Generation of Liars (48 page)

I perked an ear and suddenly I
heard it too. “Where is that beeping sound coming from?” I asked.

“You hear it too?” Pressley asked.

“It sounds like a microwave or
something.” I was doing my best deer-in-the-headlights intimation. “Do you
think that beeping is coming from me?”

Chapter Fifty: Don’t Tell Pierre

“A
LICE,
PLEASE DON’T freak out over what I’m about to tell you.” I knew something was
horribly wrong by the look on his face when he said it. “The beeping is
definitely coming from you.”

“It’s the bomb, isn’t it? Do you
think there’s some kind of default timer on the bomb? Do you see lights
blinking on me or anything?”

Pressley pushed his nose into the
face of the bomb and I heard him mumble, “This isn’t good.”

“
What
isn’t good? What? Tell
me!”

“I think you’re right, some kind of
timer has kicked in.”

“What makes you think that?”

“There’s a sixty-minute countdown
in red numbers on the face of the bomb.”

“I’m dead.” My insides seemed to
melt and loosen up like an inward storm and I doubled over into the freshly
fallen snow. My hunger-afflicted stomach could only deliver a spout of black
bile.

“Alice,” Pressley was trying so
hard to console me, “don’t worry. I can fix this.”

I was stumbling around. My eyes
were pressing out hot, stinging tears. “It’s too late, Pressley. I never should
have let you lead me here. I should have just run to the police when I had the
chance. Just get away quickly before I blow you up with me.”

“Alice, just listen to me, I’m
going to get this bomb off of you. We have to get to the river. I know a spot
on the Seine with nothing more than abandoned barges. Once I get you free, I’ll
toss the bomb there.”

“How exactly are you planning to
get this thing off me?”

“I need something sharp to unjam
the lock. A knife or something.”

“Like a chef’s knife?”

“A chef’s knife would be perfect. I
doubt we are going to just happen upon a chef’s knife in the middle of the
street in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve.”

“Probably not.  But that
restaurant over there might have one.”

“Restaurant?” He was spinning on
his heels now.  It was a scant-sized bistro and its glass windows were
black as pitch.

“Take off your socks.”

“This is hardly the time for you to
be trying to disrobe me.”

 “I’m going to punch the glass
out of that window and I need something to protect my hands.”

“Oh.” I kicked off my shoes and
peeled down each of my socks and handed them to Pressley. I balanced my bare
feet over the frozen pavement.

He was rolling the socks over his
hands. “Wish me luck.”

Pressley pummeled the large glass
window and was suddenly left standing inside a circle of shattered glass. There
was a black abyss behind a gaping hole where the plate-glass window had been.
“Let’s hurry, shall we?”

Over the jigsaw pattern of smashed
glass we went. The glimmer from the streetlamps disappeared once we got on the
other side. Pitch blackness and silence escorted us along. I was doing all I
could not to lose sight of Pressley walking in front of me. I could hear a
faint set of footsteps beneath the patter of my bare feet on the linoleum
floor. The dark can do that to you.

“We just have to find a knife,”
Pressley called out.

That’s when I felt a pair of hands
seize each of my arms. Each hand was lined with sharp fingernails like a row of
spiked ammunition. I was stopped dead in my tracks. The hot breath of my
perpetrator was wheezing onto my neck. Something cold and hard was being
pressed to my throat.  I swallowed hard, but the swallow was trapped by
the pressure of a knife blade’s teeth being clipped against my skin. “You mean
like the knife that’s pointed to my throat right now?” I eked out. There was a
very distinct stench coming off my assailant. My nostrils were expanding,
desperately trying to identify the smell.

I realized that I knew that stench.

It was the stink of cigarette smoke
mixed with Sara Cinnamon’s cheap drugstore perfume.

“Sara?” I called out.

“Alice?” a scratchy, but feminine,
voice called back.

“What the heck are you doing?”

I heard Pressley press the action
on his Glock. “You know this person, Alice?”

I was spinning free now, facing
Sara’s shadowed outline. “This is my friend, Sara Cinnamon. She’s one my girls
from Pigalle.”  

“Explain why one of your
girls
just tried to sever your pulmonary.”

