know what it really means to be a part of all this? You want thoughts to pull out of my head and report back to Keane? I’ll give you thoughts.

She leans against the black-tiled wall, stares past me at the shattered mirror. “There’s an artist in Asheville, where I’m from. She works in mosaic. Takes broken pieces of mirrors and fits them back into patterns. I have one. It looks like a starburst, the pieces rearranged to shine outward like rays of light.”

I narrow my eyes. “It’s still a broken mirror. It’s ruined. It’s useless.”

She shrugs, still not looking at me. “It’s broken, yeah. But it’s beautiful. And it means something to me when I look at it, even if I can’t see myself clearly in it anymore.”

I’m overwhelmed with the impulse to go over to her, to let her hug me, to cry on her shoulder. Is it an instinct? Is it right? Is it wrong?

“I’m on your side,” she says, smiling sadly. “You’re the only friend I have.”

I pick up one of the thick, folded paper towels. Smear my blood across it, wad it into a ball, and drop it in the sink. I don’t trust this impulse, I don’t trust her, I don’t trust me. No. I only trust me. No. I am the last person I can trust. I am the only person I can trust. I tap tap tap tap a fingernail against the sink, consider the spiderweb of my reflection.

“Here’s the thing, Pixie. I don’t have a side. I work here.
Just like you
. And I don’t ever forget that.” My phone rings, and I pull it out of my pocket. James. James will know what to do. He’ll tell me. We’ll do it together.

“Please,” Pixie says, desperate. “If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have already done it. You gave your secrets away before I ever listened in your head and realized you haven’t killed the people you say you did. Tap tap tap tap, Fia. Four taps. But you’ve
killed
six people. Two with the bomb. Clarice. Adam. Annie. Eden. It wouldn’t even be my word against yours. All they’d have to do is look and they’d see the truth.”

I cock my head, consider. She’s right. I could laugh at how careless I’ve been. “Are you threatening me?”

“No! I’m telling you to be more careful! I care about you. But James is destroying you. He lets you think you have the same goals, but he wants nothing that you do. He was working with Rafael, building his own group to rival his father’s. He has been this entire time, playing Lerner, playing his father, building so that he can take over and create the
exact same thing
his father already has. He’s not going to stop anything. You’re just building an empire for a new Keane.”

I have her slammed up against the wall before she can blink.

“You know nothing,” I snarl.
Nothing. You know nothing, and you are nothing, and you mean nothing to me or anyone else. No one in the whole world cares about you. I say a word, a single word, and you are the next overdosed girl floating dead in the river.

She whimpers.

I lean my forehead against hers, close my eyes. My voice comes out even, soft. “Stay out of it. I really don’t want to hurt you.”

I leave the bathroom before she can read me, before she can realize that I am lying, that I am nothing but a lie. I do, I care, I care so much and it terrifies me, and I don’t want to care about her because when I care people get hurt.

The people we love are the ones with the power to destroy us.

James is all I have. I chose James. He has to be right. Please let him be right.

WE SIT, A SILENT, MISERABLE GROUP. THE HOTEL SUITE
has adjoining rooms, and the walls are thin enough to make out most of what Rafael and Cole are shouting at each other. I had been worried about what would happen when I saw Rafael again after our kiss, but it’s funny how trivial something like that is now.

As much as I want to mourn Sarah, part of me is livid. I’m furious with her, furious that she made those choices, that she forced Fia’s hand like that. I have no idea what this will do to my sister.

No, that’s wrong. I know exactly what this will do, and this time I’m not there to take care of her. Please, James. Whatever goodness you have in you, whatever humanity—please take care of Fia. Don’t let her hurt herself.

“I just don’t understand,” Adam says, anguish soaking his voice. “Why would Sarah do that?”

“She was on amphetamines, right?” Eden asks. She’s sitting next to me, and I’m curled into her, my head resting on her shoulder.

She told me she stayed because they threatened to kill her mom. It was the hardest choice she’d ever had to make, because she loved me more than she ever loved her mom, and betraying my memory to protect that woman was torture. But now that Eden’s dead, too, we can be together. I shouldn’t be so grateful, considering everything that was lost for this to happen, but I won’t let Eden go again.

It took us a few days of hotel hopping before we all got to the same place and felt safe enough to meet. Sadie has barely spoken five words to any of us. She also hasn’t showered, and I can smell her from across the room. Someone needs to take care of her, help her, but we’re all so shell-shocked by what happened. At least she seems calm and resigned to being with us.

Eden continues. “I’ve seen some of our girls on it. It can make you paranoid, even trigger brief psychotic episodes.”

Apparently Cole feels the same, given the accusations he’s hurling at Rafael.

“Get away from her,” Eden snaps.

“What?” Nathan says. I wish he weren’t here.

“Don’t get anywhere near Sadie. She doesn’t want you to.”

“I think she can talk for herself.”

“I think you can take a flying leap off the balcony for all I care. Just stay away from her, you’re making her nervous.”

Nathan mutters something under his breath, but we’re interrupted by the door opening.

“Well,” Rafael says, his voice artificially bright. “We’ve got to decide what to do next. Obviously we can’t all stay together. Adam, it’s easiest if you’re with me. So, Cole, you and Eden can take Sadie to a safe house, and I’ll take Adam and Annie.”

“No.” Sadie’s voice is lower than I expect it to be, almost husky. “I want to stay with Annie.”

I’m surprised by this, but pleased. Someone needs to take care of her, so I’ll be that someone. It’s about time I had someone to take care of again. “Okay,” I say.

Rafael sounds patient as he’s talking to Sadie, but something is off. “I don’t think it’s safe for you and me to be in the same location, since they might be looking for us. Why don’t you explain exactly what you can do, and we can decide where the best place is for you.”

Then it hits me. Rafael uses a different tone of voice when he’s talking to women. His accent masked it, and, if I’m being honest, I liked flirting with him too much to notice. It’s not obviously condescending and skeezy like Nathan, but it’s there.

That detail feels like sand on my skin, irritating and impossible to brush away. “It’s okay. I’ll go with Sadie.”

Eden takes my hand and draws casually in my palm. I wonder what she’s doing until I realize she’s forming letters.

What is wrong?

“Eden, can you show me where the bathroom is?” I ask.

She stands, taking my arm, and leads me through a room. We close the door behind ourselves. “You’re worried. What?”

“I don’t know. I’m confused. I’m so worried about Fia. And I don’t know how to feel about things here. Rafael is … I don’t think I had him figured out the way I thought I did.”

“Yeah, he’s a puzzle. You were distracted by his accent, weren’t you?”

I laugh. “Shut up. Okay, yes. I was. Listen, I’ll stay with Sadie. I feel responsible, you know? But I worry about Adam.”

“He seems like a good guy.”

“He is. But …” I tell her about the vision that started all this. “I think he needs to be watched. Would you—this is awful, I don’t want to be separated from you, but would you stay with him?”

She sighs. “I just barely got you back. But this is important to you. I’ll do it. And I’ll try to feel out Rafael better.”

I hug her. “Thank you.”

“Seriously though, this company is wasted on you. Adam is all nerd hot, Rafael has that whole Latin lover vibe going, and even Cole is smoking. It’s kind of a slow build, you know? At first he looks pretty average, but then he’s got this incredible intensity in his stares, and his body is
rocking
. I should have joined Lerner ages ago.”