Perfect Lies by Kiersten White Read Free Book Online Page B

why I’m fighting them, I don’t need to fight them except they won’t leave me alone.
    They have stun guns. Now I
want
to fight them. I break a nose, pop an arm out of its socket, fight my way into the corner. Two left. Two on one. Not fair.
    Not a problem.
    “Stop! Get off her!” James shouts.
    The security guard immediately in front of me pauses. I slam my head into his nose and he stumbles backward, clutching it.
    Good. Now no one is touching me. I don’t want anyone to touch me. I smooth down the front of my black tee, then finally take in the room. Several men in various stages of shock sit around a large oval table. The table I slammed the woman into. She’s still lying on the floor, but James is crouching next to her.
    “She’s not dead,” I blurt, needing to say it and needing him to confirm it. “I didn’t kill her.”
    James finally looks up and meets my eyes. I can read the panic hidden there, but his face is carefully composed. “She’s unconscious.”
    “Why did you attack her?” a handsome older man with salt-and-pepper hair asks, and when I look at him I feel
    nothing
    nothing
    nothing
    so much nothing I worry that I will lose myself in it.
    I shake my head, trying to snap out of it. He is worse than the distraction of the wrong feeling. There is something so strong in the way I react to him that it goes beyond right or wrong. I can hardly breathe. “I needed to.”
    “She’s worked here for five years.”
    James stands, holding a handgun. “She had this. I think Fia saved your life.”
    The man’s expression doesn’t change. He doesn’t have an expression. He’s not a person. For the first time in my life I think I know what fear—true fear—feels like. Because everything about him is off, so far off I don’t even know how to process it.
    “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” he says, and I think he is smiling, but it isn’t a smile because he isn’t a person. My instincts made me run in here, my instincts made me stop whatever this woman was going to do. But this man can’t be right, can’t be.
    James sets the gun on the table. “Fia, this is my father, Phillip Keane.”
    I smile because there is no other option. It is all I can do to hold in a burst of laughter, because this is the funniest thing that has ever happened to me and I am broken, once and for all, completely broken.
    I just saved the life of the man I’ve vowed to destroy.

ANNIE
Two and a Half Months Before

    “FIA,” I MUTTER, STOMPING INTO MY ROOM AND throwing open my closet door. “You’d better be having the time of your life to make up for abandoning me and forcing me to figure this all out on my own.”
    When I agreed to talk to Mae, I didn’t realize they’d track her down within a day. I wanted to be useful, I did, I
do
, but this feels fast. I’m not sure what to say to save this girl. But it should work out, shouldn’t it? Since I’m doing the right thing?
    There is the tiniest hint of an exhalation in the room and I spin around, clutching my things to my chest. “Who’s there?”
    No one answers.
    My heart racing, I edge toward the door. Now that I’m listening I can hear all the little sounds a body makes when it is trying its hardest to be silent. I open my mouth to scream, but … I know everyone in this house. I’m not going to be scared in my own room.
    I plaster a smile on my face and shake my head. “You’re going crazy, Annie.” I let my shoulders relax, hum, and toss my clothes toward the bed, then walk out into the hall and close the door behind myself.
    I count to twenty, then throw the door open and scream “GOTCHA!”
    I’m answered by a shriek. A guy’s shriek. “
Adam?
”
    “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to— You came in, and I didn’t want you to know—I was looking for something but then it was too late to let you know I was in here, and then once I was quiet for a few seconds, it felt too weird to suddenly announce myself, and … I am so,