Liquid Lies (33 page)

Though it had pained her greatly to sleep alone last night, now she could at least be grateful for Reed’s silent treatment. Xavier’s suspicion received no confirmation. She didn’t even glance at Reed, though their ignoring of each other destroyed her a little bit.

“Good morning.” Xavier smiled, and his self-satisfaction gave her chills. Then, in Tedranish, “I’m going with you to Genesai’s.”

Someone swept her to the top of Mount Everest and dropped her off the back end.

“I’m looking forward to meeting him,” Xavier said, “and also to see you work. Translation fascinates me. We’ll be waiting for you in the hall.”

She wanted to scream, to cry, to slam her fist into the wall, but she was crippled, unable to do anything but drag her ass out of bed and into the plainclothes prison uniform.

She could have told Xavier he was wasting his time, that Genesai would never say anything but nonsense. She could have tried to elaborate on the lies she’d spewed yesterday, but it wouldn’t do any good. The moment that cabin door opened and Genesai saw her, the lie would crumble like a dry leaf.

And so would she. Here started the beginning of the end.

Everything she’d said to Reed last night was for nothing. All the truth, all his horror and hurt, all her begging…worthless.

Maybe he hadn’t come back to her room last night because he was thinking things through. Or maybe the distance was his way of saying that he’d finish his job here, keep his identity safe from this Tracker person, and then disappear again.

As she knocked on the hallway door to be let out, she couldn’t feel the wood beneath her knuckles. Every patch of her skin had gone numb, and when Reed opened the door without meeting her eyes, her heart took a high, hard dive into a bucket of ice.

He’d never given her any reason to hope, so why did she feel like it had been stolen from her anyway?

Xavier made her wait in the foyer while Reed pulled the Range Rover out of the garage. All she could think was,
what now, what now, what now?

Reed rolled down the window as Xavier prodded her outside. “You want to drive?”

The pause in Xavier’s step was only slightly detectable. “No.” Scowling, he slid into shotgun.

Thinking back, Gwen realized she’d never seen Xavier behind a wheel. He’d lived in a cinder block building up until two years ago. Of course he couldn’t drive.

“Gwen,” Reed barked as he stepped from the driver’s seat. “Back here.” With one hand he held the door open to the seat behind him. The other hand tilted a water bottle to his lips. Just another day at the office.

Look at me
, she silently demanded.
I’m sorry for telling you. I’m sorry for asking for your help.

No response.

Then, as she climbed into the backseat, Reed touched her hand. No, he passed her something. The feel of it was a firebrand against her skin. She curled her fingers around it. Didn’t question. She couldn’t afford to.

Xavier stared out the windshield, oblivious. The door locks clicked, they pulled up and out to the main road, and she unfurled her hand in the crater between her thighs.

The golf pencil she’d used the other day and a tiny scrap of paper.

She loosely cradled the paper. Her hands were sweating and she didn’t want to shred it. It was worth more than gold.

Her first thought should have been what to write on it, but it wasn’t. All she could do was stare at the back of Reed’s shiny head and trace the black vine lines curling around his nape with her eyes.

As usual, when he reverted into being the Retriever, he was impossible to read. But she knew one thing, and this she allowed herself to cling to for dear life. He was putting his trust in her, and it was the most precious thing in the world.

The Range Rover started its twisting climb into the mountains. As surreptitiously as possible, she kept watch on Xavier. When she deemed him sufficiently bored, she pressed the pencil to the paper. It poked through and she panicked. The tiny sound boomed like a cannon. Reed glanced at her in the rearview mirror, the connection no longer than half a second.

Elbow on the armrest, Xavier gazed out the window, unaware.

Gwen drew a deep breath to steady her hand. She wrote:
Griffin
. And his cell phone number.

The whole rest of the drive she held the little note against the outside of her thigh and stared down at it, into the faces of all of Earth’s and Ofaria’s and Tedra’s gods. Praying. Hoping.

The road angled more steeply, its corners cutting more sharply, as they approached Genesai’s corner of the forest. The trees crowded closer together and she fidgeted, thinking them all spies staring into the car. They knew what she was up to. That she’d coerced Reed into helping her. Apprehension fed into her fear, strengthening it.

