Liquid Lies Page 3

  “You don’t love me. I know.”

  She stepped back, trying not to make it seem like she was pushing him away. “Of course I love you.”

  The wry grin he gave her restored some of their long-standing camaraderie. “But not in that way.”

  Primary and Secondary women lusted after this man. She’d seen it happen plenty of times. She shouldn’t have him. He deserved a woman who looked at him with heat that rivaled a summer afternoon.

  She picked her next words carefully. “It’ll change for me. I have no doubt in my mind. Look at all the great Ofarian marriages. Look at all the terrific kids and families. And look how our work is setting up such incredible futures for all of them. We’ll get there. I know it.”

  Maybe if she kept repeating that, she’d believe it.

  He raised his thick black eyebrows and took her face in his hands. For a second she thought he’d kiss her, and she tensed. But he didn’t.

  “We will,” he said, and backed toward the limo. “Call you later?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The limo pulled away, heading for the Chairman’s manor in Pacific Heights. She turned for her door…and realized she’d left her purse, with her cell phone and apartment keys, back at the office. She reached for the signal switch to call back the limo, but she’d pulled it off on the Embarcadero. In the chilly predawn it was way too early to knock on her neighbor Martha’s first-floor window and ask for her spare. The idea was to avoid attention and suspicion.

  Company HQ was only three blocks up and two blocks over, uphill. Even though Yoshi was in custody, Griffin and Dad and probably the whole Board would likely have a heart attack if they knew she was out on the streets alone. She weighed her options. Sit out in the open on the front steps for another few hours, or be at HQ in ten minutes.

  Settled. She’d call Griffin from her office.

  So she walked, high heels gouging into her feet and the suit she’d been wearing for going on twenty-four hours feeling itchy and dirty.

  Later, after grabbing said purse from her bottom desk drawer, she called Griffin, who apparently had fallen asleep just inside his apartment door.

  “Be there in ten,” he slurred, sparing her a lecture.

  “Mind if I go around the corner to grab a coffee? Don’t think I’ll be sleeping now anyway.”

  A big pause. “Okay. But stay in the restaurant until I get there.”

  HQ was in the middle of the block, the all-night diner just south around the corner. She started for the restaurant, mouth stretched wide in a yawn and the sky beginning to pale low over the Berkeley hills.

  Then she wasn’t on the sidewalk anymore.

  Hands ripped her off her path and threw her against a wall. Her skull rattled. Her vision winked out. A great blossom of pain exploded on her crown and tore its way down her spine, detonating a bomb of fear.

  When she came to, Yoshi’s bared and crooked teeth filled her terrified sight. He held her immobile, forearm like iron across her chest.

  THREE

  Who the hell had Griffin’s forces nabbed? Some poor, unsus-pecting Japanese man on a sunrise walk?

  “If you touch your magic”—flecks of Yoshi’s spittle splashed her cheek—“the whole world will know what I know.”

  Of all the threats he could throw at her, it was the only one that could make her listen.

  He shoved a cell phone in her face, the screen reading the name of a recognizable Japanese news service. “I have other contacts. CNN. Our government. Yours. I recorded what you did. What he did.”

  No. No. The Ofarians themselves didn’t even have recorded evidence of their powers. It was the most important Ofarian rule, the one drilled into children’s heads the moment they understood speech. Leave no shadow. In situations like at Vaillancourt Fountain, Ofarian moles working inside the authorities and in Primary security firms would have already erased any camera footage that proved Ofarians were ever within fifty yards of that place.

  The Company’s client contract and confidentiality agreement was so huge it could prop open the door to a safe. But since Yoshi’s attempted theft had already forfeited the majority of Mikatani’s empire, he was a walking dead man. He had nothing to lose, and it showed.

  “What do you want?” She clawed for every last bit of strength. Any weakness on her part would only make Yoshi stronger.

  “I want in.” His Japanese slurred with desperation. “You’ll hide me from Mikatani and give me half of the assets you take from him.” He jiggled the phone. “And I’ll keep the secret of your little magic shop.”

