Cruel Lies (Lies 4)

I kiss down her body, stopping at her stomach that looks swollen to me, but it’s probably my imagination. She said she isn’t pregnant.

But she lied—about hurting Atlas or about being pregnant or both?

Liesel grabs my arms, shaking me fiercely under the water. “Hate me! Hate me for real. I need it to be real.” She bites down on my bottom lip, then slaps me. She’s flailing desperately for me to truly hate her. She’s purposefully trying to be cruel. But I see her clearly for the first time. I may not know all of her secrets, but I know her heart. Everything she’s ever done is to protect her son.

She’s the opposite of cruel. She is beauty and strength and all good things in the world. I’m the stupid idiot who ever thought differently of her. I just don’t know why she’s so desperate to add me to the list of people she wants to protect. Why does she think me loving her is going to hurt me?

I decide we aren’t leaving this room until she gives me an answer.

My phone starts buzzing in my pocket.

Strange.

I don’t answer. I need her. I need answers.

It eventually stops buzzing, only to start right back up again.

I groan and grab a nearby towel before picking up my phone. It’s an unknown number; a tactic Beckett would use to contact me.

“Hello?” I answer as soon as I see the number.

“I fucked up,” Beckett says.

“What happened? Are the kids…?” Safe? Alive? Dead? I can’t think any of the words out loud. But the mention of the kids has Liesel scrambling out of the shower, dripping wet with a towel and barreling toward me.

I put the phone on speaker so we can both hear.

“Phoenix took Rose and—” Beckett says.

“Okay? She’s her mother. Just call her and tell her to come back to the compound where it’s safe,” I say.

“No, I mean she kidnapped her,” Beckett says.

Liesel and I trade stares. “She’s her mother. She can’t kidnap her.”

“Well, she did. She said she was just taking Rose downstairs to get ice cream. But they are both gone, and she left a note.”

“What does the note say?”

“To give her the treasure or else she’ll kill Rose,” Beckett says.

I glance at Liesel, whose eyes are spinning. Yet again, she knows something she isn’t telling me.

“Where is Atlas?” I ask.

“Maxwell took him. I tried to fight him off, but I wasn’t strong enough.”

“Fuck.”

I throw the phone down in frustration, watching it shatter into a billion pieces.

Liesel sinks to the floor.

“They’re all working together,” Liesel says suddenly.

“What?”

She comes out of her daze and looks up at me. “They are all working together. Corbin, Maxwell, and Phoenix. Corbin played the bad guy, Maxwell our friend, and Phoenix the loving mother.”