She clutched her prize and waited. Waited. Steadied the entrance and exit of air through her lungs.

Reed started to shift uncomfortably in his seat. Xavier glanced over at him questioningly.

“Hey,” Reed said to him. “Water’s going right through me. Mind if we stop?”

It was all Gwen could do to keep from launching herself into the front seat and kissing Reed in gratitude.

Xavier eyed Reed sideways. “Aren’t we almost there?”

Reed shook his head. “At least another half hour. There’s an old general store just around the next bend. Secluded. I’ll park where no one driving by can see us. The doors lock from the inside. You stay with Gwen. I’ll just run in.”

Gwen stared at Xavier. He glanced over his shoulder at her. Reed continued to dance in his seat.

Xavier waved an annoyed hand. “Fine, I guess.”

The familiar gravel lot of Myrna’s General Store appeared around the curve.

Reed’s left hand dropped nonchalantly from the steering wheel and slid between his seat and door. He tapped there twice, silently. She shoved the paper into the slot, her heart throwing itself against her rib cage. Everything about the world felt heightened, exaggerated. And every single pair of eyes was focused on her.

The gravel under the Range Rover wheels crunched loud as gunshots. Reed killed the engine and pocketed the keys so he could lock Xavier and her inside. As he slid out of the seat, he smoothly shoved the paper scrap into his jeans’ pocket.

“Won’t be a moment.” He nodded to Xavier, then limped up to the store to keep up the charade that he had to pee.

Through the store’s dusty front window she watched the guy behind the counter direct Reed to someplace out of sight. Xavier would think it was the bathroom. Gwen prayed it was a phone.

Xavier hooked a long piece of his blond hair behind his ear and turned in the seat, the leather of his jacket creaking. “Is Muscle as dumb as he looks?”

Oh, the effort to keep a straight face. “Haven’t we already covered this? I wouldn’t know.” Then, because she couldn’t resist, “I’ll bet he’s not nearly as dumb as you think.”

His eyes narrowed. “What did he say to make you try to take off last night? Don’t say ‘nothing.’ I saw you two talking in the garden.”

She held his stare. To look away would be telling. She’d learned that much from Reed. “I was upset about Nora’s choices. I took it out on him. He pissed me off. So I ran.”

“Uh-huh.” His suspicion hung between them as translucent and hazardous as toxic smoke.

He watched her for a moment. When his face wasn’t marred by a scowl, she imagined that the softness in his gunmetal eyes and his pale, European-style beauty might have assuaged some of the women he’d been forced to lie with. Maybe they’d reached for him. Maybe he’d been gentle with them.

“Will you miss Earth?” she asked, trying to get his mind away from Reed and her. “The parts of it you’ve seen, I mean. The beautiful parts. No one knows what Tedra looks like anyway. No one but Nora, and that was a hundred and fifty years ago when there was a war on.”

He arched his neck to gaze up through the moonroof, at the harsh bursts of sunlight stabbing their way through the shifting tree branches. “I wish I could answer that. I don’t know what’s beautiful in this world and what’s not,” he said.

With a hard pang, she realized she didn’t hate him.

She wanted to. Stars, she tried to. He was too astute and he was ruining everything. He was making things worse for himself and his people, and he wouldn’t listen to any reasons why. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to blame him, given all that he’d been through—was still going through. Her people hadn’t just bred Tedrans in the Circle; they’d bred sorrow and bitterness, and Xavier was one of their finest accomplishments.

Gwen’s presence fed his fire. When he walked into Genesai’s with her and discovered she’d been lying, it would just be another load of wood and a generous squirt of lighter fluid on the flames.

The store door creaked open. Reed bounded down the steps. Such a short time inside. A good or bad sign?

Reed climbed behind the wheel, the car lurching under his weight. “Thanks, man,” he said to Xavier, ignoring her.

Give me a sign. What just happened in there? What did you do?

He started the car and threw it into reverse. With a thick arm stretched behind the passenger seat headrest, he backed out of the lot and onto the road. And completely avoided her eyes.

She stared at the space between the seat and the door where she’d stuffed Griffin’s number. No finger taps. No new note.

She stared into the rearview mirror, positioning herself so the rectangular glass perfectly framed Reed’s blue eyes. They shifted left and right as he drove, but never up. Never up to meet hers.

