Sealed with a Lie (23 page)

“There
is
a reason,” Rebecca says. “We don’t think it’s a healthy friendship. And she’s not a good influence on you.”

“So now you get to choose my friends for me?” Abby shouts.

“Lower your voice, Abigail, and don’t take that tone with your mother,” her dad, Stefan, tells her.

Evan sticks his head out. “Guys, Kari’s awake.”

“Wonderful!” exclaims Rebecca. She bustles in. Her wild black curly hair is clipped on top of her head, and she’s wearing a deep amethyst turtleneck with black trousers. She’s curvy enough to seem like your average mom in regular clothes, but in shorts and a tank she looks like an Olympic athlete. The woman is
cut
. She smells of jasmine and Ivory soap as she bends forward to kiss my puffy cheek. “How are you feeling, honey?”

“Truth? Like I’ve been fed through a wood chipper and glued back together.”

“Oh, dear.” Stefan comes to stand by her. He’s been on sabbatical working on a book, so I’m surprised to see him here. He’s grown a beard lately, probably because he sometimes forgets to shave while he’s researching a project. He’s such the absentminded professor, cliché or not.

I’d never put him with Rebecca in a hundred years, but he was once her “asset,” to use a spy term, and maybe the top agent at Interpol wants to be able to just relax and laugh with someone nonthreatening when she’s at home.

Stefan peers down at me through smudged reading glasses. His brown eyes are kindly but abstracted, as if he’s translating a text in another corner of his head—and as a linguistics specialist, he probably is. There’s a cracker crumb caught in his beard.

Rebecca notices the cracker crumb and frowns. I can tell she wants to brush it out but doesn’t want to embarrass him.

So Abby does it for her. She pushes around them, rolls her eyes, flicks the crumb out of her dad’s beard, and says, “Wow, Kari. We were scared that you’d go into a coma. You okay?”

“I’m awesome,” I say, staring at all the splints on my hand. “I’ll be putting on nail polish in no time.”

I look at Rebecca. “We were never so glad to see someone as you. But how did you know to come?”

Her mouth tightens as she looks at her daughter. “Abby called me while I was in the field, said it was an emergency—”

“I told her I was pregnant!” Abby says with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “Go figure—she got on the next flight home.”

Stefan’s lips twitch. “Knocking back Jack the whole way.”

Rebecca smacks him. “Too much information!”

“I beg your pardon, my dear,” Stefan says drily. “Of course you were sipping tea—with quiet maternal joy—and knitting yellow booties with ducks on them.”

“Freaks,” Abby mutters. “My parents are freaks.”

“So what happened on the ship?” I ask again. “After I passed out?”

“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” Rita asks.

“Good news.”

“Okay. All the terrorists are either dead or detained in custody.”

“And the bad news?”

“Most of the KGB2 operatives got away, except for two. But they can’t be interrogated because they’re dead.
Worse, the
jungbrunnen
is missing, as well as the list of Agency passcodes. They must have taken both.”

My mouth twists. I think of the other list, the notorious list of KGB2 people that Mom and Dad have “no” knowledge of. Right. “My parents?”

“Escaped. The Duvernays as well.”

While I’m sort of glad that Gustav and his grandfather got out of Dodge, I really don’t know how to feel about Mom and Dad getting away. They would have been imprisoned and interrogated . . . possibly tortured, depending on what facility in which country they were taken to. Let’s just say that the Geneva Convention doesn’t always apply in these situations, and I have no illusions about that.

I wouldn’t wish torture on anyone, having been through it. And I don’t want my parents to suffer. I may not like it, but I do still love them. They’re my parents and they raised me. To their credit, they did attempt a rescue of Charlie and me. I can’t forget that.

But what damage will they cause to the US and Europe? The Agency? A dull pain throbs inside me that has nothing to do with my injuries. How can I both love and despise these people? I close my eyes.

It makes no sense to me that they are working with KGB2, none at all. Unless there’s something in my mom’s past that I don’t know about, something that would force her into it, and my dad with her?

