Page 86 of Master of Lies

He made a move as if he were going to touch me again, but I flinched back. “Go on, now. Please. You’re just making it harder.”

He turned away without another word and jogged off into the darkness.

The car he’d rented that day hummed into life. Headlights sliced through the trees, flickering as he accelerated away. He circled the bend, and the light was gone.

I had a brief meltdown, since he wasn’t there to see me, but I got it under control quickly. I headed for the bathroom, swiftly showered off the crunchy helmet of hairspray, and swabbed off all the make-up. I put on the regular clothing we’d bought for me today, jeans and a thick, warm sweatshirt. Then I combed my wet hair back behind my ears, and that was it. No reason to wait any longer.

I dug into the stash of burner phones we’d bought today. It was an obscene hour to call my brother, but who cared. Of course, my oldest brother slept with his phone by his pillow, being twitchy by nature. He picked up instantly. “Who the fuck is this?”

Yep, that was my bro for you. “Hey, Ethan. It’s me.” I braced myself, and not a second too soon, because he lit right into me, with all the savagery I had fully expected from him.

“Where thefuckhave you been?” he roared. “Why haven’t you been answering your phone? I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I’m up in Seattle right now, grilling all of your friends, and they’re all fucking useless! Did you think Holly didn’t have enough to cry herself to sleep about without losing you, too?”

“She hasn’t lost me,” I soothed. “Listen up, Ethan. I don’t have time for the lecture right now. I need to convey a lot of information very quickly, and then I need your help, and fast. Along with all the Unredeemables you can pull together. Right now.”

“Frey? What the fuck are you doing?” His voice was soft with disbelief.

“I’m with Jed Clearwater,” I said.

“You’re…where? With who? The Jed Clearwater who sold your brother for fifteen-fucking-million dollars?”

“Ah, well. About that. He didn’t, actually,” I told him. “I tracked him down, after he disappeared a few months ago—”

“And never told me what you were doing.”

I knew my brother well enough to feel the volcano rumbling, about to blow, but all I could do was press doggedly on. “Uh, right. Sorry about that. He was using a different name, and he was in prison, undercover, trying to make contact with a guy who could give him dirt on the person who did sell Shane. Wex Boer.”

“Oh, for the love of God,” Ethan snarled. “Boer’s dead, Frey! His death was officially confirmed, using dental records and DNA analysis! Clearwater is playing you. He’s an excellent liar. He had me fooled for years. He fooled Shane, too.”

“But it’s not true. Boer isn’t dead. He faked his death.”

“Yeah? Really? Is that what he you told you?” Ethan’s voice had that dismissive, talking-down tone that always drove me mad.

“He didn’t have to tell me,” I said. “I met Boer myself. He tried kill me twice. I’m only alive because of Jed.”

That startled him into silence, but the satisfaction was all too brief. “Where are you, Frey?”

His voice had gotten detached. He was in get-it-done warrior-mode.

“Later for that,” I said. “Do you want to hear what’s happening, or not?”

Ethan kept his mouth shut for the time it took to tell him the essential, abridged version of the tale, without spilling that I was wildly in love with the guy. But I might as well not have bothered to omit any details. Ethan Masters had many terrible character traits, but being unobservant was not one of them.

“Tell me something, Frey,” he said, when I wrapped it up. “Jed knew that we suspected him. The evidence was stacked up against him before he disappeared into thin air. So how is it he ever agreed to see you at the prison in the first place? It seems like a piss-poor idea on his part. Pretty stupid, actually, and that guy never struck me as stupid.”

I hesitated briefly. “He, ah…didn’t know it was me.”

“Come again?” he said, blankly. “How…”

“I’d created an alter ego,” I explained. “I’ve been growing her for months. Her name was Sandee. She was one of those girls who fall in love with convicted felons and court them while they’re behind bars. I changed up my looks, bleached out my hair, dressed differently, made myself up. And went to see him. He had no idea it was me.”

“Why?” Ethan sounded shocked. “To what end? That’s senseless, Frey.”

“I wanted to get under his guard,” I said. “I hoped to get him to spill some sort of information that could help our search for Shane.”

Listening to myself, it sounded crazy in retrospect. Hell, it had sounded crazy even in forward-spect. But this was no time to fuss about my poor choices.

“And you say he didn’t recognize you?”

---