Generation of Liars (23 page)

“He does?” I blustered. “Where is
it?”

“It’s in Amsterdam. Motley is there
already.”

“Motley went to Amsterdam by
himself? This must be serious, because Motley never goes any place for himself.
He usually sends us.”

“He’s staking out the guy who
Pressley claims possesses the dynamite stick. He just told me I am to board a
flight to Amsterdam immediately.”

“How soon does our plane take off?”
I asked. “Do I have time to get dressed?”

“That’s the thing, Alice. Motley
only wants me to go. He thinks you should just rest for a little while. He said
you can stay here, in his house, if you want. Actually, he prefers if you stay
here. We’ll keep in touch with you.”

I twisted my lips into a pout. “I’m
fine. I don’t need to rest. I should be a part of this too. This has been my
life for three years. You cannot cut me off now.”

“It’s not like that, Alice. Nobody
is cutting you off.”

I was about to protest, but a
rattling commotion began in the hallway adjacent to the kitchen. Rabbit and I
turned our heads, and I recognized the sound of high heels clicking against the
granite floors. Cleopatra presented herself in the doorway and rolled her
luggage into the kitchen. “Are you ready to go, Rabbit?”

“Oh come on!” I blustered. “She
gets to go, but I don’t?”

“Sorry, Alice,” Rabbit said. “These
were Motley’s orders.”

“Motley’s orders were to leave me
out and bring her instead? That is so unfair. She hasn’t even been with us a
week and she gets to go and claim the dynamite stick?”

“Alice, you don’t have to talk
about me like I’m not in the room,” Cleopatra broke in. She whipped out her
compact mirror and started applying red lipstick. It blended perfectly with her
black fur coat and matching leopard-print luggage set.

“Shut up,” I yelled to Cleopatra.
“Nothing you say means anything to me. You lied to me when I asked you if you
were my replacement.”

“I told you, Alice, I’m not here to
replace you. The job I do is significantly different than yours.”

Chapter Nineteen: The Cellar

I
WAS STANDING inside the slashes of sunlight which were breaking through the
stained glass arched window in the foyer. A bead of blood plunged up from under
my fingernail. I had been nervously chewing my nails like grass as I watched
Rabbit’s A4 drive away with only him and Cleopatra onboard. I dragged myself up
the giant staircase to the master bedroom suite and drew a scorching hot bath
from the elegant brass levers. While the water filled up, I took off all my
clothes and sat on the toilet lid and cried my eyes out as I pictured
Cleopatra, diamonds radiating from her ears, and her long legs folding over
themselves as she sat next to Rabbit in the car. I told myself that maybe some
alcohol would help. That’s when I got the idea to go down to Motley’s wine
cellar and get a bottle of wine. I got up off the toilet and draped myself
under one of Motley’s cloud-like white guest robes that was embroidered with an
M
, and I traversed to the lowest level of the house.

I only knew Motley had a wine
cellar because he bragged all the time about his vintage
whatevers
. It
wasn’t just wine Motley enjoyed collecting, he had tons of overpriced
collector’s items on display all over his house. His prized possession at the
moment was currently mounted to the wall of his poker room. It was a foot-long
Samurai sword and he was
always bragging about it to guests. It had been
forged during the seventeenth century just before some epic battle where
everyone’s head ended up on the ends of long sticks lined up like fence posts.
I didn’t find it particularly impressive myself, but if it turned out I
couldn’t find a corkscrew, I would probably just grab the sword and use it to
free my wine.  

I couldn’t quite remember which
door led to the wine cellar, so I went through all the rooms on the lower
level. The left side of the hallway had a door to the large screening room,
meant for watching movies. Further down was a room with a regulation-sized
indoor pool and attached hot tub. On the opposite side of the hallway was the
game room with a professional poker table, which was the room where Motley
displayed the large sword.

