Filthy Liar (Forbidden Bodyguards Book 5) Read online

  Filthy Liar

  Ainsley Booth

  www.ainsleybooth.com

  Contents

  About This Book

  A Note To My Readers

  1. Melinda

  2. Jason

  3. Melinda

  4. Jason

  5. Jason

  6. Melinda

  7. Jason

  8. Melinda

  9. Jason

  10. Melinda

  11. Melinda

  12. Jason

  13. Melinda

  14. Jason

  15. Melinda

  16. Jason

  17. Melinda

  18. Jason

  19. Melinda

  20. Melinda

  21. Jason

  22. Melinda

  23. Melinda

  24. Jason

  25. Melinda

  26. Jason

  27. Melinda

  28. Jason

  29. Melinda

  [ Epilogue ]

  Also by Ainsley Booth

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About This Book

  Jason:

  It’s been a long, lonely five years. I never stopped caring for Ellie, even after I realized she’d conned her way into our firm in order to get a scoop. Now that she’s back in my life, we have a lot to catch up on—even as the world burns around us, I’m going to find a way to prove she can trust me.

  * * *

  Melinda:

  I’m not his Ellie. I never was. She doesn’t exist, and if Jason starts digging into Melinda the journalist, that won’t end well for me, either. But now that some of our cards are on the table, maybe I can use Jason one last time. For the greater good.

  Also in this series:

  Hate F*@k (Cole and Hailey)

  Booty Call (Scott and Ali)

  Dirty Love (Wilson and Tabitha)

  Wicked Sin (Taylor and Luke)

  * * *

  www.ainsleybooth.com

  A Note To My Readers

  This series started out as two distinct things: a huge, sweeping saga about geo-political issues, stretching out over many books, and at the same time, each book is an individual, deeply intimate story of two messy people finding each other in the chaos.

  Filthy Liar continues that tradition. This book starts in a more ripped-from-the-headlines way than I first envisioned, jumping over the end of this series as I originally planned it. If you’re here for the messy love part, that’s very much the same as I always planned it to be, don’t worry.

  I really wish that billionaire rapists were properly held to account in the real world, and on the page, but maybe what we need now is for them just to be dead in both places. So, RIP* Gerome Lively, you horrible monster.

  As a reminder, I started writing this series in 2014. It’s not my fault shit got real. All similarities to real events or people is purely coincidental.

  A detailed content warning is available on my website.

  * * *

  ~ Ainsley Booth

  * * *

  * The P does not stand for peace, I promise.

  1

  Melinda

  What does justice really look like? Not a billionaire’s suicide, that’s for sure.

  Somehow I always knew the journey would end like this. Not in a court of law, not at the end of the imperfect course of justice being served, but cut short by an act of brutal selfishness.

  Of course Gerome Lively killed himself. He was in jail, denied bail, and looking at multiple life sentences with no chance of ever seeing freedom again. Removing himself from the justice process was his final “fuck you” to every woman who came forward about him abusing them when they were girls.

  After everything the survivors of his sex-trafficking did to bring him to justice—twice, because the billionaire had a disturbing number of friends in high places who didn’t care what he did, or worse, had been a part of his depravity—he took the coward’s way out.

  I get the news alert on my phone. A minute later, my college roommate texts me.

  Caroline: The fucking coward.

  Melinda: My thoughts exactly.

  Caroline: The conspiracy theorists are going to love this, too.

  Melinda: Not if we can help it.

  Caroline: You need to come back to D.C. so we can have drinks.

  Caroline is a federal prosecutor. She didn’t work on his case, and we’ve always been careful about work boundaries. When I wrote my book about Lively, the one that thrust him back into the public eye and triggered a new investigation, we had an ethical firewall from the moment I decided to cover the story on the off chance it might blow up in her jurisdiction.

  But it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for her to be a source on one of my stories. I open the sliding door and step out onto the deck. It’s still early on the west coast and the Pacific Ocean is a beast this morning. Far below, waves crash against rock.

  Go back to D.C.?

  It’s the last place in the world I want to spend any time. But to see Caroline—and maybe for a story, if there’s something she can only tell me in person—I’ll get on a plane.

  After booking a flight, I go to social media to see what trends are being pushed around Lively’s death. I know even before I go to Twitter there will be chatter that he didn’t actually commit suicide.

  I’m not wrong. And there’s just as much chatter about who might want to “silence” him, as if there was ever a chance in hell of him turning on his acquaintances. As if Lively’s celebrity “friends” had anything to fear from him, as if the dubiously elected POTUS had a need to silence him. Or my favorite: as if the British prince who spent his mid-life crisis “accidentally” being a pedophile had somehow ordered a hit to happen at Riker’s Island.

  All of those rumors assume a lot more competence in certain high places than actually exists.

