Liquid Lies Read online

  Reed jumped out first then pulled her out by her ankles, her stomach protesting violently. The moment he set her on her feet, she stumbled away from the van on wobbly legs and vomited into a small bush.

  Thick fingers brushed her neck. She flinched. Reed was holding back her hair. No one had held her hair while she puked since her college days at Cal. It wasn’t any less humiliating now.

  There was no end to the pain, to the grossness her body expelled. All she could think about was how horrified she was with herself. How she’d actually considered sleeping with this man. This kidnapper.

  But that had been his plan all along, hadn’t it? Pretend to hit on her in Manny’s so she’d leave with him and save him the effort of breaking into her place later on. Only she’d foiled him by running out of the bar.

  So where the hell did the scene in the alley fit in?

  She wanted to throw up on Reed instead of the bush, but she was dry. She settled for spitting on his boots. Straightening, she yanked her hair out of his grasp and ignored the sharp pain at the roots. He held up his hands but didn’t step back.

  “You killed Griffin.” The sound of his name made her nose tingle and her lip quiver, and she tried desperately to ignore and cover both. Stupid, silly woman. This man wouldn’t cave to weakness. Only strength would earn his respect, and his ear.

  Reed’s face was a stone mask—a carbon copy of the guy who’d thrown Yoshi halfway across the alley—ghostly and expressionless in the moonlight. “No,” he said, then glanced surreptitiously at the van. “He’s not dead. I just knocked him out.”

  “She talking?”

  The new voice was sharp with anger. The male Tedran she’d seen in Manny’s leaned against the van hood, long, defiant arms crossed over his chest. He was leaner than Reed but no less intimidating. Reed used his sheer size; the Tedran wielded a mighty glare. He pushed away from the vehicle and stalked toward her, his tangled blond hair flapping about his shoulders.

  Reed backed away like an obedient employee and went to stand in the glow of dull red created by the brake lights, not sparing her another glance.

  The Tedran male bent over her, his face so twisted with hatred she stumbled backward under its force. For this man, the war between their two races had never ended. History was not history; it lived in the present. He still detested her people, and even though she was only one Ofarian, she wore a million faces.

  And she was alone.

  Desperate, she searched for an escape. The night hugged its pitch-black cape tight around its cold body. The lights of San Francisco—or any hint of civilization—were nowhere in sight. Her only company was the scant, scrub-like vegetation, the distant wink of headlights on the highway, and Reed, picking at his fingernails as though he waited for a bus.

  The highway was too far away to run for. Not with the slug drug still lingering in her veins. Not with her hands tied. Not with Reed or the lanky Tedran on her tail.

  Gwen looked for the other Tedran, the small woman who’d also been in Manny’s, and found her behind the wheel of the van. She bent far forward, her neck craned to see what was going on outside. When Gwen met her eyes, she looked down.

  “So you’re her,” the male Tedran said in Tedranish. “You understand what I’m saying?”

  He knew. He knew what she was.

  Hesitant, she nodded.

  “Then we’ll speak my language so that Muscle over there doesn’t know what we’re saying. You have as much to lose as we do if we’re found out.”

  She stole a glance at Reed, who’d stopped picking his nails and now seemed fascinated with his boots.

  The Tedran grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. “That Primary is under orders to never leave your side. Don’t even think of transforming to water in front of him. You don’t want him to find out what you are any more than I do.”

  No, but if she touched water and got away, she’d send Griffin after Reed. He’d be more than happy to dispatch the guy who’d attacked him and taken his betrothed.

  The Tedran’s fingers tightened on her face. “I don’t have a gun, Gwen. But I do have this.” He reached for his back pocket and pulled out a syringe. Yellow, iridescent liquid sloshed inside the cylinder. “Nelicoda.”

  She stared, dumbstruck. Nelicoda neutralized Ofarian water powers. The Board kept some under lock and key at HQ. When Gwen’s sister chose to love a Primary over her people, the Board had voted to issue her a massive dose, annihilating her power.

  Gwen couldn’t even begin to guess how the Tedran had gotten his hands on some.

