Page 70 of Lethal Game

"Poisoning your mother was his first shot. He wanted your father to know his cover was blown, and he was coming for him."

"It's so cruel to hurt an innocent woman."

"That's who Novikov is. He doesn't have a conscience. He's a cold-blooded killer."

"And now he has my father," she said, a lump growing in her throat.

"Your dad is still alive. Novikov needs him to complete his mission."

"You should be with your team and not with me, Jason."

"I'm working from here. And right now, I'm hungry."

As he finished speaking, the timer went off.

"Well, you're in luck because the pizza is ready."

Their conversation had soured her appetite, but she would force herself to eat. She needed to keep up her strength for whatever was coming next.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Thanks for putting this together, Alisa."

She smiled. "Frozen pizza is one of my go-to meals. I don't have a lot of time to cook, and it's not exciting to cook for one person."

"I hear you. I can't remember the last time I made anything besides breakfast."

"Your eggs were good, so clearly you have some cooking skills. Did your mother teach you?" She paused, wondering if his mother was a touchy subject. "Sorry, I probably shouldn't have asked that. I know you lost your mom when you were young."

"She taught me how to make breakfast: eggs, bacon, pancakes. That was the meal we always had together. For dinner, she'd usually feed me, and then wait for my dad to come home to share the meal with him. Sometimes, she ended up eating alone after I went to bed. I didn't realize how lonely she was until after they got divorced."

"Did she work?"

"Part-time as a stager for a realty company. She loved getting a house ready to sell. She was very creative and artistic. At one time, she wanted to be a designer, but my dad needed her to be at home, taking care of me. He traveled so much that she didn'twant to leave me with a babysitter all the time, so she compromised. After they split, and I was a teenager, she worked longer hours." He paused, shadows filling his gaze. "She was just getting her life back together when she got sick. It felt very unfair."

"It sounds like it," she said quietly, thinking that Jason had lived a far lonelier life than she had.

"I never really thought about whether she was happy until she was gone. I just took her for granted," he murmured.

"We all do that. I took my family for granted until all this started. I used to tell my parents how boring they were, and how I was going to have a far more exciting life. I never expected it to go like this. Now I think about my dad sitting there listening to me question him about why he hadn't wanted more for his life, why he hadn't wanted to travel or see the world. He just kept saying he had everything he wanted: a wife, a daughter, and a home." She shook her head. "I wonder if he ever was tempted to tell me his story."

"He knew he couldn't. And he wasn't lying, Alisa. He had everything he'd wanted. And he knew how important it was to hang on to it."

"But he was living a lie, Jason. It was all fake." That thought still made her angry.

"His life with you and your mother was real."

"Was it? Can something based on a lie be real?"

"That sounds like a question no one can answer, like if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?"

"It does make a sound because it's a tree falling in a forest," she said.

"But if no one is there to hear it…"

"We're not talking about a tree," she grumbled. "We're talking about someone becoming someone else."

"It's still a philosophical question. What do you believe?"

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