Liquid Lies (10 page)

“Sorry, Gwen. I had no idea it would be you.”

NINE

The angry buzz of a thousand bees roared through Gwen’s head
. The vibrations stretched to the tips of her limbs and beyond; no amount of concentration could control the shaking of her arms and legs. Her teeth felt like they’d been jammed backward into her gums and her mouth tasted gritty, like she’d been chewing on hair. She tried opening her eyes, but invisible concrete weighed down the lids.

Awareness came agonizingly slowly. After hours or days or years, the hum started to dissipate. Gradually, gradually it decreased to the perimeter of her consciousness. The shaking stopped, but her limbs now moved on a delay. When she got them to budge, it was never more than an inch, and even that left her panting with effort.

The fear still beat at her with a sharp club. Palpable, unrelenting, vicious.

Finally she managed to pry open her eyes. Though it was only a crack, she nearly cried, feeling victorious. Tiny red lights glowed around her. The world smelled of rubber and plastic carpet, the kind her grandma had lining the breezeway in her house in Pleasanton.

She recognized a few sounds. Pavement whirring beneath tires. The
whoosh
of cars intermittently passing in the opposite lane. She lay in the back of a windowless van, rocking as it barreled down a highway.

With a groan, she tried to roll over. The buzz wasn’t the only thing inhibiting her movement. Rope bound her wrists and ankles, and she ended up gracelessly on her belly, chin gouging into the prickly fake rug.

At first she didn’t remember what had happened, how she’d got here…then she remembered everything.

Griffin’s body on the floor of her apartment. The intruder.

She’d been kidnapped.

“Take it easy,” said a smooth, deep voice. “It’ll take a bit to come around.”

That voice.

A small flashlight clicked on, illuminating a frighteningly familiar man. The black half-zip, the shaved head, and that maddeningly innocent-looking vine tattoo climbing up his neck.

“You!”

Fishlike, she flopped onto her back and tried to scramble away, but the sudden movement tossed her stomach and sent her head spinning. Acid leaked into her mouth and she dry heaved.

Reed started to reach for her, then changed course and instead banged on the wall dividing the back from the cab.

“I said to take it easy.” Whatever soothing she thought she’d imagined coming from him before was gone now. “You’ll probably throw up. I told them to expect this. We’re stopping.”

He stretched for her ankles but she snatched them away. “Don’t touch me!”

Her stomach contracted. He was right; she was going to lose it.

The van slowed. They turned off the paved road onto one full of potholes and rocks. As the vehicle pitched side to side, her stomach echoed the movement. Reed shined the flashlight on her green face, blinding her, and swore under his breath.

He clamped the flashlight between his teeth and moved to her feet. She could either kick him off or concentrate on holding in the contents of her stomach. She chose the stomach.

He jerked the ankle ropes until they loosened, then he snapped them free and tossed them against the metal van wall with a clang.

At last the van stopped, brakes squealing. The passenger-side door opened and footsteps headed toward the back. The doors opened, and it wasn’t too much lighter outside than it was in. She couldn’t see who was responsible, but she had a really good idea.

Reed jumped out first then pulled her out by her ankles, her stomach protesting violently. The moment he set her on her feet, she stumbled away from the van on wobbly legs and vomited into a small bush.

Thick fingers brushed her neck. She flinched. Reed was holding back her hair. No one had held her hair while she puked since her college days at Cal. It wasn’t any less humiliating now.

There was no end to the pain, to the grossness her body expelled. All she could think about was how horrified she was with herself. How she’d actually considered sleeping with this man. This kidnapper.

But that had been his plan all along, hadn’t it? Pretend to hit on her in Manny’s so she’d leave with him and save him the effort of breaking into her place later on. Only she’d foiled him by running out of the bar.

So where the hell did the scene in the alley fit in?

She wanted to throw up on Reed instead of the bush, but she was dry. She settled for spitting on his boots. Straightening, she yanked her hair out of his grasp and ignored the sharp pain at the roots. He held up his hands but didn’t step back.

“You killed Griffin.” The sound of his name made her nose tingle and her lip quiver, and she tried desperately to ignore and cover both. Stupid, silly woman. This man wouldn’t cave to weakness. Only strength would earn his respect, and his ear.

