The Good Liar
Kate Livingston and Liza Kingsley have been best friends since their childhood in the suburbs of Chicago. They know everything about each other. Or do they?When Liza sets up the newly divorced Kate with Michael Waller, an elegant man sixteen years her senior, neither woman expects Kate to fall for him so soon. The relationship is a whirlwind that enthralls Kate…and frightens Liza. Because Liza knows she may have introduced Kate to more than her dream man; she may have unwittingly introduced her to a dangerous world of secrets.And yet Kate marries Michael and follows him to a French-Canadian town called St. Marabel, where she begins to suspect that Michael isn't exactly who he seems. As each new suspicion arises, Kate finds herself investigating her husband, but what she doesn't know is that she's about to steer her friendship with Liza on a collision course that will race from the U.S. to Russia and from Canada to Brazil, and the betrayals she uncovers could cause the end of all of them.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest appreciation to Margaret O’Neill Marbury, Maureen Walters and Amy Moore-Benson. Thank you to everyone at MIRA Books, including Donna Hayes, Dianne Moggy, Loriana Sacilotto, Craig Swinwood, Laura Morris, Stacy Widdrington, Pamela Laycock, Katherine Orr, Marleah Stout, Don Lucey, Gordy Goihl, Dave Carley, Erica Mohr, Darren Lizotte, Andi Richman, Kathy Lodge and Carolyn Flear.
Thanks also to everyone who read the book or offered counsel on it, especially Jason Billups, Dustin O’Regan, Clare Toohey, Trisha Woodson, Pam Carroll, Mary Jennings Dean, Morgan Hogerty, Ted McNabola, Joan Posch, Elizabeth Kaveny, Margaret Caldwell, William Caldwell, Kelly Harden, Karen Uhlman, Rob Kovell and Les Klinger.
Lastly, thanks to my panel of experts—Dr. Stuart Rice and Dr. Richard Feely for their medical counsel, Maria Fernanda Mazzuco for her Rio de Janeiro expertise, Dr. Roman Voytsekhovskiy and Peter Zavialoff for their insight into Russia, Gary LaVerne Crowell for his knowledge about the Phoenix Program and Vietnam and Rob Seibert for his special ops and weapons guidance.
Contents
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
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
“O nly you can save your own life.”
Everyone told me this in one version or another, during the very bleak days after Scott and I fell apart. I took the advice to heart. I did everything I could to rescue myself.
I prayed to a divinity I couldn’t see or feel. I logged hours on the couch. I cleansed. I twisted my body into awkward positions intended to purify. I scribbled and scrawled in journals. I read Goethe. I slept and wept. I watched comedies and dramas. I swore off TV. I ate organically. I drank toxically. I took up gardening. I ran until my legs could hardly hold me.
Nothing helped. The problem was I no longer really wanted to save my own life. Someone had to do it for me. That someone was Liza.
But even Liza had no idea what it would take to save me.
1
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
R oger Leiland both hated and loved Brazil. On one hand, he’d grown up there professionally. The Trust, the organization he worked for, the one he was now in charge of, had planted him in Rio many years ago. He’d lived there under his alias, Paul Costa, posing as an American businessman selling vaccinations to the Brazilian government. Paul Costa had fallen in love with a woman named Marta and consequently had fallen in love with Brazil itself. But then Marta was gone, dead after a drive-by shooting on the Rodovia dos Lagos Highway. The shooting had left Paul Costa all but dead, too. The Trust had realized he was slipping and pulled him out. Sent him to Chicago, where he was like a walking corpse slowly coming back to life, strangely paralleling his research there—the Juliet Project. Eventually, he’d moved to New York where he took solace in the resilience of power instead of the tenuous comforts of love. He climbed the ladder at the Trust until he’d forged an entirely new existence at the top, all the while keeping his thumb squarely on the Juliet Project.
Now, his expertise was needed in Rio again. Technically, he could have sent someone else, but he wanted to prove to himself that he was at the apex of his game, that Rio no longer touched him. He had been back in Brazil for a few weeks, and while he had felt a flicker of longing for his old life, it was only that—a flicker. He was a different person now.
He had done his job while here. He’d gotten all the intel he required, and now he was meeting with Elena Mistow. Usually members of the Trust knew each other only by their aliases, and they’d been strictly trained to look no further. But even before he was a board member of the Trust, he knew Elena Mistow’s real name. Everyone did. Because Elena Mistow was royalty. Her father had founded the entire organization.