  But most of all, they deny the depths to which a depraved criminal can sink.

  Gerome Lively never valued anything beyond twisted power. Stripped of it in almost every way, he used the last tool in his disposal to cause pain one more time.

  For five years, I’ve been writing about this story, and others like it. For five years, I’ve worked within the bounds of the law. I’m a journalist and freedom of the press gives me some latitude to hold sources in confidence, to investigate stories.

  Lively’s suicide means a lot of information is never going to come out in court.

  He didn’t die to protect anyone’s secrets but his own, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t collateral damage.

  I put my phone down and stare out at the ocean. I need to clear my mind and remind myself of the endgame.

  No more secrets. For anyone.

  2

  Jason

  The text arrives while I’m glad-handing at a glitzy reception at the French embassy.

  Cole: New client. Meet at the office in an hour.

  I set my glass on a tray carried by a passing waiter and head for the door. I’m done here, anyway. Every so often I get lucky, because here’s the thing: big decisions are made in backroom deals, yeah, but sometimes those back rooms are actually the corner of a party. Power brokers huddled in plain sight.

  Not tonight, though. It’s not a complete bust. Halfway across the room, I catch the tail end of a discreet conversation that I file away. If I’m free tomorrow night, I might be able to make an appearance at the Kennedy Center tomorrow and make a new friend.

  A lot of my job is knowing the right—or wrong—person at the right time. I keep my eyes and ears open and take nothing at face value. Everyone is lying, to themselves or others, and when I can use what I know to get what I want, it’s a beautiful thing.

  A beautiful, twisted, broken thing, but that’s my life.

  The how and why of what I do as a crisis management specialist—a fixer, one of Washington’s best—that’s not important. What matters is that I get results.

  Thanks to a generous tip, the valet staff have my car close at hand. I slide behind the wheel, and as soon as the door is closed, I hit play on the audio file waiting on my phone. It’s the start of a dossier, read in a cool, electronic voice programmed by Wilson Carter, our resident hacker.

  Our client, it turns out, is Jeff Mayfair.

  Billionaire, philanthropist, and the older brother of a former SEAL buddy who has done some work with us—Scott Mayfair, who married Cole Parker’s youngest sister-in-law.

  Fucking hell.

  “Mr. Mayfair has no criminal charges in his background, either domestically or according to Interpol. He is a dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom. He has extensive holdings in both countries, recently divested from the parent company, Mayfair Enterprises…”

  There’s nothing in the dossier that is a surprise to me. There’s also nothing there to hint at what his reasons for hiring The Horus Group might be, either.

  By the time I pull into the parking garage beneath our building, I know one thing for sure. Our client has almost certainly been lying, somewhere and for some reason, and now it’s come back to bite him in the ass.

  This is why my firm exists—to get the rich and powerful out of the trouble they should have avoided in the first place.

  But we’re all human. I don’t judge anyone, as long as they pay their bill promptly.

  Upstairs, I find Cole waiting in the boardroom with Jeff. Wilson is on one of the screens on
the wall, video conferencing in from his home in some secret location in the Pacific Northwest.

  Our fourth partner, Tag Browning, arrives just as we’re doing introductions. Seven years ago, Tag was a disillusioned DC cop going through a divorce. I used that to my advantage and laid the facts on the table for him. We were going to make a real difference in the world.

  Nights like this, I sometimes wonder if we’ve done enough in that regard.

  “Jeff, this is Jason Evans, our president,” Cole starts.

  “We’ve met in passing,” I say. “I’m a big fan of your brothers.” In addition to Scott, they have another brother who is a pilot in Air Force.

  “As am I.” Jeff sighs. “If any of this touches them, I’ll be damn sorry.”

  “Why don’t you start by telling us what this is?” Tag gives him a big, disarming grin. It’s an act, and one he’s very good at.

  “I’m being blackmailed.”

  Ah, that old chestnut. None of us look surprised. I take a seat at the table—not the head, but one of the seats along the side.

  Cole sets our standard non-disclosure agreement in front of our new client. “Tell us everything. Whatever you leave out will be the nail in your coffin.”

  “There are photos of me with girls—underage girls—on Gerome Lively’s plane.” Jeff pauses as Cole loses his calm mask.

  Well, no fucking shit my partner is unimpressed. Lively kidnapped his wife. But none of us are on Team Defend Predators.

  “I’m sorry,” I say with all the chill in my voice. “We don’t work on that kind of case.”

  But Jeff doesn’t move. He doesn’t get mad, he just keeps going. “The photos aren’t real,” he says levelly. “And I can prove it.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “The proof is classified. I’m willing to risk sharing it with you behind that NDA, but I can’t make it public. Not without risking jail time and losing contracts worth billions of dollars that would put my employees out of work.”