Reed’s face was a stone mask—a carbon copy of the guy who’d thrown Yoshi halfway across the alley—ghostly and expressionless in the moonlight. “No,” he said, then glanced surreptitiously at the van. “He’s not dead. I just knocked him out.”

“She talking?”

The new voice was sharp with anger. The male Tedran she’d seen in Manny’s leaned against the van hood, long, defiant arms crossed over his chest. He was leaner than Reed but no less intimidating. Reed used his sheer size; the Tedran wielded a mighty glare. He pushed away from the vehicle and stalked toward her, his tangled blond hair flapping about his shoulders.

Reed backed away like an obedient employee and went to stand in the glow of dull red created by the brake lights, not sparing her another glance.

The Tedran male bent over her, his face so twisted with hatred she stumbled backward under its force. For this man, the war between their two races had never ended. History was not history; it lived in the present. He still detested her people, and even though she was only one Ofarian, she wore a million faces.

And she was alone.

Desperate, she searched for an escape. The night hugged its pitch-black cape tight around its cold body. The lights of San Francisco—or any hint of civilization—were nowhere in sight. Her only company was the scant, scrub-like vegetation, the distant wink of headlights on the highway, and Reed, picking at his fingernails as though he waited for a bus.

The highway was too far away to run for. Not with the slug drug still lingering in her veins. Not with her hands tied. Not with Reed or the lanky Tedran on her tail.

Gwen looked for the other Tedran, the small woman who’d also been in Manny’s, and found her behind the wheel of the van. She bent far forward, her neck craned to see what was going on outside. When Gwen met her eyes, she looked down.

“So you’re her,” the male Tedran said in Tedranish. “You understand what I’m saying?”

He
knew
. He knew what she was.

Hesitant, she nodded.

“Then we’ll speak my language so that Muscle over there doesn’t know what we’re saying. You have as much to lose as we do if we’re found out.”

She stole a glance at Reed, who’d stopped picking his nails and now seemed fascinated with his boots.

The Tedran grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. “That Primary is under orders to never leave your side. Don’t even think of transforming to water in front of him. You don’t want him to find out what you are any more than I do.”

No, but if she touched water and got away, she’d send Griffin after Reed. He’d be more than happy to dispatch the guy who’d attacked him and taken his betrothed.

The Tedran’s fingers tightened on her face. “I don’t have a gun, Gwen. But I do have this.” He reached for his back pocket and pulled out a syringe. Yellow, iridescent liquid sloshed inside the cylinder.
“Nelicoda
.
”

She stared, dumbstruck.
Nelicoda
neutralized Ofarian water powers. The Board kept some under lock and key at HQ. When Gwen’s sister chose to love a Primary over her people, the Board had voted to issue her a massive dose, annihilating her power.

Gwen couldn’t even begin to guess how the Tedran had gotten his hands on some.

All the rationalization
not
to run flew out the door. She whirled, started to sprint, and tripped. The Tedran snatched her bound hands before she fell and yanked her back. With a snap of the wrist, he flung her around and pulled her tight against his body. Legs braced wide, one of his arms clamped her shoulders to his chest. He was much stronger than he looked.

As he raised the syringe, she tried to kick out, but the angle was bad. She snapped her teeth at his chest, getting a mouthful of leather. Out of the corner of her eye she could still make out Reed leaning against the van bumper, perfectly rigid. Perfectly passive.

When the Tedran’s body started to quiver all around her, something in his signature shifted. Not what made him Secondary, but what made him a man. A whole new level of fear kicked into her system.

With a growl, he stabbed the syringe into her neck. She cried out—at the pain of the needle, at the disgusting feel of the icy, slimy liquid sliding into her bloodstream. It worked fast, snaking its way into her brain and the tiniest corners of her body. The water power, her last line of defense, slipped away like the ebbing tide, leaving her empty. Naked. Helpless.

She was as worthless as any Primary.

Against the van, Reed bowed his head.

