A Perfect Lie Read online

“Going home.”

  “How about I take you for a late dinner?” he suggests.

  “Why?”

  He laughs. “Why? Because we’re both hungry.”

  “I didn’t say I was hungry.”

  “But you are. I know you are. That’s what makes me a damn good attorney. I see the unspoken.”

  It’s a lighthearted, innocent remark, unless it isn’t. “That wins you no points with me,” I say, my half guard now fully erected. “I don’t want a stranger to see what isn’t spoken.”

  He arches a brow. “Are we still strangers?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And if I want to remedy that?”

  “You’ll fail,” I assure him, and I mean the words, but then, I meant it when I said that woman fell off the cliff, when she was pushed, too. I changed my mind later, and I don’t give myself a chance for that to happen now. I walk around Logan and head for the door, stopping by the bar to talk to Michelle.

  “Please tell me you’re coming back,” she says, setting down the wet towel she’s holding.

  “I will,” I say, “and about payment.”

  “Yes, of course. Let’s talk pay.”

  “How about a brownie for the road?”

  “No,” she says. “That’s not enough, but,” she concedes, “for now, because it’s late, I’ll give you the two I have left and some cookies.” She hurries away, fills a bag, and returns. “Thank you so much for tonight, Hailey.”

  “It was my absolute pleasure,” I assure her.

  She touches my arm. “I am so thankful to you for doing this.” She swallows hard. “Gosh,” she whispers. “I might choke up.” She holds up a hand and seems to gather her wits. “I put my entire life savings into this place. It’s very special to me.”

  Her entire life savings, while I have millions in a trust. If only we could trade places. I shove aside the thought. “What made you pick this place to invest?”

  “I used to go to a place like this in Chicago when I was in school. It was a sanctuary for me during a rough time in my life. I could think of nothing better to do with my time but offer that kind of sanctuary to others. My parents are school teachers, they didn’t have money to help so believe it or not, I won the lottery, not the big one, but a small one, fifty thousand before taxes, and here I am.”

  The lottery. I’ve never played the lottery. I’ve never even considered the idea that a random gamble had a place in life. It has always just been this pre-set agenda that myself, and every political youth around me, followed: Go to law school. Support the bigger political cause. Make money. Gain power.

  “This is a special place to me,” she adds. “And I can’t believe I actually made it happen.”

  “You have an amazing story. How long have you been open?”

  “Three years ago, and it’s not making me much more than school teacher pay, but it’s my dream, you know? I’m living my dream.” Someone shouts her name.

  “Go,” I say. “Take care of business and your dream. I’ll stop by tomorrow.”

  “Thanks again,” she says, hurrying away.

  Dream, I think, unmoving. She’s living her dream and struggling as she does, but she owns her future and her success. A hollow place inside me seems to open up, threatening to swallow me. A hollow place where my hopes and dreams, once blossomed and died. Unbidden, my breath is lodged in my throat and I turn, expecting to find Logan somewhere nearby, but apparently, he’s taken the hint and gone away. I hate that I am disappointed, and I hate the story his absence tells. He gave up and that was easy. Maybe it was some surveillance test and I passed. I wasn’t easily seduced. I didn’t spill the story of my life. It hits me that had I gone for Logan’s come-ons, had I slept with him, the only three men in my bed in my adult life would have been hired by my father. My hand settles on my belly where a rolling sensation sickens me.

  Needing air and just to breathe past the head games my father plays with me, I rush toward the stairs and walk toward the door. Who is the next person that will be used against me? Because there has to be someone on guard and ready to “deal” with me when needed.

  I exit to the street and hear, “Hailey.” I freeze at the sound of Logan’s voice that tells me he didn’t give up. He must get paid by the day.

  Slowly I turn to find him leaning on the wall, all long, leanly muscled man. I wonder if my father skimmed a catalog to choose him, and chose based on what? Good looks? His job? His willingness to sleep with me to get ahead?

