The Liar's Lullaby by Meg Gardiner Read Free Book Online Page B

long time.”
    He wrapped his arms around her waist. “My buttons. Yeah, I’m the one whose control panel is blowing up here.”
    He kissed her.
    Sometimes he seemed as still as a pool of water. Sometimes he seemed reserved to the point of invisibility. She knew that the surface reflected little of the turbulence beneath, that it hid his intensity and resolve. He was an illusionist, a master of emotional sleight of hand.
    His cool served him perfectly as a PJ, a search and rescue expert for the Air National Guard. He came off as affable and reassuring. But sometimes, when he was challenged or threatened, his attitude changed, and Jo glimpsed the warrior he had been.
    And was about to be again.
    One day gone, eighty-seven left. Gabe had been called up to active duty. At the end of the summer, he and others from the 129th Rescue Wing had orders for a four-month deployment to Djibouti, to provide combat search and rescue support for the U.S. military’s Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa. He’d be back at the end of January. After that he’d remain on active duty for another eight months, but thought it possible he would serve much of that time at the Wing’s headquarters, Moffett Field in Mountain View.
    But as always when reservists were called up, Gabe’s life was getting blown to the wind. He wasn’t just a pararescueman; thanks to the G.I. Bill, he was also a graduate student at the University of San Francisco. Deployment was going to tear up his academic schedule. But his first priority was his ten- year-old daughter, Sophie. He was a single dad. His ex-girlfriend lived in the city but on the fringes of competence, and saw Sophie only twice a month. Gabe had gone to painful time and expense to modify his custody arrangement so that Sophie would live in San Francisco with his sister and her husband while he was deployed. Sophie wasn’t happy that he was going. But she knew it was his job. She’d been through it before.
    Jo hadn’t. But, holding him, she set that aside. She tried to stop the ticking in her head.
    He brushed her curls from her face. “You okay?”
    “Once I saw Tina, I was great.”
    His face looked sober. “It was only a close call. But I know that’s too close.”
    She suppressed thoughts about any dangers involved in his deploying to the Horn of Africa. And she knew she was far more head over heels for this man than she could ever have imagined.
    “What part of hell does your new case come from?” he said.
    “I’m going to perform a psychological autopsy on Tasia McFarland. It seems I’m going to ride the tiger.”
    His eyes widened. “Excited?”
    She had to think about it a moment. “Yes.”
    “Ready for the predators to come at you out of the tall grass?”
    “Undoubtedly not.”
    “You really are a thrill seeker, aren’t you?”
    Sharp guy, Gabe Quintana. She put her hands on his shoulders. “I am. How long can you stay?”
    He smiled and pulled her against him. And his cell phone rang.
    Jo leaned back. He answered the call.
    “Dave Rabin, what’s up?” he said, and within five seconds she knew that thrill seeking of a radically different kind was on his agenda.
    “Sixty minutes. I’ll be there.” He flipped his phone off. “Merchant tanker five hundred miles off the coast, reports a fire in the engine room. They’re adrift and down at the stern. Multiple casualties.”
    Jo reluctantly let him loose. A buzz seemed to radiate from him. He put a hand on her hip and kissed her again.
    “Bring ’em back,” she said. “Be safe.”
    He ran down the steps toward his truck. She hung in the doorway and watched him go. She didn’t want to close the door, to turn back to Tasia McFarland and the unblinking certainties of death. She watched him go until he was out of sight.

10
    N OEL MICHAEL PETTY THUDDED UP THE HOTEL STAIRS, SWEATY AND winded, cradling the artifact inside the fatigue jacket. The hallway was dank but empty. Petty rushed inside the hotel room, slammed