Perfect Lies (Mind Games 2)

FIA

Nine Hours Before

I SIT ON A BRANCH, HIDDEN BY THE NIGHT AND THE clinging leaves, my back against the tree trunk. The lake stretches out in front of me, a black slick, but if I only look up, all I see are branches and leaves and sky. No lake, no park, no city. No buildings.

No people.

Rafael’s plan is simple, and very similar to James’s. He has guaranteed me Phillip Keane at an exact time in an exact place. He does not care what method I use, as long as Phillip Keane never leaves the meeting. And as long as Phillip Keane ceases to be, Annie is safe.

In Rafael’s plan.

In James’s plan, as long as Sadie ceases to be, Annie is safe.

If Phillip Keane were supposed to die, if that were right, if I knew what right was, then I would have let that woman kill him. I wouldn’t have to decide to do it myself. It would already be done.

If Sadie were supposed to die, if that were right, if I knew what right was, then I wouldn’t have wanted to protect her, wouldn’t have wanted to save her. When I looked at her I saw myself.

But if she is me, I can’t save her anyway. No one can.

I can’t decide to kill either of them, so I take them out as variables. I make them not-people. They are not-people. They are elements of the wrong stretching out before me, and my goal is to choose the least-wrong possible.

This is easy. Rafael is wrong that makes me want to throw up. I should never have called him. I do what James asks. Rafael is implicated in the fake attempt on Phillip Keane’s life. Annie remains secret and safe. Rafael is no longer playing any game at all.

Ever.

I get two taps for the price of one. A Sadie tap and a Rafael tap. I tap tap tap tap tap tap experimentally on the side of my leg, and I want to sink into the rough bark of the tree, be folded into its green heart, cease to exist think feel be.

I’ll make myself a not-person, too. If Sadie is a not-person, and I am a not-person, then it doesn’t matter what we do to each other, what I do to her. What I do after.

I pull out the stolen phone. The picture on the sleeping screen is a smiling, chubby baby. It is amazing to me that such a thing can exist. How does it survive? How does it live in this world?

I dial another phone number I know by heart.

“Hello?” my sister says, and I let out a breath of gratitude and relief, because she is alive, no matter how many times I forced myself to make her dead in my thoughts and feelings and heart. She’s still alive.

“Heya, Annahell,” I say.

“Fia. Oh, Fia. I have to tell you—”

“Are you safe?”

“I am.”

She’s not. She’s never safe. It’s my fault, always my fault. But I’ll make this safe permanent if it’s the last thing I do. “Stay safe, okay?”

“Fia, listen to me. Don’t do it. Please don’t do it.”

I tap tap tap tap the back of my head against the tree trunk. She knows. She always knows. She’s already seen what I’ll do. She only sees the terrible things about me.

There are only terrible things to see when it comes to me.

“There’s no right choice,” I say.

“There is a right choice. Walk away. Right now. Just walk away.”

I sigh, the breeze carrying away my breath my life my future my self. “I love him. Why would I love him if I wasn’t supposed to?”