  A quick glance at the screen on the wall tells me Wilson is already digging.

  Silence bounces around the room.

  Cole doesn’t say a word. Tag glances his way, then to me. Finally, he looks up at Wilson, who gives a tight nod. Go ahead. I haven’t found anything—yet. Tag leans back in his chair, sliding into the good cop role with ease. “Look, Jeff. Can I call you Jeff?”

  The billionaire nods.

  “The thing is, as you say, proof can be faked just as easily as photos. Maybe—maybe—you can survive pictures, if there’s nothing else. Literally, nothing else can come out like this. And don’t get me wrong, I know we’re all men with urges here, but—”

  “I don’t like younger women,” Mayfair interrupts. “I definitely don’t like girls. That’s disgusting. Lively was disgusting, and not only is that photo not real, but I went out of my way to never cross paths with him. That’s not the kind of business person I am. Period. You won’t find anything.”

  “What do you like, then?” Tag shrugs. “Bondage? Threeways? A little good-humored humiliation?”

  Mayfair’s throat bobs.

  Tag grins, another broad we’re-all-guys-here friendly face. “Is that it? You’re afraid something else gets out?”

  “I wish it were that simple.” Mayfair scrubs a hand over his face, then sighs. “I’ve never had a particularly long relationship, and while I like the physical side of it as much as the average person, I’m not into ropes and whips and chains—in either direction.”

  When he doesn’t continue, Wilson looks up to the camera, making eye contact from the other side of the continent. “But you do make all of your intimate partners sign NDAs.”

  Jeff nods. Then he gestures to the form document we had presented to him, with our own signatures on it. “It was presented to me as a good idea by our legal team, a long time ago, and no partner ever had an issue with it. But the photos I’m being blackmailed with…they have a copy of that NDA. It’s been forged with a young woman’s name. I have never met her in my life. I swear to you, that’s the truth.”

  I stand up and pace to the sideboard, where someone—Cole, probably—filled a pitcher of water before the meeting started.

  Once upon a time, we had a receptionist who made sure there were bagels or muffins there as well, but then I fucked her for a summer. And she took off for the hills.

  So I’m not really one to judge another man for fucking up his life in the most ordinary of ways. I pour myself a glass of water. “Tell us about the blackmail. How long have they been in contact with you, what have you paid them already, and how did the contact begin?”

  Without hesitation, he digs into the whole story. He hasn’t yet paid anything out. They made contact to his personal email address, not through an intermediary, and he’s been slow-rolling them with his responses for three days.

  “Why did you come to us? Why not handle this with your internal security team, or with Scott?”

  Jeff shakes his head. “I’d prefer my brother not be involved. He’s living his best life in California, and he’s been through enough.” He glances at Cole. “I came to you instead of my own team because I’m not sure it’s not an inside job. I know Scott trusts you, and if I went to him first, he’d probably say I should hire The Horus Group.”

  “Well, our reputation stands for itself. We’ll do our best to help you,” Cole says, the first time he’s spoken since we sat down. His brow is still pulled tight, but the storm clouds have passed. It’s as close to an endorsement of this client as we’ll get.

  I nod, then look at Tag, who turns to Wilson on the screen.

  Our hacker jerks his chin up. “On it.”

  The next night, following that hunch I had based on an overheard conversation, I make sure the wrong people see me buy a pretty young socialite a drink at the Kennedy Center.

  By the end of the concert, she’s warned about me. He’s dangerous. The rumors are true. Jason Evans may look like a Washington insider now, but he’s an ex-SEAL who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, and his first clients were…well, Amelia Dashford Reid is dead now, isn’t she? He got her husband off a murder charge, you know. But that family…

  Fuck those fuckers. That family—at least the younger generation—has removed themselves from the narrative, and the ghost gossip doesn’t matter. I’m not above using it, though.

  Over the next week, a few things slide into focus.

  First, we don’t think Jeff Mayfair is the only person being blackmailed with false documentation of connections with Lively. So far we haven’t found anyone else willing to admit it, but the routing number for the off-shore bank account has pinged around a bit on the Dark Web in recent months.

  They’re a hired gun, and hired guns like regular work.

  Instead of paying them off, Wilson had Mayfair make a low-key but public statement waiving all NDA agreements, personal and professional. It sparks speculation that Mayfair might be running for public office, and still the photos don’t make a peep anywhere—and the blackmailer doesn’t return with new demands.

  The second thing that pings onto our radar is that my half-brother, Mack, has started a quiet and unexpected campaign to join the president’s administration. It’s an attempt to course-correct from the inside, and it’s an uncharacteristically bad move, but he’s the older brother, the more successful brother, and guidance between us has always moved in a single direction. He gave us the seed money to start The Horus Group. We’ve outgrown the need for him as a silent investor, but that history still exists.