Brains are predictable—not just through modern medicine, but common sense. If you know how they work, it’s easy to game the system; this is exactly what the FBI are trying to do with me. They’ve planted a seed of doubt via Leo, and now they’re waiting for me to act on it. To come forward with what I know about Ash’s father—seek him, draw him out. It’s obviously who they’re looking for. How helpful of me to know absolutely fuck all.
In a couple of days, when she recovers from the all the stress of the Blood Honey case and getting on this plane, Leo will catch up. She’s off her game a little lately—so absorbed in her own brain—but no matter. I have a handle on this.
Blood Honey is not Ash’s father. I know this because Ash’s father is dead. Do I have a body? I don’t need one. My mother flat out admitted that he’d been taken care of with a plastic bag over the head, the same way my old man was dealt with; if you’d seen the glee in her eyes when she let that one slip, you’d know she was telling the truth. It’s probably the only thing she was good at; she stripped the candy coating off everything and fed it to me whole, bittersweet, salt and all. This is the woman who left me playing fucking Super Mario, alone in a car in deserted woodland, while she buried my dad.
Or perhaps Agent Chen & co took the Go Fund Me campaign just a little too seriously, and they want to fuck with me because they can. Maybe they saw the hospital report email and figured it was worth a try, that I might crack because I knew something. This is obviously the more logical of the two options.
Fortunately for me, I’m already six thousand miles away from these asshats. And we’ve got another two thousand to go.
“Two thousand is a long way. Stop trying to make it sound like we’ll be there in ten minutes.” Leo presses her face into the pillow of our cabin bed and rolls over, tousled honey hair settling over the side of her face. Turns out she doesn’t like flying. Poor lamb.
“Man up. You’re pathetic.”
“I don’t want to go to Australia,” she whimpers. “The spiders there are bloody huge.”
“We’re not going to Australia.”
“Japan’s a little too close to Russia for my liking.”
I give her hip an absent-minded pat. “We’re not going to Japan.”
She moans in annoyance and rolls over again, tangling herself in the cotton sheets. “I need another drink.”
All this fuss from the girl who put a gun to my belly. It’s almost endearing—you know, if I wasted my time on that kind of crap. You’d think flying in a luxury private jet would make things easier for her, but no, apparently the height is the problem. I fed her champagne from a pretentious crystal goblet; I changed her dressing, praised her pretty knitted skin and her propensity to heal; we joined the Mile High club. Twice. She’s still moaning. Fucking women.
I’ve spent the past eighteen hours sleeping and reading. The last time I picked up a book was for the launch of the Steve Jobs biography, and before that, for college; since we refueled at Dusseldorf, I’ve been reading world history about various far-flung destinations just to mess with Leo and piss her off. A man has to amuse himself somehow.
“Did you know Kublai Kahn created the first unified paper currency?” I stroke at her hip, my fingertips curving about the fine shape of protruding bone.
“Aeron. I don’t care.”
“You need to go talk to Gwen. She needs a sisterly shoulder.”
“You shouldn’t be listening to her phone calls.” Leo tries to slap my hand away, but only succeeds in knotting her fingers in mine. She acquiesces too fast, glad of the comfort. “That’s not what we set up the tap for.”
I squeeze her hand too hard. “It’s exactly what we set up the tap for.”
“Personal drama’s different. It’s got nothing to do with—”
“Stop pretending to be such a goody fucking two shoes. We both know personal drama gets faked if people are suspicious of a tap. For all we know, she’s still with the guy. Or she was never with him to begin with.”
“Sounded pretty authentic to me.” Guilt pulls at her tone.