  “What are you doing?” I ask, a bite to my voice that has come from the expectations I’ve created in my head.

  “Waiting on you,” he says, his tone unaffected by mine. “It’s too late to walk home alone.” He straightens. “I’ll walk you.”

  “This neighborhood is safe.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  It’s him that I’m not sure about and I decide to just nip this in the bud. “I’m not in a place to do to this, whatever this is. I’m not. That won’t change.”

  His eyes darken and narrow, but his expression is indiscernible. “I’m just walking you home. That’s all.”

  That’s all.

  But it’s not.

  It never is in my world.

  Megan bursts from the door, stops dead in her tracks, looks at us—no, me—long and hard, and then just leaves. “And there was that,” Logan comments dryly.

  I look at him. “What was that?”

  “She’s an odd bird,” he says. “She watches people and seems to judge them before moving on. Not someone I’d ever want on a jury.”

  She was watching me, judging me, and I am suddenly concerned that she knows who I am. I turn to try to catch her, talk to her even, but she is gone.

  “Problem?” Logan asks.

  I rotate to face him again, staring up into his handsome face with a realization. The press is looking for me, not us. Having a hot man by my side, that everyone looks at instead of me, is an asset. I need to put my politician daughter’s hat back on and be smart. I need to use him the way he was going to use me. “I need to go home.”

  “I’m walking you home,” he says, and it’s not a question.

  It’s what I expect. It’s what I setup with that announcement because he might work for my father, but I’m my father’s daughter. I know how to manipulate, no matter how dirty it feels. I start to walk down the quiet, quaint sidewalk observing the now silent and dark stores, galleries and restaurants that trail into the surrounding tree-lined residential areas. Logan, as expected and like most arrogant, powerful men, assumes an invitation and he falls into step with me. “Where do you live?”

  “Clayton Street,” I say, “just six blocks away.”

  “I’m on Josephine, a few streets over,” he replies, offering what I wasn’t going to ask for, before he catches me off guard by adding, “I watched you in there tonight.”

  I glance over at him. “I saw you, remember?”

  “You saw me all of sixty seconds,” he replies. “I watched you a lot longer than that.”

  Was he watching me? Had I been so oblivious that I didn’t know? I don’t like this idea and it hits me that once again, my father’s words apply. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I need to keep Logan close, but my way.

  “I tend to get lost in my work,” I comment.

  “I saw that,” he says. “Can I buy your work? Do you sell in a particular gallery?”

  Sell my work. I remember a time when I wanted to sell my work. Now, it’s in a storage facility my father doesn’t even know I own. “No,” I say. “It is not. And I don’t sell it.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  I’m suddenly not sure he works for my father, who would not push me to make a career of my art. Never. No way. I stop and look at him. “Because I don’t.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  He’s testing me, making sure that I’m in line with my father’s campaign goals and it�
�s frustrating. No. After hearing Michelle’s story of dreams and goals, it’s infuriating. “Life is full of maybes.”

  He catches my arm and turns me to him, his hand hot on the bare skin of my arm. “I hit a nerve.”

  “I have no nerves to hit.”

  “Liar,” he says softly.

  Liar.

  Now he’s not just hit a nerve, he’s hit the nerve. And I didn’t lie anyway. Not this time. He did hit a nerve. I’m a member of an inescapable political cult and he can’t begin to understand what that means. He can’t know. I look at my arm and back at him, “Let me go, Logan,” I order, my voice just as soft as his had been when he’d called me a liar.

  “What if I don’t want to let go?”

  I want to tell him to just go away, but then there will be someone else, some other spy that will follow. He’s insulation to protect me from someone worse. He’s necessary. He’s the devil I already know. But I can’t know this devil right now, this night, when I crave something real that he cannot be for me. He has hit a nerve, and I am dangerously vulnerable, when I have not been vulnerable since I recovered from my mother’s death.

