Page 89 of The Truths that Deceive

His mouth quirks but the smile doesn’t reach his blue eyes. “You didn’t look at what you have, did you?”

“What good is doing that? It’s puzzle pieces.” Some are from Johnny. Intel from him he asked me to hold on to. But the other stuff I found, poked into?

I wanted it because I like puzzles, because I’m a hacker.

I didn’t think it through.

“Let me ask you something,” Smith says. “Did you sell smaller blueprints that already are circulating as hardware on the market?”

“No.” I shoot him a glare. “Just?—”

“Just?”

“I have information that hasn’t left me.” My hand curls. “No one else has seen any of it.”

“Like encoded blueprints probably meant for higher-ups.” He shakes his head as he straightens his tie. “You fucking…”

“Idiot, yeah. I know how it looks,” I say quietly, “but I didn’t steal, I didn’t do… the things it looks like.”

“Like you took what you could to sell to the highest bidder, you and Johnny? Or that maybe you had Johnny killed? We know he’s not dead, but does the CIA?”

I give him a sharp look.

Smith raises a dark brow. “I’m playing Devil’s advocate. Don’t look at me like I murdered your best friend.”

“Did you?” I ask, swallowing.

His expression changes to curious as he goes to the small bar and pours a drink. But he just holds the glass. “Do you? Have one?”

Yes, I want to hurl at him.Mybrother. But I don’t. He’s my twin, my family, but he also has a life I’ve never had or wanted. Computers were my escape, and when I did have friends, I…

When.

A shudder passes through me. And I look down at my hands. This is stuff he could easily look up, no doubt the CIA has a full-on dossier of who I’ve befriended all the way back to kindergarten. “No, I… Shit, I don’t have any friends, not anymore.” To my horror, my lip trembles.

“Could be worse, you could have me.”

A small sob breaks free. I don’t know why. At all.

Smith sighs and sets down his untouched drink. “It’s been a long two days. Come here.”

And I do.

Why, I don’t know. But he’s got a hold on me. The thing inside me that keeps me separate from others, that creates the little moat around me crumbles, and I stand in front of him, gazing upward.

“Fuck,” he mutters, rubbing a thumb under my eye and the tear that’s probably there. “Don’t. I didn’t… I’m not good with kids.”

I’m not wearing shoes. It doesn’t stop me. I slam my foot down, hard as I can on his, and then I spring back. “I’m not a kid.”

“You’re twenty-four.”

“And lived a life that most thirty-four-year-olds haven’t, sodon’t patronize me, old man.” I shove him for good measure. “You’re not good withpeople.”

Smith captures my hands. “True. But you’re fucking ornery as shit.”

“Asshat.”

“Come here.”

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