The Perfect Liar Read online

  Praise for Brenda Novak’s The Last Stand books

  Trust Me “generates genuine thrills.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A clever, impeccably plotted thriller.” (Top Pick)

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Trust Me

  “In Trust Me…Brenda Novak expertly blends realistically gritty danger, excellent characterization and a generous dash of romance into a chilling, thrilling novel.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Novak has outdone herself with this series. She is a great storyteller.”

  —Once Upon a Romance

  “Trust Me is a page-turner…Sure to become a much-loved keeper-shelf read…I highly recommend Trust Me and suggest Brenda Novak be added to your ‘to buy’ list today. You won’t be disappointed—trust me.”

  —Romance Reader’s Connection

  “No one can send chills down my spine as Brenda Novak can.”

  —Huntress Reviews

  “When I open a Brenda Novak story, I…delve headfirst into a scene so vividly portrayed that I am with the characters each step of the way.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “The third book in Novak’s trilogy is creepy and absorbing, and the characterizations are excellent. Plan to stay up very late to finish this one!”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Watch Me

  “Whenever I see a new Brenda Novak book, I buy it and read it, pronto. I can always count on her for a solid, exciting story, full of adventure and romance.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller

  Also by BRENDA NOVAK

  THE PERFECT COUPLE

  WATCH ME

  STOP ME

  TRUST ME

  DEAD RIGHT

  DEAD GIVEAWAY

  DEAD SILENCE

  COLD FEET

  TAKING THE HEAT

  EVERY WAKING MOMENT

  BRENDA NOVAK

  THE PERFECT LIAR

  To Marcie, my niece. You’re a sweet girl who’s easy

  to be around. Keep up the good work and build a

  wonderful life for yourself—you can be anything

  you want to be.

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome back to The Last Stand, a fictional victims’ charity set in Sacramento, California. If you’ve been following the series, you’ve already met several of the characters, but the hero and heroine in this book will be, for the most part, new to you. Ava took over at the charity when Jasmine married and moved to Louisiana. Ava’s an interesting character, so cautious about avoiding emotional entanglements that she lives on a houseboat in the delta. She can pick up and leave at any moment, won’t commit even to a location. But she’s not quite as free as she thinks, especially after she meets Captain Luke Trussell, a pilot at Travis AFB.

  One of my favorite characters in the story is, as usual, the villain. The study of abnormal behavior has long been fascinating to me, perhaps because it’s often so self-destructive. I don’t always understand why some people act the way they do, but I based the major tenets of Kalyna Harter’s personality on a woman I once knew who sued just about every employer she ever had for sexual harassment. She lied and manipulated and used laws meant to protect women to punish the men in her life, not only her employers but also those with whom she had personal relationships. Some of my outrage at her actions has no doubt filtered into this story. Kalyna is very real to me because I’ve known someone very much like her.

  When you get a minute, please visit brendanovak.com. There’s a lot there—contests and giveaways, interviews with various professionals in the criminal justice world, 3-D screensavers you can download free, a virtual tour of the offices of The Last Stand, a short prequel to the whole series, and more. If you sign up for my mailing list, you’ll be invited to my annual cyber Christmas party, which is a blast. At my Web site, you can learn more about my annual online auction for diabetes research, an event I sponsor every May (my youngest son suffers from this disease). Together with my fans, friends, fellow authors and publishing associates, I’ve managed to raise over $700,000 to date. Don’t miss the auction in 2010. It’s going to be amazing!

  For a free pair of 3-D glasses, send an S.A.S.E. to Brenda Novak at P.O. Box 3781, Citrus Heights, CA 95611.

  I hope you enjoy The Perfect Liar!

  Brenda Novak

  When the sun sets, shadows, that showed at noon But small, appear most long and terrible.

  —Nathaniel Lee, 1653–1692

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Travis Air Force Base

  Fairfield, California

  Sunday, June 7

  “You’re here why?” Wearing only a hastily donned pair of jeans, Captain Luke Trussell stood squinting at the man and woman, both from base security, whose knock had just dragged him out of bed.

  “We’re responding to a complaint filed by Sergeant Kalyna Harter.”

  There had to be some mistake. He didn’t even live here. He’d lent the use of his off-base apartment to two female cousins visiting from out of state. In the meantime, he’d temporarily moved into a friend’s place because it was empty while that friend and his family were on leave. “Against me?” He raised a hand to his bare chest.

  One of the officers, Sgt. E. Golnick according to her name tag, let her gaze range over his upper torso. Although female attention had little to do with why he worked out, it was a fringe benefit. But her expression revealed more contempt than appreciation. He could tell she was taking note of his size and musculature, thinking how easy it would be for him to overpower a woman, any woman, even a woman like Kalyna, who was five-ten and lifted as regularly as he did.

