Liquid Lies (37 page)

By her distress, she must have known who this Tracker was and what he meant to Reed. Which told Xavier that her and Reed’s relationship was definitely more than just sex.

“She ordered me to do it,” Xavier went on. “Told me to shoot him. Take him back to the mountains. Bury his body.”

Gwen’s hands flew to her mouth as she sucked down breath after breath. “But you didn’t do it?”

This thing called human interaction would never come easy to him. Pretending and posturing, honesty and trust…they were mysteries. He’d only followed Nora because her goal, to him, was the right of the world. He thought himself a hero. In Gwen’s eyes, he was something else entirely, and he was forced to admit that it wounded him.

“Do you know why your people think you’re dead?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Because Nora made me feed
Mendacia
to a homeless guy and then kill him. I couldn’t just cloak him in my glamour because the second someone touched the body, it would dissolve. But if he drank
Mendacia
, the illusion would live until they cremated the body they thought was yours.” He clenched his fists. “I stabbed him and it was the most horrible feeling in the world.”

She stared back at him, wide-eyed. “I don’t understand. What happened to Reed?”

He shook his head, hair falling over his shoulders. “I saw so much death in the Plant. All of it slow and agonizing. Though I hated killing that homeless man, when Nora told me to take care of Reed, I thought I could do it again, for her. But I couldn’t. I ordered one of the Primary guards to do it—Frank, the guy with the messed-up ear and half a hand.”

Gwen glanced down the hill toward the dimly lit hut housing a different Primary guard. “But Nora thinks he’s dead?”

Xavier tried to nod with confidence, but he was starting to shake with the fear of discovery. “I told her that, yes. You don’t think he’ll come back for you, do you? Because if he does, we’re both good as dead.”

“No.” Another surge of unshed tears. “He won’t. He’ll disappear.”

She hugged herself tightly. The cold he didn’t feel made her teeth chatter. “Thank you,” she murmured, though he wasn’t sure she was aware she’d said it.

It made him a bit indignant. He hadn’t done it for her; he’d done it because his own fears wouldn’t let him take another life.

She started up the stairs again.

“Wait.” He couldn’t believe what he was about to say. The words just sort of lodged in his throat. “If you help us get out of here, if you help my people and my…kids…I want to ask Nora if it would be all right if you came with us.”

She turned as pale as a Plant Tedran. When she didn’t say anything, he kept going.

“I know you didn’t know about the slaves. I didn’t want to believe you at first, but I believe it now. And I understand that you want to make things right. I see it in the way you handle Genesai, the way you’re thinking about my people and your own. We forced you into this situation and you’re helping us. I think you deserve a place on the ship. I don’t think you deserve what will happen after we’re gone.”

Her face went from bloodless to tomato red in less than a second. Advancing fast on him, she jabbed a finger into his chest. “You want me to leave them? You want me to betray my people, then abandon them to public fear and government investigation while I sail off into the sunset?”

He threw up his hands in defense, utterly speechless, but she plowed on.

“I know you think you’re offering me something good, some sort of twisted ‘thank you’ for a job well done, but I’m not a fucking coward. You think I’d give the government the match to ignite the bomb then fly away to avoid the blast? No, Xavier. I’m not going with you. I want every single Ofarian to know what I was forced to do here. I want them to know my shame over how we’ve used the Tedrans. I want them to know I tried to make it better for both races. I’m sure as hell not turning my back on them.”

As she stomped up the steps, all Xavier could think was that he could not wait to get off Earth.

THIRTY-FOUR

Xavier locked her in the bedroom she was so very sick of. When
she closed her eyes, the small, clean space retained Reed’s image like pencil marks that clung to a piece of paper even after the drawing had been erased.

He’d told her once, during the night after their joint shower, as he’d folded her against his body, that he always traveled lightly for a job. So lightly that he rarely brought anything but the clothes on his back. It added to the anonymity, he claimed, and helped to maintain the separation between the Retriever and his true self. She wondered what had been left behind next door. Some socks, maybe. A pair of jeans.

