Liars' Games (Project Chameleon Book 1) (8 page)

RETURNING TO CENTRAL Administration after the Round Table Meeting, Steve Jensen sat down behind his desk and began checking his phone messages. Forty voicemail messages. Good God. That always happened when he was out of the office for half the day, but the number of messages seemed to get bigger every month. He punched the message button and listened, scribbling notes on a pad of paper as he did so.

He prioritized the notes, number one being a question from the mayor, one that required research on Steve’s part. He turned his chair around so that he could retrieve the book he needed off the bookshelves behind his desk. Before he found the right book, he heard a knock on his door.

Frank stuck his head around the corner. “Hey Steve, you got a minute?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“Your luncheon was today, wasn’t it? Sorry I couldn’t make it to this one. What’d I miss?”

Steve shook his head. “Not much. John Richmond was his usual obnoxious self.”

He thought about the odd remarks John had made to Claire about her not using her magic yet. Damn strange. And he was sure he saw John wink at her once, which was something he’d never seen John do before
.  

“Where are you, somewhere in the Alps?” Frank asked, bringing Steve back to the present. “Aren’t you going to tell me what happened this afternoon? Come on old man. I want details.”

Steve smiled and shook his head. “Funny. Look who’s calling me an old man. Takes one to know one, huh?”

“Yeah, yeah, come on.”

Steve gave a summary of the events at the meeting.

“So
why do you think John dislikes Claire so much?” Frank asked.

Resting his elbows on the arms of his chair, Steve swiveled the chair and steepled his hands. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure
. After the meeting, I stopped to talk to Manuel outside the conference room. John was talking to Claire inside the room. The door was open and I caught a snippet—something about Alan Reynolds and a mistress. She came out a few minutes later and looked really upset. I tried to talk to John afterwards, but he brushed me off.”

“I sure hope she doesn’t walk off the job tomorrow,” Frank said.
“I really like her. What did you think of her?”

Steve hesitated
, remembering her shimmering light brown hair with its gold highlights. Sometimes, when the room’s lighting was just right, her hair had a slight reddish tint. Oh, and her sparkling blue eyes were incredible. Yes, she was beautiful, sexy, intelligent, witty, but he damned sure wasn’t going to say it, not even to Frank. He hadn’t told anyone about his date with her. “I don’t know her very well yet. I like her. I’m usually a good judge of character. I hope I’m right about her. Gotta admit that John’s behavior toward her during and after the meeting bothers me a little. Of course he often doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

“My lips are sealed. You know how I feel about him, too.”

Steve nodded. He knew darn well that he and Frank weren’t the only people around here who didn’t like John Richmond. Although most wouldn’t dare say it aloud, their body language spoke volumes.

“Hey, that reminds me,” Steve said. “If
you find out anything about why the board hired Claire, let me know.”

CHAPTER SIX

CLAIRE FUMBLED WITH her front door lock, then entered and closed the door, wanting to cry. She couldn’t let her son and his nanny see her that way, though. She pulled off her suit jacket and hung it on the coat rack. Regaining a modicum of composure, she went into the living room.

“
Did you have fun at work, Mommy?”

She nodded and pulled him into a hug. Kate
then summarized what they’d done during the day and left. Setting her laptop, handbag, and mobile phone on the coffee table, Claire plopped onto her sofa, and stared off into space.

Marcus hopped around in front of his mother like a puppy dog
, drawing her attention. “Are we gonna read a book? I’ve been waiting all day.”

She
stood up and walked over to him, picking him up in her arms. “Sorry, little man. You’ll have to wait a bit longer, I’m afraid. I need to make an important phone call. Can you go upstairs to your room and play for a while? I’ll read with you later.”

“Okay.”

She set him down, and off he went like a windup toy, spinning and rolling and giggling—the epitome of innocence. Suddenly, she longed to be a child again, even if that meant reliving her not so easy childhood filled with long days locked in her bedroom, forced by her father to study from the time she’d get home ‘til bedtime on school days and from morning ‘til night on non-school days.

Claire’s mother had tried to intervene, tried to tell her husband that no one needed that much studying.
He wouldn’t listen. He told her he envisioned his daughter going down in history as the youngest person ever to attend Oxford. Later she had indeed made it into Oxford, but wasn’t even close to being the youngest, and her father never let her forget his disappointment in her. That wasn’t the kind of childhood she wanted for their child, and her former fiancé, Callum, had agreed.

How sad that that part of her life had become the good old days.

For the past hour she’d been desperate to call Brad. Now that she had the opportunity, she couldn’t bring herself to pick up the phone. How would Brad react? He’d told her point-blank that she called him too often with worries. Would he tell her she was overreacting again?