  “Yes, you,” she responded, her eyes shifting to his face. “You know her, right?”

  “Yeah, I know her. She’s in my flying squadron, has been since she was transferred here three months ago.” Which was how they probably knew where he was staying. She must’ve told them.

  “She’s claiming you raped her last night, Captain. From the look of her, it was a brutal attack.”

  A brutal attack? Kalyna had been perfectly fine when he left her apartment only—how long ago? He glanced at his wrist, then remembered that she’d removed his watch when he started saying how late it was. She hadn’t wanted him to leave her bed. Was this her revenge for doing so, anyway? Or had she been hurt by someone else—badly enough that she didn’t know what she was saying? “Is she going to be okay?”

  “She’s got some nasty bumps and bruises,” Sgt. P. Jeffers, Golnick’s counterpart, chipped in. “It’s nothing life threatening, but she’s spent the past five hours at Northbay Medical Center being examined for sexual assault.”

  Luke shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense. If she was assaulted, someone else did it.”

  “T
hat’s not her story.”

  A rush of anger burned away his sleepy confusion. “She must be out of her mind, delirious.”

  “She’s perfectly coherent,” Golnick said.

  “Then she’s lying!”

  One eyebrow slid up. “They’ve extracted semen from her body. Are you telling me it won’t prove to be yours?”

  “I don’t see how it can.”

  Golnick folded her arms. “You didn’t have sex with her?”

  Luke rubbed his neck. He hated discussing such personal matters—especially when all he wanted to do was forget—but he had to explain fast and be frank. If he didn’t, there could be more trouble. “We had sex, yes,” he clarified. “But it was consensual.”

  “Consensual means you both agreed.”

  He gave her what he hoped was a withering look. “I know what it means.”

  She stood her ground. “The fact that you didn’t use a condom might suggest otherwise.”

  “I did use a condom,” he insisted. “I wouldn’t…I mean, I’m not that reckless.”

  “Then how do you explain the semen?”

  He couldn’t. But it wasn’t as if last night was a complete blur. It was just that he remembered some details more than others. And it didn’t help that he was hung-over. “Maybe it broke…” He hadn’t noticed anything unusual, but he’d drunk more than he had in years. And once he started sobering up, he’d been anxious to get home. “I didn’t hurt her. I can promise you that. I’m sorry if someone else did, but I’ve never struck or forced a woman.”

  “You keep mentioning someone else.”

  “Because it wasn’t me.”

  “So what do you suggest happened? Are you assuming someone came in after you left?”

  “That has to be the case,” he said. “It isn’t as if I’m some predator out trolling for women. I wasn’t the one who wanted to hook up last night. Kalyna got into my cab and gave the driver her address. I thought we’d already said good-night.”

  “Some men might think that means she’s asking for whatever she gets.”

  He could easily recognize the trap in that statement. “Some men, but not me. Quit trying to twist whatever I say. I’m just telling you how we got together. If I was a rapist, don’t you think I’d be the aggressor?” That was how he pictured rapists, but Kalyna had been chasing him for weeks. She managed to bump into him all over the place, even when they were off work and off base. He’d been able to feel her interest from the moment they were introduced, could still remember how her smile had widened at the sight of him, how she kept trying to engage him in conversation.

  “She said you asked to go home with her and she refused but later relented.” Jeffers added this with some doubt in his voice, so Luke appealed to him.

  “That’s a lie! I didn’t even ask her to dance with me. I’ve never been attracted to Kalyna.” In his opinion, Kalyna was too masculine—at least in the light of day. And he’d been able to tell from very early on that she was too controlling. He avoided her if he could, but it was impossible to avoid her entirely. She was his crew chief, which meant she performed preflight, through-flight and postflight inspections and fixed anything that went wrong with his jet.

  “If you weren’t attracted to her, why’d you have sex with her?” Golnick asked.

  Luke hadn’t planned on touching Kalyna. She was the one who asked him to dance and kept rubbing up against him, whispering in his ear: You make me so hot…When you gonna show me what you’ve got in your pants, Captain? Even then, he hadn’t been tempted until later on, after he had a good buzz going.

  “To be honest, I don’t know,” he admitted with a sigh. He’d just let the sultry promise in her voice overcome his better judgment.

  Golnick peered behind him, into the Craigs’ house, as if she might see something there that would provide proof of his guilt. “Why don’t you get dressed?” she said. “We need you to come down to the squad room to make a formal statement. We’ve notified your commander. He’s meeting us there.”

