Our very existence is threatened by these dissidents. They would have you believe we are at war. We are not the warmongers, we are the guardians. We are the ones defending our world from the annihilation of free agency.
~ Press brief from Colonel Aina’s I1–2073
Wednesday June 19, 2069
Alabama District 3
Commonwealth of North America
Sam pushed away from her desk, rubbing her neck and wishing for an insane gunman to drop through the ceiling and take her hostage. Anything to distract her from checking insurance claims against the district records. There was a tap on the wall.
She jerked her head up. “Agent MacKenzie? Are you all right? You look . . . deflated.” There were corpses in the morgue who looked better. His pale skin was flaccid, but his eyes weren’t bloodshot. Mother Mary have mercy, she thought, he looked bad high.
Who knew sober could be worse?
“Where have you been? Did you go to the hospital?” His truck was missing when she returned from work on Thursday, and Marrins had kept her buried with busywork for the past week. Hunting down her erstwhile roommate hadn’t been a priority. “You should have called if they were going to admit you.”
“Can . . . Can we talk?” he asked in a hushed voice. His hands trembled.
“What about?”
“The . . . Jane. Jane Doe.”
Sam nodded. “Sure. I’m going to lunch. We can talk there. Let me close my files up real quick.”
Marrins’s door opened, and Charlie the Plastic Skull bounced off the wall in front of a startled MacKenzie. “Give that to the coroner on your way down!” Marrins shouted.
Rolling her eyes, she closed the computer down. “A real winning personality,” she told MacKenzie, faking a smile. “He’s been throwing it at people all week. If you accidentally lost it in the Dumpster on the way to Harley, I’d consider it a national service.”
MacKenzie didn’t crack a smile.
She dropped Charlie on the secretary’s desk as they walked past. “This is for the coroner, courtesy of Agent Marrins.” She ignored the dirty look Theresa gave her and kept walking. “Mac, seriously, are you all right? You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
He shook his head. “I haven’t.”
“Were you at the hospital?”
“No. Office.”
She gave him a stern look. Whatever the reasons, he looked ready to collapse. “How about we walk over to the café?” He nodded and plodded after her, a reluctant puppy on a leash. “Talk, MacKenzie. What were you working on?”
“The autopsies. Mordicai Robbins and the . . . the Jane Does.”
They stepped out into the swamp of June in Alabama. “Weather control, is that too much to ask for?” she muttered. “Lower the humidity here about 20 percent, that’s all I’m asking.” Her suit jacket, so perfect for staying warm in the air-conditioned office, was suddenly three times too thick for comfort. She took it off, catching MacKenzie’s stare as she did. “What?”
He shook his head, turning to look at the hibiscus blooming along the sidewalk. “Sorry.”
“Focus. Tell me about the autopsies.”
“Harley took my computer Thursday morning.” Mac sounded angry. “All the work I’d done on Melody Doe and Mordicai Robbins was erased. Both bodies were cremated.”
She whistled softly. “That was fast.”
“Too fast, but I had a backup copy on my data pad. I’m not sure if Harley knew that or not when he ordered the hard drive wiped.”
Sam took a deep breath. At least the outside smelled better than her overchilled office. “I don’t think he would have erased the data if he didn’t—it’s too valuable to lose.” When Mac didn’t respond, she switched topics. “Did you hear about the arrest yesterday? Altin wasn’t happy, I heard all about it because Marrins was dodging his calls again. Someone said they saw the guy’s car out by the labs the night of the break-in. It’s not much to go on, but I guess it’s a start.”
“They let the kid go an hour ago.” Mac sighed and sat.
Sam waved to a waitress as she took her usual seat on the patio outside the Peach Blossom Café. The self-serve screen popped up in the center of the table, and Sam entered her order from memory. “How’d you find that out?
“Harley told me. We got into a fight. I told him the evidence didn’t back up the arrest. The kid’s nineteen, works a night shift at the cinema, and was at work when the lab was broken into. Same alibi for the time of death. The only reason they took him in was that Officer Holt has tried to arrest him twice for breaking the noise ordinance in her neighborhood—he likes to turn the radio up when he drives home—but the charges never stuck.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I think Altin is the only competent person on the force.” A flower petal drifted across the menu screen, and she flicked it away. “I hate to ask, but do I have an alibi?”
