A human being is more than a mere tangle of DNA. Humanity is the gift of sentience, art, civilization . . . To be human is to create and to destroy.
~ excerpt from Among the Wildflowers by Andria Toskoshi
Monday March 24, 2070
Florida District 8
Commonwealth of North America
Iteration 2
For centuries, Florida thrived on tourism. The constant influx of capital from visitors did everything from pave the roads to pay for the new playgrounds at the schools. As with any large tourist area, there were hideaways, secret places that the natives kept hidden from outsiders so they could escape. Gator Trap was one of those places. It was a combination gas station, marina, bait shop, and restaurant on the edge of Shipyard Canal that had an unlisted number and no Web site. So far, that was enough to keep the tourists away.
It also made it an excellent hideout for the kind of people who didn’t like clones or police. Knowing that, Ivy had opted for casual wear, or at least as casual as she dared let herself wear. Jenna Mills had been a very pretty girl in life. Ivy wasn’t sure what her gene donor acted like, but there was something about strawberry blonde hair and freckles that made people assume she was going to have a cute Southern accent and wear shorts no longer than a bikini.
She went out of the way to defy those expectations.
Her only concession to the springtime heat was a thin pink T-shirt with cap sleeves. The shirt and her jeans were both baggy in an attempt to hide her body from prying eyes.
Sitting on the front hood of her car, she watched the people watching her and hoped no one decided to pay any closer attention. She checked her watch, bit her lip in worry, and kept an eye on the empty stretch of road.
A few centuries seemed to pass before a familiar red truck pulled into the dusty lot. She’d told Agent Edwin to come in casual dress, which for him seemed to mean khaki shorts and a faded university T-shirt with a fraying hem. He waved.
Ivy waved back and hopped off the hood. “Hi. Thanks for meeting me out here.”
“No problem,” Edwin said. “It’s this or read through physics notes for Agent Rose. This is definitely better.”
“Not a fan of physics?”
Edwin shook his head. “I barely passed it in high school. Everything we’re reading from the lab is so far over my head, I need the Hubble telescope to see it.” He clapped his hands together. “What are we doing here, and does it include lunch?”
“Should it include lunch?” The aroma of deep-fried fat was overwhelming, and not in a good way. Fatty foods weren’t a part of her shadowhood. Adulthood and freedom hadn’t changed her views.
“They do a great fried-gator sandwich. It’s life-changing.”
“I’m sure it is for the gator.”
Edwin sighed and rolled his eyes. “If we’re not here for lunch, why are we here?”
She rocked to the balls of her feet and bounced with nervous energy. “I, um, might have reached out to someone and told them I was a friend of Jamie’s and that I wanted to meet.” She bit her lip anticipating a reprimand.
“Who’s Jamie?” Edwin asked.
“Your pirate? Nealie? His real name was Jamie Nelson. I contacted Connor Houghton, who was Jamie’s foster brother of sorts. They spent at least three years in the same foster home during high school. Connor was a year older . . .”
“ . . . and you think he’s Connor Nu?” Edwin nodded. “That makes sense. You want me to ID him?”
“And make sure no one feeds me to the gators,” Ivy said. “Self-defense laws don’t apply to people like me.”
He squinched his face and looked at the ground. “It’ll be fine.”
“I’ll feel safer having you as backup.”
Edwin beamed. “Then lead on.”
She crinkled her nose and laughed. It was kind of adorable how the big, tough CBI agent was willing to play backup for her. She walked into the Gator Trap and picked a corner booth overlooking the water in the screened patio. Edwin saw her seated, then wandered off—presumably hunting for his fried-gator sandwich.
Ivy took a deep breath, checked the water for gators, then started watching the parking lot. She’d heard about Connor from the rumor mill at work. A few years ago, there had been talk around the station that the pirates were clone sympathizers. The chief wanted them prosecuted for sedition. She’d accidentally shredded the orders, and no one ever followed up.
