Liquid Lies (6 page)

She’d thought the same thing, only there was another angle to consider. “Maybe. But you wouldn’t have caught the real Yoshi otherwise. You followed the ambulance to the hospital and took care of him there, right?”

His nostrils flared and he did that chin rub again. He’d had to kill two Primaries in less than twelve hours.

“Besides,” she added, “Dad was with you when you took off. If they hold you accountable, they have to point the finger at him, too. And we both know that’s not going to happen.”

That seemed to let him breathe easier.

“Walking to HQ alone was a stupid, stupid idea that I’m embarrassed to say I ever had, and I’m sorry.”

He reached out, hesitated for a moment, then dragged a soft hand around her skull and down the back of her clean hair, the action tender but not uncomfortable.

After stumbling into her place at daybreak, she’d finally gotten ahold of Griffin on his cell phone, and told him the ambulance he’d likely just seen near the diner held the real Yoshi. She’d assured him she was safe at home, and he’d raced to the hospital. Then she’d taken a shower, spending a long time under the hot spray scrubbing off Yoshi’s attack…and trying to rid herself of the Allure. She’d had more success with the former than the latter.

“Thank you for saying that,” Griffin said. “Look, I know you want me to apologize for acting without orders back at Vaillancourt Fountain, but you’d be dead or taken if I hadn’t have done something.”

She opened her mouth to refute that, but realized it was pointless. They were both wrong. They were both right. They could run in verbal circles all day. But the Board was waiting for her report.

“Can we go in now?” she asked.

Wordless, he released his hold on the door. He tagged so closely behind he practically clipped the four-inch heels of her knee-high boots. She supposed she’d have to get used to it; the Board wouldn’t let her sneeze without Griffin handing her a tissue from now on.

One security guard nodded at Griffin, their boss, as she and Griffin skirted around the semicircular front desk. The other guard squinted at a bank of monitors. Both wore heavy cloaks of
Mendacia
, disguising them as portly and inattentive when in reality they were two of Griffin’s best. Threats were more likely to be careless if they thought security was lax.

Gwen walked quickly past the rows of false elevator fronts and went right for the fountain against the back wall. Twelve feet high, water gushed from the ceiling and burbled over a mass of smooth, giant, and artfully stacked rocks. She placed her palm against a cool, round stone at shoulder height. The water came alive at her touch, sliding over her hand to cover her wrist, glove-like. She called to it in silent Ofarian, and it answered, testing her identity.

“How’d you break Yoshi’s leg? Water’s not that strong,” Griffin asked behind her.

For a moment she lost her concentration, then she regained it.

The wall behind the fountain shivered and melted, its two halves drawing apart in a liquid curtain that dissolved to mist. A mixture of
Mendacia
and water magic, and the ultimate barrier between Primaries and Secondaries.

Gwen pulled her hand from the stone, spoke the Ofarian words to absorb the water from her wrist and hand, and turned to face Griffin.

His face was impassive. “I’m not going to like it, am I?”

“Probably not,” she acknowledged, and turned to enter the main floor of Company operations.

Around a hundred Ofarians worked here at HQ, but that wasn’t indicative of all who were involved in
Mendacia
or with the Company in a peripheral manner. Almost two thousand Ofarians in existence and each and every one had something to do with the product, whether it was related to business or security or even washing the floors at night. Like the Primary world, their jobs depended on their level of education, their drive, and their connections.

If you worked at HQ, you were part of the ruling class. If you worked in the Primary world—whether in technology or government or law enforcement, with the purpose of identifying then hiding any leaks of Ofarian movement—you were considered cunning and extremely intelligent. If you worked at the Plant, well, you were considered very special.

Gwen and Griffin wove through the maze of sky blue cubicles, buried in the dense murmur of office activity and the gentle susurrus of the waterglass windows. The boardroom was at the far end of HQ. She prayed she wasn’t late.

“The Chairman?” he asked.

“Hey, Casey,” Gwen called to her dad’s secretary, who waved back, her shoulder holding a phone in place at her ear. “No,” she said to Griffin, flicking a warning glance in his direction. “He won’t like it either. None of them will.”

