Page 115 of The Lie Maker

Lana said nothing.

Seconds later, she could feel the fabric being unknotted at the back of her head. The blindfold fell away, and it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the light. She blinked several times and looked at the woman standing in front of her.

“Who are you?” she asked again.

“I’m Gwen,” she said.

Lana blinked several more times, getting used to the light. “With the witness protection program,” she whispered.

“Oh, so Jack’s been talking. Naughty, naughty.”

Shit, Lana thought. I’ve given it away.

But matters seemed to have progressed to a point where what might have seemed important before wasn’t anymore.

“You can’t kidnap people,” Lana said. “Even if you are with the government.”

“I suppose,” Gwen said, “if I were, then this sort of thing would be highly irregular. I haven’t been entirely truthful with Jack.” She smiled. “We’ve done some quick research on you. You’re a smart one. Doesn’t seem much point maintaining the fiction any longer.”

Fiction?

“Jack broke the rules, going off to look for his father without telling me. But there’s a way to make this right. Jack doing what he did, evidently with your help, may be what brings our business to a conclusion.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Feeling that tickle in her nose again, Lana sniffed.

Gwen pointed to another chair. “Cayden, bring me that.”

Cayden dragged it over and placed it in front of Lana. Gwen sat.

Tickety tickety tickety tickety tickety.

“And do we have to listen to that infernal racket?” Gwen asked him, looking at the fan.

“You said it was stuffy in here, so I put on the fan. Now you don’t like the fan. You want it cooler in here, or quiet? Because you can’t have both.”

Gwen sighed defeatedly. She turned her attention back to Lana. “You’ve been helping Jack. You traced a license plate. Tell me about that.”

Lana didn’t have to ponder long how Gwen might know this. She must have had Jack’s apartment bugged. They’d been listening when she got to his place and gave him the news. So what did they need her for if they’d heard everything?

There had to be things they hadn’t said out loud. She’d handed Jack a slip of paper with Frank Dutton’s information on it. He’d gone onto his laptop to see where Gilford was in New Hampshire. If they’d gone to his apartment after she’d left, they wouldn’t have been able to search the computer’s history. They would have needed a password to open it up.

“The plate was a dead end,” Lana said.

For all she knew, that might even be true. Frank Dutton didn’t have to be Jack’s father. If the plate was stolen, as Jack’s father had claimed, Jack’s trip to Gilford would prove to be a waste of time. She didn’t know one way or another.

“What makes you so sure?”

“The plate I checked, it was most likely stolen. It was a long shot. A waste of time, but Jack wanted to check it out, just the same.”

“Have you heard from him?”

“Yes,” she said. “He called me. Before... before Cayden here showed up at the bar.”

A lie seemed the smartest way to go. On the remote chance Jack’s trip proved successful, her hunch was that it was better if these people did not know.

Gwen leaned in, her face only a few inches away from Lana’s. “Why don’t we check that and—”

Lana sneezed. Right in Gwen’s face.