The fine hairs on the back of Emily Kendrick's neck tingled as though her nape was brushed by static electricity.  A cold slick of imagined perspiration covered her bare arms.  She had been unconsciously swiveling back and forth, giving the OC chair a slight rock as she ate.  The movement stopped dead.  She swallowed the spoonful of yogurt in her mouth with effort.  The glassy blue eyes boring into her had turned the spoonful of yogurt in her mouth into a ball of phlegm, and she swallowed with effort.

Emily had been watching Amy.  The girl was talking to herself again.  It was the usual half mutters that were completely incomprehensible.  She sat curled up on the bed, pressed into a corner, with a blanket wrapped around her.  Her eyes stared at some blank spot on the wall.  Emily wasn't able to see Amy as anything other than a horrifying beast, and the noises she made were too freakishly reminiscent of growls and puppy mewls, so she turned the speaker volume all the way down, quieting the OC.

Then the door had opened and Emily suddenly yearned for simple companionship of the insane, bestial noises.

"Um, what are you looking at?"  Her words came out as a hoarse whisper as they escaped past the raspberry goo coating her throat.

Barbara Gracie moved from the door and slithered into the chair next to Emily, without pulling it away from the console.  She rested her hands on her lap, laying her fingers straight and perfectly parallel to her thighs.

Christ, this woman gives me the creeps.

"Tray worked for me.  You know that." 

 Emily gave a small nod of acknowledgment.  She didn't have a clue why Barbara told her that.  The way she said it made this common bit of information seem ominous, like a warning about an approaching calamity.

"I was wondering if he told you why he was leaving."

So she doesn't know.  Careful what you say, Em. 

"Why would he tell me his reasons?"

"I thought the two of you were friends?"

"What gave you that idea?"  As the evasion slipped from her mouth, she felt herself falling back into the old pattern.  She hadn't worked a con in over three years, but her training was right where she'd left it, waiting for her.

She could almost hear Lauren lecturing her, while Birdie chuckled to himself from his work table in the corner.  The musty odor from those rust-colored carpeting in their Quincy bungalow seemed to fill Emily's nostrils.  She'd almost forgotten about that crummy place they lived in when she had first joined the crew.  In a way, it had been her nursery.  She was so raw and clueless back then.

"Rule number one," Lauren said. "Is self-preservation.  Always keep yourself alive.  Nothing else is as important as that.  Not the job.  Not the team.  Not even me.  Understand?"

"So she admits it?" Birdie mumbled just loud enough to make himself heard.  Smoke rose from the ashtray at his elbow, fogging his features, as he deftly affixed a photo to a blank passport.

"Oh, do you have something to add?"  The tone was forced to arid dryness. 

Watching them always amused Emily.  There was a comforting sense of family to their teasing and nagging.  They were like an old married couple.  Even though, the thought of the two of them as a couple was disturbing on many levels. 

Lauren was a fierce fifty-year-old, who only looked forty, and had the energy of an eighteen-year-old.  She was competitive to a fault and had a sophisticated country-club beauty to her.  She was drill sergeant, mother, and rival all rolled into one. 

Birdie was a neurotic mess of nervous sweat and facial tics.  He was some mysterious age but looked at least sixty.  Chain-smoking had left his teeth ravaged and his breath foul.  He was the setup man.  He manufactured identities, got blueprints from city hall, spent hours researching on the Web.  When absolutely necessary, he acted as the driver, but he never played a con.  He never had the temperament for it.

"No.  No.  Please continue.  This is most enlightening."  He made a rolling motion with his pen handled X-Acto knife and adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses.

"Rule number two: always remember your story.  Stick to it no matter what.  Rule number three: the truth is your friend.  Bend it or twist it only as necessary."

Lauren called her list The Art of Deception.  Although canon was a better word for it than art.  The art wasn't the laws she laid down but hidden behind them.  The rules she pounded into Emily were the basics—the ABC's.  But what Lauren could do with them, now that was artful.

Emily darted her tongue across her lips and prepared to channel her old master, as Barbara continued, "You two looked close."

