Liquid Lies (47 page)

None of the
Mendacia
clients could raise a stink about the dissolution of the Company. The contracts still bound them to keep quiet, and no one wanted to admit to using the product either.

It truly was over, and one end opened up into another beginning.

“Where are you keeping them?” she asked Griffin.

“At the old Plant. Seemed appropriate.” His hand slid over hers. “Do you want to see him?”

“No.” That came out much stronger than she’d intended. “Not yet.”

There were about a Dickens novel’s worth of issues for her to page through before she could face her father in person.

“Whatever you want, Gwen,” Griffin said. “He’ll be there whenever you’re ready.”

She traced a jagged black line in the marble countertop with a finger. “Any lead on Delia?”

His pause twisted in her stomach. “Still looking. The Board seems to have lost her trail a few years ago. But it doesn’t mean she’s not out there. There’s no proof of death.”

She nodded, but more because it was expected, not because she believed they’d find her sister.

Griffin spun his phone on the counter, using the hand that wasn’t in a sling. “There’s generations of info to sift through. Thousands of things the Board was hiding from us.”

“Get Casey, Dad’s secretary, to head up the task force to go through all the files. She practically owns that office anyway.” As Griffin nodded, she remembered something else. “And have her keep an eye out for anything labeled ‘Others.’”

He raised an eyebrow. “‘Others? That’s all we have to go on?”

She told him what she’d glimpsed in the boardroom the morning after Yoshi’s attack—the weird map, the strange labels and color codes, paired with the Board’s argument.

“Yeah, okay.” He laughed humorlessly. “I’ll add that to the list.”

“You took Adine’s computer, right?” Reed chimed in.

Griffin nodded. “About a thousand levels of security in that thing, but we’re working on it.”

“Let me know if I can help,” Reed said. “I have contacts.”

The men shared a look that translated as an awkward sort of truce. It was a start.

Griffin said, “All right. Thanks.”

Griffin’s phone went off again. She’d gotten used to the persistent sound over the past few days. Right now he was acting as her go-between, but that couldn’t go on forever. Her people wanted to hear from her, and she needed to lead. At least until they could establish a new ruling party.

As Griffin spun away from the kitchen and disappeared into the bedroom, phone plastered to his ear, she meandered over to the bar. She dug out a bottle of the good stuff, poured herself a glass of Napa Cabernet, and ventured out onto the terrace. Coit Tower rose above the roofs only a few blocks away, warm exterior lights lifting the round, ivory structure high into the sky. Surrounded by the white noise of traffic, she leaned on the terrace wall and breathed in the salty air. She’d grown up here, but everything felt different. She no longer belonged.

Glass clinked on stone as Reed set down the wine bottle. He poured his own glass and stared into the ruby red. “Tell me what you want to do.”

She inhaled through her nose, lifted her face to the breeze. “I don’t want to stay here. In San Francisco.”

He nodded, staring up at the tower. “You don’t think you should?”

“I need to stick around for a bit to see some things through, but I can’t live here.” She shook her head. “My old life…it isn’t mine anymore. Maybe someday I’ll find my way back.”

“But your people.”

She closed her eyes, smelling the water to the east. “I was thinking that what could possibly be a better way to convince them to get out into the Primary world than to see me doing it myself? I can still be involved with the Ofarians from anywhere in the world. The magic of the Internet, and all that.”

“Griffin needs you.” It killed Reed to say that, she knew, and she loved him for it.

Stars, she did. She loved him.

They’d both managed to ignore her little outburst on the dock a few nights back. When her mouth had opened before her mind could catch up, Reed had looked like she’d run over him in that giant semi he’d looked so sexy driving. It was okay; she didn’t blame him. She was in no hurry. For once in her life, no hurry whatsoever.

Silence draped itself over their shoulders, but it wasn’t awkward. Nothing about the two of them felt forced or uncomfortable.

“Griffin does need me,” she acquiesced. “And we work well together.”

Reed swirled and sipped his wine. “Remember what I told you back at the lake house? That I wanted to show you where I lived?”

