Free Liquid Lies by Hanna Martine Page B

scanning the Board members’ homes, setting guards. Some families chose to leave San Francisco, heading for vacation homes or any other destination a last-minute, red-eye flight would take them.
    “Griffin. I’m scared.”
    He emerged quickly from the kitchen but stopped in the hall, one hand curled around the edge of a steel and glass armoire she’d splurged on at a designer’s auction. He tried to smile reassuringly, but even he was greatly disturbed by what she’d seen tonight, and the smile turned out to be nothing more than an odd twist of his mouth.
    “Then you can be scared for the both of us. I’m the one who’s supposed to act all brave, right?”
    She buried her face in her hands. They smelled like the bar at Manny’s—of alcohol-stained wood and dusting spray—and of Reed. Even though she hadn’t even touched him. Her whole body shuddered. “How the hell did they find us?”
    “And what are they planning?”
    When she removed her hands, Griffin was moving from window to window, checking the locks and the folds of the stiff, white drapes.
    “Isn’t the fact that they’re here enough?” She finally got her feet to move, and shuffled farther inside, every sound of her narrow heels on the parquet floor a scream.
    He swept an arm around her place. “Everything look okay? Like it was how you left it this morning?”
    Had it only been this morning? It felt like she’d been away for weeks. A quick glance told her the place was immaculate, as always. She despised clutter; there wasn’t much to disturb in the first place.
    “Yeah.” She threaded a hand through her heavy hair and kneaded her neck. “Looks fine.” Griffin nodded and continued to circle around the living room, eyeing the molding between wall and ceiling.
    “We should run,” she blurted out. “Leave San Francisco.”
    “We ran once, a hundred and fifty years ago. Didn’t do much good.” He threw her a hard look. A soldier’s look. He’d never flee. He’d stay and fight.
    “The world is so much different now,” she murmured, running a hand over the back of her white sofa. “We can’t afford a war. We can’t risk the exposure.”
    Strange, but the Tedran man and woman she’d seen didn’t look like fighters. In fact, they looked just the opposite.
    “I want to know why they’re here.” Griffin’s voice punched through the heavy silence. “How they got here without the Primaries noticing. Don’t you?”
    Of course she did. But what she really wanted was to forget she’d almost slept with a man collaborating with the Ofarians’ oldest and most formidable enemy. She scraped her fingernails over the upholstery, digging them in hard. Sick to her stomach and sick with herself.
    Griffin moved to the powder room and flipped on the light. Her whole apartment was now ablaze. She started following Griffin around, turning off the lamps and lights when he was done searching, until only a standing lamp glowed softly between the two sofas and the dim glow of her bedroom stretched down the hallway. She felt better now. Hidden.
    “If they know about the Company,” he said, “they might know about Mendacia . There’s no reason for them to target San Francisco unless they came for that.”
    The Board had said as much, too, hence the extensive protection measures.
    She started to straighten a few books on her shelves, realized they were of Magritte and Mapplethorpe and Goldsworthy, and then stepped back as though they burned. Reminders of Reed everywhere. She’d have to get rid of all the pages she loved so much so she wouldn’t constantly be reminded of her awful choice to try to indulge when she should have run.
    She had to think of something else. Focus her brain on the problem.
    “Do you think our ancestors could have learned the art of glamour from the Tedrans?”
    He fingered a gray-striped pillow on the sofa and frowned. “What do you mean?”
    “Well, the words to manipulate Mendacia aren’t ancient Ofarian. We always