  “Try another time,” I suggest, leaving an open door for him in hopes that this makes him back off for now. “This time isn’t working for you,” I add.

  His expression darkens, all hard lines and rough edges, and I sense that he wants to say something else, but smartly thinks otherwise, allowing his hand to slide away from my arm. I don’t waste my freedom, of which I have so little. I turn and start walking, but he is quickly by my side, keeping pace, clearly not dissuaded from walking me home. Wordlessly, we turn onto my street, leaving the retail area behind, with only a half a block left to travel. Once we are at my rental, Logan stays with me all the way to my door. I unlock it and turn to face him. “Thank you for walking me home. Goodnight.”

  He presses his hand on the doorframe above my head. “I will, you know.”

  “You will what?”

  “Try again.”

  With that, he pushes off the wall and walks away. I stare after him with one thought: I want him to try again, and the fact that I can’t stop myself from feeling such things, disturbs me. I don’t want things I can’t have. This place is changing me, creating a shift inside me. I feel it happening. I do want what I cannot have. I want to sell my art. I want to live and breathe my art. I want a man who wants me, not what I represent. I’m emotional, and emotions are dangerous.

  What am I doing?

  My jaw sets hard. This is Logan’s fault. He doesn’t get to do this to me.

  I open the door and enter the rental that is probably bugged with listening devices. That’s the world I live in. I’m watched. I’m monitored. I’m controlled. And everything, is of course, per my father, for the greater good. Logan will try again, because power craves power. I’m power in a way I never wanted to be power.

  Locking up, like that protects me from anything, I head to the kitchen island and quickly power up my MacBook, waiting impatiently for it to ready until finally, I do what I should have already done. I google Logan who is thirty-three, ten years my senior, a Harvard graduate, as expected, and now in a private practice, and the managing partner of that firm. His track record includes an impressive list of wins delivered to an even more impressive powerful list of clients. He is absolutely the perfect candidate for my father’s corruption. I look for links to my father and instead find a link to his father. My eyes go wide. His father is a judge, and judges are always political fodder. My heart starts to thunder in my chest and I quickly click the bio to receive another shock. He’s not only in the opposite party from my father, he’s opposite in views on almost every hot topic.

  If Logan is loyal to his father, he would never work for my father. For a moment I feel hope but then I make myself go further. He could be estranged from his father thus working for my father. Or be spying on my father for his father. That makes no sense though. He appeared the same night that I arrived. He’s shown interest in my art which my father hates.

  I stand up, walk to my art room and spread the sketch I did of Logan out on the floor, studying him, looking for what my mind is telling me about him. There is nothing corrupt in his eyes. Nothing familiar that is, and corruption is what I know. But it doesn’t matter, now does it? Thanks to my father, anyone who will ever come into my life could have an agenda. Anyone could form an agenda.

  This is my life, no matter what name I call myself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  There’s a fine line between love and hate. A statement proven by the very real fact that more than half of all murders are committed by a lover or family member. Torment and passion turn people you don’t believe can kill, into killers; therefore, emotions become the weapon that transforms love to hate. And in hate all things are possible. I have an intimate understanding of just how powerful and dangerous emotions can become.

  My mother and I fought vehemently before she got behind the wheel. Pain and blame ate me alive for the months that followed. Survival mode meant that I shut down emotionally. I became a machine. It was safe. It was a sanctuary inside my own mind. I couldn’t hurt anyone. No one could hurt me.

  Until Denver.

  I woke up from a slumber. The problem is, I didn’t know it had happened until it was too late. No. Until it was a bloody emotional mess.

  ***

  THE PAST…

  The morning after my teaching debut, I decide the best way for me to get some space from my father’s prying eyes is to work harder at his game and focus on my plan. I have to ensure that he looks away. I have to be a contained problem. I do this by ensuring that whoever is watching me, documents my uneventful behavior. Therefore, I go to yoga class. I then return home, shower, eat a protein bar, and dress in jeans and a T-shirt, along with comfy Keds with the intent of being seen doing nothing interesting. A stark contrast to a Sunday in Washington that would include some formal breakfast, a fundraiser most likely to which I’d wear a suit dress, and make small talk with people my father wanted me to impress.