At the time, it hadn’t occurred to her that she might one day have to meet one of the pirates and learn the truth. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. No one could tell by looking at her what she was, but she’d sat silent while the people around her ranted about wanting all clones dead enough times in her life already. They were welcome to their opinions, but she was never going to go out of her way to help one of the bigots. If he was a clone hater, she was going to kick herself.
She dug in her purse and pulled out a laminated card that fit in her palm. It was a print copy of her emancipation letter with the details of the Caye Law printed on the reverse. For other people, there were prayers to gods and saints. For her, there was a law that declared her human.
“Connor!” Edwin’s voice echoed off the wooden rafters.
“Danny Boy!” a tenor voice shouted back.
Ivy nodded to herself. Most voices were just voices, but this one was musical. The voice of Oberon welcoming Titania home to the moonlit forest. It was a good voice for a mysterious pirate. She turned, trying to catch a glimpse of him through the crowd.
A shadow fell over the table, and Ivy jerked back, startled.
Edwin grinned down at her. “I got you some gator nuggets and sauce.”
If it were possible for a clone to turn green, she was doing that now. “Gator nuggets?”
“They’re like chicken nuggets but saltier,” he said as he sat down and pushed a basket of unidentifiable deep-fried lumps, a white sauce with green chunks, and french fries at her.
“I’ve never had chicken nuggets. Aren’t they chocolate? For Easter time?”
Edwin stared at her, sandwich halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“What?”
“You’ve never had chicken nuggets?”
“I grew up on a vegetarian diet.” Ivy squirmed in the wooden booth. “Is that wrong?” Other humans lived as vegetarians. She knew they did. There were cookbooks just for vegetarians. Clones couldn’t be the only ones buying the books.
He shook his head too quickly. “No, it’s just . . . you eat meat right?”
“Sustainably caught fish and occasionally grilled chicken.” That’s what normal healthy people ate. She’d read that in a book at the library. A healthy diet for an adult female consisted of a balanced diet full of nutrient-dense food such as vegetables, fruits, and wild fish sustainably caught. Her heart raced with fear. “What did I do wrong?”
Edwin shook his head. “Nothing, nothing. It’s just a little weird, you know? Most people try junk food eventually.”
Ivy frowned at the basket of food. “I . . . I didn’t want to. Not when my body was finally mine. I didn’t want to hurt my body. For the longest time, it wasn’t even mine, but now it is, and sometimes I feel it’s the only thing I own.”
“I’m sorry.” He frowned. “I wasn’t trying to break you. I just thought you might like it. The gator’s real tasty.”
“Danny!” the tenor voice said, interrupting them. A man sauntered up to the table. He was striking in a very magazine sort of way, Ivy decided. Brilliant hazel eyes, sandy-brown hair, a five o’clock shadow even though it was one in the afternoon, and well-defined muscles that looked like they took six hours at the gym every day to maintain.
“You’re frowning,” Edwin said.
Ivy shrugged. “I thought the pirates would be more . . . scraggly. Malnourished. Ragged. Real pirates were riddled with sexually transmitted diseases, parasites, and lice. They weren’t—”
“Handsome?” Connor hit her with a megawatt smile. His eyes met hers, then traveled leisurely down, resting longer than was polite on her breasts and legs before making a leisurely trip back up. He made sure he had eye contact . . . and then winked.
She burned with embarrassment.
“You are beautiful.”
“Thanks,” Ivy said weakly, “I was designed that way.” Connor moved to sit down beside her, and she had to scoot to the end of the bench to avoid being sat on.
He took the seat opposite Edwin with another wink for her. “This isn’t the bad old days, beautiful. We’re not keelhauling anyone. Modern pirates are ecoterrorists. We want to preserve our natural heritage with heirloom seeds and eat foods that weren’t lab-created.”
“Rotten sunflower seeds and low-yield tomatoes,” Edwin said between bites. “That’s not how you build a revolution.”
“I don’t want my garden produce to be owned by a company,” Connor argued.
