The Liar’s Lullaby

For Eleanor

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

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Acknowledgments

About the Author

Praise

Also by Meg Gardiner

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

HACK SHIRAZI BRACED HIMSELF IN THE OPEN DOOR OF THE HELICOPTER and gazed across San Francisco Bay at the crowded ballpark. Wind and engine noise buffeted him. The evening sun bisected his field of vision. The check had cleared, so he was going to deliver the Rambo. But they were running late, which put the failing gold light square in his eyes.

He shoved the banana clip into the Kalashnikov. “On my mark.”

In the helicopter flying alongside them, the second team positioned themselves in the doorway. They swept over the bay toward the city. Whitecaps foamed on the surface of the water, five hundred feet below. In the pilot’s seat, Andreyev held tight to the controls.

The Giants’ ballpark was filled to capacity. People jammed the stands and covered the field from home plate to the centerfield stage. The two Bell 212 choppers would fly beyond it, circle back, and make their run at the target from out of the sun.

Andreyev radioed their man on the ground. “Rock and roll.”

IN THE STANDS BELOW, Rez Shirazi put a hand to his radio earpiece. “I hear you.”

Rock and roll was just about all he could hear. It echoed from the bleachers along the foul line, where beer-marinated rednecks whooped to the beat. From the teeming field, where sunburned college girls sang along with the saccharine lyrics. From the corporate hospitality suites on either side of him, where venture capitalists sipped mojitos and dipped five-dollar tortilla chips in mango chutney salsa.

Shirazi shook his head. Ersatz rock and roll—drowned in country-western cheese sauce. Tasteless, drippy American cheese.

Through his earpiece, he heard his brother Hack. “Four minutes. Mark.”

Rez clicked the timer on his watch. “Mark.”

On the stage, near towering speakers that amplified their cornpone accent, a choir of backup patriots was woo-wooing, while a singer in two-thousand-dollar cowboy boots wailed about the trials of the common man.

You can take my work, you can take my cash…but if you won’t shake my hand, I’ll light a fire up your—

“Ass,” Shirazi said.

The surrounding suites were jammed. People crowded the interiors and filled rows of seats on the balcony. But Rez’s suite was empty: no food, absolutely no drink, no loiterers. He stepped onto the balcony and checked their gear. The CO2 canisters were in place. The zip line was secure. It was a stainless steel aircraft cable, clamped through a forged eyebolt and anchored to the girders that supported the upper deck of the stadium. He glanced at the video camera, then over the edge of the balcony. The drop was substantial.

Andreyev’s voice crackled through the radio. “I can’t see her on video. Is she there?”

ON CUE, the door to the suite opened. Noise flowed in from the hallway outside. Tasia McFarland stormed in.

“Rez, they’re following me. Get rid of them. I can’t do this with all these people harassing me.”

His nerves fired at the sight of her. “She’s here.” For a millisecond his skin itched and his ears thundered. “Oh, brother.”

In his ear, Hack sounded sharp. “What’s wrong?”

Tasia already had the climbing harness cinched around her hips. That was no mean feat. She was wearing a magenta corset, which trailed back into ruffles that dragged on the floor. Beneath it she wore ripped jeans and turquoise cowboy boots. The top half of her looked like Scarlett O’Hara halfway through a striptease. The bottom half looked like she’d escaped a cage fight with a rabid badger.

Behind her, people streamed through the door. Stadium security men. A makeup artist. A wardrobe assistant. The soundman.

She spun on them. “Stop hounding me. You’re turning my head into a beehive. I can’t think. Get out. Rez, get them out.”

Rez put up his hands. “Okay. Chill.”

Her eyes gleamed, jade bright. “Chill? This is an event. This is a supernova. I’m at the shore of the Rubicon. And these”—she waved at the entourage—“these vampires are filling my head with static. They’re filling the score with noise and I won’t be able to hear what I need to hear to protect myself out there. Get them out.”

In his ear, Rez heard the director in the control booth. “Crap. Is she melting down?”