“Of course I remember.”

He scrubbed a hand over his head, and the fact he was nervous made her belly flutter in the best possible way. “If I asked you to come home with me now, would you?”

“What about Tracker?”

They’d talked about him a bit as they got tangled in the ridiculously soft hotel sheets. Reed was worried but not scared. Nora had never contacted Tracker.

“I can always move us to Alaska. Change my name again.”

“Again?”

“Well, I could still be Reed Scott to you.”

“Damn.” She snapped her fingers. “Was hoping to get two for the price of one.”

He smiled brightly. She would never, ever get tired of the dimple. “So what do you say?”

Scrunching up her face, she pretended to consider. “Depends on where this mysterious home is.”

Another sip. “It’s east.”

She pressed her hip into the wall. “East of what?”

“East of here.”

They laughed together. He really wasn’t going to tell her, the impossible, mysterious man.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” he said in earnest.

“Yeah? What about?”

“How we met. Where we are now.” He leaned closer. Though they’d spent the better part of three days naked or kissing, his proximity still made her dizzy. “Can you think of a crazier situation in which two people have tried to start a relationship? Think about the shit we’ve been through. Our atmosphere could hardly be called normal.”

“What are you saying exactly?”

He leaned both elbows on the wall, kicked his long legs out. “I know we can survive anything, but I think we should test it out.”

“Test
what
out?”

“Normalcy. Us, inside normalcy.”

She laughed. “So you want to take me back to Virginia? Meet the parents?”

“No, not that. Not yet, at least. I want to take you back to my home, not theirs.”

“So how do you want to work this test of yours?”

The dimple flashed. “My mom once told me there are two ways to test a relationship, to see the other person’s true colors. One was to wallpaper a room together.”

She snorted. “And the other?”

“Road trip.”

They left two days later
.

Reed rented a generic blue two-door for the drive he cryptically described as “long.” She’d sent him into her old apartment to get clothes and things while she’d stayed out in the hall and shouted directions. He didn’t mind at all. Even took along a few of her gigantic art books out of his own interest.

Griffin was under orders to put the place on the market. When she came back for meetings and rituals and such, she’d stay at a hotel.

The rental car idled in the street, Reed leaning casually against the driver’s side door. Gwen and Griffin stood facing each other in his open front door, warm September San Francisco sunshine on their faces.

He reached up, grabbed the door frame with one hand. “You know, I think I’m a little scared.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard you say that since the day we graduated high school.”

He chuckled. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” she said seriously.

“I wish you were staying. At least for a little longer.”

She glanced at Reed, who was trying not to watch them but wasn’t doing a very good job. He’d firmly left the Retriever—and apparently all his cover abilities—behind. “I can’t.”

Griffin mistook her meaning and glared at Reed. “If he’s making you…”

She placed a calming hand in the center of Griffin’s chest. “He’s not. Not at all. We don’t feel the way we do about each other because we were thrown into the lion pit and clawed our way out. But we’d like the chance to prove it to ourselves. I think we deserve that. That’s why we’re leaving.”

“That’s it. Throw the Ofarian world into upheaval and take off. Nice one, Carroway.”

She laughed lightly. “That’s right, I’m a coward.” Then, soberly, “So. Conference call tomorrow with the new finance group? I’ll make sure I’m somewhere with good cell reception.”

He nodded. “Your suggestion makes sense: dividing the Company assets among all innocent Ofarians. The audit committee will approve it, I’m sure.”

“I hope so.”

He laughed. “After your incredible address yesterday, they’ll do whatever you want.”

That’s not what she’d hoped for at all. She hadn’t deposed one ruler to take over herself. The Ofarians needed to start from a clean slate.

That was why, in yesterday’s video address securely sent to all Ofarians, she appointed Griffin as her interim spokesperson until they could establish a new government outside the Company. She agreed to sit on the restructuring task force—and embraced being able to help the people she loved—but they needed someone other than another Carroway at the head of the table.

