Page 20 of Filthy Liar

“Sure.” She has the audacity to shrug, and I want to punch the wall.

Instead, I pace into the middle of the library. My mind is racing. If she’s not a hacker, and she wasn’t tagging one of the guests last night, then what was she doing at that party? And more importantly, why is she in my client’s home now? I pivot and point at her. “What story are you working?”

She’s unfazed. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. What are you covering up for Mayfair?”

No. No, no, fucking hell no.

She waits, her eyes bright.

I don’t like the extra-dark hair, either.

I don’t like anything about this new Ellie or her rude return to my life. But instead of answering her, I rake my gaze down her body. She’s still built for sin, and five years is not long enough to erase the memory of her body on top of mine, her thighs straddling my hips. I need to remember that despite our history, she’s investigating my client. Sin can’t play here.

I set my jaw and prowl back toward her, stopping just out of touching range.I want to touch her all over.It’s a dark, unbidden thought, primitive and stupid. I don’t want to touch her, not really. She’s lied to me at every turn. “Tell me what story you’re working, first.”

“That’s not how show and tell works, I’m afraid. I asked, you answer.”

“So you think you have a story on Mayfair.” I lean in. I can’t help it. She smells the same as she always did. “You’re wrong.”

“Then it was great catching up, Jason. I’ll see you around.” She moves, and I grab her wrist. Not hard. Just enough to stop her. Her attention drops to where my fingers manacle her wrist. She sneers. “What happened to you? I thought you’d turned into one of the good guys.”

“There are no good guys.”

Pain slices across her face, just for a second. Fuck me. I drop her arm.

She shrugs it off. “No, I get it. From your perspective, there’s nothing to be done about the state of the world. Not when you come to athinglike this and see people who swear to the world that they are on opposite sides of everything hob-knobbing over a fresh oyster bar, am I right?”

I like the way she saysthinglike the word is three-week-old rotten garbage. She’s not wrong.

Her voice drops to pure silk. “Spend too much time in this town and it will ruin you.”

That’s my line. I said it to her a few weeks after we hired her—after we hired a sweet, innocent young woman from the Midwest, I correct myself.

That woman, who I knew as Ellie, was too fucking pure for this world.

Now I don’t know who I have in front of me. I doubt she’s too pure for anything. But she might be too fucking smart for this world, and I need her to get wise to the reality of the danger around her. That she’s a journalist doesn’t change that fact. “Let’s start over again. Who are you?”

She waits long enough that I can imagine the responses running through her mind. She wants to refuse to answer again. Ellie always did like a bit of verbal sparring, the push pull.

She was a journalist the whole time.

While I fucked her. While she ducked in and out of confidential client meetings.

It doesn’t matter what she liked, she’s a liar—and, I have no doubt, a thief. “Fine, if you don’t want to answer me, let’s loop back to five years ago—”

“My name is Melinda Gray,” she snaps. “Are you happy?”

My mouth drops open. Ellie isMelinda Fucking Gray?

She smiles sweetly. “So you know who I am.”

“Everyone in this city knows who you are,” I growl. “You’re the reason Gerome Lively went to jail.”

She rolls her eyes. “No, but I helped.”

Melinda Gray.

Nothing ever shocks me, but this… Wilson had tried to figure out who she was, too. Cole had no idea, either, and his sister-in-law was one of the sources for her book—not that they are close. Taylor has worked hard to rebuild her relationship with Hailey, but there’s a lot of complicated history in the mix. And secrets, apparently.

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