  All the rationalization not to run flew out the door. She whirled, started to sprint, and tripped. The Tedran snatched her bound hands before she fell and yanked her back. With a snap of the wrist, he flung her around and pulled her tight against his body. Legs braced wide, one of his arms clamped her shoulders to his chest. He was much stronger than he looked.

  As he raised the syringe, she tried to kick out, but the angle was bad. She snapped her teeth at his chest, getting a mouthful of leather. Out of the corner of her eye she could still make out Reed leaning against the van bumper, perfectly rigid. Perfectly passive.

  When the Tedran’s body started to quiver all around her, something in his signature shifted. Not what made him Secondary, but what made him a man. A whole new level of fear kicked into her system.

  With a growl, he stabbed the syringe into her neck. She cried out—at the pain of the needle, at the disgusting feel of the icy, slimy liquid sliding into her bloodstream. It worked fast, snaking its way into her brain and the tiniest corners of her body. The water power, her last line of defense, slipped away like the ebbing tide, leaving her empty. Naked. Helpless.

  She was as worthless as any Primary.

  Against the van, Reed bowed his head.

  The Tedran shoved her away. She hadn’t been wrong about what she’d sensed in him. Lascivious eyes raked up and down her body. But his mouth twisted into a snarl and he’d gone red in the face. He was disgusted by her, enraged by whatever perverted desires had skated through his system. She didn’t know if she should be relieved or even more frightened. She went with the latter.

  The Tedran flipped back his hair and jabbed a finger at her. “I’d be lying if I said I’m not enjoying your fear. How does it feel to be the one not in control?”

  The needle prick burned but she couldn’t rub it. She wouldn’t cry. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

  He considered her, his eyes turning distant for a quick moment. “I’m Xavier,” he grunted.

  “What are you doing here? How did you find us?”

  His laugh stung like poison. A fist tightened at his side, but she refused to flinch. If he was going to hit her, let him. She wouldn’t back down.

  A hundred and fifty years of freedom wouldn’t end here.

  “My people will look for me,” she said. “I saw you and that Tedran woman in the bar, when you met him.” She jutted her chin at Reed. “I warned our leaders. They know you’re here, and when they see I’m gone, they’ll know it was you. They’ll come for you.”

  “They will, will they?”

  “I don’t know who you thought we’d be, but we’re not your meek little slaves anymore. We’ve built something here, something powerful.” The strength of Griffin’s conviction, spoken in her own apartment not hours ago, came back to her. “You want another war? Bring it. I guarantee you this time we won’t run. And you won’t win.”

  He smiled without teeth. She hated that smile. His gray eyes glittered like sharpened knives. He stepped closer then stopped abruptly, as if recalling his body’s previous reaction to her. “No one is coming for you.”

  “That’s only one of many times you’re wrong.”

  “Oh, really?” He bent forward at the waist. Hands behind his back, he mimicked her position. “They think you’re dead.”

  TEN

  It had to have been her. Millions of people in the San Francisco area, and Reed had been paid to extract
Gwen Carroway.

  Fighting tears, she kept her chin lifted. Her vicious stare never left Reed’s client. Even when Xavier had grabbed her and stabbed that awful-looking needle in her neck, she resisted.

  Yeah, Reed saw all that, even though he leaned against the van and pretended to look away, bored. After fifteen years in this business, his peripheral vision was almost as good as his direct.

  He’d also noticed the way Xavier had reacted to Gwen’s nearness. You’d have to be a man of iron not to be affected by the way she looked and felt, only Xavier’s reaction set off about a thousand alarm bells. Hatred ran deep in that guy.

  Reed’s worry for her tested the strength of the wall keeping the Retriever on the front lines. He couldn’t let that wall down. Not now. The job was on.

  Reed had no idea what Gwen and Xavier were saying to each other, but he knew the gist of the argument. It was always the same. Every job.

  Why did you take me? What do you want? Please let me go, I’ll do anything.

  Except Gwen’s defiant stance and spitting tone veered markedly off script.

