Lies Ripped Open Read Online Free Page A

taker is an elemental.”
    “Yeah, it came up. Did you say he let the hostage go before I arrived?”
    Mike shrugged. “He said he trusted us. And that he’d kill one hostage every sixty seconds after ninety minutes of waiting.” He glanced at the watch on his wrist. “Which is in three minutes.”
    “Why ninety minutes?” I asked. “I could have been out of the country.”
    “He knew where you were,” one of the balaclava-wearing men guessed.
    “So, why not just go after you at home?” one of the other officers asked.
    “Because my home has motion detectors. I’d have warning of his approach, and I’d be on my own ground. Here I’m not, I have no advantage.”
    “But so long as he has the hostages, he does,” Mike said.
    “You should have told me about the threats to the hostages,” I said to Kelly.
    “I didn’t want you to be any more agitated than you needed to be. You didn’t need to be worried about his threats; you just needed to get here.”
    “As a rule, threats don’t make me agitated,” I informed her. Kelly didn’t trust me. That much was obvious, although why that was the case was something I didn’t understand. Maybe it was purely that I’d quit Avalon and left Merlin, which some people found to be almost traitorous, or maybe it was just that she’d heard rumors about my past and wasn’t sure how to be around me. Of course there was a third option. The head of the SOA, Sir Kay, wasn’t exactly my biggest fan, and I thought he was a bully, thug, and about as much fun to be around as being bitten in the crotch by a honey badger. If Kelly and Kay worked closely together, then that would explain her keeping things from me.
    “We’re ready,” Mike said and passed me a phone.
    “Hello,” said a voice on the other end.
    “This is Nathan Garrett,” I said. “And you are—”
    “God,” he said. He sounded like he was smirking when he spoke.
    “Yeah, that’s the name. You have all the power in the world.”
    “That’s right, I do.”
    I heard screaming in the background, accompanied by whimpering.
    “You don’t need to hurt anyone else,” I said.
    “Don’t tell me what I do or don’t need to do,” he snapped.
    “Fair enough, so why did you want me here?”
    “You’re not here, you’re out there. I want you in here with me. I want to talk to you face to face.”
    “That’s never going to happen,” I said.
    “That’s a shame, because I don’t want to start killing these lovely people.” His voice was completely calm, and I knew with certainty that he would carry out that threat without pause.
    “Okay, let me talk to the guys here and see what we can come up with. You’re going to have to give something though. You’re going to have to give a hostage.”
    “You have five minutes. Then I start putting bullets in heads. You get in here, I send out one person.” He ended the call, still sounding calm but certain of the power he held.
    “I have to go in,” I said.
    “No fucking way,” Mike replied.
    “Do you have a better idea? Because in five minutes you’re going to need a lot more body bags for when you finally do get in there.”
    Mike stared at me for a few seconds. “If you go in there, we have some rules. Don’t antagonize him, don’t let him rile you, and whatever you do, do not get into a physical confrontation. You get in, you keep your distance, and you get out.”
    “Unless he doesn’t want me to get out,” I said, and I noticed everyone pause what they were doing. “You’ve thought of that, I assume. That he wants me here to kill me.”
    Mike nodded slowly. “You still okay to go in?”
    “Better him shoot me than shoot a bunch of people.”
    “Get him a vest,” Mike told a nearby officer, and a few moments later I was passed a bulletproof vest.
    “That’s really not necessary,” I explained.
    “You know he could shoot you and then kill everyone else. I wasn’t asking you to wear a vest. It’s not open to