Page 130 of The Next Lie

Isabel looks toward the fire that’s always burning in the grate. She wants me to speak. To ramble. I stay quiet.

After a while, she continues. “You have been restless too.”

“I am often restless.”

“You went to Chicago three times in the last two years.”

The glass stops halfway to my mouth. I recover as smoothly and swiftly as I can, resuming its track and taking a healthy swallow.

Fuck. It was only a heartbeat. But it was enough for one as sharp as her.

She blinks, catlike eyes that remind me of Reva. “I had no missions on record for you there.”

“I do not record every breath I take.”

“You record the useful ones.”

“Chicago has old contacts.”

“Names.”

I almost smile. “If they had names worth giving you, I would have given them.”

“You expect me to accept that?”

“I expect you to know I dislike wasting your time.”

That pleases her. Slightly.

Compliments do not soften Isabel. They only remind her of the hierarchy she built and the debt expected from everyone living inside it.

“What did you want there?” she asks.

“Information.”

“About?”

“A courier route that went dead after Katrina and reappeared through Chicago.”

Her eyes stay on me.

It is a good answer because it is partly true. An old route did reappear. I did trace it. I also used it as cover to spend four hours outside Reva’s apartment while she slept behind a third-floor window with one lamp on and a baseball bat propped beside her bedroom door. A guy she’d gone out with exactly once had turned obsessive and didn’t like the word ‘no.’ I made sure he gained new respect before I went back to Louisiana.

That time.

Isabel taps one finger against the arm of the chair. “Three trips for a dead route.”

“Two trips for the route. One because the man I was tracking lied.”

“And?”

“He died.”

That earns the smallest smile. “Useful.”

“Eventually.”

She studies me long enough that I feel every old lesson settle back into my bones.