A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(66)

"Hey, babe," he said as he kissed her cheek. "How was your trip? Get some good pictures?"

They walked over to the couch to sit down, and Parker put her feet up in Milo's lap.

"It was good. The weather was beautiful," she told him as he untied her shoes and removed them for her.

She'd learned one of the main tricks of leading a double life was to stick to the truth as much as possible. It had been nice in Puerto Rico. And according to the Weather Channel, it had also been nice in Mexico, where Milo thought she'd been.

Milo told her to relax as he got up from the couch to take a frozen pizza out of the oven. She opened the drawer of the table next to the couch to pull out the remote to the TV. As she picked it up, she noticed a blue matchbook with the name "Occidental El Embajador" etched on it in silver. She had been in the same drawer just four days ago and it had been empty, save for the remote. She pulled the matches out and turned them over in her hand, the cover flipping open with the movement. A date and time was scrawled in Milo's handwriting on the inside. It was for two days ago.

Milo walked back into the room and stopped when he saw what was in her hand.

"Hey, where did these come from?" Parker asked curiously.

Milo smiled and hurried over to take them out of her hand and push them into the pocket of his pants.

"Oh, just from some club we went to a few years ago."

Milo had smoothly changed the subject back to Parker's trip and her photography, the matchbook quickly forgotten.



Until now.



Parker had been young and new to the CIA at the time. She had no reason to question her boyfriend, of one year, about whether or not he'd been lying.

The sight of a blue matchbook with "Occidental El Embajador" peeking out under a pile of papers on Fernandez's desk was too much of a coincidence to her.

Garrett listened as Parker retold the story of the day she came home from her first mission and watched her frantically type away on the keyboard..

"He told me it was a club he'd been to, and the way he said it made me just assume it was someplace the two of you had been," Parker said as she waited for the website hits to pull up.

"I've never heard of it before. It's definitely not a place I ever went with him."

The only hit was a hotel an hour outside of Punta Cana, where they were currently located. She clicked on it.

"Maybe that place has a club inside it," Garrett suggested as he looked over her shoulder, grasping at straws. He didn't want his best friend to be guilty of something. That wasn't the point of the trip. They were there to find out why he died, not to accuse him of something else entirely.

Parker didn't see a listing for a club anywhere on the website and a quick call to the hotel confirmed that. It also confirmed that the hotel was roughly three miles from the palace.

"Okay, so he lied about it being a club, not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things," Garrett said, an inkling of doubt worming its way into his mind as much as he tried to avoid it.

"It doesn't explain why he had a book of matches from a place right down the road from the palace though. And according to his military records, he was never sent to the Dominican before his final assignment."

Garrett shrugged. "It's probably just a coincidence."

Parker was getting frustrated with Garrett’s nonchalance about the entire thing. She narrowed her eyes and glared at him as he casually walked to the side table and picked up the remote for the TV.

“Jesus, Garrett. You don’t find it a little suspect that Milo had matches from a place seven years before he supposedly first went there?” Parker asked as she tapped away at the keys.

Garrett huffed in annoyance and tossed the remote back onto the table where it landed with a clatter. He stalked over to his bag at the foot of the bed and began yanking things out of it roughly just to give him something to do.

“The matches Milo had listed a date and time on them from two days before I found them. It was Milo’s handwriting. He met someone here in the Dominican. I know he did,” Parker said as she turned from her computer to watch Garrett empty his overnight bag.

Garrett would have known if Milo ever went to the Dominican. As his superior for most of their career, he was privy to all of the missions he was sent on. And as his friend, Milo confided in him about everything.

He glanced quickly at Parker as she stared at him and realized Milo hadn’t confided in him about everything. He’d failed to mention the fights he’d been having with his fiancé and how distant they’d become. Not only that but Milo had looked him straight in the eye and lied to him about it.

Everything about this situation pissed Garrett off and made him feel like he didn’t have any control. When he was on a mission, he was in charge. He led his team, he made decisions, and he always knew what he was getting into. Now the rug was being pulled out from under Garrett with every turn. It frustrated him, pissed him off, and made him want to lash out. Unfortunately, Parker was the only one there to take the brunt of it.

Garrett picked up his empty duffel bag and flung it across the room, wishing he had something heavier within reach to throw.

He faced Parker with his hands on his hips, the fury rolling off of him in waves.

“So, because you guys were having a few problems, you’ve suddenly decided to turn this mission into a way to...what? Find out if he was cheating on you? Dig up some dirt on him to make yourself feel better?” Garrett said heatedly. “All of a sudden you want to make him out to be the bad guy. Have you already forgotten who he was to us? Just a few short months of doubt and you’re ready to turn him into the enemy.”