“You got it.” Rez gestured the entourage back. “You heard the lady. Everybody out.”

The makeup girl pointed at Tasia in dismay. “Look at her. She’s been playing in the crayon box.”

Rez pushed the girl toward the door.

The security men glowered. “This breaches protocol.”

“It’s not a problem,” Rez said. “We’ve done the stunt a dozen times.”

The soundman shook his head. “Her radio mike, she—”

“I got this.” Rez ushered the last of the crowd from the suite.

The soundman shouted over his shoulder. “It’s on your head, man.”

“I’m the stunt coordinator. It’s always on my head.” Rez shut the door.

“Lock it,” Tasia said.

Rez flipped the bolt. Tasia stalked around the room, glancing at corners and the ceiling, examining the shadows. Her ruffles trailed behind her like a peacock’s plumage.

“I used to think fame was a shield. But it won’t protect me. It’s only made me a target,” she said.

Rez glanced at his watch. “Celebrity’s tough.”

“Tough? It’s a life sentence. And life’s a bitch, and I’m a bitch, and then you die. Like Princess Di.”

Over the radio, Andreyev said, “Three minutes. We are inbound, beginning our run.”

“Roger,” Rez said.

In three minutes a computer program would set the special effects sequence in motion, and Tasia would make her grand entrance as the helicopters overflew the ballpark. And she was blowing a damned cylinder.

“And I’m not camera shy. But there’s an eye in the sky, watching me. Satellites, NSA, paparazzi. On TV, online, whenever I turn my back. I’m in their sights. Fawn in the headlights. Doe in the brights. Do, re, mi, fa, so long, suckers.”

She stalked out the plate-glass doors onto the balcony and stared down at the forty thousand people who filled the ballpark. The music bounced off the glass, distorted echoes of the Star-Spangled chorus.

Rez followed her outside. “Let’s get you rigged. It’s going to be fine. It’s just a stunt.”

The breeze off the bay lifted her hair from her neck like swirls of caramel smoke. “It was a stunt in the movie. But in the movie, the star didn’t do this. You know why?”

Because she’s sane. “Because she’s not you.”

Because the star wasn’t as ravenous for stage time as Tasia McFarland. Because the star wasn’t brave or wild enough to hook herself to a zip line and fly forty feet over the heads of the crowd as fireworks went off from the scoreboard, singing the title song from the movie.

Bull’s-eye was the latest in a series of action films that featured guns and slinky women. Long Barrel. Pump Action. The stuntmen had their own names for these movies. Handguns and Hand Jobs. Planes, Trains, and Blown Brains.

But the flick was a hit, and so was “Bull’s-eye,” the song. Tasia McFarland was top of the charts. And she wanted to stay there.

“Movie stars don’t do their own stunts because they don’t know jack about life and death,” she said.

Her eyes shone. Her makeup looked like an overstimulated six-year-old had applied it after peeping at Maxim.

“Stop staring at me like that,” she said. “I’m sober. I’m clean.”

Too clean? Rez thought, and his face must have shown it, because Tasia shook her head.

“And I’m not off my meds. I’m just wound up. Let’s go.”

“Great.” Rez forced encouragement into his voice. “It’ll be a breeze. Like Denver. Like Washington.”

“You’re a lousy liar.” She smiled. It looked unhappy. “I like that, Rez. It’s the good liars who get you.”

In his ear, Andreyev’s voice rose in pitch. “Two minutes.”

Tasia’s gaze veered from the empty suite to the heaving field. She squirmed against the tight fit of her jeans.

“The harness feels wrong.” She pulled on it. “I have to adjust it.”

A carabiner was already clipped to the harness. Rez reached for it. She slapped his hand. “Go inside and turn around. Don’t look.”

He glared, but she pushed him back. “I can’t sing if my crotch is pinched by this damned chastity belt. Go.”

And she thought that adjusting her panties in full view of a stadium crowd was the modest option? But he remembered rule number one: Humor the talent. Reluctantly he went inside and turned his back.

Behind him the plate-glass doors slammed shut. He spun and saw Tasia lock the doors.