The Tedran shoved her away. She hadn’t been wrong about what she’d sensed in him. Lascivious eyes raked up and down her body. But his mouth twisted into a snarl and he’d gone red in the face. He was disgusted by her, enraged by whatever perverted desires had skated through his system. She didn’t know if she should be relieved or even more frightened. She went with the latter.

The Tedran flipped back his hair and jabbed a finger at her. “I’d be lying if I said I’m not enjoying your fear. How does it feel to be the one not in control?”

The needle prick burned but she couldn’t rub it. She wouldn’t cry. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

He considered her, his eyes turning distant for a quick moment. “I’m Xavier,” he grunted.

“What are you doing here? How did you find us?”

His laugh stung like poison. A fist tightened at his side, but she refused to flinch. If he was going to hit her, let him. She wouldn’t back down.

A hundred and fifty years of freedom wouldn’t end here.

“My people will look for me,” she said. “I saw you and that Tedran woman in the bar, when you met him.” She jutted her chin at Reed. “I warned our leaders. They know you’re here, and when they see I’m gone, they’ll know it was you. They’ll come for you.”

“They will, will they?”

“I don’t know who you thought we’d be, but we’re not your meek little slaves anymore. We’ve built something here, something powerful.” The strength of Griffin’s conviction, spoken in her own apartment not hours ago, came back to her. “You want another war? Bring it. I guarantee you this time we won’t run. And you won’t win.”

He smiled without teeth. She hated that smile. His gray eyes glittered like sharpened knives. He stepped closer then stopped abruptly, as if recalling his body’s previous reaction to her. “No one is coming for you.”

“That’s only one of many times you’re wrong.”

“Oh, really?” He bent forward at the waist. Hands behind his back, he mimicked her position. “They think you’re dead.”

TEN

It had to have been her. Millions of people in the San Francisco
area, and Reed had been paid to extract Gwen Carroway.

Fighting tears, she kept her chin lifted. Her vicious stare never left Reed’s client. Even when Xavier had grabbed her and stabbed that awful-looking needle in her neck, she resisted.

Yeah, Reed saw all that, even though he leaned against the van and pretended to look away, bored. After fifteen years in this business, his peripheral vision was almost as good as his direct.

He’d also noticed the way Xavier had reacted to Gwen’s nearness. You’d have to be a man of iron not to be affected by the way she looked and felt, only Xavier’s reaction set off about a thousand alarm bells. Hatred ran deep in that guy.

Reed’s worry for her tested the strength of the wall keeping the Retriever on the front lines. He couldn’t let that wall down. Not now. The job was on.

Reed had no idea what Gwen and Xavier were saying to each other, but he knew the gist of the argument. It was always the same. Every job.

Why did you take me? What do you want? Please let me go, I’ll do anything
.

Except Gwen’s defiant stance and spitting tone veered markedly off script.

Suddenly Xavier turned and stalked back to the van. “Get her,” he snapped. “Let’s go.”

Reed pushed to his feet. At last he looked directly at Gwen. Whatever Xavier had just said slapped some of that defiance off her face. The square set of her shoulders fell, and her lips parted on words unsaid.

An odd discomfort burrowed under Reed’s skin.

She didn’t try to run. As he took her elbow, she felt like dough, pliable and shapeless. As he guided her toward the back of the van, he was glad she didn’t say anything, because he had no idea how he could respond.

“Xavier,” he called out.

The blond man’s hand slid from the passenger side’s door handle. “What.”

“She’s gonna puke again if we don’t get something in her stomach. I don’t want to be rolling around in vomit the rest of the ride.”

Xavier rolled his eyes before hauling open the cab door. From inside he took out plastic-wrapped sandwiches and two bottles of water. He stomped over and shook them in front of Gwen’s face. She just glared.

Even if her hands weren’t tied behind her back, Reed knew she’d never accept anything from Xavier. Reed held out his hand. “Give ’em here.”

Xavier slapped the sandwiches and water into his palm, and then climbed into the cab.

Reed opened the van’s back door with a creak and tossed the food inside. He nodded at the dark interior. “Get in.” When her eyes met his, the transferred weight of all the hatred she’d focused on Xavier almost made his knees buckle.