  Suddenly Xavier turned and stalked back to the van. “Get her,” he snapped. “Let’s go.”

  Reed pushed to his feet. At last he looked directly at Gwen. Whatever Xavier had just said slapped some of that defiance off her face. The square set of her shoulders fell, and her lips parted on words unsaid.

  An odd discomfort burrowed under Reed’s skin.

  She didn’t try to run. As he took her elbow, she felt like dough, pliable and shapeless. As he guided her toward the back of the van, he was glad she didn’t say anything, because he had no idea how he could respond.

  “Xavier,” he called out.

  The blond man’s hand slid from the passenger side’s door handle. “What.”

  “She’s gonna puke again if we don’t get something in her stomach. I don’t want to be rolling around in vomit the rest of the ride.”

  Xavier rolled his eyes before hauling open the cab door. From inside he took out plastic-wrapped sandwiches and two bottles of water. He stomped over and shook them in front of Gwen’s face. She just glared.

  Even if her hands weren’t tied behind her back, Reed knew she’d never accept anything from Xavier. Reed held out his hand. “Give ’em here.”

  Xavier slapped the sandwiches and water into his palm, and then climbed into the cab.

  Reed opened the van’s back door with a creak and tossed the food inside. He nodded at the dark interior. “Get in.” When her eyes met his, the transferred weight of all the hatred she’d focused on Xavier almost made his knees buckle.

  “Get in,” he repeated. “Or I’ll put you in.”

  She gave him that little chin lift, then stood on tiptoe to seat her ass on the bumper. She held his gaze as she leaned into one elbow and used it to haul herself in. Awkwardly, determinedly, she shimmied all the way in like a worm.

  The van bounced under his added weight. Gwen looked supremely uncomfortable and he reached for her.

  “Don’t you dare come near me.” Her voice twisted into a nightmare of hopelessness, fear, and determination.

  He exhaled audibly through his nose and sat back, hands raised. “Was just going to try to help you sit up.”

  She blew errant strands of hair from her face. “I can do it myself.” And she did, struggling and flopping until she’d propped herself against the van wall, legs curled to one side. She refused to look at him.

  He flicked on the small flashlight again and pulled shut the van doors. After a pound on the cab wall, the van lurched into motion.

  He settled opposite Gwen and set the flashlight at his feet so it speared the dark between them.

  “If you want,” he said, his voice barely audible over the engine, “I can take the ropes off your wrists. At least until we get there.”

  Her eyes flipped up to his, and if they’d have been guns, he’d be dead. “Trying to tell me you’re not afraid of me?”

  “It hurts to have your arms tied for so long. I thought I’d give you a rest.”

  “How thoughtful of you. I want to go home. Can you do that for me instead?”

  “No, Gwen.”

  The sound of her name made his tongue feel full and his cheeks weird, as though someone else had been moving his mouth. Then he knew. It was Reed again, knocking on the interior wall, reminding the Retriever of what he’d done. Who this woman was to him.

  The drone of the highway passing underneath filled the space between them for a long while, until she asked, her voice hollow, “Do you know where they’re taking me?”

  “No. Not my business to know. It’s my job to see you get there in one piece, without any hitches.”

  “I’m a job,” she whispered.

  A few hours ago you might have been more than that, Reed thought.

  But now that’s gone, the Retriever countered.

  “Were you paid to hurt me?”

  “No. I’m not a killer. Retrieve and deliver. Then I’m out.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant. I’m talking about before. In the bar.”

  Oh. So this thing between them hadn’t been just physical for her, too. She thought they’d paid him to mess with her emotions as well. Why did that sting more than it should?

  She restored the challenge to her voice. “So you ‘deliver’ me. Then what? You’re not supposed to kill me, but what if they do it anyway?”

  “They won’t. It’s in the contract.”

  She laughed. Actually laughed. “But will you wonder what’s become of me after you fly back to Washington, or wherever the hell it is you come from? Will you feel sorry for what you’ve done?”

  Usually he gagged his targets. It helped keep the wall strong and erect. He had a clean handkerchief in his back pocket, but couldn’t bring himself to reach for it.

