Read Online Ten Thousand Lies by Kelli Jean - Free Book Online

everything.
    “Your father didn’t allow you a higher education because he was afraid you’d go all queer as an artist. You graduated from school a slightly above average student. Your drawing and painting got you noticed by your teachers. When you graduated, your father set fire to nearly all of your work.”
    “How—”
    “We make it our priority to know whom we’re recruiting.”
    “We, uh…we didn’t know what we were supposed to do when we got here,” said Ronen. “So, I asked if Ja—Ricki—”
    Ellen cracked up at Ronen’s slip. “Ja-Ricki? Say that in a Jamaican accent for me.”
    “Erm… Ja-Ricki !”
    Throwing her head back, Ellen roared with an old-lady cackle that had me and Ronen gasping for breath.
    By the time we simmered down, Ellen asked, “Now, what were you saying?”
    Wiping tears from behind his specs, Ronen giggled. “Oh, yeah. Ricki’s gonna be my apprentice.”
    “Sounds like a plan. We Locals like having thugs on our payroll.”
    “Locals?” asked Ronen.
    “Yeah. Lawful Opposition of the Criminally Abhorrent League. Locals . You slow on the uptake or something?”
    “So it would seem,” Ronen grumbled.
    “Come on. I’ll show you the lay of the land then.”
    Ellen was the coolest fucking woman on the planet. Her flat was shit straight out of the ’70s. She showed us to two tiny rooms with small beds where Ronen and I dropped off our crap.
    “Sorry they’re not much bigger than closets. There are times when we need rooms for victims who are acclimating back into society, and when that happens, I have a little space. I give ’em jobs working in the store until it’s time for them to move on.”
    “Are you the only one in Amsterdam who does that for victims?”
    “Hell no,” Ellen replied.
    We all sat down in her living room, and she pulled out a box that held a fat bag of weed, rolling papers, and an ashtray. This woman was just full of surprises.
    “Am I allowed to have a cigarette in here?” I asked.
    She jerked her head toward a window. “Only if you hang your head out. Don’t like the smell too much. You don’t want some green?”
    “He doesn’t smoke weed,” Ronen informed her. “It makes him paranoid.”
    “Shame,” grunted Ellen. “What about you, turd?”
    “I smoke the green.”
    “Yeah…I bet. PTSD can be a bitch, right?”
    Ronen stiffened but then relaxed back into the sofa. “Yes.”
    “How many battles you fought?”
    “I was in combat in the Middle East for a couple of years before they put me in intelligence.”
    “I know that, son. I was asking how many battles.”
    “I don’t even know. I try to forget.”
    “Seven. You were in seven battles, and you made it out of each one. I’m sure the shit you’ve gone through, what you’ve seen, would have made a lesser turd look for a way out.”
    Ronen had fought in the Israel Defense Forces. Five years older than myself, Ronen had gone through some shit. Some of it, he had been willing to tell me about. Some shit…not so much. I knew he had nightmares. Spending the last week and some days in the same room had made it hard to miss that.
    “When the two of you came here last year to bust out Sarai—”
    “Don’t fucking say her name,” warned Ronen.
    Ellen narrowed her eyes at him, shrewd and calculating. I fished out my pack of smokes and opened the window. Glancing out over the street, I saw the everyday waffle milling around.
    “All right,” conceded Ellen. “Last year, you boys came and busted out a victim. You caught the eyes of the Locals. You actually wounded the almighty hell out of one; we have thugs on the inside of operations. Ulrich still walks with a limp, Ricki. The knife you stuck in his rump damaged nerves. He’s been on desk duty, and he’s pretty bitter about it.”
    Blowing out my smoke, I looked back at her. She had a twinkle in her eye that put me at ease.
    “So, the two of you got your person out, but you neglected to get three others. Why’d you leave