It had taken her an entire day to write that speech. Much of it she’d already told her father and everyone else after the caravan attack. Griffin had said the response was overwhelmingly positive.

There, in the open doorway, Gwen looked at her dearest friend. “However we restructure, however we go forward, it will be on a better road than the one we traveled before. Besides”—she cupped his smooth cheek in her hand—“they’ll have a strong leader.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I would never say this to anyone else but you, but why would they want a failure to lead them?”

She drew back. “Failure?”

“I had a responsibility to keep you safe, Gwen. My
only
responsibility. And then I let a Primary go with knowledge of us.” He coughed. “I couldn’t even keep the girl.”

“You know what I think? I think sometimes the most reluctant of leaders turns out to be the most fair and able.”

“You don’t know if they’ll vote me in.”

She smiled. “Yes, I do.”

“Thank you. For your faith.”

They embraced for a long time, rocking, then she backed out into the sun.

“I want you to come back in January,” he said, “and lead the Ice Rites.”

She let out a little gasp. “You don’t know if the people will choose me for such an honor.”

His turn to smile. “Yes, I do.”

She started to back down the walkway toward the street. “You know where to find me.”

He raised a dark eyebrow. “I do?
You
don’t even know where he’s taking you.”

She waggled the shiny new cell phone Reed had bought her when he’d gone out for the car. Only three people had its number. “I meant that I’m never far.”

He put a hand to his heart. “No. You aren’t.”

She had to turn then, to walk away.

“So.” She plopped into the passenger seat of the sedan as Reed stuffed himself behind the wheel. “Where we headed?”

Reed’s grin was borderline evil.

FORTY-FOUR

Six weeks of sitting on the edge of her seat. Of asking, every
time they crossed a state line or entered a city’s limits, whether or not this was the place, if
this
was where he called home. Every time he’d throw her an impish smile, which meant no.

Then, depending on where they were, they’d check into a hotel, shower, fuck until they were hungry, grab something to eat, hit some crazy-hilarious regional museum, or hang out in a local bar to chat with the townies.

She saw parts of the United States she’d never even heard of before. One afternoon, just outside Jackson, Wyoming, she found herself looking up at an airplane with distaste. Why would anyone choose to travel with a view of only the seat in front of you? Why couldn’t everyone have Reed as a traveling companion?

He cracked inappropriate jokes when she demanded he pull over and let her pee. Somewhere in Idaho he coaxed her out of her fear of horses, and she was hooked. She made him ride every day for the three they were in town. Across the barren stretches of South Dakota, he turned off the radio to listen as she told him all about her life. He didn’t pressure her when she really, truly didn’t want to eat venison at a roadside diner on the Wisconsin-Minnesota border. She even learned the Lakota language.

She spent long stretches of empty highway e-mailing back every Ofarian who contacted her directly, most of whom she’d never met but was honored to know.

It was the best six weeks of her life.

One evening, as they pulled into a boutique hotel in Minneapolis, her phone rang. The screen showed a San Francisco area code. The third person who knew her number.

“Gwen?”

She wondered if he’d call. “Xavier. Hi.”

“I…” Even over the fuzzy cell phone line, she detected the shaking in his voice. “Gwen, I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything.” She looked at her lap as Reed glanced over questioningly. “Just take it. It’s yours, the way I see it.”

“
All
your money?”

“I don’t want it. I don’t need it. Most of all, I don’t deserve it.”

“But it’s so much!”

“And now it’s yours.” A few seconds passed in silence. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

Xavier exhaled. She pictured him running his hands through his tangled hair. “Adine’s helping me get settled. There’s so much to know…so much to think about…”

“I’m glad Adine’s with you.”

“She said she’ll stick around for a bit. She’s got plans of her own, though. I don’t know what they are.”

In the background she heard waves crashing against land.

“Thank you, Gwen. A thousand times, thank you.”

“If you ever need anything…”

The line went dead.

She shut the phone and cradled it in her lap.

“Xavier?” Reed asked softly.

“I gave him my money.”