  “I’m not your first, am I?” She stared at him down her nose, and he got the feeling she was used to going toe to toe with people who were technically more powerful than she was. He admired her for that.

  “No,” he replied, but that wasn’t necessarily true. She was the first in one big way.

  She smiled but there was zero joy behind it. “You’re good.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you got around Griffin.”

  The guy in her apartment, the one she thought he’d killed. The one grinning and holding her in that photo on her bookcase.

  God, her bookcases. Stacked with giant tomes of art, just like she’d told him about in Manny’s, in perfectly aligned configurations. The sight had definitely chipped at his wall. He’d almost walked out right then and there.

  Change the subject. “He your boyfriend?”

  “Something like that.” Her face paled and she looked away. She wasn’t very good at lying.

  He couldn’t resist. “If you have a boyfriend, why were you going to sleep with me?”

  “You know, at this point, I can’t really recall.” But when her eyes trailed back to him, they rested for a moment on his mouth. Then they skittered away again.

  He stretched out one leg and propped an elbow up on the opposite knee. “They don’t know about us. I mean, about what almost happened. They don’t know about the alley and they don’t even know you and I were talking in the bar before they got there.”

  “Why on earth would that matter to them?”

  He didn’t know. But it mattered to him. Maybe, after she thought about it, it would matter to her, too.

  The sandwiches sat at his hip. He unwrapped one—peanut butter—and offered it to her. She narrowed her eyes at him and he thought she’d continue to be stubborn—it wouldn’t be the first hunger strike he’d faced—but then her lips parted and she nodded. He scooted forward, one leg arching over her baby-soft leather boots, and placed the sandwich at her lips. Her first bite was tentative; the subsequent ones were those of a ravenous beast.

  “You’ll take food from me but not Xavier?” he asked. “You trust me
over him?”

  She paused mid-chew. “You aren’t…one of them. And I never said I trusted you.”

  When she was done, he cracked open a water bottle and held it as she drank until she turned her face away.

  A smudge of peanut butter sat on her cheek. “You have some…right there,” he said. Her tongue poked out, swiping around her mouth. “No. Wait. Let me.”

  As he lifted a hand, she darted away, her head snapping back so fast she smacked it against the van wall.

  “You okay?” he asked. When she just stared, he reached out and ran a thumb over the peanut butter smudge. Her eyes dropped to his mouth again as he put his thumb between his lips and sucked the peanut butter off.

  She stopped breathing altogether.

  He sighed, lowering his hand to the outside of her thigh, and leaned in close. Fuck it. There wasn’t anything to lose at this point. She wouldn’t believe him, but at least he could say he tried.

  “I didn’t know it was you they wanted me to take.”

  Her chest sputtered into breathing again. “Bullshit,” she snarled.

  They were so close he could smell the sandwich on her breath. It mingled with the scent of her hair, which he’d practically inhaled back at Manny’s. Nothing about that encounter had been false. “It’s the truth.”

  “You were scouting me when you found me in that alley. You saved me so you could kidnap me later, make sure you got your paycheck.”

  He slowly shook his head. “Nope.”

  She kept going. “And then you followed me to the bar. You expect me to believe that was all coincidence? That you just happened to meet me in the alley and then in the bar? The very same bar the…Xavier walked into?”

  “My flight in landed long before dawn, but I was too wired so I wandered the streets. Never been to San Francisco and wanted to see the sunrise over the city. Instead I found a woman being attacked by a crazy Japanese guy with an agenda I still don’t understand. I did what I thought was right.”

  “You’re a goddamn kidnapper.”

  He didn’t refute that. “Then I got a good look at you. I had this asshole in my hands and I could barely take my eyes off you. Couldn’t stop thinking about you the whole day, wondered who you were, if you were okay. That night I went to the bar where my clients told me to meet them and, bam, there you were. I don’t believe in fate, but I thought you’d be a nice…distraction until I had to do my job.” He licked his dry lips. “I just didn’t know you were the job.”