The thought buckled her body and she collapsed onto the bed. In the rush and worry of that morning, she hadn’t straightened the sheets. For once in her life she didn’t care. She cursed the tears that came as she burrowed into the wrinkled sheets and encased herself in the dark of the piled blankets.

Her fingers brushed something hard and cold.

The object in one hand, she stretched for the lamp and clicked it on. She blinked at what rested in her palm.

Reed’s watch. Not the strange Tedran device, but the Cartier Chronograph.
His
watch.

Night came and she clenched it all through the dark. Not even sleep allowed her to let go of him. The next morning, the watch band and time set knob had gouged into her skin. When the marks faded, she squeezed the watch again to make new dents.

Xavier dosed her with
nelicoda
and marched her downstairs. They didn’t look at each other, didn’t acknowledge in the slightest way their conversation from last night. He confused the hell out of her. One second he was Nora’s pawn, the angry former Tedran slave. The next he was trying to help her, in his own twisted way. Still, his actions would result in her end and that of the Ofarians.

That’s why she’d taken the
nelicoda
that morning without argument. Because when it dulled her and hollowed her out, at least she wouldn’t be connected to the powers that made her Ofarian. At least she wouldn’t feel completely like a traitor.

All day she translated for Adine and Genesai. By the appearance of their bleary eyes and the scads of nonsensical drawings, they’d stayed up the better part of the night trying to communicate. Gwen sat on the floor next to the coffee table in the living room, mindlessly interpreting Genesai’s explanations about his ship, and describing Adine’s blueprints for some truly remarkable inventions.

Across the room, near the fireplace, Xavier and Nora huddled, whispering. Though his attention was fixed on his leader, every now and then he’d glance her way.

Through it all, Gwen kept one hand in her sweater pocket, where she’d secreted Reed’s watch.

She was laden with reminders that day; before following Xavier downstairs, she’d stuffed the photographs of the Plant he’d given her into her bra. They itched, but she wanted to be reminded of whom, in the end, she was helping.

Through the glass wall she watched the sun creep down, millimeter by millimeter. Every now and then, Genesai would stare out at the lake, too, and they’d share a knowing look. She’d nod in reassurance, and then go back to watching the sun, how it changed minute by minute on the water. When it fell behind the mountains, backlighting the peaks in stunning color and staining the sky in hot pink and orange, she sighed. Another day gone. Another day closer to the end.

The glass wall exploded.

A terrible, metallic sound roared through the house. Cold wind rushed inside. Pointed glass shards rained down, stabbing into the carpet.

Adine was screaming, scrambling over the back of the couch, pulling Genesai with her. Nora wailed behind Xavier’s back as he pressed her into a corner, his eyes wide with fear and bewilderment.

Gwen calmly rose to her feet. Smiling. Jubilant. She sensed them before she saw them.

Ofarians.

There. Movement by the terrace stairs. An arm extended around the staircase opening, a gun clutched in a meaty hand. The man attached to it swept into view. Another appeared, then another. Five black-clad soldiers swarmed across the terrace, crouching low, gun arms extended. Two knocked out the remainder of the glass. The other three hurdled through the ragged hole. Glass crunched under their boots as they fanned out through the living room, shouting to see everyone’s hands.

Tedranish whispered in the air as Xavier and Nora tried to form two different enchantments—one for invisibility, one for a confusing distraction—but nothing happened.

“They’ve neutralized us,” Xavier shouted. He lunged for an Ofarian, throwing a punch that had little skill but a long reach and lots of passion. The Ofarian staggered, but another soldier came up, threw his arms around Xavier from behind, and subdued him.

Nora slyly lowered her arms, one hand going for her watch. A soldier swung around, aiming his gun at her chest. “Don’t move.”

Gwen knew that voice. David.

“Gwennie,” David said over his shoulder. “You okay?”

Hands pressed to her lips, Gwen nodded exuberantly. They were here. Her people. Which meant that Reed had somehow succeeded. He’d reached Griffin.

It also meant that her father knew where she was and who had taken her. And if he knew, so did the Board. The Plant…the Tedrans…

One issue at a time. Get out of there. Find out what Griffin knew.