  Formal statement rang like a death knell in Luke’s head. They were taking him in. This was serious. After all the bad press such stories had received in the past, the military had grown very intolerant of any kind of sexual misconduct. A wink or a nod or even a smile could be termed sexual harassment and ruin a guy’s reputation, maybe his career. And here he was, accused of much worse. It didn’t matter that he was innocent. He’d look guilty. To anyone else, the chances of a second person coming in after he’d left Kalyna had to seem minute; he’d been with her until three in the morning. Beyond that, he was bigger and stronger than she was, which meant public support would remain firmly in her favor. This was the one situation where, even in America, a guy was guilty until proven innocent.

  He opened his mouth to plead his case. But a neighbor who’d spotted the security car was watching to see what would happen next, and Luke was reluctant to put on a show. Still hoping this was a terrible mistake that would be resolved quickly if he cooperated, he ducked back into the house and yanked on the rest of his clothes.

  He’d had a feeling Kalyna was bad news, but he’d discounted it. He hadn’t realized how much damage she could inflict if she set her mind to it. He’d never had reason to fear a woman. What could she do to him?

  Apparently, he was about to find out.

  1

  Sacramento, California

  Three weeks later

  Ava Bixby sat behind her desk, watching the large-boned blond woman twist the tissue Ava had just handed her. The blotchiness of her face and the puffiness of her eyes seemed out of place against the battle fatigues she was wearing. But she’d been relating a horrific incident, one that had happened only three weeks ago and would make any woman cry, even a tough military type.

  “Take your time,” Ava said soothingly. She knew the right tone to use. She dealt with victims every day. It was her job. They hadn’t all suffered rape, of course, but most had been directly affected by violent crime. Her partners, Skye Willis and Sheridan Granger, had firsthand experience. Ava had experience with it, too—just in a different way.

  Kalyna Harter had introduced herself as a staff sergeant E-5 in the air force and looked Ukrainian, as her first name suggested. But she spoke with no accent, leading Ava to believe she’d immigrated to the United States when she was a child. A light dusting of freckles covered her nose and she wore her fine blond hair straight down her back. She would’ve been beautiful, except that her features were a little large or incongruous or…something. Ava couldn’t figure out what made her face such a near miss.

  “I’m sorry, it’s—” Kalyna sniffed “—difficult to talk about this.”

  “I understand.” Although Ava had never been physically attacked, she’d felt the effects of criminal behavior. She knew from what her mother had done how badly it hurt everyone associated with it, even those who weren’t the intended target.

  “He—he seemed like a nice guy, you know?” Kalyna was saying. “I mean, I’ve flown with him for three months. He’s never said or done anything that made me think he might be dangerous. Besides, why would any guy with a body like that have to resort to force?”

  Ava’s mind had wandered, as it always did when she thought of her mother. She was tired, had less control today. It was Monday morning, but she’d spent most of the weekend working, as usual. Sometimes she didn’t allow herself enough of a break from all this and she became almost…numb.

  Picking up her pen, she focused, trying to shake off the heavy sense of loss and betrayal that weighed her down when she least expected it. She missed her mother—and felt guilty for missing someone who could do what Zelinda had done. “Rape’s not about sex, Ms.—”

  “Please, call me Kalyna.”

  “Kalyna. It’s about power. And rapists come in all shapes and sizes. But—” she dropped her pen again “—I’m not quite sure how to help you. This is a military matter. You’ve already mentioned that their investigators are working on it.”
/>   “It happened at my apartment, and my apartment is off base. That means the civilian police could prosecute, too.”

  A sharp knock interrupted.

  “Excuse me.” Ava lifted a hand. “Come in,” she called.

  Skye Willis poked her head into the room. With her golden tan and long, well-toned limbs, she didn’t need makeup or fancy clothes, but she always dressed nicely. Today she was wearing a summer dress and had her blond hair pulled back. Sheridan was with her. She wasn’t nearly as tall or toned as Skye—she was a little more voluptuous—but every bit as pretty. Her unusual, almost violet-colored eyes and dark hair drew attention wherever she went.

  Ava felt very plain next to her partners. With dishwater-blond hair, eyes that were neither brown nor green—just a murky in-between—and a body that was thin to the point of boniness, she couldn’t compare with their kind of beauty. Maybe that was why she settled for boxy business suits. She accepted what she was, didn’t try to compete.

  “We’re heading over to Starbucks,” Skye announced.

  “Can we get you two some coffee?” Sheridan chimed in.

  Ava glanced questioningly at Kalyna.

  “I’m fine,” she murmured.

  “So am I,” Ava told them.

  Skye must’ve noticed Kalyna’s blotchy face and realized they were in the middle of a serious conversation because she lowered her voice. “Okay, sorry for the interruption,” she said, and Sheridan waved quickly as they left.