  The second most important rule in the Ofarian world? No Primaries allowed inside. Ever.

  It was violation of that rule that gave Griffin such a haunted look sometimes.

  “No way,” she ground out.

  Yoshi bounced her head against the wall. Stars pecked at her peripheral vision. Breath struggled inside her crushed chest.

  Not fifteen feet away, the hulking shape of a drunk man shuffled by on the sidewalk. Chin tucked to chest, he ambled with stuttered steps. Of course, when Griffin was not by her side and she could not touch water, the world would send her a huge guy lost in an alcoholic haze. Still, he was her only hope. She opened her mouth.

  “You cry out,” Yoshi snapped, “and I press send.”

  His thumb twitched over the green button. The screen showed a tiny movie icon labeled “fountain.”

  The only defense she had left was to stall. When Griffin didn’t find her at the diner, he’d go looking. The sun would touch the city soon, its rays slicing through the shadows night left behind. People would begin filling the streets. Yoshi wouldn’t be able to hide them then. All she had to do was buy some time.

  “You don’t realize what you’re asking,” she whispered. “You don’t know what you’re messing with.”

  He laughed. That forced laughter of crazy people. “I know exactly what I’m…”

  Someone grabbed Yoshi’s shoulders from behind and threw him to the side. Threw him. But he still had a decent hold on Gwen and she flew off balance, too. She struck the ground hard, elbow smarting.

  Parting the messy curtain of her hair, she peered up to see a giant of a man holding Yoshi in a death grip. The stranger’s back was to her, but she recognized its shape—the wide shoulders, thick arms, and muscular legs—as the “drunk” who’d stumbled by moments earlier.

  She sent out virtual feelers, testing the stranger’s signature, looking for magic. Wondering if he was one of Griffin’s. Nothing. This man was a Primary.

  He was a tornado wrapped in human skin and he shook Yoshi hard enough she felt it in her own teeth.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you guys were saying”—no trace of alcohol in his deep voice, just thunder rolling over gravel—“but I know when a woman’s being threatened.”

  She didn’t translate, but then, she didn’t have to. Yoshi, flailing uselessly, eyes wide, clearly got the message.

  The stranger glanced over his shoulder at her, still sprawled on the ground. “You okay?” When she didn’t answer right away—could only stare at his hard profile and ponder how she was supposed to get out of this cleanly—he barked, “You speak English?”

  She rubbed her throat where Yoshi’s arm had tried to carve a trench, and hobbled to her feet. “Yes. I do.”

  The stranger wrangled Yoshi around, and now she and the big man looked directly at each other. “You okay, then?”

  He was something to look at. The muscles in his arms bunched tight beneath his gray T-shirt. His head was shaved and round, and veins protruded from his thick neck. He wore faded jeans with frayed hems and scuffed workman’s boots, and he held Yoshi between his powerful, widespread legs so that Yoshi’s loafers barely grazed the asphalt.

  The way the stranger stared at her, hard and unflinching, made her fear she’d been thrown from one threat into the arms of another.

  “I guess,” she said.

  Yoshi started babbling in Japanese. “Just let me go
. Give me the chance you gave me before. I’ll leave. You’ll never see me, never hear from me again.” Yet his eyes drifted tellingly to his cell phone, lying half-hidden under a cardboard box.

  “Sorry, Yoshi. That was a one-time offer.”

  Protocol dictated he should die. Right then and there. But she had no Griffin and she had no weapon. Even if she had one, she couldn’t outright kill someone in front of a Primary. She didn’t think she could kill anyone, period. If she called in the security team, how would it look to the stranger when a van full of black-clad soldiers pulled up and stole Yoshi away? Would they take the stranger, too, even though he knew nothing?

  Damn Primary. Saving her and screwing everything else up.

  She snatched up the phone, turned it on, and dialed. It rang only once, then voicemail picked up. She used her most formal Japanese. “Mikatani. Yoshi’s been very, very bad. You’ll find that over half your assets are now in the hands of the Company, per our contract. And there will be no Mendacia coming your way. Yoshi thought someone else deserved it more than you. His body is in San Francisco. Come get it.”

