Tightrope (Burning Cove #3)(39)

Once again he appeared to be steeling himself.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It just strikes me as a somewhat unusual claim. Have you always been able to tell when people are lying?”

“For as long as I can remember. But that’s the easy part. People lie all the time. The hard part is figuring out why they are lying.”

“You care about why they do it?” she asked.

“When you have a talent like mine, you learn very quickly that intent is everything.”

She reflected on the implications. “I can understand how that kind of ability would be useful to an investigator or a cop, but doesn’t it drive you crazy the rest of the time?”

He was momentarily flummoxed. Then he smiled.

“How did you guess?” he asked.

“It just seemed obvious.”

“Most lies are harmless and often well-intentioned,” he said. “They have some social value. The ability to lie helps make it possible for people to be polite and civil to each other. How’s your day going? It’s going great, thank you. Did you enjoy the cake I baked for you? It was wonderful, thanks.”

“Okay, I never considered those kinds of questions and answers to be outright lies.”

“Because you are aware of the intent behind them. Everyone knows that conversations like that are a kind of social glue. You are so comfortable with little white lies that you automatically tune out the dissonance. It’s not so easy for me. And when people find out what I can do, they are often . . . uncomfortable around me.”

She smiled. “Had a lot of relationships end badly, have you?”

“Yes.” He cast her a quick, searching look. “You think that’s amusing?”

“Nope. But I do know how it feels.”

That startled him. “You do?”

“People tend to make assumptions about female trapeze artists. Men, especially, see us as exciting. Bold. Daring. Free. We take thrilling risks before their very eyes. They imagine that we will be happy to engage in a night or two of reckless passion because we are reckless women. They tell themselves they will be safe because we won’t make any emotional demands. After all, we’ll be gone in the morning, when the circus leaves town.”

“They see an illusion,” Matthias said. “Things will be different for you now that you’re an innkeeper.”

“No,” she said. “Things won’t be different. When Hazel and I moved to Burning Cove, I had hoped to put my past behind me. But there’s no chance of that now. There probably never was. I will always be the former trapeze artist who may or may not have murdered her lover by pushing him off the platform.”

“Not everyone will have issues with your past.”

“Who is going to trust a woman who may or may not have murdered her lover?”

“Me.”

She froze, hardly daring to breathe. “Is that right?”

“Yes. Your turn. Does my talent scare you?”

“A madman with a knife and a wire necklace once tried to murder me. Knowing that you may be able to tell if I’m lying to you doesn’t even make the list of the top ten things that make me nervous.”

A slow smile edged Matthias’s mouth.

“Thanks,” he said.

The explosion was as loud as a small bomb. It shuddered through the vehicle. The Packard swerved to the right. Like some wild creature, it clawed at the pavement, heading for the edge of the cliffs.





Chapter 23


The part of Amalie’s brain that was still capable of rational thought registered the source of the blast. Blowout. There was nothing she could do. Whether she and Matthias lived or died in the next thirty seconds depended entirely on Matthias’s driving skills and luck.

She was keenly aware that Matthias did not do the instinctive thing, he did not slam on the brakes. Instead he concentrated on controlling the steering. For a few seconds the right fender of the convertible hovered perilously close to the edge of the pavement. Car and driver fought for control.

In the next heartbeat they were safely on the far side of the curve.

Matthias allowed the car to decelerate gradually. The turnoff to a side road came up in the headlights. He drove the limping speedster into the rutted dirt path that led to a shuttered farm stand and shut down the big engine.

For a few seconds neither of them spoke.

“Sorry for the scare,” Matthias said.

She swallowed hard. “I’ve had worse.”

He shot her a quick, assessing look. “Yes, you have.” He opened his door, stood, and peeled off his evening jacket. “Shouldn’t take too long to change the tire.”

The moonlight revealed the holstered gun that had been concealed by the expert tailoring of his drape cut jacket.

“Out of curiosity,” Amalie said, “do you wear that particular accessory when you go out on a real date?”

“It’s been so long since I was on a real date, I can’t recall.”

She smiled. “Liar.”

“My last date did not end well, so I prefer not to think of it as a real date.”

“Is that right? What happened? Did you tell her about your talent?”

“No. There was no point. I knew things were over between us so I gave her an easy out.”