"Ah—No."  The brief hesitation was intended to interject humor into her answer, in an attempt to exude casualness.  But then she remembered she was talking to Barbara Gracie, and she was completely humorless.  "No, we weren't close," she answered more precisely.

"You sure there wasn't anything?  You two seemed to spend a lot of time together."  Barbara leaned in.  With another person, it might have been seen as a gesture of confidentiality, but from her it was predatory.

Is she interrogating me?  What is it she thinks she knows?

Ugh, could Tray have been spreading rumors about us? The little creep.

As if in response, she could hear her mother's scolding voice in her head, don't speak ill of the dead, Em.

"Tray?  He was okay."  She looped a strand of her deep orange hair around a finger and toyed with it.  She willed Barbara to break eye contact and glance over at the distraction, but her stare didn't waver.  "We were just co-workers.  I wouldn't go so far as to call us friends.  And certainly nothing more."

"It sounds like maybe you didn't like him very much?" 

Gracie was so hard to read.  It was like talking to a robot.  There was no stress on any of her words.  Not even a lilt at the end indicating if it was a statement or a question.  "I liked him well enough.  We just weren't close.  That's all."

"Paulson mentioned he saw you and Tray fighting the other day."

What the fuck?  She is interrogating me.  And the bitch just tripped me up.

Well, there goes Lauren's fourth rule: never get caught twisting or bending the truth.

"We had an argument.  So what?  Don't tell me you always get along with everyone here." 

Rule number five: defuse, deny, derail.

"We aren't talking about me.  It appears there was some serious friction between the two of you."

"Look.  He was interested in me romantically.  He was clingy.  I told him I wasn't interested.  End of story."

"So you didn't tell him you wanted him dead and that you were going to hurt him?"

Fuck!  Fuck!  Fuck!

"I don't know.  Maybe."  Her bottom lip slipped between her teeth.  Emily thought of Aaron and tears moistened her eyes. 

Time for rule number six: play the victim card.  

"I didn't want to say anything, but he was harassing me.  He grabbed me.  I was scared.  I may have said something like that, but it was just so he'd leave me alone."  She let the air catch in her throat.  A pathetic whine escaped.  "Do you think that was why he decided to leave?"

"I was really hoping you would shed some light on why he isn't here anymore." 

Lauren's rules were worth shit with Gracie.  Playing the victim didn't work with a person utterly devoid of sympathy.

"Why don't you talk to Max?  He should know," Emily said dismissively as she cast emotion aside.

"Don't worry.  I will be talking to him.  But he might not know everything that happened to Tray.  He hasn't been around very much lately.  You wouldn't know where he's been spending his time these days, would you?"

"Not here?  Really?  I hadn't noticed."  The body heat drained from her limbs.  She dropped the spoon into the yogurt container on her lap, so it wouldn't shake in her hand.

"That surprises me."  Barbara didn't seem surprised.  It didn't look like anything had ever surprised her in her whole life.

"I don't keep track of his coming and goings.  How do you even know he hasn't been here?  Perhaps Max has just been avoiding you."

"Perhaps.  Are you worried?"

"Worried?"  What does she see in my face? What am I revealing?

"That Tray might not have gone far.  That he might be planning on stalking you.  Perhaps he'll keep on harassing you outside of work."

Good, she was back to talking about Tray.  Emily forced herself not to let out a sigh of relief. 

"No, I'm not worried about him.  Tray wasn't dangerous or anything, just annoying."

"Wasn't?"  The word flicked out of Gracie's mouth like a whip's lash.

Son-of-a-bitch, she knows he's dead.  What the hell else does she know?

New rule: fuck this shit.

"I have work to do in the lab."  Emily slid her chair back with a harsh grinding noise and marched straight to the door.  The whole time she waited for it to open, two demonic embers seemed to burn into the back of her skull.

She took a deep breath.  What the hell happened to me?  I used to be so good at lying.  A natural, Lauren had said.

The door swung open on its hydraulics, and Emily hesitated only a second before turning right toward the labs.  The urge to head straight to the offices was almost overpowering.  She had manipulated enough people in her lifetime to know that it would be playing right into Gracie's hands.  But she needed to find a way to warn Max before Barbara pounced on him.