Look at me!
Tell me.

Why wasn’t he giving her a sign? What was he waiting for? She’d told him everything there was to know about Genesai. He could deduce what was about to happen once Xavier and she went inside. Before she went in there, she needed to know where she stood.

Oh, God.

Reed’s nonreaction
was
the sign. The worst one possible.

He hadn’t reached Griffin. Or maybe he had, and Griffin hadn’t believed him. Or Griffin had run to her father. Any way you read it, she’d lost.

She sank deep into her seat and closed her eyes. Only when she sensed the car stop did she open them, and even that much was a chore. They parked near the iron grill at the top of the cliff above the cabin. Reed jumped out and opened her door. It took a few seconds for her legs to find their gear. When she finally got out, Reed didn’t look at her, but then she didn’t expect him to. His silence said enough.

She would have to watch Xavier now. If Nora got wind of anything going down with the Plant, she’d contact Xavier first.

Xavier took her by the elbow and turned to Reed.

“I know the drill,” Reed said, shoving his hands into his pockets and squinting into the trees.

Xavier’s heavy gaze shifted between her and Reed, then his fingers tightened and he steered her down the steep path. Her feet dragged. She stumbled more than once.

Xavier pounded on Genesai’s door without any sort of greeting. There was no time for Gwen to gather herself, no time to prepare.

The door flew open. A trapezoid of daylight tumbled into the shack and Genesai jumped away from it, a forearm shading his eyes. He was naked from the waist up again, his flour white skin covered in goose bumps. He didn’t seem to notice he was shivering.

“Gwen!” he cried. “You came back! Will you take me to her now?”

It didn’t matter which language was spoken, her name would always sound the same. She wore her defeat like handcuffs and leg irons: debilitating and obvious.

“I knew it!” Xavier roared. His fingers bit hard into her arm as he spun her around and shoved her inside.

Just before the door slammed shut, she glimpsed Reed up on the rise. He leaned against the Range Rover, pretending not to look at her. By the clench of his fists, though, he was. She’d never wished herself back in that San Francisco alley before, but just then she really needed the Reed that had appeared to her that dawn. She wanted him to charge down the hill and get her out of this.

He didn’t.

THIRTY-ONE

Inside the cabin, Gwen coughed on clouds of dust. Xavier
rounded on her.

“You lied to me, Gwen. You lied to Nora.” Behind his fury lay the shadow of a deep, cutting hurt.

Denying it was pointless. The willpower to fight was starting to deflate, especially after Reed’s nonverbal cues. If Griffin wasn’t coming, if her father found out where she was, if Nora was readying her arsenal of photographic weapons…what was the point?

“You know what? You caught me.”

“Why?” Xavier prowled closer. “Why lie when so many lives are dependent on you?”

“Gwen?” Genesai squeaked behind her. She could hear his breath quickening, sense his fear rising.

“I’m all right,” she told Genesai as calmly as possible. Then, to Xavier, “I told you and Nora that there are other ways to end this. Other ways that don’t end in death, or more slavery. I was buying myself time. Trying to figure out a way to help
everyone
.”

“There
is
no time!”

“Gwennnnnn…” Genesai began to stamp his feet and pull at his hair. Mistrustful eyes bulged at Xavier.

She planted herself between the two men and took Genesai’s shoulders. “Genesai. Genesai, look at me, not at him. Everything is all right. Please stay calm.”

He vibrated in her grip. “He is hurting you.”

“What the hell is wrong with him?” Xavier demanded.

“You are,” she snapped over her shoulder. “You’ve upset him. He gets worked up and passes out sometimes. If that happens, who knows when he’ll wake up. Then we’re all screwed.”

She gently took Genesai’s face in her hands. “He isn’t hurting me. We’re just arguing.”

A deep, shuddering breath rattled his bones. “What does that mean?”

“It means nothing. We’re just sorting some things out.”

Genesai pointed a finger as white and knobby as bone. “Who is he? Why is he here?”

Xavier shuffled behind her. “What’s he saying? Why is he pointing at me?”

“Enough.” She shoved a hand in Xavier’s face. “If you want what we came here for, keep your mouth shut and stand back unless I ask for you.”