  Popping out his phone’s memory card, she dropped it on the ground, stabbed it three times with her stiletto heel, then slid the shards into her purse. When she looked up, the stranger cocked an eyebrow at her.

  Yoshi squirmed, unintelligible Japanese streaming from his lips. The stranger held him seemingly without any effort. When he removed one hand, a moment of panic stabbed into her. Was he going for his phone?

  She thrust out her hands. “Don’t call the cops!”

  He froze, just his eyes flicking up to hers. His were blue, blue like ocean water, and they widened with speculation and…was that amusement?

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

  He flexed the fingers of his free hand, cracking them, then resumed his grip on Yoshi. Sunlight struck the tops of the two-story buildings rising on either side. He looked up into the brightening light and then out at the street. His feet shifted, the only sign of anxiousness she’d witnessed in him thus far.

  But he didn’t ask what this was all about. It didn’t even look like he cared.

  Neither one of them wanted the cops involved. She didn’t care about his reasons, only that they were on the same page. They watched each other. Assessing. She fought the urge to defend herself, to tell him that she was normally perfectly capable of holding her own.

  “So what now?” he asked.

  Griffin had acted when she hadn’t wanted him to, but this man waited for her to call the shots.

  When she didn’t answer, the stranger added, “If I let him go, will he follow you?”

  “Don’t let him go. And yes. He probably will.”

  Deep creases dug into his forehead. “So…leg or arm?”

  Said so matter-of-factly. Like he did this every day. She shivered.

  She paused, but couldn’t really understand why. She’d already ordered Griffin to kill Yoshi’s bodyguard. But that had been Griffin and it had been Company business. This man was a Primary, and he’d been nudged into the Ofarian world.

  She walked around Yoshi so she could meet his wild, pleading eyes. “Leg,” she said in Japanese.

  Yoshi thrashed like his henchman had in the fountain. She turned to the stranger. This close to him, she could sense the tension in his body, see up close the way his muscles moved beneath his skin. It was like standing next to a campfire. Inviting and intoxicating at first, but ultimately dangerous if you stood too close for too long. She stepped back.

  “Leg,” she told him in English.

  The stranger bent low to Yoshi and growled, “You talk and I’ll find you.”

  That she did translate.

  He lifted an arm and drove his elbow down into Yoshi’s cheek. Yoshi collapsed to his knees, the caps making a horrible, hollow sound on the pavement. He screamed, high and vibrating, and it echoed out on the street.

  They wouldn’t be alone much longer.

  The stranger’s head snapped up. He met Gwen’s eyes and gripped Yoshi’s ankle. He didn’t ask her to leave, as Griffin had. This time, she would own her decision and watch it being carried out. The big workman’s boot came down hard. There was a sickening crunch and another scream.

  She started to breathe heavier and her palms hurt where they tightly clasped her purse strap.

  Heavy footsteps came at her. A large hand grabbed her elbow and pulled her out onto the sidewalk. The stranger steered her downhill and she didn’t look back. Yoshi’s groans faded but didn’t disappear.

  All around them the city was awakening. Over it all drifted the wail of a police siren, coming closer. If Griffin was anywhere near the diner by now, he would hear that, maybe even come running, but she had no way to contact him while the stranger guided her away.

  She wanted to run, and the big man must have sensed it because his clamp on her arm tightened. He held her back, kept her in check, wordlessly slowed her pace. He was right, of course. Running would only draw attention.

  He ducked into an alcove behind a corner convenience store already inhabited by trash cans and a hissing orange cat. He pulled her next to him, flattening her against the wall, one giant arm across the front of her shoulders. Her heart pounded so loudly she didn’t hear the screech of new sirens until the flashing lights sped past, heading uphill.

  With a foreign sense of helplessness, she realized she was more than a little out of her element. If she were alone or with other Ofarians—as she usually was—she’d be an innocuous puddle by now. And yet…this guy seemed to know what he was doing in evading the cops.