Edwin rolled his eyes, and Ivy got the feeling the two had debated this at length many times.
With a nervous smile, Ivy risked touching Connor’s arm to get his attention. He responded with another blazing smile . . . but there was ice in his eyes. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about Jamie.”
“Jamie?” Connor shook his head. “Don’t know him.”
“Jamie Nelson,” Ivy said, setting her face in a practiced look of disapproval she’d modeled after Agent Rose. “He went by the name Nealie Rho after graduation. Before that, you two lived in foster care together. I have pictures,” she added in case he tried to wriggle his way out of the conversation.
Connor stole one of Edwin’s fries and chewed on it while stared at her. Finally, he shrugged. “So I knew him? So what? Is that a crime now?”
“N-no.” Ivy stuttered. This would have been so much easier if she’d worn her uniform. Tiny women with freckles never got respect. Badges did.
“Anyway,” Connor said, “I haven’t seen Nealie in a while. He buggered off with the others.”
She looked to Edwin for help. He was eating his french fries with no more interest in the conversation than she had in attending a college football game. Taking a deep breath, Ivy said, “Nealie’s dead.”
“What?” Connor turned to Edwin. “How?”
Edwin glanced at her. “He died of asphyxiation. Ivy”—he carefully avoided her title—“found the body. She’s been helping the bureau in the investigation.”
“Because, what, you’re a good citizen?” Connor scoffed.
“I was the first officer on the scene.” She lifted her chin a little, trying to act as if his opinion of her didn’t matter. It would be so much easier to fake if the opinions of people like him couldn’t sign her death warrant.
Connor frowned and shook his head. “Nealie was fine last time I saw him.”
“Which was when?”
“I dunno.” He took another fry from Edwin. “Last week maybe? We got into a bit of a fight. MacKenzie and Troom had Nealie’s head all twisted up talking about changing the world.”
Ivy’s hand started to shake. “MacKenzie? Agent MacKenzie?”
“Yeah,” Connor said. “Why?”
Edwin frowned. “Agent MacKenzie from the bureau? Tall guy with dark hair.”
“Looks like he knows how to move in a fight?” Ivy added. “Possibly has anger management issues?”
Connor shook his head. “No, Agent Mackenzie’s a girl. Short, black hair in a braid, Aussie accent. She and Troom came out to our camp and asked for help. I didn’t like her, so she went to Nealie.” He looked at the table as if eye contact was too hard. “She knew everything about him. His mom’s name, his history with his dad, all of it. Wrapped him around her finger faster than you can gut a fish. I tried telling him . . .” He sucked in his cheeks as his face turned red. “I told him she was trouble.”
“But he wouldn’t listen?” Ivy asked.
“First time in his life Nealie doesn’t listen to me, and he winds up dead.” He shook his head again. “I’ve known him since we were kids. We weren’t placed together on purpose, but we wound up in the same homes a lot. I was the only one who remembered his birthday. Even Nealie didn’t. All he remembered was his mom’s death date.”
“Which was?” Ivy slipped her notebook out.
“March 19,” Connor said. “Every year, he’d ask me to go out to his mom’s grave with him. He didn’t like going alone.”
Ivy’s hand hovered over her notebook. The date couldn’t be a coincidence. “Was he depressed when he went to his mother’s grave?”
“No, not really. He understood she was gone, and he’d done his crying a long time before I met him. He brought me in case his dad was there.”
“This is Sheriff Gardner we’re talking about, right?”
Connor nodded. “Yeah, though he wasn’t sheriff when Dolores died. When we were younger, he’d get drunk and yell at Nealie if he saw him. He sobered up. Did rehab, I think. We never saw much of him after graduation, but we stayed out of his town, too. If we were there, I don’t doubt Gardner would have made our lives difficult just because of Nealie. He hates him.”
“Do you know if Nealie went to his mom’s grave this year?”
“I guess he would have,” Connor said. “He didn’t ask me to come with him if he did, though.” His eyes narrowed for a second, then he shrugged it off. “He’s not a kid anymore.”