She was glad she couldn’t see his reaction.

The Board was all assembled. Their hazy shapes appeared through the waterglass walls dividing the boardroom from the general Company employees. A thin veneer of enchanted water streamed slowly from floor to ceiling, enclosed between two layers of glass, and it completely shut out the voices inside. Gwen should know; she’d spent many hours trying to eavesdrop—trying to rechannel the magic to allow her to hear—during her internship years. She’d been known to attempt it again as a vice president.

The waterglass in the building’s main windows looked like gold-tinted, reflective glass from the outside, but it prevented any Primaries from seeing in. It canceled out heat-seeking devices. It stopped projectiles. It made them anonymous. Safe.

If the entire Board was already gathered, she didn’t want to keep them waiting. She knocked twice and let herself in, Griffin trailing.

She walked into chaos.

An argument raged across the table. The Board had divided itself along its usual lines: five members siding with Dad, four with Jonah Yarbrough, the Vice Chairman and Director of Production. The two men had never gotten along personally and clashed repeatedly when it came to Ofarian matters, but that was one of the reasons they’d been chosen to lead together. Checks and balances. It wasn’t perfect, but it also meant the leadership wasn’t a monarchy. Dad was the face, the spiritual and cultural leader. Jonah ran everything else.

Gwen caught only tidbits of the loud disagreement.

“…responsibility as leaders…”

“…have to stay out of there…”

“…if we won’t, someone else will…”

In the middle of the screaming, Jonah, standing at one end of the long steel and glass table, saw her and turned. Beneath his carefully moussed hair, his calculating eyes met hers and narrowed. He pressed a button on his laptop. The image projected onto the large wall screen vanished.

But not before she saw it.

A map of the world. Brightly colored dots speckled every continent. Places in which she’d already opened business, like Abu Dhabi and Shanghai. Places she’d targeted next, like Saint Petersburg and Montreal. And places she hadn’t tapped yet as possible markets, like Santiago and Copenhagen. Even in her brief glance of the map, she could discern no rhyme or reason to the colors over certain areas. They didn’t match her research.

“Gwen.” Her father came around the table. The Board fell suddenly and eerily silent. Ian Carroway was still dressed in
Mendacia
, and she wondered if it was left over from last night or if he’d done another hit this morning before coming to the office.

The hug he gave her was both tight and terse, meant to tell her that as her father he was glad she was okay, but as her Chairman, he had many, many questions.

Quickly she laced her fingers into the flat prayer position simulating water and spoke the traditional Ofarian-language greeting of elders. Beside her, Griffin did the same.

Straightening, she nudged her chin toward the now-blank screen. “Were those my territories?”

Several Board members exchanged inscrutable looks. Jonah’s face was equally devoid of clues.

“Ah, no.” Dad waved a hand and gave her a warm smile. “You’ll be briefed on all that later.”

That was most likely true, but it would be the watered-down version. The one with only a few more details than Casey the secretary would get. If they would just let her pull up a chair here on a permanent basis, she was confident her fresh voice would help calm the argumentative waters, so to speak. These men and women were like lifer Congressmen, set in their ways and deaf to new ideas.

Jonah wouldn’t look at her. He shut his computer and shuffled papers, then sat and crossed one leg over the opposite knee. She battled with Jonah almost as much as her father, but Jonah had been the very first Board member to back her proposition of expanding internationally. Jonah was her boss and he’d taught her a lot, even if they weren’t each other’s favorite person. Was he going behind her back now?

“Sir?” Griffin asked the Chairman. “Do you need me to stay?”

Dad frowned. “Absolutely. We need your side, too.” He sat, rolled his chair back under the table, and folded his hands on the top. “Now what exactly happened?”

She and Griffin related their versions of the Vaillancourt Fountain disaster. Gwen then recounted every moment since the limo drove away—including the Primary. She told them every detail except that the Primary had seen her safely home. That their pretend hug had gone on longer than it should have. That he had kindled the Allure.

Beside her, Griffin stood as still as the rock fountain by the elevators. If he suspected anything, his posture gave no hint.

