Spies and Prejudice (27 page)

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he finally asks. “There’s no going back.”

“For who?”

“For you. Me.” He opens his mouth and closes it again, holding back whatever he wanted to say.

But it doesn’t matter. I need to know what happened to her. I don’t want to go back to being the scared little girl who thought her mother left on purpose. I can only move forward. And I’m not foolish enough to believe that Tanner Halston will ever be part of my future. I need this. “When did you find out?”

“This afternoon. After you mentioned my dad could be involved.”

“And when were you planning on telling me? Never?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“You know this is important to me.”

He throws the bottle of Frantic at a pile of boxes. His silence hangs in the air between us, an invisible chasm that gets wider with every second that passes.

Tanner doesn’t owe me anything. I’m just a distraction. A damaged girl who keeps getting in the way of keeping the formula, and his father, safe. I turn away from him and start walking back toward where we left Drew. “Forget I asked.”

Tanner runs to catch up. “You deserve to know the truth.” He reaches for my hand, lacing his fingers with mine, as if the physical connection will bridge the distance. As if his acknowledgment of my deserving to know is the same as telling me.

It’s nowhere near, but I don’t blame Tanner. The ending of my mom’s story will always be the same, no matter how it happened. No matter how important learning about the past might be to me, Tanner would be gambling with his present. His future. Maybe I don’t want him to be the instrument that destroys his own family. If it came down to protecting my own dad, I would hold tight to my secrets.

I squeeze his hand. “It’s okay.”

He watches me closely, like he’s not quite sure he believes me.

“Don’t think I’m giving up or anything.” I don’t know if I’ll ever be this close to the truth again. Maybe I won’t. Tanner tries to smile again, but it’s a sad smile. I can almost feel the past, our parents’ past, between us.

A door opens with a bang, and Mary Chris’s voice carries across the warehouse. “Berry! Tanner!”

Tanner doesn’t move away from me. He kisses me lightly on the forehead. “I’m sorry,” he says.

I stare up at Tanner. His mouth is so close that all I have to do is lift my chin and I could kiss him. “Me too,” I whisper.

Tanner steps away from me and shoves his hands in his pockets. He looks at something past me, avoiding eye contact. I keep my eyes trained on his face, daring him to look at me.

He doesn’t. He’s already as good as gone.

All at once there is a rush of voices and the sound of boxes and bottles being cleared as paramedics make a path to Drew from somewhere on the other side of the boxes.

Ryan and Mary Chris run up behind me. Mare takes one look at my blood-soaked shirt and her eyes widen.

“I’m okay,” I say. “How did it go?”

“Ryan is amazing. He disarmed the firewall in under five minutes.” She smiles up at Ryan with total admiration. “Turns out Dave taught Ryan everything he knows.”

“Mary Chris is too modest.” Ryan puts a proprietary arm around her. “This girl knows her way around a file encryption.” He holds up a thumb drive in his other hand. “Mission accomplished.”

“We’ll take it,” Tanner says, reaching for the drive. “Someone needs to go to the hospital and keep an eye on Drew so we can take him into custody as soon as he’s released.” He looks down at the blood splatters on his ripped shirt. “There’ll be less questions if you go.”

Ryan nods. “On it.”

“Wait,” I say. “Aren’t you going to call the police? You have the evidence Drew was trying to steal the formula.”

Tanner shakes his head. “Michael likes to keep things private.”

“But Drew?”

“Is handled,” Ryan says. He looks at Mare. “Later?”

“I was hoping I could come along.” She grins, and it’s obvious
that they are back on in a big way. Good for Mary Chris. I always liked Ryan. Except Mare needs the file to get her dad out of jail.

“What about your dad?” I ask. “We need those files to clear his name.” Dave Preston is the one who should be behind bars.

“Mom called a few minutes ago. Dad’s out. Dave Preston found evidence that Heather Marrone was paid to say she lied about witnessing the accident. The police can’t believe a word she says. My dad’s been cleared.”

And so has Dave Preston. Somehow I’m guessing that Dave didn’t tell the police the whole story. I stare at the hard drive as it passes from Ryan to Tanner. The answers are there. Doesn’t Mare want to see the proof of her father’s innocence? “Don’t you want to know?”