While she worked up the nerve to call him, she opened her laptop and googled ‘Colorado Alternative Principal Preparation Program’
and read through the requirements. Oh God. It was worse that she’d imagined and she doubted she would even be accepted into the program. Sighing, she leaned forward and picked up her phone, then slumped back against the sofa back and hit the speed dial number that connected her directly to Brad.

“Brad Meyers here.”

“It’s Juliet Powell.”

“What?” Brad said in a shocked tone.

Oh bloody hell! She wasn’t supposed to use that name, not even with him. That person no longer existed. “Oh. Sorry. Claire Constantine.”

“What the hell? You know better than that.” 

“I’m sorry, Brad. I’m having a bloody miserable day. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” She sighed, and her breath vibrated with emotion as she exhaled.

“What’s happened? Please tell you aren’t in some kind of danger. ”

“No. I mean I don’t think I’m in any danger,” she said. “It’s not that. It’s—it’s this job. It isn’t working. Not at all.”

“Okay. Hang on a minute. You’re gonna have be more specific. What isn’t working? Did you blow your cover again?”

“Uh, well, no, that’s not the problem.” How could she sum it up and not sound like a whiny baby? “It’s the school board. They—they think I’m having an affair with some senator. A Senator Alan Reynolds, I think. It’s insane. Until today, I’d never even heard the name. They think he helped me get hired because . . . .”

She couldn’t finish.

Brad groaned into the phone without saying a word.

“Are you going to move me?”

“Before I do anything, I want to know what happened. You’ve been in Colorado less than two weeks. We can’t keep moving you, especially on a whim.”

“It’s not a whim.” 

“Okay, so give me the details.”

She relayed the scene for him, and when she finished, he said, “Damn. They were supposed to hire you as a teacher. You were supposed to blend in,
be invisible. Why didn’t you tell me they’d offered you a principal position?”

“I
—I thought about calling you, but I couldn’t call in front of the HR Manager, could I?”

“You couldn’t excuse yourself and call?”

“I thought about it. Then I remembered what you told me the day you brought me to Denver. You said, ‘don’t keep calling me and asking what you should do. It’s been almost ten months. I can’t keep holding your hand. You’ve gotta stand on your own’. Don’t you remember that?”

“
Now
, you choose to listen to me!” He sighed. “We obviously need better communication.”

“
Yes, and speaking of better communication, I need to know what background information was given to this school board.”

“Huh?
You mean you didn’t know? No one discussed that with you? You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“Do
es this sound like I’m kidding?”

“
Hold on, let me pull up your file on my computer.” Silence followed for a moment, and then he said, “Okay, you’re supposed to have taught math at two high schools, one in Indianapolis and one in Cleveland. You’ve taught for fourteen years. As for the other issue, I’m gonna have to do some checking, talk to some people. I’ll get back to you.”

Claire hung up and sat slumped over with her head cupped in her hands. Finally, she rose, went into her bedroom to change into pajamas, then
flopped across her bed. An hour later he still hadn’t called back.

“I’m hungry, Mommy.”

She looked up and tried to smile. “Oh, Marcus, I’m sorry. I forgot all about dinner. I’ll start it now. What do you want?”

“Mac and cheese,” he said. “Mackie and cheesy, mackie and cheesy.” He giggled and hopped, and Claire smiled in spite of her bad mood.

“That, I can do.”

After dinner she read with Marcus. When he grew sleepy, she tucked him into bed, then
quietly crept to the door and switched off his light. How innocent he looked, lying there under his yellow comforter, the soft glow of his night-light giving off an almost angelic aura. If only he could stay that way. Someday he would face life’s challenges, and his innocence would fade away. The sudden ringing of her cell phone made Claire jump and sent her dashing from his bedroom down to the living room. She made it to the phone on the third ring.

“Sorry it took so long to get back to you,” Brad said. He cleared his throat
, and in the distance a car horn tooted. “I was on the phone with my immediate boss. Not an easy man to deal with, even when things are going good, so you can guess his reaction.” He paused, and a clicking sound, like someone typing on a computer keyboard filled the silence.

Claire’s hope sank. The pauses, the tone of his voice, his words. He was preparing her for bad news.

Oh, God. Please let it be a minor delay. I can’t last here a week or two more.

“You’re not gonna like this.”

She plopped down onto the sofa and waited for the anchor to drop and pull her underwater.

“Okay, there’s no easy way to say this so I’m gonna give it to you straight. My boss’s boss is a good friend of Senator Reynolds, so when she asked him for assistance in getting you a job in a school district in his state, the senator agreed, as a favor to her. No one in the school district knows why Senator Reynolds stuck his neck out, only that he
personally wanted you hired there. He vouched for you, based on info we gave him. If you quit or if you fail, it’ll reflect on him.”

Claire struggled to digest this new information.

