Page 15 of Master of Lies

I threw off the piles of brush, made heavier by heaped snow, gasping for air. My lungs were burning. I felt around for the key I had duct taped up inside the undercarriage with numb fingers. Maybe frostbitten. I could lose some of them.

Two more days, and the Drakes would have been there for backup. I could have run out the hole in the fence with Mickey, leaped into a warm car, and sped away with three tough-as-nails Unredeemables watching my back. But no. That was not to be.

Stop whining like a bitch, Clearwater.I dropped the key into snow at least twice, had to look for it in the dark with fingers that had no sensation.

Finally, I got the key and managed to open the door. I got the engine started and ratcheted up the heat. When I stowed the vehicle here, I had not counted on two feet of snow. I put it in gear, and lurched out onto the rough terrain.

I have a good visual memory, and I’d memorized every twist and turn of the terrain, but most of my many landmarks were hidden by snow.

There.Yes. The root system of a fallen fir, reaching up high into the sky like a skeletal fan, clutching boulders in its strangling coils. That was the spot where I needed to hew hard to the left… rev up, up, up…right over the big snowdrift…andyes.

I was thudding over a rough but more or less level track through the trees, lurching and wallowing. Clutching the wheel with bloody claws of hands that made me think of Mickey.

Body parts, clogging the shower drain.Don’t go there. Shut it down. Just drive.

The road ran parallel to the highway, all the way to where it intersected the powerlines. I could follow the lines down to the river road and connect with the main highway not far from the Dew Drop Inn. Where Sandee stayed, all unsuspecting.

Hoo, boy. I could feel it coming over me, like a bad rash. The urge to do something ill-considered. Self-destructive. Stupid heroics that no one had asked for.

But goddamn, that woman had done nothing to deserve what was coming for her. She’d been stupid as dirt, definitely, but not evil or greedy or cruel. She was just a weird, sweet, oversexed girl with no clue, and no discernible sense of self-preservation. Granted, she may have been cruising for a little trouble, just for the entertainment value.

But not this kind of trouble. Not the kind that landed you in the morgue.

I couldn’t leave Sandee to Boer’s tender mercies, and Boer knew it. They’d threatened her with harm just to make me jump. Now look at me, three feet in the air.

I just never learned. It’s that sign taped to my back. “Go ahead, kick my ass.”

Fuck it. What was one more rousing ass-kick. Just to make my day complete.

CHAPTER6

Freya

Istared out the window of the diner at the gusts of snow buffeting the glass. The weather was absolute shit, and even so, I felt I’d made a mistake, deciding to stay the night. I should’ve hit the road the second I walked out of that prison.

I’m still too close to Jed Clearwater to even breathe. Knowing he was just a few miles away, seething in a cage, wound me up to a fever pitch.

Which, of course, made me hate myself all the more. It was so stupid.

It was just a method acting, right? Using my old crush on him to psych myself into character. Not that it had worked. He’d resisted my womanly wiles with the greatest of ease, and kicked my ass out. Brutally. So much for my powers of seduction.

It enraged me. It was dumb, and vain, but there it was. That arrogant bastard. How dare he. He could have suffered a pang of frustrated lust for me, for fuck’s sake. He could have given me at least that much cheap, meaningless satisfaction.

But I couldn’t rationalize away the truth right in my face. Jed Clearwater still excited me…but the feeling was not at all mutual. Not even dolled up and tricked out as I had been. Which settled a burning question I hadn’t known I was still asking.

I wanted to kill the part of myself that responded to him. Just fucking euthanize it like a rabid dog. It made me so ashamed. Talking dirty to him made me flushed, wet, weak in the knees. How could this be happening? What the fuck was wrong with me?

Jed Clearwater had set up my brother to die. For money. And look at the state I was in. God, the cognitive dissonance literally hurt my head.

I looked down at the sad tomato soup, the charred grilled cheese sandwich, the cold, weak coffee. No point. I was vibrating at too high a frequency to swallow.

I should get back to the hotel room, take a nice, long shower, wash the pink streaks out of my hair. I wouldn’t need them until the next time Jed consented to let me visit, whenever that would be. Maybe never. My employees in Seattle didn’t need to see the pink Sandee hair. The bleached blonde hairdo would be weird enough for them.

I took a sip of the nasty coffee, grimacing, and fished up the hem of my puffy jacket, unfastening the hidden zipper and taking out my smartphone. My Freya Masters smartphone, anyhow. I fished out the battery, too, and assembled the thing. It was time to contact Holly, my sweet little niece. Nine years old tomorrow. Shane, her dad, had disappeared off the face of the earth, so I couldn’t disappear on her, too. I made a point of contacting her every day when we weren’t together. But I wasn’t in any state to actually talk to her. Holly was very intuitive. She’d know right away that I was all messed up. It would make her more worried, not less.

I opened up our chat, and typed in a message.

hey honey what’s up

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