Instinct

19. The Hand that Fate Dealt You

Liam didn’t really want to go to his meeting with Kim. Stephanie’s sudden reappearance had left him unsettled, unsure of himself and his PR rep would undoubtedly catch on to that energy. She’d try to pry it out of him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to tell her about the newly found Armstrong family member. There was a part of him that knew there was something up with her. It wasn’t just the quick temper or her thin, bedraggled appearance – though that was a worry on its own – but the bizarreness of the entire situation.

Nothing in her story matched up, and he suspected she knew it too, yet she had poker-faced it anyway and Liam had respected that as well as he could.

He liked Kim, but she knew an opportunity when she saw one, and she would likely perceive Stephanie as just that: an opportunity. Stephanie, he sensed, was still the same as she was those many years ago; the media would chew her up and spit her out unless she was truly ready for that kind of exposure.

With those skinny wrists and dark circles under her eyes, he knew that she wasn’t.

He unfolded himself from the back of the car and strode up the street, letting himself into the office building. This was one of those places where people didn’t look at him, and he always had to do a double take while crossing the lobby and to the front desk when silence still reigned.

“Good afternoon, Gina,” he said to the desk clerk. “I had an appointment with Kimberley West for six. Is she still available?”

The attendant glanced up from the computer and turned to the phone on the desk, tapping a couple of digits in. “Ms. West?” She said after a couple of rings. “I have Liam Hall here for you.”

Gina put the phone back down on the receiver after a moment and gestured toward the elevators. “She’ll see you now, Mr. Hall.”

He gave her a smile, which she promptly scowled at, and took his leave. Despite her relative youth Gina was not at all taken in by celebrities or their charm. Liam made it a point to speak to her, endlessly amused by the lack of an impression he was able to make on her.

Five floors up and a hundred feet from the elevator was Kim’s office, her name engraved in block print on a placard by the door. He pushed it open and stepped into the warmth of the room. Sitting at her desk, hair hurriedly pinned up with a pen stuck into the pseudo-bun, TV running from its mantle on the wall, phone pressed to her ear and tapping at the keyboard in front of her, was Kimberley West.

She gestured for him to take a seat, having barely spared him a glance. He pulled out the leather chair and sprawled out in it, his eyes straying to the TV while she finished whatever negotiations she was currently brokering.

“No, of course not,” she said. “Though I’d really appreciate it if you held that story – you’ll be the first to get all the details, I assure you, and that’s all that really matters, yes?”

Liam reached for the remote and turned up the television, despite the scowl and pointed look he got for it. It was insane how quickly stations could run stories after the fact. Already, cell phone footage of Stephanie jumping the fence was being looped on screen with hosts pointing out what they sold as fact, even though the grainy, shaking pictures showed no real evidence of who the dark figure was.

Peering at the screen, Liam himself wouldn’t have recognized Stephanie. She’d disguised herself well.

But where had that thought come from? It struck Liam as odd – obvious enough to have sparked a subconscious response, but it was the why that was bothering him. Just an hour ago, he’d told her everything. The awful vacuity that his life had held just two years ago, the terrible things he’d been a part of, and she had revealed nothing. Stephanie had danced around their questions, keeping as vague about what had happened to her as possible.