“Hey.” Rez shook the door handles. “What are you doing?”

She grabbed a chair and jammed it under the handles.

“This isn’t a stunt, Rez. He’s after me. This is life and death.”

ON THE FIELD, sunburned, thirsty, crammed on a plastic chair surrounded by thousands of happy people, Jo Beckett sank lower in her seat.

The band was blasting out enough decibels to blow up the sonar on submarines in the Pacific. The song, “Banner of Fire,” was hard on the downbeat and on folks who didn’t love buckshot, monster trucks, and freedom. The singer, Searle Lecroix, was a pulsing figure: guitar slung low, lips nearly kissing the mike. A black Stetson tipped down across his forehead, putting his eyes in shadow. The guitar in his hands was painted in stars and stripes, and probably tuned to the key of U.S.A.

The young woman beside Jo climbed on her chair, shot her fists in the air, and cried, “Woo!”

Jo grabbed the hem of the woman’s T-shirt. “Tina, save it for the Second Coming.”

Tina laughed and flicked Jo’s fingers away. “Snob.”

Jo rolled her eyes. When she’d offered her little sister concert tickets for her birthday, she figured Tina would pick death metal or Aida, not Searle Lecroix and the Bad Dogs and Bullets tour.

Despite her taste in music, Tina looked like a junior version of Jo: long brown curls, lively eyes, compact, athletic physique. But Jo wore her combats and Doc Martens and had her UCSF Medical Center ID in her backpack and her seen-it-all, early thirties attitude in her hip pocket. Tina wore a straw cowboy hat, a nose ring, and enough silver bangles to stock the U.S. Mint. She was the human version of caffeine.

Jo couldn’t help but smile at her. “You’re a pawn of the Military-Nashville complex.”

“Sicko. Next you’ll say you don’t love puppies, or the baby Jesus.”

Jo stood up. “I’m going to the snack bar. Want anything?”

Tina pointed at Lecroix. “Him. Hot and buttered.”

Jo laughed. “Be right back.”

She worked her way to the aisle and headed for the stands. Overhead, sunlight glinted off metal. She looked up and saw a steel cable, running from a luxury suite to the stage. It looked like a zip line. She slowed, estimating the distance from the balcony to the touchdown point. It was a long way.

A second later, she heard helicopters.

ANDREYEV PUT THE BELL 212 through a banking turn and lined up for the pass above the ballpark. The second helicopter flanked him. The sunset flared against his visor.

“Ninety seconds,” he said. “Rez, is Tasia ready to go?”

He got no reply. “Rez?”

He glanced at the video monitor. It showed the balcony of the luxury suite.

He did a double take. The doors to the suite were jammed shut with a chair. Rez was inside, rattling the doorknob.

On the balcony Tasia stood with her back to him. She reached around to her back pocket, beneath the extravagant ruffles that trailed from her corset.

“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Andreyev said.

From the door of the chopper, Hack Shirazi shouted, “What’s going on?”

Andreyev yelled into the radio. “Rez, she’s got a gun.”

2

REZ POUNDED ON THE PLATE-GLASS DOOR. “TASIA, OPEN IT. FOR God’s sake, nobody’s after you.”

In his ear Andreyev shouted at him. “…a gun. Rez, stop her.”

Rez put his hand over his earpiece. Tasia turned around. In her right hand she held a pistol.

“What are you doing with that?” he said.

The gun was a big mutha. It was a goddamned Colt .45 automatic.

“Is that from Props?”

“It’s from the department of authenticity,” she said. “With a grand finale, it always comes down to a gun.”

“On-screen, not in real life. Put it down.”

“You keep thinking this is a show. So call this a solo with high-caliber backup.”

“That thing drops on somebody’s head and we’re sued up the wazoo. Don’t get me fired.” He rattled the door again. “You can’t take a weapon out there.”

She smiled angrily. “Everybody else involved in this stunt has a gun.”

“But theirs are fake.”