Mare blinks. “I know my father. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. I don’t need to fact-check it.”

I don’t know if it’s love or faith or naivete that makes Mare so sure about her dad, but it occurs to me that whatever it is, I don’t have it. Whether it’s something that was sucked out of me on the day my mother died, or something that was never there to begin with, there is no question that it’s not there now.

Mare’s blind faith puts her right in the path of a proverbial semitruck that she’ll never even see coming, but at least she’s happy now. The problem with living your life with eyes wide open is that those happy moments are harder to come by and far more fleeting.

Tanner closes his fingers around the hard drive.

The problem with knowing the semi’s coming is that it doesn’t hurt any less when it hits.

“Dude,” Ryan says, and takes Mare’s hand.

Tanner waits for Ryan and Mary Chris to leave, watching them disappear around the corner. He tilts his head to the side, finally making eye contact. He flips the drive around in his fingers.

“What?”

He holds the hard drive out to me. “Take it.”

I stare at the little black box. It’s nondescript, but it takes a concerted effort not to flinch away from it. I want to know until I’m confronted with the proof.

Tanner pushes it at me. “You need to see this. Even if you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Tanner, remember?” Not by a long shot. And now he is going to give me the evidence that will put his father away. Evidence I won’t be able to ignore.

“You might.” He takes my hand and places the drive there, closing my fingers around it. He lets go and steps back quickly, like he’s afraid I’ll bite.

I tighten my fist around the drive, torn. The truth is here, in the palm of my hand. But at what price?

Tanner takes another step away from me. “I swear I didn’t know.”

A box crashes to the floor behind us. We both turn toward the sound.

Michael Moss steps over some plastic bottles and strides toward us.

I slip the hard drive in my back pocket, relegating its secrets to the dark for just a little while longer.

M
r. Moss looks like he just came from the golf course. It’s hard to believe he’s spent the day in the police station. “I understand you’ve caught the infiltrator.” Mr. Moss’s gaze is hard, making me feel more like the captured than the captor.

“We did,” Tanner says.

Mr. Moss looks at Tanner. “And the formula?”

“He never got near it.” Tanner’s eyes dart to my hand, just as Dave Preston comes around the corner.

“The file’s been compromised. We’ll have to move—” Dave stops talking abruptly when he sees me standing next to Tanner.

Seeing Dave and Tanner together makes it impossible to deny that they’re related. Impossible to separate the father from the son. The murderer from the, what? What is Tanner to me now?

“It’s fine,” Tanner says. “Ryan got the file out. Drew never saw it.”

Dave looks from Tanner to me, a question in his eyes. He wants to know if I’ve seen it. If I know the truth.

“No one saw it.” Tanner answers the unspoken question.

“Good work.” Dave winks at Tanner, and I want to slap him. Good job keeping Berry from seeing the files is what he means. Good job making sure my crime stays buried.

It’s strange standing face-to-face with the man responsible for Mom’s murder. Without a gun pointed at my chest, he looks almost normal. Like someone’s father. Like Tanner’s father.

“Where is the file?” Moss asks.

Tanner shakes his head. “We destroyed—”

“I have it.”

Everyone turns to stare at me. Dave Preston holds out his hand.

I put my hands in my pockets. I’m not getting out of here with this thing, but I’m in no hurry to give it up yet either. Tanner looks shocked, but I’m not going to let him do this for me. I’m done hurting my friends.

And there’s no question now that Tanner is a friend.

“Well?” Dave says.

I kick at a green bottle on the floor, rolling it toward him. “Explain this.”

Dave’s forehead crinkles. His knees bend slightly as he picks up the bottle.

Mr. Moss smiles. “Try it.”

I reach down and pick up a bottle. “I think I’ll pass.”

“It’s perfectly safe, Berry, the result of ten years of research and development.”

He might as well be asking me to drink a bottle filled with my mother’s blood. “No. My mom was going to stop you, and now that she’s out of the way, you think you can just sneak this drink out into
the marketplace without anyone knowing. Well, you can’t. I know. Drew knows.”

“Berry.” Tanner steps beside me and grabs my wrist.

He may as well be putting a leash on a tiger. I have no intention of letting Mr. Moss get away with drugging half the population. “My mother died for this.” I glare at Dave. “And it won’t be for nothing.”

