Perfect Lies (Mind Games 2)

“Wanna go dancing?” I ask.

“Hells yes.”

Pixie shrugs into her leather coat and we walk together toward the lobby. The lobby I was so desperate to get past this morning. Will I be stuck there again? Mr. Keane is nowhere to be seen, but we pass an open door and I look in to see James listening as two other men talk. He’s pale, obviously troubled by today’s events, but gives me a ghost of a smile and a hint of a nod.

Guess I did something right after all. I don’t think access will be a problem again.

All it took was foiling one murder and causing another.

I drag Pixie onto the dance floor with me, try to help her forget everything, turn it off, stop listening. She whines that she can’t stop hearing things.

“Let it be static,” I say. “Don’t tune in.”

I also give her drinks stronger than Shirley Temples. A lot of them. I tip my own drinks back and think how buzzed I am getting, how I really shouldn’t have any more to drink but, hey, why not.

Meanwhile, I don’t actually drink anything.

I smile at Pixie as she nods her head in time to the music. Or rather, not actually at all in time to the music. Her eyelids droop and she sways into my shoulder, resting her head there. Sleepy drunk. Sleepy drunks are adorable. Angry drunks are less so. Funnier, though.

“So,” I say. “Are you loyal to Mr. Keane?”

“I am loyal to myself. Whatever gets me where I want to go.”

“And right now?”

“Right now that’s my big fat paychecks.”

At least I can tell James she’s cleared for loyalty. It makes me sad. But, then again, I’m here, doing bad things, because I am trying to get to where I want to go.

But I lost where that was. I can’t find it anymore. I saved his life. That can’t have been right. There is no world in which sacrificing that woman for Mr. Keane is right. And if I can’t feel right anymore . . .

I poke Pixie to make sure she’s still awake. “The crazy woman was plotting to kill Mr. Keane. How long do you think she was working toward it?”

“Casey. Her name was Casey. And she’s planned it for months.”

“By herself

?”

Pixie shakes her head. “No. She thought of a few other names.”

“And they were?”

“Lerner. That’s the one I told them. She also thought about James.”

I frown. “Well, she knows him, obviously.”

“It didn’t feel like that kind of thinking about him. But I didn’t mention that.”

“You didn’t?” She isn’t totally loyal, then? Does she keep things from Keane?

“Of course I don’t tell them everything,” she says. The tears pooling in her eyes catch the light, glinting more than the studs in her eyebrow. “Is it our fault? That she’s going to die?”

I shake my head. Then I shrug. “Her fault. She got caught.”

“Because of us.” Pixie looks like her heart is breaking, and I know what that feels like, how deep those fissures go, how much of your soul cracks off and disappears.

“No. Look at me. Look at me, Pixie. You wouldn’t have caught her. I did. You have no blame in this. Understand?”