Edwin finished his fries. “Tell me more about this Australian agent and her buddy Henry.”
“Do they matter?” Connor asked.
“I’m curious,” Edwin said.
“She showed up near the end of January. Seemed to be in a rush. They needed a place they could work on a project off the grid. At first it didn’t bother me. He seemed nice, and she was . . . whatever. I don’t like her. She’s creepy.”
“What kind of creepy?” Ivy asked.
Connor stole one of her fries since Edwin’s were gone. “Just weird. She’d say things that made no sense. Talk about stuff that was going to happen like, ‘Next month when you do this, make sure you don’t leave trash all over the place again.’ ”
“You made a mess at that one protest,” Edwin said. “I yelled at you, too.”
“You yelled after we made a mess,” Connor said. “She was reading me the riot act two weeks before we planned the event. I hadn’t even decided we were doing it. Tell me that’s normal.”
“Do you have a history of littering?” Ivy asked.
Both Connor and Edwin shook their heads.
“My people don’t litter,” Connor said. “We’re earth-conscious and ecofriendly. Everything we use is renewable, sustainable, and fair-trade. But we had some antigovernment types stop at the protest. They had plastic water bottles!” He sounded outraged at the idea. “Never mind the oceanic gyres or the needs of sea turtles. They had plastic they left on the ground. I even made sure we had recycling bins.”
Edwin frowned. “You don’t usually have recycling bins. I thought you upcycled everything.”
Connor shrugged. “The lady creeped me out. Told me I’d get a fine if I left a mess again.” He held up a finger. “Again? It’s the again that gets me. Like she’d already lived through all of this. Between that and Troom talking about rewriting history, I dunno. I didn’t like her.”
“But Nealie did?”
“She was kind to Nealie,” Connor said. “She left, then Troom left, so I figured Nealie had gone with them.”
Ivy looked at Edwin again. He shook his head. She nodded. Connor really ought to know.
Connor caught the gesture. “What’s up?”
“Edwin wants to eat my gator nuggets,” Ivy lied. She pushed the basket of deep-fried reptile across the table.
Edwin pushed it back. “Try one first.”
With a reluctant grimace, she snatched up a breaded piece of meat, dipped it in the white sauce, and took a bite.
Edwin and Connor laughed at her expression.
“I told you gator was good,” Edwin said. He pushed the basket back to her. “Connor, go grab another basket. You owe me for all the fries you stole.”
Connor laughed. “Fine. You want a drink.”
“Water is fine,” Ivy said.
Edwin pulled his wallet out and gave Connor some cash. “Bring some of the icy lemonades?”
“Sure.”
Edwin raised his eyebrows as Connor walked away. “What do you think?”
“That this isn’t a coincidence. Henry Troom and Jamie Nelson are both dead. Jamie died on the anniversary of his mother’s death?”
“Do you think the killer picked the date?” Edwin asked.
She shrugged. “It’s a working hypothesis.”
“It’s sickening.”
“Well, serial killers are usually a bit messed up in the head, aren’t they? Maybe this one was trying to ‘right history’ and kill people they were supposed to.”
“Then Nealie would have died in a car accident.”
“You don’t know that. Kids die from asphyxiation in cars, too. A seat belt across the neck or an airbag to the face? That kills kids.”
“That’s tenuous.”
“This whole thing is tenuous,” she said.
Edwin stole one of her nuggets. “Agent Rose isn’t going to like this.”
“Look on the bright side, at least we don’t have to tell her that her Agent MacKenzie is a suspect.”
“Great, now all we need to do is find a short woman with black hair and an accent. That only describes, what, 40 percent of the country?”
Ivy smiled. “At least now we have a lead.”
Sam sat at her desk listening to the sough and whine of the air-conditioning as she read over two lists. One was the visitor registry for Sea Pines Memorial Gardens, where Dolores Nelson was interred at a family plot. The other was a list of activities on the sheriff’s schedule. The name Jamie appeared on the visitor record, no surname given, and the sheriff’s schedule put him at the cemetery that day, too, but he hadn’t signed the register.