I turn that over in my mind. This theory has a lot more appeal than them just doing it for money. They’re not like that. And they came to rescue me and Charlie. And
my dad kicked the Russian doc’s ass when he wanted to kill us . . . they’re being blackmailed into working with KGB2. I’m sure of it. And with that certainty comes a measure of relief. I’m still angry and I still have questions, but I feel a little less betrayed.

I talk with everyone some more, trying to absorb energy from Rita’s obnoxious fringed orange sweater, but fatigue steamrollers me and my eyelids keep drooping closed. Like a narcoleptic, I fall asleep in the middle of the conversation.

When I open my eyes, Luke Carson is standing in front of me, juggling a vase of flowers, a bunch of balloons, a box of chocolates,
and
a teddy bear.

Evan drops my hand as if it burned him.

Luke registers that and frowns, tightening his grip on the teddy bear’s leg. It’s dangling upside down.

I blink, because I’m sure I’m hallucinating.

But he’s still there, still smiling a guilty, hopeful, apologetic smile. “Kari?”

“
Luke?
What are you doing here?” I keep waiting to feel something. Excitement or chills or butterflies. But I feel … nothing. Nothing but a vague surprise that he’s in front of me. Maybe I’ve had too much trauma and too many drugs.

Evan stands up, looking as if someone died. He gives a nod to Luke and heads for the door. Everyone else takes this as a cue too. They all troop out.

Luke shifts from one foot to the other, and then back.

He’s so hot . . . he hasn’t changed a bit.

I take in his athletic, Abercrombie & Fitch good looks: the brush-cut blond hair, the chocolate-brown eyes, the tanned face even in winter, from constantly running track outside. Again, I wait to feel that rush I used to feel whenever he looked in my direction.

But I don’t.

All I feel is a muted kind of sadness.

What’s wrong with me?

“Kari,” he says. “How are you?”

“Okay, I guess.” I aim a weak smile at him.

He scans me and then averts his gaze. Wow, I guess I look really bad. But I can’t bring myself to care.

“Look. I just want to apologize—” He breaks off into an awkward silence. Still loaded down with that overkill of silly stuff that I don’t even want, he cracks his neck. He looks supremely uncomfortable.

In one of those weird, instantaneous moments of clarity, I get it. There’s nothing wrong with me. This thing with Luke is just not right. Even though I desperately want it to be.

I shake my head. “No need to apologize.”

“Yeah,” he says heavily. “There is.” He makes no move to put down any of the stuff in his arms. “I shouldn’t have taken Tessa to that formal. I shouldn’t have even thought about it.”

Tessa. Wouldn’t it be easy to blame her? The “other woman”?

“So, how was it?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I want to know the answer. “The dance, I mean.”

A flush spreads up his neck. “Oh. Fine, I guess.”

So he went, even though he knew it would upset me. “What did she wear?”

“Uh, blue.” Luke stares intently at the balloons, as if he’s an archaeologist and they are ancient skulls that will reveal the secrets to some long-lost civilization. He won’t meet my gaze.

“Did you have fun?”

“Kari . . .”

I know, deep down, that they fooled around that night. I just know. And even though I tell myself that he was free, that we were technically broken up, it still hurts.

“It’s fine, Luke. It’s done. We weren’t together, anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles again.

There’s a long, awkward moment. I need to put us both out of this misery.

I open my mouth, then close it again. What am I, stupid? I’ve already broken up with Luke once. No girl in her right mind would break up with him
twice
.

No girl except me.

“Luke,” I finally manage. “This . . . relationship, or whatever it is. It’s not working. We both know it. The distance, the fact that we don’t know each other all that well . . .” I shake my head again. “The Tessa factor . . .”

“There’s no Tessa factor,” he says quickly. “I swear. One-time thing.”

Poor Tessa.

“And the distance—look, Kari, I’m here now. I flew all this way to see you. To make things right. So the distance isn’t a factor.”

