Page 60 of Filthy Liar

Melinda

The whole timeJason is gone on some Boy Scout attempt to save the world—which isn’t going to work, but has to be tried first, I guess—Wilson and Cole are trying their level best to get information out of me.

The conversation shifts back and forth between grilling me as a suspicious person and drawing out my perspective as an ally against a common enemy.

As Wilson tries to figure out if Jason’s half-brother is even in the country—because the last flight plan filed by his pilot has him currently in Geneva—I do another round of dodging questions from Cole. Not because I don’t want to answer them, exactly, but they’re the wrong questions to be asking in the first place.

“I can’t tell you my sources,” I repeat for the third time. “That doesn’t help us, anyway. Read the text message again.You aren’t playing my game. So I’m changing the rules.This was all a game to him. All of it. And he thinks he’s the puppet master. We need to be focused on his next steps, and right now, we don’t even know what led him to this point.”

Cole shakes his head. “You do, though. You know more than us.”

“I don’t have proof. Just hunches. That’s what stories are half the time, hunches that we sit on for a very long time, maybe too long, because we have ethical standards to maintain.”

“Like protecting your sources.”

“Like verifying what they say with at least one other independent source,” I snap back.

“Are your hunches protected? Can we start there?”

I take a deep breath. “Where do I start? I’ve been watching Mack for years. I didn’t like him when I was with the foreign service. Those guys I saw this morning? I’m not surprised he has mercenaries on speed dial. He’s deeply, quietly invested in a couple of private armies.”

“Why keep that from us, though? We all know some guys who have gone and done that. We’ve hired some of them to be bodyguards. It’s not like we have any kind of reputation to maintain.”

“Ah, but you do.” This is hard to explain. “You’re the good-bad guys. For every rumor about The Horus Group, every salacious bit of gossip about that one time you covered up a murder, that creates the illusion that this is as depraved as Washington gets.”

“We’re some kind of cover? This whole time?”

“Not exactly. Five years ago, you split from whatever role he first envisioned for you. I don’t think he saw that coming. But when it did, that distance protected himfromyou, didn’t it?”

“He helped us.”

“That resistance to seeing what is right in front of you is exactly why I can’t reveal my sources. It’s why stories need to be researched and documented way beyond hunches. And it’s why I’ve had to live with awful truths for a long fucking time, truths thatif you would just believe me, could have radically altered the path of history five years ago.”

Cole’s jaw flexes. “Try me.”

I don’t like doing this. “Five years ago you flew to Miami on Mack’s jet.”

A broken, wounded sound comes from his mouth. “No.”

Cole’s wife was kidnapped after they landed in Miami, by Gerome Lively. They rescued her, and Lively was arrested, but he got a sweetheart deal and it wasn’t until my book came out that he faced significant charges for other crimes.

“He set Hailey up.”

“Why?” Cole shakes his head. “No, don’t answer that. I see what you’re saying now. Nobody wants to see the monster right in front of them. Motherfucker. I’ll kill him.”

“I get it. I do. But that doesn’t actually solve anything. You cut off one head, another pops up elsewhere. Because it’s all connected. PRISM. Lively’s abuse of girls. You think he’s the only one?”

Cole’s eyes are blazing as he turns back to Wilson. “Where the fuck is he?”

“Officially, he’s in Geneva. Unofficially…I have no idea. But I’ve created some chaos in his network, and the New York Stock Exchange has suspended trading in his company, so wherever he is, he’ll have to show himself soon for a call with investors.”

The elevator pings, and we all pivot in that direction. My jacked-up pulse doesn’t settle down when we see that it’s Jason, either.

His face is grim. He glances at the screen on the boardroom wall. “Looking for Mack’s whereabouts? I think he’s in New York.” He gives us the summary of how it went at the White House. “POTUS is going to the United Nations this afternoon. He says he’s having lunch with Mack, who is agood guy.” He laughs hollowly. “So whatever game Mack is playing, he’s buying time to get past that lunch.”

“Or killing time, maybe?” I swallow hard against that ugly thought. “Maybe he’s bored. Maybe everything has already been set in motion, and he’s playing with us like a cat plays with string.”

“Either way, the president takes off in an hour. He has a plane at the ready, and we do not. How are we going to beat him to NYC?”

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