Lie to Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

if left with no alternative, but they couldn’t know that. Hopefully.
    Kella lowered the volume of the music.
    “May I assist you somehow, gentlemen?” The question was directed to the man guarding the only exit, but another voice answered.
    “We’re looking for Mack Ellason.”
    She peered around the one blocking her view, but then the voice stepped around the man. Shoulder-length, chocolate hair, parted at the side, hung straight and shiny. Square jaw shadowed with scruff and a pair of well-defined, sensuous lips. Straight nose that led to a pair of cool, ice-blue eyes. Eyes that should seem cold but every time he’d turned them on her as kids, they’d warmed her up. He stared straight at her, his confidence large and in her face, causing her to struggle to maintain eye contact.
    Stone Emmerson. In the flesh. Sporting new muscles to go along with his grown-up face.
    Kella swallowed and folded her arms across her abdomen so their sudden shaking wouldn’t be noticeable, all while praying her sudden spike of nerves remained hidden.
    No way he recognized her. She’d disguised her appearance years ago with an outdated and extremely illegal vanity chip. Before the pestilence, V-chips had been used to enhance one’s appearance. She’d dumbed down her looks by changing her black hair to dirty blonde and her emerald eyes to dark brown. Her once bronzed skin tone had been altered to a fair and splotchy quality, and she’d even added a crook to her nose. The tattoo on her neck identifying her as the property of Stone Emmerson had been airbrushed away with a simple push of a button, thanks to the banned machinery. The V-chip was a piece of engineering ingenuity. Nothing freaked the Regents out like equipment the elders had once used since the ancients were the cause of the pestilence that almost wiped out humanity.
    The alterations were permanent until a retro scanner—or an R-scanner—was used on her, and that device would erase all her work at hiding her real appearance. Her husband might have one, but she didn’t plan on getting anywhere near it.
    Her pet, Retro, must’ve sensed her unease because she placed her paws on Kella’s legs and gave a low squeak. Out of habit, Kella picked her up.
    “Mack Ellason.” Stone Emmerson reminded, staring at her from the haughty slant of his head. “You know where we can find him?” he asked as his gaze left her and slid about her establishment.
    “You’ve found her .” That got his full attention. His focus whiplashed back to her, and his eyebrows elevated. Pleased her voice remained steady, she motioned to the seat opposite her while taking her own seat. “Care to take a load off, Regent?”
    “I’m surprised you know who I am.”
    “I read the papers. You’re in them a lot.”
    His gaze felt like a twenty-ton meteor headed straight for her. “My photograph isn’t in the papers.”
    “No.” She leaned over and retrieved a scandal sheet—similar to the twenty-first century’s tabloids, only these printed the truth the Regent-owned papers failed to account. As she sat forward to offer him the scandal sheet, at least one weapon being primed to fire cracked about the room. Kella just barely caught herself from rolling her eyes. “Call your dogs off. I don’t carry weapons.”
    Stone accepted the tabloid, but remained fixated on her. “You’re a relic pirate,” his tone implied her occupation inferred weapon usage.
    “Technically speaking, I’m a vintage archeologist. I don’t pirate loot the government already laid a claim to.” Yeah, so she pirated relics before the government’s Regents could claim the stuff. No law against it—yet—even if they loathed the practice.
    “Lower your weapons.” Stone studied the scandal sheet and grimaced at his face splashed across the page with a woman named Katarina or something like that. Despite his displeasure, he made no effort to deny he’d been caught in the altercation. Damn him for impressing her with that.