Page 60 of Cruel Lies

To his credit, he doesn't smile. He just looks at me with those churning eyes, as patient and open as ever.Goddammit,I hate that he's a good listener. It's making me feel like he's a safe shoulder to cry on, even though I know for afacthe is not that.

"You sounded concerned on the phone," he prods gently.

"That's a word for it," I choke out.

"Tell me what's happening."

So I pull up the notification on my phone and slide it across the sticky tabletop to him. Ronan reads. He doesn't rush. He scrolls with one finger, slow and unhurried, his jaw working slightly, and I watch his face for the thing that's been driving me crazy since I met him—the flicker underneath the surface.

But there's nothing. He's smooth as brushed steel.

"It's Todd," I blurt out when I can't stand the silence. "It has to be. You said it yourself. They lose, then they regroup."

"They do." He sets the phone down and turns it face-up so the screen glows between us. "This is regrouping."

"So what do I do?"

"Nothing," he says. "You do nothing. I do everything."

"That's not—" I press my thumbs into my eyes. "That's theoppositeof what I came here for. I came here so you could tell me how to fix it myself. So I could go home and open a spreadsheet and be competent and not feel like a—like a?—"

"Like a victim," he finishes.

I drop my hands. "Yeah. That."

"You're not." He touches my wrist, just once, then withdraws. "This battle is a long way from over. It's merely a motion, and motions can be answered. Answered, then dismantled." He takes a slow breath. "And frankly, this is amateur work, Ms. Meadows. I don't think we'll have an issue fighting back."

The knot of fear loosens in my chest. Just a notch. Just enough.

"You can stop it?"

"I can." He's so full of such endless confidence. If scientists found a way to hook up some jumper cables to him, he could power the known universe forever. I find myself leaning toward him,relyingon him.

A very dangerous place to be.

Worse yet is the fact that I believe him.

Not because he's charming—he is, of course, though in a very different way than Todd. It's because he simply is what he is, unapologetically. There's not an ounce of liar in him.

"Give me a minute," he says, sliding off the stool. "I need to make some calls."

"On our date?" I joke weakly. "Kinda rude, Mr. Akov."

He smiles. "The window on responding to something like this is short, and the people I need are the sort who prefer to be woken up rather than caught flat-footed." He touches my shoulder—just barely, two fingers, gone before I can decide how I feel about it—and heads for the door. "Don't move. Don't leave."

I roll my eyes. "If you ask nicely, I might even shake and roll over."

"Oh, I'm sure you're full of useful tricks," he agrees with a laugh. Then he steps out onto the street with his phone at his ear.

I sit there and stare at my water, trying to feel like a woman in charge. I do a pretty decent job of it for about ninety seconds.

Then a glass appears in front of me.

"From the gentleman over there," the bartender says. He tips his head toward the far end of the bar, where a guy in a quarter-zip and expensive sneakers lifts his own drink at me with a flirtatious smile.

The drink is a dirty martini. I'm briefly annoyed that he correctly guessed my preferred intoxicant.

"Oh," I say. "No. Thank you, but no."