Lies(10)

“Too risky.”

“But they must be so worried.” My throat tightens, my eyes burn. “God, this is insane.”

“There’s nothing we can do about it right now,” he says, voice firm. “Just try and stay calm.”

Easy for him to say. My mind won’t stop racing. Fear apparently makes me chatty. Or maybe some part of me thinks more information will make this situation easier to get a grip on. “So you’re in charge of the zoo? They all seem to look to you for direction, follow your orders.”

“I’m the current most experienced operative.”

“Who’s Scorpion? Was she your real… Forget it. I don’t want to know.”

We speed away from the house on dirt roads, dust rising all around us and the sun beating down. No idea where we are. No idea what’s going to happen. And the scent of blood still fills my lungs. The visual of Spider’s corpse remains lodged inside my mind.

“Calm your breathing, Betty. I don’t have time for you to have a panic attack right now.”

The asshole’s got a point. My chest is heaving. A sheen of sweat covers my whole body. He turns up the air-conditioning, blasting me with cold air. It helps a little. So does taking long, slow breaths.

“Never seen a dead body before,” I say quietly.

“I know.”

“Did you kill him?”

He glances over at me, his mouth a firm line. “No.”

“All right.” I nod. It probably makes me an idiot, but I believe him anyway. “Why am I still alive? I was asleep just a couple of rooms down, with no one between me and Spider. It would have been easy.”

“The killer would have no reason to want you dead at this point. Whoever it is has probably marked you as a strategic liability, thinking it will be easier to deal with me if I need to focus on protecting you.”

“Is that true? That I’m a liability?”

He swallows. “You’re going to a place where I know you’ll be safe. Then I’m going to go deal with this.”

“You’re dumping me somewhere?”

“I thought getting away from me was what you wanted.”

“Really, you want to do this now?” I turn in my seat, all the better to face him. “Thom, you were never home. If it was your physical presence that pissed me off, all I had to do was stay right there. But it wasn’t. Our relationship itself was complete and utter bullshit.”

“In what way?” Now he sounds almost angry. This is quite possibly the most honest emotion that I’ve had from him in forever. “Because I had to travel for work? To earn a living?”

“Because even when you were home, you were never really with me. Mentally and emotionally, you were elsewhere.”

“That’s absurd.”

“To be fair, this whole discussion is pretty absurd.”

The dirt road ends and we turn onto something resembling civilization. More houses. Occasional people and other cars. Signs of life, normal life. People going about their mornings without their whole world turned upside down and the threat of imminent death hanging over their heads.

“How was I not with you?” he asks, definitely getting testy. “Every time you wanted to bitch about some idiot at work or talk about who Jen was banging, I listened. Even when you were just repeating yourself, I was attentive and supportive.”

“You know, I don’t think you’re as good at pretending to be interested in things as you think you are.”

“I always let you pick what we watched on TV, let you decide what takeout we got.”

“Is that all a relationship is to you?” I ask, any hint of a panic attack long forgotten. This insight into Thom’s mind is fascinating. And somewhat disturbing.

“It wasn’t all a lie, you know.”

“Honestly?” I arched my eyebrows. “What part of it was real?

“I wasn’t lying when I said I love you.”

I laughed. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help it. “Well that’s ironic. Because that was the one thing you said to me that I didn’t believe.”

“Why not?” He scowls. “There was intimacy. We had sex.”

At this, I scoff. I can’t help it.

“What?”

“Our sex life was not amazing.”

It takes him a moment to respond. “The average cohabitating couple has sex approximately fifty-one times a year. When you deduct time spent away due to work, we met the average.”

“We met the average? Huh,” I say. “How I aspire to always meet the average. It’s my life goal, really.”

“Bring on the sarcasm. What a surprise.”

“Oh, yeah? How’s this for sarcastic, Thom? More often than not the sex sucked—and not in the good way.” So there. “I bought lingerie and read all of the stupid articles about tips for the bedroom. I tried to keep things interesting.”

His fingers tighten around the steering wheel. “Most women don’t manage to climax every time they have intercourse with their partners. I’m sorry, but I had to maintain the median…the illusion of us being a normal couple.”

I just blink.

“It’s a well-known fact. Studies show that—”