  When she chanced a look up at his face, he was already watching her. He raised a deliberate eyebrow then returned his focus back to the sidewalk. How long did they wait there? One minute? One hour? At last he tugged her back out onto the sidewalk and they continued walking downhill, but at a much slower pace.

  They stopped outside her apartment building.

  The whole time she thought she’d been following him, when really it was the other way around. Wasn’t that the classic mark of a con man, to let the victim think they were the one in control? This guy was a master. But a master at what?

  Three blocks away, the squawk of an ambulance answered the blurt of a police car siren. Gwen desperately needed to call Griffin and tell him she was okay and that Yoshi had been picked up by Primary medical. Or maybe he was already on scene, pretending to be a bystander, and noticing that she wasn’t there.

  The street she lived on had four lanes, and now that the sun had fully risen, a smattering of people moved along the sidewalks. Cars pulled out of parking spaces and drove off. A line of vehicles began to form at the streetlight at the bottom of the hill, another line of customers in the Starbucks at the opposite corner.

  “Just relax.” The stranger’s voice was still incredibly deep, but the grit and tumble of the aggressive storm had passed. “People notice panic. Breathe deep, in and out now.”

  He turned her to face him. The sound of his voice, pouring over her like honey, drew her eyes to his face. He leaned closer. “Come on now,” he coaxed through a whisper. “Deep breath.”

  She started to comply, then…“Cop.”

  The white car stopped at the bottom of the block, idling at the corner. The policeman inside swung his head in their direction. Gwen flinched but her companion was faster. He reached out and pulled her body into his. She stiffened, resisted.

  “If you dive for the door,” he said near her ear, “they’ll notice. Put your arms around me. I’m just a guy walking a girl home after a date that lasted all night. Nothing strange about that.”

  Except everything. Nothing about the last five hours had been remotely ordinary.

  How did he do it? How did he put such force and focus into his words yet make his body act so natural?

  His command pulled a string somewhere inside her. She slid her arms around his waist, finding him warm and taut through his T-shirt. Her ear pressed against h
is hard chest, and when he asked, “What will your neighbors think if they see you out here with me?” the soothing rumble of his voice made her sigh. She caught it too late.

  “Nothing.” She barely knew any of them except Martha, and even she was still just a casual acquaintance.

  Not too long ago Griffin had embraced her in this very spot. And here she was again, in the arms of a complete stranger—a Primary.

  Why wasn’t this more awkward than it should be?

  “What about the guy?” His voice swam around her, inside her. He was everywhere.

  “The guy?”

  “With the broken leg. Will he talk? Should I worry about you?”

  “Me? What about you? You’re the one who broke his leg.”

  Was that a chuckle? Gwen couldn’t tell; he masked it by shifting, drawing her closer. “I can take care of myself.” Then: “The cruiser’s moving.”

  She couldn’t see over the not-quite-a-stranger-anymore’s wide shoulder, but she heard the whir of the cruiser’s engine, the slow friction of its wheels on the asphalt.

  He expelled a hard breath. “It’s gone.” He didn’t release her. And she didn’t push away. Somewhere inside those tense few seconds their embrace transitioned from alibi to personal. No space existed between their bodies. Their chests and hips and knees pressed together like two people who actually knew each other. He was firm and enveloping and smelled like delicious danger.

  “I need to go.” She didn’t move.

  “Tell me.” His head dipped lower. “Is it too early in the relationship for you to ask me up for coffee?”

  She shoved against him, nearly jumping away. Safely outside of his aura, she looked him up and down. The tension his body had owned in the alley had dissipated. He now stood relaxed, sitting slightly into one hip, big arms dangling easily at his sides. But it was his eyes, those sea-depth eyes, that spoke of his attraction. Or did it merely reflect hers?

  She wasn’t shocked that he’d asked, but because, for a split second, she actually considered it. Instantly, horrifically, she understood what had just clobbered her over the head: the Allure.