Liars, Inc. (21 page)

The Colonel's cabin comes into view, and I pull my hood even lower and drop down into a crouch. My blood roars in my veins, drowning out the symphony of bugs and rustling leaves.

Ducking down below the front window, I put my ear to the wood and listen. I can't hear anything except the slamming of my heart. No voices. No movement. Where is Parvati? Adam and I exchange a glance. He makes a motion like he's suggesting we split up, each of us going around one side of the cabin. I nod. I creep around to the near side and listen below the bedroom window. Still nothing. I do the same in the back, just outside the small kitchen. Silence.

I look to the right, expecting to see Adam's broad form approach. Nothing. Where did he go? Through a window? The back door? Did someone snatch him? My eyes scan the tree line, looking for movement, gun barrels, for the glowing red dots that mean snipers. I don't want to lose my friend right after I got him back.

Suddenly I wish I still had the gun Parvati gave me, or that I was a kickass martial artist like she is, or that I was good at anything besides surfing.
Focus, Max.
Once upon a time I survived on the streets. I was brave. No, screw that. I'm still brave. I don't know if Parvati and I will be together when all this is over with, but I'm not going to let her die.

I wrap my fingers around the doorknob. I turn it just a half inch to see if it's locked. The knob twists freely.

I swear at the moonlight. Unless everyone is tucked away in a bedroom, they'll see the back door open when I try to enter. The best I can do is wait until a cloud passes in front
of the moon and be as quick and quiet as possible. I lower myself into a crouch and look up at the sky. My heart rattles in my chest. Every beat feels like a lifetime. It has to be after midnight by now.

Just as a ribbon of gray clouds starts to blot out some of the light, something presses hard against my back. A gun.

Someone clamps a rag over my nose and mouth. It smells sweet, like incense or pipe smoke. I try to pull away, but my body won't obey my brain's commands. My attacker holds the cloth tight over my mouth. My lungs are burning. I gasp for air. My fingers blur on the doorknob. My knees start to buckle and my muscles all go slack. I end up on my back in the gravel, the stars twisting and spinning in the sky above me.

MY STOMACH CONVULSES THE SECOND
I open my eyes. I swallow hard and take a deep breath. I'm inside the Colonel's cabin, sitting slumped on the vinyl sofa. My hands and ankles are bound with duct tape. A blurry form sits next to me, dressed in flowing white. Parvati. Her eyes are closed.

“P,” I hiss. “Are you okay?”

Her eyelashes flutter, but she doesn't respond.

Adam appears from one of the bedrooms. “Did you know you can actually make chloroform out of stuff just sitting around in chem class?” He twirls a gun around on his finger before pointing it at me.

“Adam, what the hell are you doing?” I glance around, looking for DeWitt's men, looking for anyone else.

But it's just the three of us.

And a gun.

Adam chuckles. “You always were kind of slow.”

The haze of drugs begins to fade and the ugly truth becomes clear. “You lying, psychotic son of a bitch. It was
you
who set me up, wasn't it? Not DeWitt.”

Adam claps slowly, the gun still aimed at my chest. “Good job, Maximus.”

“So all that stuff in the truck was just more lies.” I shake my head in disgust. “I can't believe I fell for your bullshit.”

He shrugs. “Most of what I told you was true. Well, except for DeWitt's thugs killing my whore of a mother. I set that fire when she told me to go back to California. She didn't want me in her life. She just wanted the money I got from blackmailing the DeWitts. The bitch deserved to die.”

“Along with some random guy? He deserved to be burned to death?”

“That guy was so drunk he didn't even wake up the whole time I was switching clothes with him and starting the fire. He probably never even knew what hit him.” Adam smiles to himself. “Alcohol is a fabulous accelerant.” He glances down at his wrist. “I do miss my watch, though.”

“Look,” I continue, glancing over at Parvati. “What your mom and the DeWitts did to you is some seriously messed-up shit, but why are
we
here? We're not the ones who abandoned
you or tortured you or took away your identity.”

Adam's jaw tightens visibly. “No, you're the one who took away my fucking
family
, Max.”

Okay. Now I know he's totally lost his mind. I never even met his real mother. And
he
just admitted to killing her. “What are you talking about?” I focus on his gun while I lean against the back of the couch and slip my hands down between the cushions, feeling for the sharp edge of the exposed sofa coil that kept stabbing me and waking me up last time I was here. Got it. Slowly, I saw the tape around my wrists back and forth across the metal, trying not to move my upper body. Now I just have to keep Adam talking for a while.

“You don't remember me, do you?” he asks. “From Rosewood? We didn't really hang out.”

