Finding Lies Read online

  Finding Lies

  Rachel Lovise

  Copyright © 2020 Rachel Lovise

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  Cover design by: Canva

  Printed in the United States of America

  For my husband, who has supported me without fail.

  For my mother, whose love of romance novels inspired my own.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  About The Author

  Books In This Series

  Books By This Author

  Chapter 1

  Leah Parker stared at her panties lying on the floor of the FBI office and mentally shook her fist at them. Traitorous undergarment! She was supposed to be on the coast of Maine sipping Cape Cods and commiserating over a new bikini that fit her like a blanket, not dying of mortification over a spare pair of period panties that had jumped unbidden from her purse.

  Except Amanda, The Boss from Hell, had called her at the Maryland state line and Leah had made the mistake of answering. Amanda hadn’t even apologized for ruining Leah’s well-earned vacation; she’d simply ordered her back to D.C. to fetch an “important” file from the FBI, and Leah hadn’t had a choice if she wanted to keep her job.

  Teeth gritted, Leah had screeched a U-turn and driven back into the city, muttering scathing insults and downing black espressos. This was supposed to be her post-break-up vacation, a time to analyze a relationship she’d been trying desperately to mourn. She’d managed to shed a few tears by thinking of her childhood dog, but mostly she’d felt relieved.

  What woman felt relief after catching her perfect boyfriend banging a sexy lawyer?

  Something was clearly wrong with her.

  After donning a skirt and blouse at her apartment, Leah had marched to the J. Edgar Hoover Building to meet with Agent Asshole—pardon, Ashill—a gruff FBI agent with a voice that sounded like glass on sandpaper and who had the no-bullshit attitude of someone who’d already seen all the bullshit the government could throw at him. Leah had been passionately delivering her the-DA-and-the-FBI-should-be-best-friends speech when Agent Ashill’s stony face had clued her in that the Kumbaya routine wasn’t going to bridge the divide between the two agencies. That was when she decided to bury him in legal jargon and use an empty file folder in her purse as a prop. When she pulled the file out, her panties flew into the air and landed several feet beyond the desk.

  Commence wanting to die.

  Leah stuffed the offending black panties back into her purse, along with the half eaten granola bar that had tumbled to the floor with them, and clutched the empty file with white knuckles. She should quit. Who needed this kind of treatment? There were plenty of paralegal jobs in the city that didn’t require a seventy-hour workweek. The problem was that Amanda would never give her a reference if she left in the middle of the DA’s biggest investigation to date, and her own law career had ended with the Constitution, a textbook, and assault charges. That left her with The Boss from Hell, a salary that could barely purchase faux Prada, and a vicious coffee addiction.

  Cheeks burning, Leah avoided the agent’s gaze by focusing on the back wall of his office.

  And that was when her day really took a bad turn.

  There, staring back her from an FBI Wanted poster on the wall, was her ex-boyfriend.

  Leah never would have recognized him in the black-and-white photo if it hadn’t been for the same dark, silent eyes. In the photo his jawline was squarer, his nose straighter, and his hair long and blond instead of Wall Street dark, but those eyes—she’d have known them anywhere. She had spent an embarrassing amount of time gazing into them.

  Leah’s fingers dented the file. “Who is that?”

  Agent Ashill followed the direction of her gaze. In profile, he reminded her of New Hampshire’s Man in the Mountain before it fell. “Which one?”

  “The middle poster. The one with the man with the long blond hair.”

  The agent stabbed at the photo. “That one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alexei Sokolov. Nasty piece of work.”

  Leah swallowed. “What’s he wanted for?”

  Ashill shrugged. “What isn’t he wanted for? He’s a Russian intelligence agent that went rogue. Six years ago he fed the Taliban intelligence that ended with an American and Scandinavian soldier murdered and four more taken hostage. It was such an international shitshow even the Russians disavowed him.”

  Leah’s bottom lip dropped in a cartoonish impression of shock. Nope. No. No way. That was not her ex-boyfriend. This was simply the case of a seriously unfortunate doppelgänger.

  Her ex-boyfriend was named Vincente and he was a corporate marketing consultant who loved kids and baseball and could charm a polar bear off its ice float. She’d met his mother for Pete’s sake. The woman was a born-and-bred Bostoner, just like her son, and they both had the hair-raising accents to prove it. Obviously Leah’s brain was short-circuiting from disappointment over missing her vacation. There was no chance in hell her ex was a Russian terrorist.

  No chance at all.

  Agent Ashill lifted his brow when he noted her ashen complexion. “You all right, Miss Parker?”