She really didn’t like the idea forming in her mind. It sounded . . . sick. Yes, sick was the only word she could think of. Sheriff Gardner had been the last person to see his wife alive. His statement to the investigating officer was in the files Ivy had found. Gardner had met his ex for a brief conference at a public library, where she’d given him a box of his things left at the house after the divorce. The next time he’d seen her was at her funeral.
It was stomach churning to think that the sheriff had suffered the same trauma twenty years later with his son. Her phone rang as she made a note to talk with Sheriff Gardner. With luck, he would have some insight for her. Maybe Jamie had brought a friend along that day.
The phone rang again. “Agent Rose speaking”
“Sammie!”
She smiled. “Hey, Bri, what’s up?”
“Remember that little scavenger hunt you sent me on?”
“It wasn’t a scavenger hunt. I asked you to go talk to someone because they wouldn’t answer their phone. Were you able to go?”
“Done, and done,” Bri said. “The storage place did have a locker rented out to the phone number you gave me, but it was cleared out over Christmas by some guy in Florida. Does that help at all?”
“It does, actually. Did the storage owner know what was being kept there?”
Bri blew a raspberry. “Sam, please. The place was a roach-infested money-laundering unit. There could have been bodies stored in there, and the owner wouldn’t have known. I could barely get him to look at me, and I was wearing a low cut v-neck!”
“Professional interrogation shirt of PIs everywhere?” Sam laughed. “TV shows lie, Bri. They lie like dogs.”
“Don’t knock it ’til you try it. Cleavage gets you everywhere you want to be.”
“And a few places where I’d rather not,” Sam said. “You’re setting feminism back a hundred years, you know that, right?”
“Nah. Feminism means I have the right to do whatever I want with my body. If I take advantage of the way men objectify me, that’s evolution at work. Survival of the smartest.”
“It’s ‘survival of the fittest.’ ”
“Which is still me,” Bri said.
Sam could practically see her smug smile. “I know. How was the marathon last weekend?”
“Great! I took four minutes off my last run time.”
“That’s great,” Sam echoed.
“And, this summer, Jake and I are taking the kids on a spelunking tour across North America.”
“I thought you were going to New Zealand this summer.”
“Oh, no no no. We’re going to New Zealand for their summer. We’re leaving in August or September. Jake hasn’t worked out all the details yet, but it’s a four-year contract. We’ll have plenty of time to go exploring. You’ll come visit us, right?”
“Of course!” Not that the bureau would approve an agent’s going down to New Zealand, but she could pretend. “Any chance you’ll get to Australia while you’re there?”
“Ha!” Bri laughed. “Not happening. Ever. Their borders are closed tighter than a nun’s knees. The only reason the Kiwis are letting anyone in is because their population is critically low. And even then, it’s taking months to get them to approve our moving there temporarily.”
Mac knocked on the door and poked his head in.
Sam held up a finger to tell him to wait for her and motioned for him to leave. “Bri, I got to get back to work. Thanks for running to the storage place for me,” she said, as her door swung shut.
“Anytime, sweetie. Send me pictures from your date this weekend.”
“I don’t have a date this weekend.”
“You always say that. I always ask. One day I will get a picture of you on the beach having fun.”
“Right,” Sam said, trying not to be sarcastic.
“For me?” Bri asked. “I worry about you.”
“I’ll put on something sexy this weekend and take a picture,” Sam said, as Mac opened the door again.
He raised an eyebrow.
“ ’Bye, Bri.”
The other eyebrow went up. “You’re sending sexy pics to Bri now?”
“You were supposed to wait outside!” She sighed. “Bri wants me to go on a date and be happy.”
“I agree with her.”
“Really?” Of course he did. Sam tucked her phone away. “What did you need that couldn’t wait three more minutes.”