“Exactly.” She held up the pistol. “Fame can’t protect me. Just Samuel Colt. And my music, ‘cause the voice is mightier than the sword. Melody, harmony, counterpoint, lyrics. Remember that—if they get me, remember. The truth is in my music. Number one with a bullet, glory, halle-lu-jah.”

“Nothing’s going to happen, Tasia.” Rez raised his hands placatingly. “Please put it down.”

“Do you think I’m an asshole? I won’t drop it.” Her eyes swam with a feverish heat. “God, you actually think it’s loaded.”

For a moment her swirling hair took on the look of snakes. But the snakes were only in her head.

From the chopper, Andreyev said, “Is the gun a prop? Rez?”

“I don’t know.”

Tasia’s voice hit him low and sharp, like a blade. “No, you don’t. You have no idea what’s out there. What’s waiting. I’m talking about violence. I’m talking about propaganda of the deed. I’m talkin’ ‘bout a revolution—yeah, you know, we all want to change the world.”

In his ear, Rez heard the director. “What’s happening? Shirazi, for the love of Christ, what’s she doing?”

“Tasia, put down the weapon.”

She shook her head. “I put it down, and he gets me. Then it’s open season. Car bombs in cities. Death squads cutting down women and children.” She held the gun up, and turned it, seemingly checking that it had all its working pieces. “I used to think they wouldn’t dare. But I was naïve. I was a child. A freaking child, playing around. Round, round, get around.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Martyrdom.”

Rez felt faint.

“It ain’t always religious. Sometimes it’s ungodly, and sometimes it’s at the hands of the angels, not the devil. And this gun is from the source, the alpha and omega.”

She grabbed her carabiner and clipped it to the trolley cable that hung from the zip line.

Into his radio, Rez said, “Get security. Send them through the luxury suites on either side of us and grab her.”

Tasia turned abruptly and stared at him. “I told him. Warned him. So he’s heard me. But he’s going to hear me again, right now, a whole lot louder.”

Jesus. “Come on, T—”

She waved the gun haphazardly in his direction. He flinched. She turned back to the crowd.

“Secret Service would have scoped it out beforehand.”

Oh, crap.

“But they won’t protect me. Au contraire. Loose cannon, loose lips, loose woman. I am on my own and in their sights. So it’s just me and my music and the peacemaker here.”

Onstage, the band segued into the intro to “Bull’s-eye.” On cue, the CO2 canisters rigged around the balcony began discharging. Clouds of white smoke swirled around Tasia.

Shirazi stared at the barrel of the Colt. He had no way to determine whether the gun was loaded.

“Tasia, if there’s a problem, come inside and let security handle it. You can’t take a gun onstage. You’ll terrify the crowd.”

“No, I won’t.” She smiled again, darkly. “Watch me.”

The director shouted in his ear. “Grab her.”

“I’m trying. Did you call security?” Rez shook the plate-glass door one last time. He ran across the suite, opened the main door, and leaned into the hall. The corridor was crowded. A guard was loitering nearby.

Rez waved at him. “Tasia’s locked on the balcony, freaking out. Go through the suite next door and grab her.”

Behind him, she called, “Rez, you idiot. He’ll get in.”

The security guard hustled to the adjoining suite and pounded on the door. Rez ran back to the plate-glass windows. Tasia looked manic and distraught, her face blurred by the swirling CO2.

“I can’t let this happen.” She turned on her headset mike and began gesturing to the people sitting along the balcony in the adjoining suites. “Hey, everybody. Join the party.”

People looked up, surprised. As if she were hosting a street party, she waved everybody toward her. They held back, unsure.

“Come on!”

“What the hell?” the director said.

First one person, then another, stood up and climbed over the low barriers from the balconies of adjoining boxes. Then they all came. They swarmed over the barriers and mobbed her.

“Damn,” Rez shouted into his radio. “She’s surrounding herself with people so the security guards can’t get to her.”

More CO2 canisters lit off. Dozens of fans, hundreds, crowded around Tasia before they were lost in the white mist of carbon dioxide.

And understanding swept through Shirazi. “Tasia, no.”

