Page 11 of Between the Lies

None of them measure up to your safety, Nina.

That’s what she’d told herself. Besides it wasn’t like she’d never have her old life again. She could revisit memories, make new ones, buy more books… but if they found her or she died, that would be the end of everything.

So here she was, three months since that night, standing by a wall in a back alley, staring at the scene of the crime. Firefighters and cops had since packed up and left the area.

Even a month after the incident, this site had been crammed with journalists and onlookers. At least, that’s what they’d shown in the news. Nina had been scouring the internet for any information on what the police were doing about the case. Yet she hadn’t actually paid attention to the videos – hadn’t had the guts to do so.

She studied the building – or what had been five storeys of moss-covered bricks sporting a few boarded-up windows. Fire had eviscerated those derelict aesthetics, leaving only a black carcass behind. The blue, green and red bins that had flanked the once maroon back door lay dumped in a swirl of molten brown plastic.

You could see into the interior skeleton of the building – a few loose wires, exposed beams, collapsed walls… Complete and utter destruction. No one inside would have survived.

As far as she was aware, there had been no reports of a body being found. Perhaps the fire had burned for so long, it had eaten the evidence of Nina’s wrongdoings. Only they suspected the fire was a ploy to hide a murder…

A chill zinged down her spine. She hadn’t set fire to this place. She’d only?—

Slink, crunch, slink…

Oh God! Nina pressed her palm against her stomach. She’d killed someone inside that very building. The churning intensified until bile rose in her throat. She tried biting her lip, tearing into her own flesh to quell the sudden reaction.

Her feet retreated as if backing away from those memories. But the feel of the knife sinking into flesh like butter…

She bent over and puked, the remnants of her chocolate cereal and milk splattering all over the brick wall she’d just been leaning on. A few splatters landed on her boots – her favourite pair no less.

‘That’s unfortunate,’ a voice whispered from behind her.

Oh shit! Nina swivelled, eyes wide. A voice whispering to her was bad enough. A voice whispering to her in a neglected alley behind a burned building was worse.

And a voice belonging to a man… Oh hell! Was he just a man? Or was he Adonis? A Greek god? An absolutely hunky hunk? None of those words fit him exactly.

His clothes appeared rumpled, the smattering of a beard on his face almost unkempt. But his eyes… they arrested her. In those green eyes, Nina saw grief. A scar marred the edge of his left eyebrow, adding another layer to the grief and the scruff. And then, as if scraping back the dark, a softness emanated from him, the kind that set her heart at ease.

Nina stared, probably giving him a doe-eyed look.

He reached into his pocket – and Nina snapped out of whatever spell she’d been under. Her hands shot up in surrender. When had she ever melted for a man, especially one that looked like him?

Her eyes trailed lower in admiration – no, in assessment! – to check him out… No, to size him up.

And oh Lord, what a size it was. He had a bulge in the right place. And his entire six-foot-two frame was composed of broad muscles packed into a virile body.

And his hair. His spiky blond hair beckoned to be caressed, to be fisted, pulled closer and then…Kiss those lips.

Oh fuck!

Nina commanded her tongue to retreat at once. But when those grief-stricken eyes found hers again, her teeth emerged and sank into her own lower lip – wanting, needing to sink into his lips…

He cleared his throat and raised the hand he’d stuck into his pocket. ‘You alright?’

She realised he’d been hunting for a tissue so she could clean up the gunk around her mouth, not fetching a weapon to threaten her. Urgh! Had she literally licked her lips then bitten them like a femme fatale while looking like a kid with an upset stomach?

Nina plucked the tissue from his fingers, muttered a ‘thanks’ and dabbed at her face. She needed a bottle of water to rinse out her mouth.

The man pointed to the building. ‘Never seen a run-down building before?’

She had. In fact, at the beginning of her career, she’d researched a well-known arsonist and gone around Glasgow listing the abandoned buildings – and there were as many abandoned buildings in Glasgow as random bottles of Buckfast tucked into strange public places… or bams on the subway on a Saturday night – but she hadn’t vomited over a run-down, burned-out building, had she?

The man raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m trying to figure out if you’d feel better with a glass of wine, or whether you’ve had too many already.’

What?

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