Lisa Unger - Sliver Of Truth

When I woke, he was sitting in the chair with his feet up on the ottoman. The fire lit half his face. He was a handsome man in the rough way I mentioned. Even exhausted looking, pale with dark circles beneath his eyes, he had a hard sexuality to him. I could almost imagine being attracted to him if he wasn’t a liar and a killer. Not that such things had stopped me before.

“No one is who you think they are,” he said, somehow sensing that I was awake. “Not me, not Max Smiley, not even Jacobsen.”

He didn’t look at me, just kept his eyes on the flames. This seemed like such a pointless statement of the obvious that I didn’t even bother to respond.

“Who’s the ghost?” I asked. He turned to look at me sharply.

“Where’d you hear that?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure. I just keep hearing it when I fall asleep. I hear a man asking me, ‘Where’s the ghost?’”

“A lot of people want the answer to that question,” he said, keeping his eyes on me.

“Including you?”

He shrugged. “First you eat, then we talk.” He got up and left the room quickly. I didn’t bother to call after him to try to stop him. I was starting to get used to my own helplessness in all of this. I didn’t have any clothes, any strength. I was in trouble with the police in two countries, not to mention the FBI. I was learning to be more patient. I just sat there for a while staring into the fire, trying to fit together all the million pieces I had, coming up with nothing except the usual headache.

He returned with tomato soup and some tea on a wooden tray. Based on the condition of the place, I didn’t want to think about how long these things had been sitting in a cupboard. I was amazed at my own hunger, though, and couldn’t remember the last time I ate. I tried to eat slowly, not wanting to make myself sick. But I couldn’t keep myself from sucking down the soup in minutes. My stomach cramped but I didn’t throw up, thankfully. When I was done, Dylan made me another bowl of soup, which I ate as well. Then he handed me some pills and a big glass of water.

I looked up at him.

“I’m not taking any pills from you.”

He nodded toward the tray.

“You took the soup-and the tea. I could have drugged you that way, if that was my intention.” The British accent again. It faded in and out. “They’re antibiotics. Without them, you’ll just get worse and worse.”

They looked as if they could be antibiotics, little two-toned caplets. Against my better judgment, I took them. It seemed like a fair enough gamble.

“Where’d you get antibiotics?”

“I keep some around for emergencies.”

I couldn’t tell if he was making some kind of a joke, but I didn’t ask.

He sat down across from me, rested his elbows on his knees. He didn’t say anything as I sipped my water. I felt stronger, less light-headed. I was about to start prodding when he said, “Max Smiley picked a good time to die.”

I looked at him, didn’t say anything. He looked sad, exhausted on a level beyond physical. I almost felt bad for him.

“After a lifetime of evil, he made his exit just before some of the ugly came back at him. Death was too good for Max Smiley. People felt robbed.”

“What kind of evil? You mean Project Rescue?”

“Project Rescue was the least of it.”

I’d heard this before, from Jake. Almost those exact same words.

“I think you need to be more specific. I keep hearing what a monster Max was, how evil he was, but no one’s told me a single thing to make me believe it. I know he wasn’t the man I thought he was. I get that. But evil is kind of a strong word, you know. You need to back it up.”

He stood up so quickly that he startled me. He walked past me and I turned to see him take a brown folder off a dining table that stood behind the couch. He sat back down with the file in his hand.

“This is as complete a dossier on Maxwell Allen Smiley as exists,” he said.

“Compiled by whom?”

“Mostly by me, piecing together what I’ve found through various domestic and international law agencies.”

The file was thick in his hand. It looked like something you’d see in the movies, ominous and top secret. I fought the urge to shrink from it, all my instincts for denial kicking in. I knew one thing: Nothing in a file like that could be good.

“How do I know this is not just more bullshit on your part?” I said, feeling suddenly angry and defensive. “You’ve done nothing but lie to me since the day we met. I know you’re not an FBI agent. I don’t even know if the name you gave me is real-I don’t even know what to call you. One of my most recent memories is of you jabbing a needle into my arm. I’m sitting here in some cabin with you in the middle of fucking nowhere. Your accent keeps changing. For all I know, you’re some psycho that’s kidnapped me and is planning to eat my liver for dinner. For the last time, who the hell are you?”

That smile, that annoying smile he got, crept onto his face. If I weren’t such a wreck, I would have leapt for his throat. Instead I had to settle for an angry glare, which we all know isn’t nearly as effective.

“I do work for the FBI. Not many people know it, including your friend Agent Sorro. But I do.”

“What is it, like some Black Ops thing?” I said with a little laugh. I wanted to sound sarcastic, as if I was making fun of him, but the way he sat there in the semidark, Dylan Grace was all mystery. I would have believed anything about him at that moment.

“Not exactly, no.”

I waited for him to go on but, of course, he didn’t.

“What, then?”

“It’s not really important. The important thing is that I want to help you, not hurt you. You need to understand that.”

I shook my head. “Why does everything have to be a riddle with you? Anyway, why should I believe a word you say about anything?”

“Because I just saved your ass,” he said with predictable arrogance.

“Well, where’s the backup, the cavalry? Are they coming to the rescue, coming to take us home? Why are we here, so you can ‘figure out what to do next’?” I lifted my fingers obnoxiously as quotation marks. “If you don’t mind me saying so, it seems to me like you’re a little out of your league. And it doesn’t seem like anyone’s rushing to bail you out.”

“You’re right,” he said, his smile fading just a little. “I’m unsupported at the moment.”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what to think about this man. “What does that even mean?”

He held my eyes but didn’t say anything.

“It means we’re on our own, right?”

He shrugged again and gave a single nod of his head.

“And your accent. You’re British?”

“My father was American; my mother was British. My family lived in England from about a year after I was born until I was sixteen. Then I moved back to the States. The accent comes back when I’m stressed or drunk or exhausted.”

I shook my head at him. “Why should I believe a word you say?”

“I haven’t lied to you. Not once.”

“You’ve just omitted significant details-is that more like it?”

More of that pregnant silence he’d mastered.

“God, you’re really despicable,” I said.

He held up the file. “It’s all in here. Everything I know about Max-about your father.”

He put the file on the couch beside me and left the room. I heard a door shut and I was alone with the fire. I was alone with Max. The Ghost.

We are not our parents. We’re not. You’ve probably heard all your life that the traits you’ve found so annoying in your mother or your father will eventually manifest themselves in your own personality. Maybe you even believe it. Personally, I think it’s bullshit. It’s a cop-out, something people tell themselves to feel better about not taking responsibility for their lives. Maybe if you go through your life without examining yourself, without dealing with your issues, without consciously deciding what to bring forward and what to leave behind, or if you can’t take responsibility for your own inner happiness, then perhaps it is likely that you become the drunk, the abuser, the cold and distant judge your mother or your father was. But I believe you have a choice. I believe we all choose our lives, that our existence is the sum of our choices-the little ones, the big ones. We don’t always choose what happens to us, and we don’t choose where we came from, but we do choose how we react to the events of our lives. We choose to be destroyed or to grow wiser. Nietzsche (whom I always thought was a bit of a psychopath) said, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” I cling to this philosophy; I need to believe it.