  “Yes.” Leah snapped her mouth shut. What was she doing there again? “I . . . ” She couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think of all the slick words that would twist him into doing her will, and so she said, “She peed her pants.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Rochelle. Her father said he was taking her for ice cream, and then the next thing she knew he was driving her away from daycare, away from her mom, across state lines. He was ranting about how he was going to ‘teach Rochelle to be a good girl, unlike her whore of a mother.’”

  The agent remained silent. The FBI had done their own investigation, had actually been the ones to rescue the girl, but Leah had been sitting in on Amanda’s interview with Rochelle and the child psychologist and she’d heard the girl dully repeat her father’s cruel words. Rochelle had told them how she’d had to use the bathroom and her father had refused to pull ov
er, so she’d wet her pretty new dress. That had infuriated her father, who’d slapped her across the face for being nasty like her mother.

  “I don’t know about you, Agent Ashill, but to me the most noble American pursuit is justice. Rochelle deserves justice. She deserves to know that her father will never come after her or her mother again. The FBI tracked Rochelle down and saved her life. Now help me do my part in putting that monster away.”

  Just when she thought Agent Ashill possessed as much humanity as a brick wall, he opened his desk drawer and pulled out a thin manila folder. He held it over the desk but didn’t let go when she reached for it, instead waiting for her eyes to meet his. When they did, for a brief moment she saw beyond his gruff unpleasantness, past the permanent scowl and tobacco-stained lips, to the man who still came to work because he cared deeply about the people he protected. “You must have taken this from my desk when I went to get you a cup of coffee,” he said.

  She nodded in understanding. “I’m nosy like that.”

  He released the file. Leah hastily tucked it into her bag and stood before he could change his mind. Her gaze drifted once again to the Wanted poster before she said, “Thank you, Agent.”

  He set his mug down. “What for? I didn’t do anything.”

  “Right.”

  She started to leave and he said, “You put that waste of life away, you hear Miss Parker?”

  “Count on it.”

  Chapter 2

  Once she reached the lobby Leah took out her phone to text her best friend, Destiny. She needed her to go online and look at Alexi Sokolov’s Wanted poster and tell her she was being crazy. Leah started to type out the message and then realized a text wasn’t going to be sufficient to explain such a bizarre request, so she called instead.

  “Leah? What’s wrong? Is your send button broken? You never call me. I don’t even know what your voice sounds like over the phone.”

  Leah lifted her eyes heavenward. “I sound the same over the phone as I do in person.”

  “Except testier.”

  “Can you meet me for lunch?”

  “Today?”

  Leah heard the hesitation in her voice. Destiny Rodriguez was a women’s wear buyer for a massive sporting goods chain and put Leah’s seventy-hour workweek to shame. Yet despite her overwhelming workload, Destiny was one of those remarkably balanced women who still managed to attend hot yoga, volunteer at the homeless shelter, and look like a million bucks every day in between. Leah honestly didn’t know how she did it. Once Leah had gone to work with her bangs sticking straight up and two different shoes on. Amanda had told her she looked like a freckled horse and then ordered her to buy a bottle of Smoothing Conditioner for Brunettes before her eyes burned out. Leah bet no one had ever ordered Destiny to buy conditioner.

  “Yes, today.”

  Destiny must have heard the urgency in her voice. “Is something wrong? Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” Leah tapped her nail on the phone. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “That means it’s definitely something. I’ll make the time. How about two o’clock at The Constitution Café?” The Constitution Café was a popular sandwich shop ten minutes from the DA’s office. At two o’clock most of the lunch crowd would be cleared out and the two women would be able to chat with relative privacy.

  Leah let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “Thanks, Des. I’ll see you there.”

  She ended the call and lifted her head to glance around the lobby, her neck prickling with the sense of being watched. Security guards manned the front and side entrances while several more searched through purses and suitcases at the metal detectors. Professionally attired men and women hurried across the FBI’s seal, each with purpose and intent. No one was paying any attention to her.

  Shrugging off the uneasy feeling, she looked back at her phone and realized she’d missed eight text messages. They were all from her boss. With the Rochelle kidnapping case practically closed, Amanda was focusing all her energy on the DA’s biggest case yet: the investigation of a U.S. senator.

  The senator was Maryland’s own Michael Roth, a powerful mover and shaker in Washington. He’d allegedly downed one too many eggnogs Christmas day and assaulted his much younger wife. The PR nightmare had Amanda wound more tightly than usual and firing off text messages at lightening speed. The unfortunate part was that Leah was the only paralegal on the team who hadn’t quit, meaning she was officially the Queen of Grunt Work. She’d been elbow-deep in shoeboxes of receipts for six months now. The senator ate a lot of steak dinners.

  Boss from Hell: Did you get the file?

