Page 94 of The Truths that Deceive

And my fucking pants start getting tight.

“Kind of,” I say. “There’s an event tonight. If you want to come.”

She goes still.

“You’re not handing me over?”

“Not yet.”

We circle each other, wary.

“So we have a truce?” she asks. “What about Johnny?”

“What about my list?”

She frowns, picks at the edge of the clean kitchen island, then shrugs. “Most are dead or have clipped wings. It’s clear they’re watched and on good behavior. They’re too clean. But there are others.”

Her glaze flickers at me before she disappears to grab the computer. She walks back into the kitchen just as the scent of coffee fills the air. She takes my cup, so I make another and stare at the screen.

Names and activities and… shit.

Our gazes meet. “Why the fuck are these names showing up as building things in Bolivia?”

There are four. They’ve all got affiliations to the Collectors—tenuous but there—and now they’re in New York. Two are on the list for the event tonight.

The opening of a new office building for a nonprofit.

One of those boring places where all kinds ofdeals go down.

“I don’t know,” she says. “What’s on tonight?”

“Have you heard of Senator Aaron Riley?”

Her eyes widen. “Yes. He’s in town?”

“Yeah. Opening a nonprofit.” I look at her. “Want to go?”

A flush of color stains her cheeks. “Just try and stop me.”

Chapter 26

Calista

My blood bubbles as I stare at the senator. He’s as good-looking and respectable as always.

I try not to fiddle with the rings Smith gave me on the car ride from Brooklyn.

Smith never asked me why I basically jumped him.

Maybe he knows I’m trying to ingratiate myself on a faux intimate level to slow down the inevitable handoff.

Riley could be my downfall or no help at all. As it is, he looked at me once and didn’t even blink or acknowledge me. The building we’re at could be any high-end luxurious and discreet business. The brass plate on the outside reads Grey and Associates. It looks like a law firm or an arm of some kind of moneymaker that needs a tax write-off.

A perfect cover for all sorts of illegal goings-on. One of those impossibly monied nonprofits that are layered in so much gauze that whoever they help changes on the daily, and the real nuts and bolts of the true business are hidden.

I’d need to get hold of their computer serversto find out more.

“But that isn’t your job,” I mutter, trying not to jump every time someone looks my way.

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