Page 64 of Cruel Lies

Obviously, that just means I have to keep guessing until I get it right.

"A speakeasy," I announce to the back of the driver's head. "One of those ones with a phone booth and a secret password."

The driver's eyes flick to the mirror. He says nothing.

"A rooftop. No—ahelicopter.Does he own a helicopter now? Is that where this is going? I have to be back by eleven. I hope everyone involved understands that a helicopter does not change the fact that I have children."

We cross a bridge. The buildings shrink to two stories, then to parking lots, and a Ferris wheel swings up black against the last of the daylight.

I sit up. "Are we— Is that Coney Island? Are we getting hot dogs?"

The car stops in front of a building I've been to once, on a school trip in the fourth grade, back when I was the kind of kid who liked facts. Hayden's kind of kid. I press my face nearly to the glass like a child.

The New York Aquarium.

Dark.

Closed.

But when the driver comes around and opens my door and a man in a suit unlocks the glass entrance from the inside without a word, I understand that it is not closed for me.

Ronan is waiting past the doors, in the blue. Everything is blue. The whole building glows with it, that underwater aquarium light that comes from the tanks and turns the air itself the color of deep water.

He's standing in the middle of it in a dark suit with no tie, hands in his pockets.

"You rented the aquarium," I say in awe.

He nods. "I did."

"The whole thing?"

"It's easier than renting half."

The tanks slide past on either side as I approach him. In them swim rays, a slow patrol of silver fish, a jellyfish column pulsing pink and gold like the world's most tasteful lava lamp. It's eerily beautiful.

"Why," I ask, when I reach him, "are we here?"

"The octopus," he says.

I blink.

"I was told by a very reliable source," he continues, hands still in his pockets, "that they have eight brains. I wanted a second opinion."

As it turns out, I happen to know exactly which "very reliable" source he's talking about. Because that source shares half my DNA.

Ronan was standing on my front stoop, holding out a napkin. I had half an ear cocked toward my kids like every mother always does, but I never thoughthe'dbe listening. Men never are. Todd could look me dead in the eye across a dinner table and retain nothing, could ask me the next morning about a thing I'd told him the night before as if I'd never said it.

Ronan heard a random fact that my son shouted through a doorway and built an entire date around it.

The realization hits my bloodstream like something you'd get arrested for. A warm illegal flood, up the back of the neck, into the face. I have to look away from him and pretend to be fascinated by a moray eel, who eyes me back with open contempt.

"That's—" I clear my throat. "That's a very elaborate way to fact-check a six-year-old."

"I don't do things halfway, Ms. Meadows." He turns and starts walking, and I follow. "Follow me. He's shy. We shouldn't keep him waiting."

The octopus is right where Ronan promised, packed into the corner of his tank, one eye rolling toward us and away.

"There," Ronan says. "Eight brains. Or one central brain and eight semi-autonomous nervous systems, depending which paper you read. He can taste with his skin. He can open jars. Heescaped once, allegedly, and made it almost all of the way to the drain before they caught him."