CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

BEFORE THAT MESSAGE, there was a shorter less manic version of the same. Scanning past the sort of calls I’d expected, I found another from the Southern belle. This one a familiar two-way conversation. I played it.

“You have to stay ahead of them.”

“I just want my daughter. I’m following directions, dammit. For the love of God, call off your goons.”

“Jim, you can’t possibly think—”

That was the end of the message. I couldn’t accept the implications of finding the call recorded on Marisol’s ARGs. In effort to prove the obvious wrong, I silently brought up the command log for the time period coinciding with the call. I slumped, tossing the ARGs onto the couch. The exact moment the signal had been lost, Marisol had given the terminate-call command. Moments later she’d blocked all incoming calls to my ARGs, rerouting them to her own.

How could she betray me one minute and then…I pushed emotion aside, analyzing the situation instead with a cold rationalism.

Everything became suspect. My background mind flagged several moments in a heartbeat. Marisol’s call to the lab moments before the police surrounded us, house arrest, her apology, every bit of the information she fed me about Oleg Rodchenko, even the picture of her and Evie.

But the sex, that felt real. Surely I’d had enough meaningless sexual encounters to know the difference. Then again, I’d never known anyone who could vow to help me save my Evie and then do the exact opposite. My chin trembled, the current of my background mind shimmering behind a thin veil. With grim determination I froze its surface. Misplaced loyalty indeed.

So be it. She had a job. Well, so did I. Slinking back to her bedroom, I confirmed the regular slow breathing of sleep. Hurrying across the house to the guest room, I found a new shirt along with the rest of my clothes in a pile on the floor. As I snatched my lab coat a dark object tumbled to the carpet. The Austin Job. I tucked the worn paperback into my belt.

Writers had hidden terrible secrets in fiction before. Two things felt certain—my work had cast Evie and me into the middle of a dangerous game, and the other players regarded Evie as merely a pawn. Suddenly my path became crystal clear.

If I kept playing the game set before me, I’d lose. The rules had been established for decades, and my moves had been scripted by others. That left only one choice. After swiping some food, I stepped out the front door and donned Marisol’s ARGs complete with the cloned version of my own.

It was time to change the game.