PANIC

And we’re a team, he said. It doesn’t have to be me against the world.

Because I’m part of the team. 

Chapter Twenty-Seven - RONIN

I pull Clare aside as Roger dismisses today’s models for lunch. “I need to talk to you, Clare. Wanna have lunch with me upstairs?”

She winds her arm around mine and smiles brightly. “Absolutely!”

We walk up to my apartment together and I usher her in after I open the door. “Rook made some pasta yesterday. Want some of that? Or I have cheese and stuff.”

“Rook doesn’t look like the domestic type. I’m surprised she even knows how to cook pasta.”

I close the fridge and turn around. “See, that’s pretty much what I have to talk about. This animosity you have for Rook has to stop. I love this girl, Clare. I’m not breaking up with her, she’s not breaking up with me, we’re gonna get married and live out all that happily-ever-after bullshit. Because she’s the one. You need to stop talking shit about her.”

I expect a total capitulation, but she hands me a shrug. “I don’t believe you, Ronin.”

I laugh, seriously let out a total guffaw. “Which part is giving you trouble then? I’ll try to be clearer.”

“The part where you think Rook is sticking around. Everyone talks about her, ya know. All the Chaput models have filled me in on how things went when she got there. Even some of the photographers think she’s got one foot out the door.”

I can only shake my head at her brazen audacity. “Clare, listen to me very carefully, OK? Shut the fuck up about Rook. I do not give one shit what you think about my relationship with her. It’s none of your goddamned business. And if I fucking even get a whiff that you’re being nasty to her, or telling her shit about photoshoots, present ones or otherwise, I’ll fire you from this contract so fucking fast your head will spin.”

She laughs. “You couldn’t fire me, Ronin. The GIDGET people want me. They’d be pissed.”

“You must be under the impression that I give a fuck what those people want. I don’t. I bid on this contract because it was a challenge, not because I need the fucking money. And I’ll tell you something right now. I’ll throw it all away, pay off every fucking model, every fucking photographer, and every fucking crew member and walk away in a second. This job is a commitment I chose to fulfill because it looked fun, and nothing else.”

The shock on her face starts somewhere in the middle of my speech and by the time I’m done she looks ready to cry. “Why are you being so mean to me?”

“Mean? Fuck, girl. I’ve done nothing but help your ass for months. The least you can do is be fucking cordial to the woman I love.”

“Ronin! I’ve always had your back, you know that. We’ve always been tight.”

“We’ve always been friends, nothing more. So what’s with all this new relationship shit?”

“I just think she’s unpredictable and she’s gonna end up hurting you, I can feel it.”

“Well, look, Clare. I’m a big fucking boy, OK? If she does take off, you can rest assured that I can handle it. She’s not gonna, by the way. She won’t.” My phone buzzes and I take it out of my pocket and check the message. “Someone’s here to see me, so is this all clear, then?” Her look is defiant but she keeps silent as she nods her head. “Good, then let’s go.”

We walk back downstairs and as soon I spot my visitor near the front door I know what’s up.

FBI is back.

Fuck.

I don’t look at Clare but I know she knows what’s up too. I just hope our little moment doesn’t come back to haunt me in the form of her talking to the fucker in the black suit when I’m not looking. I straighten up my back and head over to him. “Mr…” I trail off like I forgot his name.

“Abelli,” he adds to my silence. “Agent Abelli.”

“Right, I knew that.” I smile at him. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, Mr. Flynn, we’ve been noticing some discrepancies in your statement to the Denver police and we’d like you to come down to the station and take a polygraph. Do you think you could oblige us with that?”

Aaaaannnd… game starts now.

I widen my smile. “Oh, absolutely. I’d be more than happy to.” I grab my leather jacket from a hook near the door and wave him out of the studio. “I’ll meet you down there.”

“Actually, my partner dropped me off, so if I could catch a ride with you, that’d be great.”

“No problem. What’d he do, go grab some donuts?”

Abelli laughs but the tension lines on his face tell me it’s forced. “No, he just needed to get back to the station and set up the machine.”

“Just messing with ya, dude. I know you’re not really donut eaters.”

He shuts up after that and I just unlock the doors to my truck and we both slide in. The drive down to the station only takes a few minutes since it’s mid-morning and traffic is light, but it feels like an eternity as we sit and listen to the radio. What the fuck could this be about? It can’t be Jon. I had nothing to do with any of the hacking. And Rook would’ve called me if they had Ford in custody, even if Spencer wouldn’t. No, it’s not about Jon. I didn’t even really have to lie when I gave my statement. The only thing not true was the text message. And even so, it was present and legit by the time the cops checked the phone.

No, this isn’t about that asshole, but beyond that I have no other info. But I will. Because they’re fishing for answers with this polygraph, which means they have to tip their hand with the questions they ask.

Well, bring it on. Because as Spencer said last summer when he was painting Rook, everyone has one God-given gift.

And mine is lying.

Actually, it’s acting, but what’s the difference, really? My time in India was not wasted with trips to the Taj Mahal with the tourists because there was another American artist in the hotel with us and this guy was filming a documentary about poor kids. Kinda like Slumdog Millionaire except it was supposed to be real. But no one wanted to talk to this guy or let their kids be manipulated into revealing how horrible their lives were, so he hired me to be his star poor kid even though I was an American living in a five-star hotel.

Turns out the guy was quite the liar himself and he set the whole thing up to be believable.

Let’s just say it was an elaborate plot with parents being robbed and killed on vacation and me running for my life from the Mumbai underworld after witnessing it. He did get caught faking the documentary but he played it off like it was sort of a Blair Witch thing, right? And this is when I discovered I was a fucking natural liar. Actor. Same thing.

I saw the movie a few years later—he won some independent film award for it, even. I would cry and look desperate and beg people for money on the streets, and I told a story that had Elise uncontrollably sobbing, that’s how fucking sad I made it.

But that guy never did out me. That was one of the terms in the contract Elise signed. No one would know it was me and I got a stage name. I got five thousand dollars for lying while we were in India. Which was a lot of fucking money to Elise and me at the time.

Then the modeling gigs started coming in and they wanted me to act but not speak. So I learned to talk with my body and facial expressions.

And this is how my gift works in a nutshell. You wrap your mind around a scenario, you believe that scenario with all your heart, and then you just react—body and mind together. It’s not hard at all, not really.

I never did any acting in the States because by the time we settled back down and I was in an actual school full time I was too cool for that theater shit. There is no record of Ronin Flynn ever being an actor. And if there’s no record of it, it never happened.

So polygraphs? No problem. This asshole has no idea what’s coming. 

Chapter Twenty-Eight - ROOK