Lie with Me

Lie with Me
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Dell Mass Market Original

Copyright © 2010 by Stephanie Tyler

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Dell, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D
ELL
is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-440-33970-0

www.bantamdell.com

v3.1

As always, for Zoo, Lily, and Gus,
for always being there, and for always believing

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, I have many people to thank.

My editor, Shauna Summers, for her unwavering support, and everyone at Bantam Dell who helped during the making of this book, which includes Jessica Sebor, Evan Camfield, Pam Feinstein, and the art department, who rock my world with their covers.

My agent, Irene Goodman—for believing and for listening.

Larissa Ione, because I could not do this writing thing without you.

My amazing support system of Lara Adrian, Maya Banks, Jaci Burton, and Amy Knupp—you guys help keep me (semi)sane. (I know, who am I kidding …)

All my amazing, wonderful readers, who make my day with their emails and letters and blog posts and shout-outs on Twitter and Facebook. And a special shout out to LIST and the Writeminded Loop!

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Excerpt from
Promises in the Dark

CHAPTER

1

Parting is all we know of heaven
,
And all we need of hell
.
Emily Dickinson

T
he sleek, dark bitch tailing him over the crest of the mountain was definitely not standard Army issue.

Cameron Moore ignored both the snow swirling furiously around his Harley and the classified stealth helo on his six as he began his ascent up the thin, curved ridge ringed by stone that would lead him to his destination.

Half a mile earlier, when he’d heard the familiar thump of the quiet bird over the roar of his bike, the hairs on the back of his neck had risen. Now his gut tightened in tandem with the heavy whir of the rotors, and
fuck
, he’d thought this was over and done with.

He’d had nearly five months of freedom, having been assured that his debt was paid in full, which meant there would be no more black ops jobs involving the CIA and this fucking helo from hell following him. But he’d been down this road before—after five years, eight years, ten years. The promise of release had never been kept, eleven years and counting.

It’ll never be fully paid. You knew that … you just didn’t want to believe it
.

And still, he pushed on, trying to ignore the past that wouldn’t let him forget.

He’d only been back from a mission with Delta Force for forty-eight hours, on leave for the past twenty and headed to visit Dylan Scott—a man he’d met through Delta, and his best friend—in the Catskills when he’d been tracked.

One of these days, Gabriel Creighton—CIA chameleon extraordinaire—wouldn’t be able to find Cam anymore. The chip that had once been implanted in Cam’s right forearm was only as big as a postage stamp, and as slim as one too … and was long gone. He’d convinced himself that Gabriel couldn’t track him without it.

Obviously, Cam had been way fucking wrong.

He didn’t have to wonder what his life would be like if he’d never met the man—he’d still be in jail, serving two consecutive life sentences. And he despised Gabriel more than his father, which was really damned hard to do, considering his father had framed him for the murders and left him to rot in a maximum security cell.

For eleven years, Gabriel had been both mentor and taskmaster. Cam had never asked Gabriel for anything, not a single goddamned favor.

The favors Gabriel insisted Cam provide for him were always dangerous and usually above the law. Jobs that necessitated a non-CIA operator with insider information, which Cam indeed was, hiding in the job of a Delta Force operator.

If Cam’s immediate sups knew what the jobs he did for Creighton really entailed, they’d never let on. And so Cam lived and worked, waiting for the magic number—the time limit Gabriel had imposed on him when Cam had been nineteen and willing to do anything to get out of that cell. An expiration date that only Gabriel knew.

Now he stared down at the mark on the inside of his left forearm—the result of a tattoo that had been lasered off. It wasn’t completely erased, was still a reminder.

That was the thing about pasts, you could never fully eradicate them, and fuck it all, he’d tried to more than once.

Finally, he stopped the bike on the edge of one of the small cliffs, pulled as close to it as he possibly could. The wind whipped him, making it hard to hold on to his footing, never mind the heavy metal between his legs.

The stealth hovered, unable to land, but more than willing to block him. As he stared down at the dark, cavernous chasm ahead of him, he knew his choices were limited. Going down would be the coward’s way out—and he was anything but.

He’d never let go of the idea of vengeance, tasted it like a fine wine on his tongue—it ran heated through his blood, slamming his veins with a barely concealed fury.

In all his years of military service, he’d saved a lot of people, killed more and prayed for salvation daily.

In so many ways, he’d never left the ten-by-ten cell where he’d lived for twenty-three months, four days and ten hours. At the time, he’d been wary of his rescuer, but he’d assumed things couldn’t have gotten worse.

He’d been so fucking young—fear and bravado mixing together in a heady combination. He’d been a punk, a fighter, willing to do anything to stay alive. Had kept his pride during those years, refusing to let prison take it from him, the way his freedom had been ripped away.

Pride had been all he had.

He finally turned around on the mountain, the way he had eleven years earlier when the police chased him between a rock and a hard place. That night, the police had impounded his bike.

Now Cam knew that a good operative never left anything behind. He revved his bike and let it ride over the edge without him, listened as it screeched and crashed against the mountain walls below.

And then he walked to the helo and used the rope ladder they’d lowered to climb aboard.

Two years of max security had taught him many things—that life wasn’t fair; that typically the bigger you were, the more shit you talked and the harder you went down; that this life wasn’t for the weak. His time in the Rangers and Delta Force had refined those teachings until his mind functioned like the elite warrior he was; but make no mistake, he was still that same damned punk—and he wouldn’t take Gabriel Creighton’s shit anymore.

This time, he would shoot the messenger Gabriel always sent, no matter what the job entailed, and then he would walk away and deal with the consequences—any and all, because the yoke around his neck had finally tightened to where he could no longer breathe.

A
s it turned out, the messenger wanted to shoot him as well.

Cam noted the gun in the suit’s hands as he hauled his ass into the helo, and then his gaze moved quickly to the ankle cuffs on the bench and he snapped to attention. Instead of waiting for the man to aim the Glock directly at him, Cam lunged, using the shaky motion of the struggling helo to propel him into the man’s chest even as the man barked at him to sit down.

He was too far into fight-or-flight mode to do anything else, could smell the setup as surely as helo fuel. He’d done this dance too many times, and it had never, ever looked like this before.

They went down hard, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat. The gun clattered from the suit’s hands and Cam stared into his eyes—it was the same man, always the same man, although he never spoke to Cam, had always pointed to the phone or the laptop where Cam would get his orders.

Cam wondered what this guy had done in his life to become Gabriel’s minion.

“We … talk …” the suit croaked as Cam kept his forearm across his throat. Cam wondered what the man’s story would be, if he’d gain anything by letting him speak his peace.

But the ache in his gut was swift and sudden as he remembered that he didn’t trust most people, especially strangers.

“I don’t talk to people who want to kill me.” As quickly and cleanly as possible, Cam shifted and put his hands on either side of the man’s head. A sharp twist to the right and the suit was gone, his eyes open, his stare as dead as he was.

But the fight wasn’t over yet.

Cam wouldn’t let the pilots take off with him inside, would rather free-fall out than be carried off, and they knew that—Cam saw it in the brace of the co-pilot’s back the second he’d climbed on board—and as the man lunged, Cam was ready, even as the obviously well-trained man threw a nice left hook, which caught Cam square on the jaw. The helo banked a hard left and Cam lost his footing for a second, hitting his head on a sharp piece of metal used to hold the hooks for the parachutes. The co-pilot also fell, and Cam was the quicker one up and at the ready, slamming his boot into the guy’s chest.