I tore into my pocket for my Zippo
and flicked the flame to illuminate the space between Sara and myself. “What’s
with the knife?”

Sara was looking rough, even for
Sara. Her eyes were speckled with bloodshot vines and her skin tone was
suppressed under a grayish color. “Sorry, Alice. I never would have cut you. I
panicked when the glass shattered. I got spooked and I grabbed the carver.”
  

“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“It’s Christmas Eve? Don’t you have anyone to be with?”

“That’s the thing. I’m here meeting
someone. Pierre. He owns the bistro. We sort of have a
thing
going on.
But he’s married so our engagements are, shall we say, limited. We can only meet
here after hours.”

“You’re dating another married
creep? I thought we burned our bras over this already. You don’t need some
loser with a ball and chain at home using you as a backup. You are an
independent woman, Sara.”

Sara was chewing her lips. “I know,
Alice. I was all pumped about that pep talk at first. But then I got to feeling
lonely, and Pierre is so sweet and he lets me take the dinner rolls home after
the restaurant closes. Besides, you stopped coming around here once you got a
boyfriend. I figured all that stuff before was just you being bitter over being
lonely.”

“You know that boyfriend I told you
about?  Turns out he was all wrong for me. Everything he ever told me was
a lie. He was married.”

Sara let a
tisk
escape her
lips. “You think you know a person but you never really do. Too many darn liars
out there. Prince Charming always turns out to be Duke Divorcée.”

“Exactly. That’s why you can’t just
sit around and wait for some guy to rescue you, Sara.”

She shot a look to Pressley. “What
about him? It sort of looks like you’re letting him rescue you.”

“He isn’t. I’m rescuing myself.”

“Does it have something to do with
the thing beeping on your chest?” she asked. “You counting down to the new year
or something?”

“That’s a bomb. If I don’t get it
off me fast, the three of us are dead. Early Christmas gift from the
ex-boyfriend.” 

“What the heck are you doing coming
into Pierre’s place with a bomb strapped to yourself?”

“I’m searching for a tool to cut
the bomb off. Can I please use the knife in your hand?” Sara let the knife drop
to our feet. I handed it to Pressley.

“We’ll use the counter.” He pressed
my cheek against the cold, sticky counter. “Stand still.” I was tense,
forgetting to breath. Pressley gingerly positioned the knife over the lock and
began working the blade into the mechanism.

Sara was hovering, craning her neck
to watch the action. “Pierre is going to be so pissed if I blow up his
restaurant.”

Pressley was grunting, sweating,
hyper-focused. The lock crashed onto the floor and he caught the bomb in his
hands.

“We did it.” I didn’t dare smile
when I said it. The bomb was still live, after all, and the battle was only
half-over.

Pressley was reading the digital
face. “We only have forty-five minutes to make sure nothing in this city blows
up.”

“We’ve gotta roll,” I told Sara. “I
know I was a crappy friend for disappearing like I did last time, so I’m giving
you a heads-up now before I go underground. Don’t worry, we’ll see each other
again someday and when I come back I don’t want you dating some pig in Pigalle,
you got it?”

“I got it, Alice. I’m going to tell
Pierre tonight that it’s over. Unless he has a Christmas gift for me and its
diamonds. Or any semi-precious stones. Or I can accept drugstore rubies and
wait until after New Years to dump him.”

“Some things never change.”

“Wait, Alice, speaking of Christmas
gifts, I have something for you.”

“You do?”

“This.” She was twisting a
snowflake pendant on a thin silver chain that was around her neck. “I got it
from one of those fancy jewel shops in Pigalle, it was in the front window, on
top of one of those puffy fake snow displays with lights that made it sparkle.
Anyways, I probably paid too much for it. But you always did tell me a girl
should take care of herself. Well, anyways, I want you to have it because a
girl should take care of her friends too.” She slipped it off from around her
neck. “For all you’ve done for me.” She clasped it around my neck.

“Thanks, Sara.” I gave her a
squeeze goodbye, inhaling one last gust of the stench of her perfume and
lingering cigarette smoke.

