Page 5 of Clever Deceit

I handed Rocco his coffee and sat opposite him, eyeing him for a moment. I wasn’t sure what read I was getting off him. My gut reaction had been that he seemed like a nice guy, but could I trust that? I didn’t know. I didn’t know if there was anyone I could trust, outside of Warren and my mother and Silver, who were currently out on a walk together.

I decided not to tell them about this. They didn’t need the stress of someone else poking around after everything else that had happened. Better to keep this private and make it so they didn’t have to worry about what was going on here. Yeah, it might not have been the smartest idea to keep things from them, but I doubted this was going to come to anything anyway.

“So can I ask what you saw on the night of the fire?” he asked. My mind flashed back to Tony grabbing me, his hands on me, his face pressed up close to mine—his eyes screwed up with anger, sheer hatred in his voice as he glowered at me. I wasn’t sure I had ever felt so hated by someone in my entire life. It was terrifying, but I still shook my head.

“Not much,” I lied. “It was all such a rush, with everything that happened. I didn’t really take any of it in.”

He nodded, but I could tell he was annoyed—he was hoping for a little more to work with than that, and I’d given him next to nothing. I shifted in my seat, hoping he wasn’t going to start pressing for more.

“And you didn’t see anyone at the scene?” he asked me. He wasn’t calling it a crime—maybe because he didn’t want to give anything away and affect the investigation, maybe because they weren’t even investigating it as one. I shook my head again.

“Nobody who stood out,” I replied. I could feel my cheeks getting hot. I had never been any good at lying, and I felt as though he must have been able to see right through me. How obvious was I making it that I was lying through my damn teeth, just hoping he didn’t figure it out?

“Okay, well,” Rocco remarked, pulling out a notebook and jotting a couple of things down. I strained to try and get a look at what he was writing, but I couldn’t see it.

“What we’re interested in is if there is anyone you can think of who might have wanted to do this to you,” he explained, lowering his voice and leaning forward slightly. “Is there anyone who fits that bill for you? Anyone at all?”

The sincerity in his tone caught me off-guard for a moment. For that split second, I really thought about telling him everything. I thought about looking him in the eye and telling him what had really happened. How Tony had been tracking me ever since I came back into town and how I was sure he would do worse. How I didn’t even want to think about what worse would look like, after the way he had gone after Warren’s house, but he wasn’t giving me much of a choice but to face up to it.

But I bit my lip, holding it back. No. I couldn’t just go telling that to anyone. For all I knew, this Rocco guy was on Warren’s payroll, and he was squeezing any information he could out of me under the veneer of actually caring. I shrugged.

“If I think of anyone, I’ll let you know,” I offered. My voice sounded artificial as I spoke, as though it was coming out of someone else.

He grimaced. It was like he could sense that he had been on the brink of actually getting something useful out of me, only for me to pull back at the last instant and hide it from him. He took a long drink of the coffee and got to his feet, reaching into his pocket to pull out a card as he did so.

“If anything comes to mind, contact me at this number,” he told me, raising his eyebrows at me pointedly. “You think you can handle that?”

I took it from him, staring down at the letters in front of me—I couldn’t take them in, my eyes too blurry with panic and tears.

“Yes,” I whispered. And with that, he headed for the door, leaving me sitting there and wondering what the hell I should do now.

I just stared at the card for a while, fighting the urge to pull out my phone and call him right then and there. I could have told him everything. Not everyone could be working for Tony and his father, right? There had to be good people left in this town, people who weren’t doing everything they could to cover for their crimes. He might have already guessed that Tony was the cause of the fire, and this was his way of giving me a chance to open up about it.

I was snapped out of the reverie I was in when I heard the front door open once more. I stuffed the card down the side of the armchair, promising myself I would come back to it later when I felt ready to. I grabbed the coffee cup he had been drinking out of and tossed it in the kitchen sink so there would be no evidence anyone else had been here at all. Plastering a smile on my face, I stepped out to greet my mom and Warren.

Silver came running over to me, nestling her head into my hand, and I smiled and patted her.

“You guys have a good walk?” I asked. My voice still had that strange tone to it, and Warren clocked it at once.

“Yeah, it was great,” he replied. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied to him, sliding my gaze to the floor. Maybe I would talk to him about this when I was feeling a little more sure of where I stood on it, but right now, I just wanted to forget it had ever happened. The memory of the fire was still too fresh in my mind, and I just wanted to leave it behind for the evening. Mom was still a little shaky, trying to get her feet under her again, and I knew it would be a while before she could really be comfortable in her own home once more.

“It’s getting cold out there,” Mom remarked, rubbing her hands together. “Do you want me to make a pot of tea?”

“I can do it,” I replied on autopilot, not even thinking about it as I headed through to the kitchen to put together a pot. Warren was right behind me, a crease in his brow and clear worry on his face.

“Lily, is everything all right?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” I replied, forcing a brightness to my tone. “I just got a little distracted from the washing up, that’s all.”

His eyes scanned the kitchen and landed on the coffee cup in the sink.

“Was someone else here?” he asked. I took a deep breath and then shook my head. It wasn’t that I wanted to lie to him, but I didn’t need to have him asking too many questions. Nothing had happened, anyway; I hadn’t shared anything that might have landed us in trouble, so there was nothing for him to be concerned about.

“Nope,” I replied. “You want a cup of tea?”

I turned my attention to the kettle and let out a long breath. And thought about the card stuffed down the side of the armchair—and if it was really from an ally, as it had seemed, or just another trick our enemies were playing.