He grabbed a chair and swung it into the plate glass. It bounced off. The pane was ultra-thick safety glass, and the blow left barely a mark.

The first round of fireworks ignited. Tasia faced the stage and raised the Colt.

3

STANDING CENTER STAGE, GUITAR IN HIS HANDS, SEARLE LECROIX HIT the high note at the end of the verse. The crowd reached toward him, swept up in his performance like wheat pulled forward by a prairie wind. He grinned and pushed the cowboy hat down on his forehead.

In the stands behind home plate, carbon dioxide swirled around Tasia. Lecroix hit the downbeat. On cue, she began to sing.

“Give me a shot of whiskey with a chaser of tears…”

Her soprano filled the air like silver. The crowd cheered. Lecroix felt a rush.

He hit the chord change to G major. Tasia’s voice gained power.

“Give me a shot of courage, blow away all my fears…”

Her magenta corset swam in and out of view through the smoke. The crowd was spilling onto the balcony around her. What on earth? And she had something in her hand. It caught the light.

A gun.

He lost the beat. The bass player glanced at him.

Theatrically, like she was a gunfighter practicing a quick draw, she swung the gun up, aimed at the stage, and pretended to pull the trigger. The second round of fireworks whizzed into the air from the stage scaffolding. Tasia jerked her hand up, miming recoil. The fireworks burst with a crackle and poured red light on the crowd.

It looked like Tasia had set them off. She raised the gun to her lips and blew on the barrel.

Wow. The girl wanted to tie the crowd in knots. Indulging herself in some fake gunplay—Drive the guys crazy, why don’t you?

More fireworks lit off, green and white. Again Tasia raised the gun, fake-fired, and blew on the barrel.

“Fire away, hit me straight in the heart…”

Lecroix’s own heart beat in double time. Above the stadium, two helicopters flew into view. The third round of fireworks burst, red, white, and blue. Tasia’s voice rocketed above them.

“Baby, give me a shot.”

She raised the gun again. Smoke obscured her.

A sound cracked through the ballpark like cannon fire.

BELOW THE BELL 212, the ballpark swept into view. Andreyev heard Rez yelling at him over the radio.

“The weapon’s not a prop and—”

A colossal bang cracked through Andreyev’s headphones.

“Christ.” Ears ringing, he called to the pilot of the other helicopter. “Break off.”

Was Tasia Goddamned McFarland firing at him? The second chopper veered right. Andreyev banked sharply, following it.

Hack shouted, “Too close!”

He’d banked too hard. He jerked the controls, but it was too late. His tail rotor hit the second chopper’s skids.

The noise was sudden, loud, everywhere. The chopper shook like it had been hit with a wrecking ball. The tail rotor sheared off.

Hack yelled, “Andreyev—”

The chopper instantly spun, losing height. Andreyev fought with the controls. “Hang on.”

The engines screamed. The view spun past Andreyev. Bay Bridge, downtown, sunset, scoreboard. God, clear the scoreboard, get past it and ditch in the bay and don’t auger into the crowd—

“Hang, on, Hack.”

The bay swelled in his windshield.

ONSTAGE, LECROIX HEARD metal shearing. He glanced up. In the sky above the stadium, debris spewed from one of the stunt helicopters. The crowd gasped. The chopper spun in circles, engine whining. It keeled at a sharp angle and dropped behind the scoreboard toward the bay.

The security guards waved at the band. “Get down. Look out.”

A slice of rotor blade buried itself in the stage like a hatchet.

The drummer leaped up, knocked over his kit, and hit the stage with his hands over his head. Lecroix threw down his guitar and jumped into the crowd.

A chunk of the chopper’s tail plunged like a meteor into the front row seats. Screaming, the crowd fled. Lecroix fought against the tide, aiming for the stands where CO2 canisters continued to spew white smoke.

Lightning seemed to run through him. He knew where the first God-awful banging noise had come from. And why it was deafening, infinitely louder than the pyrotechnics or guitar solo.

The gun had fired, next to Tasia’s headset mike.