Mr. Moss shakes his head. “Your mother saved this company from a potential disaster. It was through her work that we were able to discover the dangers associated with Juiced. We were able to pull the product before its national launch. It took us eight years to fix the problems, but we did.”

The gray stripe in Moss’s hair seems whiter than normal. “You fixed it?”

“Of course. The FDA has already tested it and cleared it.”

I step toward Dave Preston. “But you killed my mother anyway?”

Tanner tries to pull me back, but ends up moving with me.

“You think I killed your mother?”

“I know it. You paid Heather Marrone to go to the police before the accident happened. The only way you could know it was going to happen in the first place is if you planned to kill her.”

“I didn’t kill anyone.” Dave stares at Tanner’s hand around my wrist.

Tanner lets me go. He can’t help me anymore. If he ever really could. Tanner, the one person I let get too close. We are tied together. His father is responsible for my mother’s death. That’s not something I can pretend didn’t happen. Dave can deny it all he wants, but there’s only one explanation.

“Had her killed. Semantics.”

“No one killed your mother.” Michael Moss picks up one of the green plastic bottles and turns it over in his hands. “Dave saved her life.”

“Funny how she ended up dead then, isn’t it?”

Tanner rests his hand on my shoulder. He says my name so quietly that I might imagine it.

I look from Mr. Moss to Dave to Tanner. They all have the same expression on their face. The same, pitying, sorry-for-me expression that I’ve seen a million times. My fingers shake as I push Tanner’s hand away. There is no reason for them to feel sorry for me now. I’m where I want to be. Confronting my mother’s killer. Finally, finally, I have someone to blame. But instead of anger, all I feel is fear. The hole in my heart is still here. Right where it’s always been. There is no solace in having an enemy. No closure.

I will always be broken.

“What?” I finally ask, panic making the word come out too high and too loud.

Tanner looks at the floor. “She deserves to know.”

I stare at him, but he doesn’t look up, he won’t make eye contact.

“What?” I say again, pleading this time.

Mr. Moss nods his head toward Dave. “Go ahead.”

Dave blinks. He looks around the mess of crumpled boxes and plastic bottles before his eyes settle back on me. “What I’m about to tell you can’t leave this room. Ever.”

“If it’s about how you killed my mom, I’m pretty sure I can’t keep that to myself.” I cling to the last shred of anger I find. It’s the only
thing that keeps me upright, the only thing that keeps me from collapsing along with the stacks of boxes.

He shakes his head. “I didn’t kill your mother. No one did.”

The seed of anger takes root and expands. I don’t buy the suicide story. Not anymore. Dave Preston can parade a thousand witnesses in front of me and I will never believe that my mother left me that way. “She didn’t kill herself,” I say with a certainty I feel in my bones.

Dave nods. “Correct.”

He’s agreeing with me? “It wasn’t an accident either.” The accident was staged. By Dave Preston.

“Also true.” Dave rubs his hand through his hair. It’s the same gesture I’ve seen Tanner do when he’s uncomfortable. When he’s about to say something he doesn’t want to say.

“Then how did she die?” I picture the gun in Dave’s hand, held to my mother’s face. I can see her clearly, her gray eyes flickering with fear, her brown hair curling where it sticks to her neck.

Dave sighs. “She didn’t.”

My mouth goes instantly dry. The large room seems smaller somehow, like the walls are closing in around us. The lights flicker until all I see are white spots. My legs shake, but my brain is still trying to process what Dave Preston says.

My mother didn’t die
.

My mother didn’t die
.

It’s impossible and completely insane and so, so, so freaking
wrong
. Dave starts to say something, but I hold up my hand. “Don’t.” I can’t hear any more of this. I can’t.

Tanner finally looks at me, his eyes full of sadness.

I shouldn’t have felt anything more than sorry for you
.

At least now Tanner gets his wish.

I sit down on the cold concrete of the warehouse floor while Dave Preston tells his story. I get enough to understand the gist of it, but it’s all a hazy blur.

My mother found the problem with Juiced. Someone threatened her life. She asked Dave and Mr. Moss to help her. She was afraid they were going to hurt me and Dad. They arranged for her to disappear into a witness protection program. The accident was faked. My mother changed her name and her identity.