“Get their wrist devices,” she told David, who promptly gave the order to strip the three Tedrans of their gadgets.

Faintly, in the distance, started a gentle and repetitive
whump whump whump
. The sound crescendoed, drawing closer. Helicopter.

A rubber-melting squeal whipped her attention to the large semicircular window above the front door. It framed the driveway as it slanted up to the road. Two black vans screeched down the drive, busting through the gate, and swerved to a stop. House alarms came to ear-splitting life.

The front door burst inward. More Ofarian soldiers poured inside like black water after a dam break. They flowed around the main floor and up the stairs. One even broke the lock to Adine’s basement and descended into it.

The
whump whump whump
grew louder and louder.

Gwen whirled in every direction, searching for Reed in every soldier. If he’d gotten a hold of Griffin, maybe that meant he’d come back for her. If he wasn’t here, she told herself, it didn’t mean he was dead. No. He could just be gone. In hiding to protect himself from Tracker. Or from her.

It was counterproductive to jump to conclusions at this stage. She mentally slapped herself and turned toward the sound of Xavier’s Tedranish cursing. David knocked Xavier to his knees, and the Tedran hit hard. Instantly Xavier’s shoulders slumped, his chin dropping to his chest. David slapped a black adhesive patch over Xavier’s mouth and clamped handcuffs outfitted with a glowing green neutralizer around his wrists.

Though appalled by David’s treatment, Gwen said nothing for fear of tipping her hand. It might be better to let her people continue to believe that the established roles of staunch enemies were still alive. She couldn’t explain it; it was just a feeling, and one she intended to follow until she found out what the hell was going on.

Adine and Nora looked so small and fragile in their restraints. Adine kept her eyes on the carpet. Nora looked her captors right in the face.

When Xavier lifted his eyes and found Gwen, the resignation in his posture cut deep. David roughly hauled Xavier to his feet. She went to Xavier, plastered a false sneer on her face, and spit out in Tedranish, so the Ofarians wouldn’t understand, “You think this is the end, but it isn’t. I’ll stop
Mendacia
. I’ll free your people. I promise you.”

She pivoted away before she could see his reaction.

“Gwen!”

That dear, dear voice, back from her past. Griffin stalked across the foyer. Dark hair combed back, black uniform crisp, weapons holstered, he headed right for her. She vaulted up the two steps into the foyer. They met in a crushing embrace, the various doodads attached to his vest digging into her chest.

“You’re alive,” he whispered into her hair. Even under the screeching alarm, she heard him.

“You came.”
Because of Reed
. She pulled back, hands on his shoulders. “Where’s—”

“Don’t.” Jaw clamped shut, Griffin’s lips barely moved. His eyes flickered from side to side, like he was ten and sneaking a beer. “Not here.”

The
WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP
devoured the house now, fighting with the blare of the alarm. Outside the air churned, whipping the trees around the house in their own little tornado. Through the busted front door, she watched a great black helicopter land on the main road, its blades slicing the air and throwing the surrounding foliage into a fury.

Griffin circled one arm in the air, keeping the other firmly around her shoulders. “Move out!” Even standing right next to him, Gwen could barely hear the order over the cacophony.

Underneath the din of the copter and the house alarm cut the first high whine of distant Primary police sirens.

A sea of black ebbed back through the front door. Uniformed men and women streamed out from the corners of the house, heading for the vans. One carried a laptop computer up from the basement. David and others pushed the three Tedrans toward the waiting vehicles. One Ofarian dragged a writhing, howling Genesai.

“No! Wait!” Gwen peeled free from Griffin’s embrace and went for Genesai.

She pried him from the Ofarian’s clutches, but she recognized the first signs of him about to pass out.

“Genesai.” She took his face in her hands. “It’s going to be all right. These people are with me.”
These people. Who are Ofarians.

His eyes rolled back. “They took Nora. They took Adine!”

“Gwen,” came Griffin’s warning. The sirens were drawing closer.

“My ship…my ship…” Genesai wailed. His bound hands grabbed at the air toward the shattered window.

“Look at me, Genesai. I will bring you to her. You will fly with her again. I promise.”