So we
were
there at the same time . . . “I didn't really hang out with anyone. I only remember Henry,” I say. “And Anna.” The tape loosens slightly as I feel individual fibers fray. I pull my ankles apart, twisting my feet slightly, trying to loosen that tape too.

The hard line of Adam's mouth softens for a second and then goes tight. “Anna. She was good to me,” he says. “She told me I was going to get adopted. A nice couple named Cantrell. A family.”

Shit.

My family.

I stole Adam's family? Darla's favorite story plays in my ear, the one about how they were going to adopt a boy but then she saw me, and she just knew I was the one. Darla and her goddamn savior complex.

I stole Adam's family.

Next to me, Parvati stirs. Her eyes open. Her pupils dilate as she turns to me. “Max,” she says softly. “I almost wish you hadn't come.”

“I didn't know what had happened at first,” Adam continues. “They seemed to like me, but then they disappeared. Later, I saw
you
with them on one of your follow-up visits. You. With
my
family.”

“I'm sorry.” I try to keep my expression neutral as the tape continues to tear. Getting my hands free is only the first step. I still have to outmaneuver a guy with a gun, probably with my ankles still bound. I scan the entire living room looking for weapons. There has to be something I can use.

But there isn't.

I keep sawing.

“Anna felt terrible for getting my hopes up. She was new. She probably didn't realize people might just change their minds like that. She told me their paperwork hadn't gone through. That it had nothing to do with me.” He clenches his jaw again. The muscles in his neck strain against his skin.
“But I knew the truth. After they met you, they didn't want me anymore.”

“That's not true,” Parvati interjects. “If they had more money, they probably would have taken both—”

“Shut up,” Adam snaps. “They were supposed to love
me
. Not him. Not both of us.” He slips his finger onto the trigger.

The tape is half torn now. I twist my wrists in opposite directions. I can almost pull one of my hands free. I turn to Parvati. I wish there was a way to alert her to the exposed sofa coil. I'm going to need her mad fighting skills in order for us to have any chance to survive this. I glance over my shoulder and down to where my hands are tucked inside the cushions. Her face remains expressionless, but she scoots toward me. I see her begin to reposition her own hands.

“I've waited so long to get you back. I didn't know if it would ever happen,” Adam says. “But then people started asking questions and DeWitt decided to move out of the city.”

“How did you end up here?” I ask. “How did you find me?”

“I had already found you online. It was so easy to plant the seeds to come to Vista Palisades.” Adam pauses. “Did you know that it's one of the best surfing beaches for miles? Claudia always felt so guilty about everything. She was constantly looking for ways to make it up to me.”

“I didn't know anything about you,” I say. “I didn't mean to hurt you. And neither did the Cantrells.” Only they had.
They had spent time talking to Adam and then decided to adopt me instead. I could see how that might make a kid feel terrible.

And then DeWitt's cronies had shown up and offered Adam the ultimate acting job. Forced to choose between becoming someone else and getting pummeled by Henry the Happy Sociopath for who knows how long, of course he had jumped at the chance to leave Rosewood.

Adam nods. “I know. My mom—Violet—told me I should give you a chance, that it was DeWitt who should pay.” His voice wavers. “By that time I had already started watching you and the Cantrells at The Triple S. I never saw you being nice to them. You were always complaining about them—how they made you babysit, like it was such a big fucking chore.” Adam bares his teeth. “You took my family and you don't even appreciate them!”

“You're wrong. I do appreciate them.” But a tiny pinprick of doubt stabs me in the gut. Would Adam have given Darla a chance to really be his mom? Would she have been better off with him instead of me? My left hand slides free of the duct tape. I separate my wrists slightly, keeping them in the same position so as not to alert Adam.

“Shut up,” he says. “Shut up or I will fucking end you.”

“Preston!” Parvati sucks in a sharp breath. “Calm down. Let's just talk about this.”

Adam backhands her across the face with his gun. Her head snaps forcefully to the side. I grit my teeth, wanting to lunge for him but not wanting Parvati or me to get shot. I have to wait for the right moment.

“I told you my name is
not
Preston.”

Even in the dim light, I can see the welt forming on Parvati's cheekbone, but she shakes off the blow like it was nothing. “Right. Adam. That's going to take a little time for me to get used to.”

She's talking to him like we're all still friends, like this is a big joke or one of their dare games from Bristol Academy. Just like me, she's trying to keep him going until she can find an opening to make a move. I glance quickly down at her arms. I'm not sure whether she'll be able to free herself too.

“You only
have
a little time, Pervy,” Adam says.

She tilts her head to the side. “Come on. You don't mean that. You have no reason to kill me. We're friends. I understand you in ways that most people don't.”