I padded down the hallway. I tried
the handle to an unmarked door diagonally across from the poker room. As I
pulled the door open onto the hallway, a chilly blast of air vapored out and
the musty smell of a cellar hit my nose. Even against the dimly lit entrance, I
knew I had found the wine cellar. I sauntered through the rows of wine bottles
and felt a little uncouth to admit to myself that I didn’t know a Merlot from a
maggot. But red and bubbly under any label sounded good, so I indiscriminately
slipped one out from the rack. The label featured a lattice of red roses and
the dreamy moniker of Strawberry Blush. I was about to turn back towards the
door when I heard footsteps coming from the other side of the rack I had just
pulled the bottle from.

Deep heavy breaths were coming from
somewhere in the cellar.

I got perfectly still. I raised the
bottle like a club over my shoulder. I crept to the corner of the wine rack and
prepared to swing, but there was nobody there. I eased my shoulders and brought
the bottle of wine down to my side with one hand. I stooped down and peered
through the space in between the levels of wine, and that’s when I saw a set of
eyes, dark and unblinking, watching me. I let out a scream and firmed my grip
on the wine bottle clutched in my hands.

“Alice, it’s me,” said a voice,
raspy and exhausted.

“You’re alive?”

“I’m immortal.” Pressley emerged
and came out towards me from behind the wine rack.

“Don’t even think about asking me
to share.” I hugged the bottle to my chest.

There were clots of blood, thick
and jellylike, dotting the corners of his lips. The skin around his left eye
was sooty, painted in bruises the shade of ripe plums. “Oh freaking hell,
Alice, can you stop trying to be cute for once?”

“What are you doing here,
Pressley?”

“I got trapped down here by your
boss. I was grabbed on the street in New York by two seriously scary guys. One
was a giant, and he had this beard that was red, I’m talking bright as a
freaking Easter egg.”

“That’s Moonboots McCafferty.”

“And then there was that other one.
He was short a few brain cells, not to mention nearly all of his teeth.”

“Xerxes O’Brien. He’s harmless once
you get to know him, charming, even, if you catch him on a good day.”

“Harmless? Does any of this look
harmless to you?” He pointed to his swollen eye.

“It comes with the territory. I
told you to stay out of this dark world, Pressley. I warned you.”

“You sure got yourself involved
with some sketchy people, Alice.”

“Judging by that shiner over your
eye, I’d say you’re the one who got involved with them, not me.”

“Not my choice. They brought me
here and dumped me in a little hole on the other side of the wine cellar. No
actually, dungeon, is a better word. Freaky as hell. Definite
Cask of
Amantiado
vibe going on.” He gave me a pitying look. “Oh, that’s right, I
forgot, you nearly flunked your first semester of English, so you wouldn’t
catch that reference.”

“You know, it really sucks having
someone who knows all your secrets pop back into your life.”

Pressley smiled. “Doesn’t it?”

I tucked my hair behind my ears
nervously, an act of deflection against the powerlessness Pressley stirred up
inside me. “You broke out of this cell you’re talking about?”

“I managed to climb up. Be careful
with your footing, the entrance point is a hole in the floor right over there.”
He pointed to a spot somewhere in the blackness of the cellar.

 I tapped my foot. “Hmm.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“I’m wondering what to do about
your status as a rogue prisoner,” I answered. A laugh flew out of his mouth and
he doubled over, as if to illustrate the fact that my gesture of
authoritarianism was humorous enough to cause him physical pain. “Well,” I
spoke over his noises, “as you know, Motley is in Amsterdam.”

“Oh, I know,” he said, edging on
his toes to look over my shoulder at the door. “I sent him there. But what
about that goofy loser, Bunny or whatever, is he around?”

“Rabbit. He went to Amsterdam too.”

He smiled so that his eyes look
like two blood-crusted slits. “By default that puts you in charge, doesn’t it?

“I guess you could say that.” I
folded my arms confrontationally over my chest.

Pressley dribbled his fingers over
the side of my cheek. “That’s good for me, since I’m pretty sure I can persuade
you to let me go free. And if not, I’m pretty sure I can find a way to slip by
you. Plus, you owe me one. I’ve been so good about keeping up your little
pretend game and calling you Alice. I haven’t slipped and called you Margaux
once.”

“Don’t touch me,” I said, pushing
him away. “And don’t call me by that name.”

“Quit playing games and let’s just
get out of here.”