But it is. I shake my head slowly. “Luke. You’re visiting
for, what? Two or three days? A week? But then you’ll go back to DC, and I’ll go back to Paris. You’ll speak English and I’ll speak French.”
Perish the thought.
“You’ll be training for the track team and I’ll be . . .”

I’ll be training for an Interpol mission, or tracking down a terrorist, or who knows what.

“Our lives are too different, Luke,” I say.

He stares at me, incredulous. “I just traveled
twelve hours
to see you, and you’re breaking up with me?
Again?
”

No
, I want to tell him.
You’re right. I’m nuts. I’m ungrateful.

But something—is it pride? Common sense? Deep, totally inconvenient inner knowledge?—won’t let me.

I nod.

Luke looks down at his feet. He looks at the wall. He looks out the window. In short, he looks anywhere but at me.

He doesn’t protest anymore. But he does look pissed.

Then his face goes carefully, deliberately neutral. It’s the look of a guy who is too cool to acknowledge hurt.

He tucks the teddy bear next to Charlie, who’s oblivious, still sleeping through all this. He sets the vase down on a table along with the chocolates. And then he approaches the bed and ties the balloons to the foot of it, all without saying a word.

He stares at me for a long moment. Then he sighs. Gives one short nod.

Luke reaches forward and gives my toe, under the blankets, an affectionate squeeze. “Kari, what can I say? You’re an amazing girl. You’re so brave. You know the
truth: that we’re not right for each other. And you’re not afraid to say it, the way most people are.” He swallows. “The way I am.”

Wow. That’s quite an admission. I look at him with new respect.

“Yeah. Well.” Not that I know what the appropriate response is here.

“I need to tell you something before I leave.” He hesitates, clearly struggling with what he wants—or doesn’t want—to say. “As long as we’re saying stuff that’s crappy, and awkward, and . . . and unwelcome? Well, there’s a guy outside in the hallway who
is
right for you. Evan. The guy who paid for a transatlantic flight from DC to Vienna and told me I’d better be on it, or he’d personally fly across the pond, kick my ass, and drag me back with him.”

I gape at Luke. “He did
not
.”

“Oh, yeah, Kari.” Luke smiles wryly at me. “He did.” He walks to the door. “And, by the way, he’s also the one who paid for Rita and Kale’s flights. Want me to send him in?”

My mouth is still hanging open. I finally shut it.
Evan
bought Luke’s ticket? And the others? Why?

Then I nod.

“Okay. Listen, Kari . . .” He sighs. His eyes full of regret, he lifts a hand and waves. “I’ll see you around.”

I muster up a weak grin. “Well, probably not. It’s kind of a long swim.”

“What—why—why is Luke leaving?” Evan asks, clearly at a loss when he comes back in.

“Because we broke up,” I tell him.

His face falls, which is the very last thing I’d expect, given the way he’s been acting around me lately. Kissing me. Holding my hand. Looking as if he was on the way to a funeral when Luke walked in. He raises his hands into the air, then drops them again. “But—”

I stare at him.

Evan Kincaid, International Jerk of Mystery, is visibly flustered. He actually runs a hand through his hair, sending the careful styling into weird tufts.

“You’re messing up your do again,” I point out. “Why?”

He cocks his head to one side and evaluates me. “I . . . uh. Well, it’s just that . . .”

“What, Evan? Spit it out.”

“If you two have broken up, then I don’t bloody well have a Christmas gift for you, then, do I? And this was perfect. You’ve bollocksed it up, right and proper.”

I take a moment to absorb this and then start laughing. Laughing is pain. Lots of pain—ribs, stomach, kidneys, everywhere. But I can’t help it.

“What’s so bloody funny, then, you daft cow?” But he, too, breaks into a grin.

“C-cow?” I gasp.

He raises an eyebrow. “It’s a term of endearment. A British thing. You wouldn’t understand, Yank.”

I catch my breath. “Evan, why would you want to, um, use a ‘term of endearment’ with me? Just curious.”