Chapter Fifty-one: Descending

W
E
WERE BACK on the street. My foot was stalled on the curb. I kept thinking about
Sara Cinnamon. I had always looked down on her for crushing on married men and
the whole doormat-meets-heavy-boot
dynamic that she applied to her love
life. But I had fallen head over heels into the same trap. I had fallen for
Ben, and he was every bit as married as Cinnamon’s men. I wasn’t so different
from Sara, after all. I just hoped I smelled better.

“Are you okay?” Pressley finally
asked me.

“Pres, we’re not Christmas caroling
here. The payload on this Santa’s sleigh is a bomb. Freaking out is to be expected.”

“I realize that. But you’ve gotten
really quiet all of the sudden.”   

“Maybe there is something on my
mind. Maybe I’m a little curious on your marital status.”

“Marital status?”

“It’s a reasonable question, given
recent developments. Sara keeps getting played by married men. I just found out
Ben is married after dating him for two months. A lot can happen in three
years, so I’m wondering if you did the white routine already.”

“I’m not married. I wouldn’t have
kissed you if I was married.”

“What about a girlfriend? Fiancé?
Been out for coffee with anyone lately?”

“Are you trying to ask if I ever
dated anyone after you?”

“Yes.”

“Of course I did.”

“Like who?”

“There was one girl. Abigail Swindell.
She asked me to the Sadie Hawkins dance that February after you left. We dated
on and off after that. She got a job offer in San Francisco after graduation
and we broke things off. By then I was already onboard with the CIA so I
couldn’t follow her.”

“You dated a girl named Abigail
Swindell?”

“Yeah. Is there something wrong
with that?”

“Swindell? Really? Did you have any
background on the girl? Because that is a liar’s name if I ever heard one! It’s
a cry for help, really, I mean, advertising the swindling right in the name.”

“Abigail was a perfectly nice girl.
You just want to be critical of any girl I dated after you. But you’re one to
talk. Doctor Zhivago over there tried to blow you up.”

“Are you sensing the same theme I
am? Bad taste in men.” I was letting my eyes linger on him. “I can’t believe
you dated some bimbo called Swindell.”

“What can I say? You were gone.
Life went on. Did you expect me to say that I sat around crying over you?”

“No –.”

“Because I did. At first, that was
all
I did.”

“You did?”

“But then I moved on. I met other
people. I dated other girls. But none like you.”

I was nervously twisting the
snowflake pendant around my neck. “I just don’t want to settle for drugstore
rubies the way Sara seems to be content doing. I need our love to be the real
thing. Speaking of drugstore rubies, this necklace weights a ton for its size.
I think these are real diamonds. Sara must have spent a fortune.”

“Alice, I promise what I have to
offer is not drugstore rubies. But for the past three years, you’ve been living
on fool’s gold and we need to just get to the riverbank and end this all. Then
our love can be strong as diamonds. “

“You’re right. Let’s just hurry up
and get this done.”

A helicopter was crossing overhead
in the sky. “Crap,” Pressley bemoaned, “we need to hide somewhere.” His eyes
were scanning the area. They stalled on the entrance to the Ecole Militaire
metro station. “In there.”

I was wishing away the menacing
black copter with my eyes. “Good idea.”

We scooped down under the entrance.
I surveyed the barren platform and it was gray and bygone for the overnight. “I
think I know a shortcut.”

“Alice, time is limited right now
and I really don’t want to get lost and have your shortcut take forever and
risk losing even a minute.”

“What’s taking forever is scuffing
through the streets.”

“What shortcut are you proposing?”

 “The trains, of course.”

“The trains aren’t even running
right now. It’s four A.M. on Christmas Eve.”

“Not riding the trains. Just the
rails. We can walk along the tracks.  It will keep us out of view of the
helicopter.”

“It’s like a human spider web down
there, and there could be dangerous spots. Don’t homeless people sleep down
there? How well do you even know your way around?”

“I know them well enough. What do
you say?”

“I say,” Pressley’s fingers were
dancing along the cold railing, his eyes peering into the rail tunnel like it
was an unknown world, “that I guess I will trust you.”

“Let’s go.” We embarked into the
station.  The abandoned tracks had a hollow and empty augury about them.
Shadows housed the concrete. Rat claws echoed. A color-coded map of the metro
routes hung from limestone.