  It’s just after noon when I step out of my rental again to a beautiful sixty-something day and head to the coffee shop where I feel certain I will find Logan. He’ll know that I know this as well. On the way, I discreetly scout for anyone following me, which I use as an excuse to stop in several galleries, and I allow myself to enjoy the art, to study the craft, to critique and admire painting after painting.

  Near two o’clock when I enter the coffee shop, to find the air laced with a smoky coffee scent, while the room bustles with people, laughter, and the hum of voices. I head down the stairs, this time when my gaze scans various televisions, I find sports on every single one. Sports, not news and politics. I love this. It’s another liberating moment. I am not in Washington. Everything is not about that world. In fact, it’s only now, despite being a rather accomplished world traveler, that I realize there is an entirely different world I’ve never seen. One where caffeine, rather than greed, makes the rules. Well, caffeine, and Michelle, who waves at me from behind the bar, offering me a glowing smile, that is so far from the brittle forced smiles of D.C. that it charms me when I didn’t know I could be charmed. I wave back, and yes, I even smile back.

  Ashley, a waitress I’ve met briefly on my first visit here, a pretty blonde in her twenties, also waves. Megan, who is standing next to her does not, but I don’t see the recognition of my real self in her face I’d feared either. She simply doesn’t like me or maybe she dislikes everyone. My skin prickles and I look left to find Logan—dressed in a navy T-shirt and jeans, sitting at a table, his dark eyes fixed on me, his dark hair rumpled as if he’s been running his fingers through it. He still doesn’t have his facts, but then, neither do I.

  I cross to join him, and I’d like to say that all my years in the press on a public stage could prevent his heavy, watchful eyes from unnerving me, but they do not. He’s a man, an impressive one at that, and he’s looking at me in
a way that I don’t remember being looked at in a very long time. Unbidden yet again, and with a jolt, I’m transported back to the night Danielle disappeared, to a moment in a hallway with me against the wall, and Drew standing in front of me, his hand on the wall by my head. Or maybe it wasn’t Drew. Was it Tobey?

  I stop walking, my hand going to my throat. Did I—was I—with Drew? No. No, I know I left with Tobey, but—there was that moment that I was sitting at the table in the bar, and Drew’s leg was against mine, while Tobey was sitting elsewhere.

  “Hailey.” I blink Logan into view to find him standing in front of me, towering over me, and his hand settles on my waist, steadying me. Do I need to be steadied? “You okay?” he asks, which seems to indicate that yes. I need to be steadied.

  “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  “You stopped walking and you’re standing in the middle of the coffee shop.”

  “I did?” I ask, “I mean, I did. Yes. I—had a nightmare that came back to me.”

  “Must have been one hell of a bad one. Come sit.” His hand goes to the small of my back and I let him guide me forward.

  We close the small space between us and the table, and Logan holds a chair out for me. I slip into it and blow out a breath. Another half second and Logan is sitting in front of me, his blue eyes warm with concern. “Talk to me.”

  In that moment, intimacy weaves between us, something fresh and new and undiscovered sparking the air, something real. It’s compelling. He’s compelling, different from everyone else in my life, despite all the ways he first appeared the same. I want to talk to him. No. I want to be the girl he met, the one who chases her dreams and has nothing to fear but a first kiss and the wrong brush on her canvas. But I’m not that girl and that means he might not be that guy.

  “Just a nightmare,” I say, repeating my prior explanation. “It’s sticking with me today.”

  He eyes narrow. “Okay. Do you have nightmares often?”

  “Yes,” I say honestly, admitting to him what I have not to anyone else, even Danielle. I have nightmares. They come in spells and then disappear. Some about the car crash. Some from that woman falling off the cliff to her death.