“You should go out with me this weekend.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “We’ve had dinner together every night since you got here.”
“So it’s tradition.” He grinned.
“Focus, MacKenzie. Whatchya got for me?”
He held the door open. “The ballistic reports for the bullet that killed Henry Troom came back. Come on down to the morgue?”
“Tell me there’s a match in the database,” she asked as they walked down to his office.
“There is,” Mac said, smiling with manic glee as he unlocked the morgue door, “and the suspect is already dead.”
“What?”
“The bullet matched the ones fired from Marrins’s gun when he shot Dr. Emir last summer.”
Sam nodded, already seeing where this was headed. “Henry went to the field behind the lab . . .”
“ . . . and picked up one of the stray bullets from the tree line,” Mac finished. “He kept it as a souvenir, and during the explosion, it hit a velocity high enough to kill him. It’s a nice theory.”
She rubbed the back of her neck as a stress tightened her shoulders. “Okay, but is that how bullets work? A spent bullet shouldn’t be able to achieve that kind of velocity.”
Mac smiled in approval. “You’ve learned something about guns in the last year.”
“You’re working up to telling me it isn’t a stray bullet from the tree line, aren’t you? That’s where this conversation is going.”
“Ten points to Agent Perfect.”
Sam slugged him in the arm.
“It’s a freshly shot bullet,” Mac said.
“From the gun of a man who is dead?” Sam stared at the wall. “Marrins is dead. His gun went to evidence. It was melted down. Right?”
“I’ve no idea,” Mac admitted. “That’s what should have happened.”
“So let’s check on that.”
“On the to-do list.” Mac looked at her. “Do you want to call Alabama, or do I have to do it?”
“You get to make phone calls. I’m going to check out a storage unit Henry rented in January. I’ve got a hunch it might be an interesting visit.”
Henry Troom’s storage unit was on the western edge of town. Conspicuously out of reach of the faulty street cameras down a cracked road the county hadn’t gotten around to repairing yet. If one were inclined to be suspicious, one might almost say it was like Henry wanted to hide something.
Sam parked her rental by the main office, mouth tightening with annoyance at the lack of hookup. At least she’d have her car back by the end of the day. The repairs weren’t done, but it was drivable. Tossing her hair, she walked into the office.
An older woman with lines etched into her deeply tanned face looked up with sullen eyes. “No vacancies,” she croaked in a nasal Jersey accent mixed and softened by Florida’s sunny tones. “Try Billie’s down the street. He’s got a couple sheds free.”
“I’m Agent Rose with the Commonwealth Bureau of Investigation.” Sam pushed her badge across the Formica counter for inspection. “I need to get into locker 324. The owner is Dr. Henry Troom, now deceased.”
The woman sighed, heavy chest heaving under her faded floral shirt with a sigh. “Only the investigating officer or next of kin can enter the premises. If you want something, you gotta wait until the auction. If no one comes to claim the property six months after final payment, we sell it off. What’s in there, honey? Nude photos? Sex tape? Trust me, I seen it all.”
“I am the investigating officer, and I’m looking for motive.” Since it wasn’t bureau policy to show civilians paperwork or get warrants unless it was a domicile or involved a living person, she felt confident that would be enough. Henry wasn’t getting any deader, as they said, and even the broadest definition of the word wouldn’t qualify the rental units as domiciles. “How many inquiries have you had about this place?”
The woman frowned. “Oh, let’s see. There was that smarmy boy. Talked like a lawyer and had oily hair. Jailbird if I ever saw one. I know someone who’s done time. All three of my husbands did time. Sometimes together.”
Sam’s thought process lurched to a stop. “Don’t you mean ex-husbands?”
“Nah, divorces are expensive. Nobody checks the paperwork anymore. They’re all dead now, anyway. Wasn’t even them killing each other like my mom said it would be. Twenty years of three husbands, and nobody said a word.”
“That’s illegal,” Sam said, amused despite herself.
The woman shrugged. “So’s speeding, honey. You ever gotten a ticket?”