“What the hell are you talking
about? You just ambushed me in a dark cellar. I should really just call
Moonboots and Xerxes to take care of you. Or run upstairs and get my revolver
so I can shoot you myself.”

“You would never shoot me.”

“Don’t be so sure. Remember, you
already shot me once, I’m entitled to a turn
too.”      

“Alice, I told you once already. I
only shot you to prevent my partner from shooting you first. I was saving you.
Because I care about you. I would have taken that bullet for you if it was an
option.”

“Doesn’t matter. A shot is a shot.”

“Hold up for a minute. Before you fix
me inside your crosshairs, I have to ask what you’re doing here, left behind in
Paris? Shouldn’t you be with Motley and Rabbit in Amsterdam? Aren’t you guys a
team?”

“I decided to stay behind,” I said.
I looked down at the bottle of Strawberry Blush in my hands.

“Decided to stay behind, or got
left behind?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking
about. I really need to open this bottle of wine, excuse me.” I twisted on the
heels of my bare feet and paraded towards the door.

Pressley followed me through the
hallway into the poker room. “I told you this Motley guy was bad news, Alice. I
told you that he would just use you for his own purpose and then toss you out.”

The room’s carpeting was
turf-colored and the walls were covered with expensively framed promotional
posters of Fool’s Luck
brand playing cards with sexy, smiling women on
display. “Shut up,” I said. I set my hands on my hips and looked up at the
wall-mounted Samurai sword. “Will you give me a hand with
this?”    

“A hand with what?” Pressley asked.

“With getting the sword down. I
need to open this bottle of wine.”

“Alice, there has to be a better
way to open a wine bottle than with a Samurai sword. Besides, it looks like it
might be an antique or something.”

“Just shut up and help me.”

Pressley passed a look between me
and the sword and shook his head. “Isn’t your boss going to be pissed if he
finds out you were playing with his sword while he was away in Amsterdam? Or is
this your passive-aggressive way of giving him payback for leaving you behind?”

I cocked my head at him. “What
about you? What are you doing chasing me around Paris and New York when you
already knew the dynamite stick was in Amsterdam?”

He bounced his eyebrows. “Why do
you think?”

“Oh, geez, Pressley, you lied about
the dynamite stick being in Amsterdam, didn’t you?”

“I had to buy myself some time.
Besides, it worked like a charm.”

“How the heck did you convince
Motley that the dynamite stick was actually in Amsterdam?” I grabbed one of the
chairs from the poker table and dragged it across the green carpet and
positioned it beneath the mounted sword.

Pressley gripped my hips and helped
me steady myself on top of it. “I had enough facts about the dynamite stick,
and assorted tidbits from hackers I’ve investigated in Amsterdam, to contrive a
believable story. I knew if I told him it was in another country, he wouldn’t
risk crossing international borders smuggling a CIA agent against his will and
I would get left behind with a chance at escape. I’m sure Motley knows Interpol
would be on alert by now since I haven’t checked in back at base since he
dragged me to Paris.”

“He is going to kill you, you know
that, right? Now that you’ve lied to him and wasted his time, he won’t rest
until all that’s left of you is meat for the Parisian rats.” I wobbled, swiftly
reclaiming my balance, and raised myself onto my tiptoes to pry the handle of
the sword from the hooks fastening it to the wall.

“I will worry about that later,” he
replied. The sword came loose and dropped into my hands. The weight of it
caught me by surprise, so that it flew out of my hands, skimming Pressley’s
head before clamoring to the floor. Pressley ducked just in time to avoid a
swift beheading. “Geez, Alice, be careful, will you?”

I climbed down from the chair and
cradled the sword to my waiting wine bottle. “How long do you estimate before
he figures it out and gets back here looking for your head?” I asked, jimmying
the blade into the slit of the cork. “Or before he puts in a call to Xerxes and
Moonboots to check up on you and they come busting in here.”

“It won’t matter because I will be
long gone, and you will be gone along with me.”

The cork flew off the bottle and
ricocheted off the ceiling with a huge pop. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not leaving here without you,
Alice. I can see that you’re in a bad situation with bad company and I am going
to save you.”

“Oh, Pressley,” I grumbled, wiping
my lips after swigging from the bottle, “don’t be ridiculous.”