Adam turns to me. “Remember that day in the cafeteria when I told you she was a liar and you said she wouldn't lie to
us
? Now do you see? She's full of shit. She'll play any side she needs to.” He scoffs. “I bet she'd shoot you herself if I offered to let her go.”

“I'm just saying I'm not your enemy and neither is Max,” Parvati says. “Let us go, Adam. And we'll help you.” She
looks pleadingly at him. “Put down the gun.”

“How stupid do you think I am? You're trying to manipulate me,” Adam says. “The way you manipulated
him
.” He pulls the phone with the videos from his pocket. “He doesn't know about that yet, does he?”

Parvati's cool expression falters. “Please don't.”

Adam sneers. “Oh, isn't that sweet. She's trying to protect you.”

“Protect me from what? What don't I know about?” I ask.

Parvati's lower lip trembles. “Look at us. You won, Pr—Adam. You don't need to do this.”

Adam ignores her. “I just wanted to take away something you loved,” he tells me. “Things have to be even. I only let you have her so that it would hurt worse when I took her back.” He works the touch screen of the phone and then tosses it down on the sofa between Parvati and me. “Watch and learn,” he says.

Parvati squeezes her eyes shut. A single tear escapes down her cheek.

The screen comes to life. It's her and “Preston.” They're curled up on his bed together. She's got her head tucked beneath his chin, just like she used to do with me.

“I'm bored,” Preston says. “You want to do some coke?”

Parvati sighs. “I told you I'm not doing that anymore, Pres. I'll never get into the CIA with a drug history.”

Preston cranes his neck to look down at her. “It's not like I'm going to tell them. Besides, that's years from now.”

Her forehead wrinkles in concentration as she glances over at the bookshelf. “I swear you want me to be an addict,” she says bitterly.

So that's what Adam meant when he said it wasn't his cocaine. Apparently, he's been supplying Parvati. It explains a lot: her mood swings, her impulsive behavior. She was telling me on the phone about why her parents were sending her to Blue Pointe Prep when I cut her off. I wonder if they found some of her stash.

Pres gets cocaine from the hollowed-out book and cuts it into lines with a credit card. They take turns snorting it off the surface of a compact from Parvati's purse.

“Suddenly I miss our dare game,” Preston says. “Don't you?”

Parvati shakes her head and her long hair obscures part of her face. “The game that got us expelled? Not really. I promised my parents no more dares. I'm trying to be good.”

“Good is boring.” Preston tucks a lock of hair behind her right ear. “You miss our dares. I know you do.” He kisses the side of her neck. “Let's do just one more, for old time's sake.”

Her body folds inward on itself. She turns her head to expose more of her throat. “What did you have in mind?” she asks finally, her voice a shadow of what it had been.

“You know Max, that guy I sometimes go surfing with?”

“The kid from The Triple S?”

“Yeah.” Preston's fingertips make their way beneath the hem of her sweater.

My hands are clenched into fists so tight that my fingernails are cutting curved gashes into my palms. I know what's coming, and it's going to be as bad as finding out my two best friends are liars. I twist my wrists one at a time so that I'll be ready to strike when the moment presents itself.

“Why do you always hang out at that place, anyway?” Parvati asks.

“Who cares? I think Max likes you,” Preston says.

“Well then, he's got better taste than someone else I know.”

Preston smiles his relaxed grin. “I bet you can't make him fall for you.”

Real-life Parvati hangs her head. “I'm sorry, Max,” she whispers.

“Yeah. Me too,” I mutter. If I swing my hip just right I can probably knock the phone to the floor. I won't have to hear that Parvati went out with me as part of a stupid dare. I won't have to learn that my two best friends were never my friends at all. My throat and my eyes start to water.

I can't do it. I need to hear this.

I need to hear the truth.

“Why would you want me to do that?” Parvati asks.

“He needs a little excitement in his life.”

“And what about after I succeed? I just dump him? Kind of mean, isn't it?”

Preston snorts. “Right. What was I thinking? You're never mean.”

“Not to people who don't deserve it.”

“You don't think the CIA is going to expect you to be mean?” he asks. “You're going to have to be able to cultivate assets, you know? Get strangers to trust you.”

Parvati doesn't say anything.

“Hey, if you don't think you can do it, I understand,” Preston says. “Maybe you're not his type.”

“Oh, I can be his type.” Parvati reaches down and undoes the button of Preston's jeans. “I'm just not sure why you want to share me.”

My turn to squeeze my eyes shut. “I've heard enough. Turn it off.”

“Aww. What's the matter, Maximus? Aren't you enjoying these videos of your girlfriend?” Adam's lips twist into a cruel smile. “She only dated you because I
told her
to.”