“No . . .” She was a careful driver.
“See? Now, next was the lady with the purple suit. Very pretty I thought. A real bulldog, ya know? She was a reporter for the one of those Spanish-language channels. Told me she was a detective following a lead, but her badge was fake as my tits. Her accent was so heavy, I didn’t even think she was speaking English at first.”
“Which lady?” Sam asked.
“The one who wanted to see locker 324. She bunged up the car she was in trying to get out. Drove forward instead of back. Cracked some paint off the pylons.”
“Oh, that’s not good,” Sam said, confused.
“Nah, it was only an Alexian Virgo. Girl like that ought to have a better car. You can’t get rich husbands driving working-class cars.”
Sam rested her arms on the chest-high counter, fascinated. “What did you say your husbands went to jail for?”
“Fraud, mostly.” She sighed again, then slid open a desk drawer and pulled out a lollipop. “You want one, honey? They’re cinnamon-flavored. My therapist says I should have one every time I think about going manhuntin’ again. I’m too old and too rich to waste my time chasing money pots.”
“No thanks. I’m good. Who else came by about the locker?”
The woman unwrapped her lollipop and tossed the wrapper in the recycler. “Let’s see, lawyer, then the reporter, then this guy with a shaved head. All muscled up with some really nice tats. I offered him a joyride in exchange for the keys to the locker, but he turned me down.”
“That’s technically prostitution. Also illegal.”
The woman’s eyes went wide. “Joyride! Joyride, honey! Ain’t you never . . . ugh. Girls. Youth is so wasted on the young. I was going to take him out in one of those classic cars we have stored here. There’s this businessman from beachside who parks his cars here when he goes to his vacation home in Tulum, down south. Gorgeous classics.”
“So you use the cars without his knowledge. That’s illegal, too.”
“No—I just borrow the cars sometimes. Make sure the engines are running. It’s practically charity work. Driving in a ragtop in the hot sun. I started charging him extra for the good sunscreen. Well, I had to. I couldn’t be driving around like that in cheap SPF 10 could I? Skin cancer is no joke, honey.”
“Do you do anything legal? At all? I’m just curious.”
Flowers trembled as the woman sucked in her breath, it came out again in a wave of humid, cinnamon-scented despair. “I pay my taxes regular-like.”
“Great. How’s this. I’m going to pretend you aren’t in my district because this is technically a gray area, and you could be someone else’s problem, and while I’m on the premises checking out this storage unit, you are not going to do anything that reminds me I have a badge. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds like I’m not going to get paid,” the woman said. She gave her lollipop a thoughtful lick. “You gonna tell me about the stiff.”
“No.”
“Fine, you’re the private type. I get that. My second husband was like that. Very quiet man. Liked horses. Liked shooting bookies more though, the poor soul. It was an affliction.”
Sam stared at the woman noisily sucking her lollipop. “Have you ever done anything normal?”
“I almost graduated once.”
That sounded about par for the course. “Key?”
“Sure, honey.” The woman heaved herself off her stool and waddled to the back room. She came out with a key ring dangling on one finger. “Do I gotta walk you out there?”
“I can find the locker myself.”
“Okay.” The woman handed her the key. “The three hundreds are the big storage garages. You can use the side door, but not the front door without the fingerprint of the owner.” She paused and her mouth drooped into a horrified frown. “You don’t have his hands, do you?”
“They’re both at the morgue, attached to the body.”
“That’s good. Dismembering people gets messy.”
Sam nodded but didn’t ask the woman how she knew. Maybe the old girl had a lively imagination. Or not. As the door swung closed behind her, she reached for her phone. Petrilli was going to love investigating this place. She sent him a quick text with the address and a note to check in one of these days.
The pedestrian gate swung open as the woman inside pushed a button. Sam crossed the parking lot, already baking in the Southern sun. The heat felt good on her skin.