Through it all, she could feel Jonah’s sharp gaze raking her with scrutiny.

When she was done, the boardroom erupted again, divided along predictable lines. As expected, the concern came down to Griffin’s ability to protect Gwen. Never mind that her father had also been in the limo that had driven away. Never mind that her stupidity had led to Yoshi’s attack.

Someone even mentioned dissolving their match and aligning her in marriage to someone better suited to watching over the Company’s most valuable asset.

She reached out and took Griffin’s hand, squeezing his fingers. To defend him would save his ass, but it would also endorse their betrothal. A decade of friendship won out. Even though the arranged marriage made her stomach sour, she certainly didn’t want to be paired with someone she didn’t know and might never respect the way she did Griffin.

She lifted her voice above everyone else’s. “My protector did all he could.” Her father raised a hand and the Board hushed. “Do not blame him for everything. He’s not a scapegoat.”

Griffin squeezed back. She slipped her hand out of his grip.

“I agree,” said her father. “Griffin will remain in service to Gwen and us. The betrothal will go on as expected. Formal matching ceremony in two weeks. Elaine?” He raised an eyebrow at the Director of Travel and Client Events. “Your department will plan.”

Elaine Montag tittered as she scribbled something on a pad. The hefty older woman was a shark in a grandmother suit. She put on incredible events created to woo the world’s elite into signing gargantuan confidentiality agreements just for the privilege of talking to the Chairman about
Mendacia
. Gwen could only imagine what she’d put together for the betrothal announcement of the Chairman’s daughter and the only known Translator. The thought made her weak-kneed, but not with happiness.

“Yoshi’s memory card,” her father prompted. “Do you still have it?”

“Yes.” She dug the shards from the bowels of her purse. The Board breathed a collective sigh of relief.

As she dumped the little chunks onto the conference table, she stole a glance over Elaine’s large, soft shoulder. A neatly typed agenda sat in front of her. “Others” was the first item. She and Griffin second.

Others
. Other what? Ofarians? Impossible. They were concentrated in California. A few more scattered here and there to cover Company long-distance issues, but outside that, the Company kept tight tabs on its people. Even those it exiled.

“Break for fifteen,” Dad announced, and the Board milled around. He came over and clapped Griffin on the shoulder. “Take Gwennie home. Let her rest.”

“No.” She shook her head sharply. “I’m going to head up to my office. I have a lot of work to do.”

Griffin gaped at her like she’d announced she wanted to evaporate the oceans. “Are you kidding? After last night? After this morning?”

“
Especially
after last night and this morning,” she replied. And her father gave her such a grin of pride that she couldn’t help feeling exhilarated.

“Fine then,” Dad said. To Griffin, “If she’s staying, come see me in my office. I need you to do something for me tonight.” To her, “
Don’t
leave here without a member of his security team.”

She agreed, of course.

Though she was bone tired, hiding in her apartment and playing weak wouldn’t get her on the Board any faster. It wouldn’t improve the Company or bolster the quality of the lives of her people. She was Ofarian and born into ruling lines. She’d serve the Company in any way they wanted, then she’d lead it into the greatest age her people had seen since their arrival.

Everything depended on the health and success of
Mendacia
, and she’d do her damnedest to lift it to the top.

SIX

Gwen had been sitting alone in Manny’s Pub so long her second
Stoli on the rocks had turned to water with a splash of vodka. This place was a hole in the wall, a narrow bar sandwiched between a shoe repair and a wig shop. It hadn’t been updated in at least twenty years, or cleaned in two. She liked it because it was unpretentious and far enough away from Company HQ that her people never came here. Perfect for when she needed to destress anonymously.

After seven the downtown worker crowd cleared out and you could hear a pin drop out on the street. It was nearing ten.

She wasn’t truly alone. David, the third in her and Griffin’s triangle of dear friends and part of her own private security team, watched Manny’s from the burrito joint across the way. Far enough away so she didn’t feel baby-sat, but close enough to keep her safe. She couldn’t tell him what had gone on in the boardroom that morning. Anything that took place behind waterglass was confidential. That was Griffin’s job as his boss, and she had no idea how David had been briefed.