“That would cause a friction between us and the Colorado state government, as well as between two friends. I don’t think I need to tell you what that means, do I?”

Claire’s mouth dropped open. She could hardly breathe, let alone get any words out of her mouth.

“Look, I know this isn’t an easy situation,” Brad said. “Personally, I’d rather bring you and your son in and start over. But it’s not my call.”

“But—but wouldn’t it cause more friction if John Richmond follows through with his threat?”

“His threat?”

“He, well, he said that if I messed up in the job, it might get out to the public that the senator recommended me for the job because I was his mistress. That would hurt his re-election campaign.
That sounded like a threat to me. I’m sure he was implying that it would get leaked out.”

“
Yes, I would call that a threat. Listen, he’s trying to intimidate you. This was a power play. That’s all. He was letting you know that he was ticked off because someone usurped his power and told him who to hire.”

“I understand that. But how do you expect me to work under these conditions? He’s terrible, the school’s terrible. I don’t think I can even do this job. It’s a nightmare.

“You’ll do fine. You’re not gonna fail, Claire. You can’t.”

“But you don’t understand. The school is—”

“I’m not moving you,” Brad said. “I can’t. Deal with it.”

Tears stung her eyes. “But you promised.”

“We have limitations and you’ve pushed them. Two moves in less than a year and you’re asking for a third. Not gonna happen. No more moves.” 

“What about the
Principal PLACE test and the principal preparation program? How can I possibly pass those?”

“How about study? I’ll try to get you a copy of the test, if I can
. I can’t promise anything.”

“Did you check out the program requirements?
It says they do an extensive background check and I have to submit college transcripts. How can any of that happen? You have to bring me back in.”

“
Yeah, I did look at that website after our earlier conversation,” Brad said. “So did my boss. He said he’ll take care of those two items. It’ll take some doing but there are ways around some of that when you have the right connections.”

“
Right, I forgot. It’s all about politics and connections, isn’t it?” He didn’t answer.

After she hung up the phone, she wanted to scream. Thro
w a temper tantrum. Something. That reminded her of the few occasions when, as a child, she had thrown a tantrum. Her father had locked her inside a dark wardrobe until she’d settled down.

She rose and paced around
her living room. How could she stay here in Colorado? Brad and others involved in the program had promised to protect her and Marcus. Where was the protection in that horrible school and this situation?

Ugh!
She picked up a glass vase off an end table and aimed it at the wall, then stopped herself. Smashing it would wake and scare Marcus.

Claire rolled the delicate vase back and forth between her open palms
, calming her nerves, and thought back over the meeting earlier in the day. Under John Richmond’s scrutiny she’d squirmed like a naughty child. But John wasn’t the only person who made her feel anxious. Her whole life she’d been a social misfit, especially around her so-called peers. Interactions in her past two fictitious identities reaffirmed that as well. The truth suddenly hit her in the face. It wasn’t only peers that caused her anxiety; she had problems with all the politics and the rules, too.

She sighed and closed her eyes. She’d entered witness protection assuming she’d be giving herself and her son the best chance to live
. But what was the ultimate cost? Politics and rules now controlled her whole life, restricted her ability to live in accordance with her own values. With so many restraints, how could she ever hope to blend in around these people, especially considering she felt like a freak? In the past, she’d blamed her freakiness on the fact that everyone knew she was a child-prodigy and thus treated her like a misfit. So if she wasn’t showing her real self now, what was her excuse now? Why couldn’t she fit in?

She set the vase back down on the table next to her sofa and switched off the lamp, then
wandered into her bedroom. Groggy from stress and finding no answers, she decided a good night’s sleep might provide a fresh perspective.

Thursday morning, Claire awoke with a terrible headache. She pulled her car out of the garage, saw the gloomy sky looking ready to dump snow, and she groaned. Didn’t she have enough clouds hanging over her already?
Okay, look at the bright side. If it’s going to snow, make it a blizzard so school will be cancelled.

S
he waited for a while, sitting in her car in the driveway with the car’s motor running. Of course not a single flake fell.
Just swell!
She covered her face with her hands—doomed to go to work and deal with problems. Bracing herself, she slowly backed out of the driveway.

School held fo
ur more disciplinary problems, two teacher complaints, and one practice fire drill before she had the chance to sit down. When she did, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Times like these, she really missed having a confidant, like her mother or father or boyfriend. What would they say if her mother was still alive, if her father was still speaking to her? Would they tell her to abandon ship and disappear in the night? That’s something Claire had thought about doing more than once. No, her parents would probably say what she already knew in her heart. Hiding out without the government’s help might be possible if she were alone. But as a mother, she couldn’t risk it. Claire’s one consolation in all of this was that her so-called protectors might have no choice but to bring her back in.