Building three hundred was near the back of the lot. Licking her lips, she looked at the keys. If he had . . . if he’d rebuilt the machine, this was probably where it was. A far safer choice than in his apartment or the lab.
She reached for the camera pin in her pocket out of habit, then paused. Officially, in the reports everyone else in Florida had read, Emir’s machine didn’t exist. Time travel had never been discovered. She’d never crossed timelines into another place or seen another version of herself. If the machine was in there, and she caught it on camera, there wouldn’t be any more secrets. Some four hundred pages of classified information that was locked under a mountain in Colorado would be exposed to public inquiry. Her life would be shoved under the microscope of public opinion.
Again.
Heart racing, she dropped the pin back into her blazer pocket. Some things were best left off the record. Her lips tightened into an involuntary frown as she unlocked the door, her movement turning on the motion-sensor lights.
And she held her breath.
Color filled the room. Huge canvases leaned against every wall. Skinny ones barely wider than her torso that scraped the eight-foot ceiling. Long ones that were still taller than she. Paintings of wild cities in colors that seared across her soul with burning emotion.
There was some order to the chaos. On the left of the main door, the first paintings were subdued, cityscapes all in shades of gray and all slightly alien. The proportions of the buildings were odd, the angles . . . not quite right. The gray paintings included one small portrait, a square no bigger than her hand. The face was hers painted in ash.
Next to the gray cities were paintings of Alabama. She recognized the café, and the courthouse in the town square across from her old bureau office, and N-V Nova Labs, where she and Henry Troom had first met while he worked for Dr. Emir. The painter had picked other vistas; the feral fields choked with weeds and dying cotton plants, the main highway out of town at sunset, maybe sunrise, and a field with high grass burned golden by the sun. A chill ran down her back.
Jane Doe had been found in that field.
Next to Alabama was another set of paintings. Some of them showed the same buildings, but this time the signs were written in Spanish, and a Mexican flag flew over the courthouse.
As she walked, the paintings became brighter. The painter had chosen more vivid colors, deeper contrasts. The strokes went from blueprint precision to wild, almost angry strokes, as if the painters had been trying to exorcise a demon through their art.
In one corner, a stack of smaller canvases lay scattered, paint side down. There was a hole there, large enough for a person to squeeze through. She pulled out her phone and turned on the camera light to look through the hole to the neighboring storage unit. Dust motes danced in the light, but there was nothing more.
Pulling out a pair of examination gloves from her pocket, Sam slipped them on and picked up one of the fallen canvases at random. It was another painting of her. She leaned it against the table and picked up another. Again, her. She turned them each over with morbid curiosity.
Her with her hair up.
Her in her work clothes.
Her with her hair down.
Her bruised and bleeding.
Always her face.
Always looking away.
Bile churned in her stomach.
She left her portraits and went to the first gray painting, the one that seemed to be on the far end of the painter’s spectrum, either first or last. The painting was maybe six feet across and came to just below her chin. Gingerly, she rested her gloved fingertips on the side and eased the canvas away from the wall. There were more gray paintings behind it, smaller ones lying hidden, but that wasn’t what she was after.
The artist hadn’t signed a name to the paintings, not one she could see, but . . . she looked across the pale back of the painting until she found the scratch marks of faded pencil lines. Shuffling the painting she got close enough to read the words:
“Iteration 1”—Abdul Emir May 9th, 2067.
Sam put the painting back on the wall and picked up the gray portrait of herself.
The back read:
“Commander I1”—Abdul Emir August 3rd, 2067
Nearly two years before they met. She would have still been in the academy. So how had he seen her? A press release? Some information bulletin from her mother’s political campaign? Or was the knowledge of her impending death making her paranoid?
She turned her phone on and dialed a number by memory. He picked up on the second ring. “Mac? I found Henry’s old storage place. I need a crime scene unit down here.”
“Did you find a body?” Mac sounded almost hopeful.
“No.” She looked at the hole in the wall, the curiously empty space nearby, and the sea of portraits. “I’m not sure what I found.”