First Lie Wins(44)
What does killing them accomplish? Lucca Marino from Eden, North Carolina, is dead.
I made no secret that I fiercely protected my true identity. In that first year, Matt would start every conversation with small talk when he would call to discuss my next job, and I was dumb enough to believe we were friends. My plans of reclaiming my identity to live as Lucca Marino were the one constant topic. I even told him about the house I would build and the garden I would plant.
But her death does not stop me from reclaiming the Lucca Marino identity. It makes it difficult, but not impossible. Killing her off was an extreme move and not one Devon or I anticipated. Mr. Smith said she was sent as a reminder, but I didn’t need a reminder of how dangerous this game is.
Which brings me back to the possibility—and hope—that it really was an accident.
And then there’s Ryan.
What does it mean for this job if it wasn’t an accident?
His grip on me loosens and he lets out a soft snore. Today took a toll on him.
Slowly, I unlatch Ryan from my waist and slide out from underneath him, replacing my lap with a throw pillow. Between the hangover I know he had this morning and the stress of the day, he doesn’t even flinch.
A glance at the clock on the oven tells me it’s time to get going. I hope Devon will be waiting for me so we can go over everything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours.
In six years of working together, Devon and I have come a long way. He knows exactly who I am and where I came from, and I have made the extremely short list of those he has trusted with who he really is and the details of his past. In fact, I believe there are only three of us on that list.
Pulling out my phone, I open Instagram. I have zero posts and a handful of followers who are mostly bots, but I follow Devon’s bogus account plus forty-seven others, 90 percent of them businesses or famous personalities that post every day. Out of the forty-seven accounts my bogus account follows, thirty-two of them are also followed by Devon’s. And even though I posted my comment on Southern Living’s latest post letting him know I needed to meet up with him tonight at five, he will answer me in a comment on a completely different account so no one would be able to link our comments as communication between the two of us.
His paranoia knows no bounds.
I can’t give him a hard time about that though because there is no telling how many times his protocols have saved us in the past and we didn’t even know it.
Scrolling through my feed, I stop when I get to the New Orleans Saints account and see the comment from skate_Life831043. This comment from Devon is the only one visible on my feed since we follow each other and also mutually follow this account, so I’m saved from having to scroll through hundreds of comments to find his.
His comment reads: Who Dat! That’s my 3rd favorite player right there!! #RightOnTime
First thing Devon does when I get the details on a new job is scope out five places where he’s comfortable for us to meet. The third one on the list he gave me when we got to Lake Forbing is the coffee shop on Main. His hashtags always either confirm the meeting time works or give me an alternative. I have thirty minutes to get there since he’ll be #RightOnTime.
I pull a sheet of paper off the pad near the fridge and leave Ryan a note that I’ve gone to pick us up some food, then slip out of the house.
I’m five minutes early, but I see Devon has beat me here.
It took two years for Devon to share the first personal detail about himself. We were going over blueprints for an office building I needed to get inside of after hours, and he recognized a name from a list of people who had offices on the floor I was trying to access. “He’s a tech guy. Spoke at MIT when I was there,” he had said. I didn’t want to pry, but I also wanted to learn as much about him as I could, so I attempted a joke, hoping to get more out of him. “Were you solving his complicated equations on the whiteboard in the hall?” His stare made me think I’d taken the wrong approach, but then he laughed. A real laugh. And that broke the ice between us. The details were still given to me in small pieces but now I have the full picture of who he really is.
Devon is sitting at the counter that runs along the entire back wall. These spots are mostly used by individuals or couples since the seating is not conducive to conversation with anyone other than the person sitting right next to you. He’s working one of those complicated kakuro puzzle books he loves and wearing those huge over-the-ear-style headphones, his head and shoulders moving to a beat even though I know there’s no music coming through the speakers.
His IQ is off the charts. If he’s awake, he’s got to keep that brain busy, like with the book in front of him. He started at MIT when he was seventeen, but he said he knew he wouldn’t last long there; not that he couldn’t handle the workload but more because he was bored out of his mind. His words. What sealed it was when he was given an assignment to build a network system for a simulated online advertising company only to discover it was a real business and his teacher was getting his students to do all the work for his side gigs.
The free enterprise system being what it is, he went straight to the client and made a deal to sell it to him directly at a slightly reduced rate, then clued in every other student in the class, who followed suit.
Then he was in business. It didn’t take him long to find the most profitable work isn’t always legal. His greatest success was retrieving info people didn’t even know they needed, then offering it to them for an attractive price. He loves moving around in those dark places. Thrives on getting around systems meant to keep him out. And if you prove to be loyal to him, he will forever be loyal to you.