  Boss from Hell: Tell that son of a bitch I’ll get a warrant if he doesn’t hand it over. We’ll see how cocky he is then.

  Boss from Hell: Have you left yet? I need you to go through the senator’s Nordstrom receipts and see if he’s been buying gifts for a woman on the side.

  Boss from Hell: LEAH! ANSWER ME!

  Boss from Hell: Get me a double Frappuccino on your way back.

  Boss from Hell: And a bagel.

  Boss from Hell: Not a bagel. Stop at the grocery store and get me some of those low carb bagel thins.

  Boss from Hell: Actually, get the bagel, scoop out the insides, and fill it with hummus. I want it warm and in my hand in twenty minutes.

  Leah stared unseeingly at the screen. What if the man in the Wanted poster was Vincente? What if he was watching her? What if he had her phone tapped?

  She nearly snorted. Of course Vincente didn’t have her phone tapped—this wasn’t a movie. If she looked at the poster again she’d realize she’d been mistaken and Vincente Barry looked as much like Alexei Sokolov as her mother looked like Angelina Jolie.

  You know those eyes.

  Leah frowned. “Go away little voice at the back of my head,” she muttered.

  You’re already at the FBI.

  Well that was true. Wouldn’t she feel better if she knew for sure no one was listening in on her phone conversations? Surely the FBI could wave a wand or something over her phone and she’d be scooping out Amanda’s bagel in no time. Twenty more minutes away from the Senator Roth investigation was a small price to pay for peace of mind. Besides, this was supposed to be her week off. Amanda could bite her.

  A woman in a scarlet pantsuit nearly mowed her over, so Leah shifted to the edge of the lobby where she was out of the way. She dropped the faux Prada bag to her feet and pretended to read an important email on her phone while she sifted through memories of the past six months, trying to make sense of her unease. Had there been clues that her ex-boyfriend was anyone other than who he’d said he was?

  No, he’d always been perfectly pleasant and agreeable. Well, until she’d caught him in bed with a model-esque lawyer who had a penchant for whips and chains.

  The relationship had been easy and carefree and hadn’t required any effort on her part. Vincente’s relentless amenability had allowed him to slide perfectly into her life without any hassle. In the past, relationships that had required her to devote even mild energy or occasional time for plans had never worked out because she’d always been so busy at the DA’s office.

  Leaning against the tiled lobby wall, Leah suddenly understood why her relationship with Vincente had been different: he’d expected so little of her.

  Well, that was depressing.

  No wonder he’d gone sniffing after Miss Shackles. Although if Leah were being honest, the chemistry between her and Vincente had always been lacking. Even though she’d dubbed him Mr. Perfect, during their six-month relationship they’d only slept together once, and Vincente had been drunk that night. It had been a fumbling, awkward experience; he’d been distant the entire time and she’d felt instinctively he was thinking of another woman. After five minutes of arrhythmic pumping the ordeal had ended, and she’d been more than happy to avoid doing the deed with him again. In fact, she’d been so secretly relieved she wasn’t having sex with Vincente that she hadn’t stopped to wonder
why he didn’t want to have sex with her.

  She’d learned the answer the day she’d come home with pneumonia to find the lawyer chained to Leah’s bed and Vincente pounding her for all he was worth.

  What Leah had never figured out was why he’d cheated on her at her apartment. It wasn’t like they lived together. In fact, they often went weeks at a time without seeing one another.

  Hence why he’d been Mr. Perfect.

  “Damn,” she whispered. This sort of relationship debriefing was meant to be done with a drink in hand, not in the lobby of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. She could not deal with adding an international terrorist to her list of exes.

  “Can I help you?” The guard who’d been sent to investigate her loitering was bald and wore the requisite glare of suspicion.

  “Yes, actually. I’m with the DA’s office and I was waiting on word from my boss. I need directions to the FBI’s technology department.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  She looked at him like he was daft. “My boss just texted me. So no, I don’t have an appointment.”

  She really hated sounding like such a bitch, but if she’d learned anything living in D.C., it was that power and confidence got you places while being meek got you crushed.

  He pointed his chin toward the reception desk. “Speak with Alfredo.”

  She nodded curtly and strode over to Alfredo, a man in a dark suit seated behind a curved reception desk. Her boot heels clicked loudly on the tile, and she arranged her face in a look of impatience and entitlement.

  “Alfredo?” she asked when she reached him. He looked up from his computer screen.

  “How can I help you, ma’am?”

  Ma’am? How dare he.

  “I need to speak with someone from your technology department, specifically an agent with expertise in extracting information from a cell phone. I’m with the DA’s office,” she added, flashing her ID.

  Alfredo’s expression didn’t alter. “This is regarding?”