Lies(14)

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Oh, good. Hang on, do you have any other fiancées or families I should know about?” I frown. Not a nice thought. Things are confusing enough as is. “Do you?”

“Of course not.”

I narrow my eyes on him.

“I’m telling the truth,” he says, sounding mildly put out at being questioned. Guess he’s not used to it from me. He takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Anyway, I couldn’t even keep you convinced long term. How the hell would I have managed convincing others too? Relationships, real or otherwise, are apparently not my forte.”

“But you’ve had girlfriends before me, right?”

This time he gives me a long look. Long enough to make me worry about us driving off the road and hitting a tree. But we don’t. For all of his uselessness as a boyfriend, he handles the vehicle with precision.

“No,” he finally answers. “I haven’t.”

“Boyfriends?”

“None of them either.”

My brows rise. I can feel them inching up toward my hairline, about to disappear at any moment.

“Generally, I was doing my best not to get shot, stabbed, or blown up at home and abroad. My priorities were elsewhere,” he says. “Wasn’t in the right head space in high school, I didn’t have time for relationships once I enlisted, and work has kept me busy and on the move since.”

“But you got tired of having no one to come home to.”

He nods. “That’s what I said.”

“Guess we have that in common. It’s amazing, isn’t it? We have this modern world where we’re all so connected and yet we’re all still so lonely.” Social media does not happiness make. I know that much. “Didn’t you want to get real with someone, though? Instead of just going through the motions?”

“I don’t think telling someone you steal, lie, and kill for a living would go over so well on a first date.”

“Yeah, but we were going to get married. That’s a bit beyond first-date territory, Thom.”

He sighs. “I was trying to protect you.”

Outside the window, redwoods flash by. “If you haven’t got honesty in a relationship then what the hell do you have? All of it was nothing more than a lie.”

“A lie that kept you safe.”

“Except it didn’t, did it?”

He rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck.

“I find it hard to believe you’ve never been in any sort of romantic relationship before. Haven’t you at least done the preliminaries? Taken someone on a date?” I ask. “Not as part of your work, but just for company?”

“Stopped for a drink or something first? Sure.”

Amazing. The man is a real romantic. I tap my fingers against my thighs, thinking deep thoughts. “But weren’t you trained in seduction and all that? How to get people to give you what you want in the course of carrying out your nefarious and underhanded schemes?”

“Yes.”

“Then how did you mess us up so badly?”

A small line appears between his dark brows. “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

“Maybe I’m just too high-maintenance for you. Or maybe you misread me and played the wrong character.”

“Maybe I did,” he agrees.

“That happens with bigger girls.” I rest my head back, gazing out at all of the aforementioned natural splendor. “People tend to think we’ll be happy to take the scraps.”

He shoots me a look, but says nothing.

Up a seemingly endless winding path, we reach a decrepit wooden cabin. Still somewhere in northern California. The ground is muddy with occasional puddles and the air has a verdant scent similar to the moss we use at work. Guess it’s rained a lot lately. Trees are alive with the most beautiful bright autumn colors, while the shack itself is half-covered in spider webs, dirt, and overgrown vines. One of the front windows is shattered and a broken rocking chair sits on the front porch. It looks like something out of a horror film. The type with ghosts and other assorted monsters lurking in the basement. Serial killers hiding in the bedroom. That sort of thing. Not even the soft hazy late-afternoon light can enhance this dump.

“I guess no one will think to look for us here,” I say.

“Come on.” He grabs my duffel bag out of the back and hoists it over his shoulder. “Lesson number one, never trust your eyes.”

Bypassing the cabin, he heads straight for the falling-down woodshed or whatever it is at the side. It leans against the original structure at an odd angle, the door hanging on mostly by a thread, so far as I can see. But then he just said not to trust my eyes. The door creaks ominously and Thom steps inside the dark, dank shed.

I, however, hesitate. “We’re going in there? I think if you’re going to kill me, I’d prefer it happened out here. Have the last thing I see be blue sky and butterflies and pretty things like that.”

He grabs my hand and tugs me in after him. The door swings shut and clicks into place. And then we wait.

“What are we waiting for?” I whisper for some reason.

“You’ll see.”

Somewhere between thirty seconds and forever later, I ask, “Are you sure about this?”