Mac nodded. “About the time someone shot Mordicai Robbins’s throat out, Detective Altin was at your house getting a signature to exhume Melody Doe.”
“That’s nice.” She relaxed a little. “Do you know what you want?” MacKenzie shook his head, so she doubled the order: two thick turkey sandwiches with fruit salads on the side. Mac sat with his hands clasped, leaning on his knees and avoiding her gaze. Sam leaned back. “So. I guess you didn’t want to see me about the Melody Doe case. What did you want to talk about?”
He looked across the street at the small grove of trees that were optimistically dubbed the city park. “This is a mess.”
“The city? The case? The state of the nation? I need more to go on if we’re going to have a conversation.” A waitress brought out two glasses of pink lemonade. Sam sipped hers, and waited for Mac to come around to the conversation.
Mac sighed. “Melody Doe is an exact DNA match for Melody Chimes. No clone marker. Everything matches the latest DNA record of Melody Chimes.”
“Which was when?”
“Wannervan Security did a full DNA scan when she signed on in October of last year.”
“But in October 2068, Melody Doe was decomposing in peace in a mass grave.”
“That’s the first problem.”
“What’s the second?”
Mac kicked a chair at their table, glaring at the park like he held a personal grudge against trees and ground his teeth.
“Mac?” Sam prompted, trying not to sound amused.
“I pulled up Jane Doe’s files while I was running some scans on Melody Doe.”
“So?”
“The trauma patterns to the bones match.”
Sam set her cup down with exaggerated care. “What are you suggesting?”
“Both women were killed by the same thing. I think Jane was hit harder, but I don’t know what hit her.” He pulled out an efile on his small computer. “This . . .” Mac shook his head, obviously arguing something with himself. “This is Jane.” The suicide from May popped up on the screen.
The waitress stepped out with their lunches. “Thank you, Autumn,” Sam said, reading the girl’s name tag. She took a bite of her sandwich, swallowed, and nodded at the screen. “Let’s see Melody.” Mac hit a few buttons, and Melody Doe appeared, the fracture pattern on the skull was highlighted. “Okay, I see what you’re saying, but it still doesn’t work.”
He frowned at her.
“All this says is that both women were hit in a similar way. That’s not enough of a connection. Melody wasn’t—” She caught the word “tortured.” This was a public place, after all. “Melody wasn’t treated the same way as Jane. They weren’t the same age. They don’t show the same abuse. You need more of a connection if you want to tie them together. The same weapon doesn’t make this a serial-killer case.”
MacKenzie held his sandwich with reverence, venerating but not eating. “What about both being dead women with identical genetic matches to living people? No clone markers.”
Sam raised her eyebrows. “That could do it. You found a name for Jane?”
He nodded. “Eighty percent accuracy. There are a few differences, but there’s also a five-year age gap between the two.”
“That takes care of the other 20 percent.” She took another bite. “Okay. Give me the name.”
MacKenzie put his sandwich down and tapped at the screen. Another window opened next to the body, a file.
Sam turned the screen to read . . . Her name. Her file.
All the little things she’d noticed the first day and dismissed as quirks of genetic drift were there. Physical similarities listed next to those of Jane Doe’s with little blue tick marks.
Check.
Check.
Check.
Sam smoothed her hands over her skirt. “Why . . . why don’t we walk? Grab your sandwich.” She dumped MacKenzie’s lunch into his hands, grabbed her own sandwich, and dropped their plates off at the cleaning station tucked behind an oleander bush. She didn’t wait for him but knew he was following. “This way.” Her high heels clicked on the hot sidewalk as they crossed the empty street to the small park surrounding city hall in the center. MacKenzie was right behind her, juggling food and computers.
She took a deep breath. “If this is a joke, MacKenzie, it’s not funny. Not at all.”
MacKenzie set his computer on a stone bench. “It’s not a joke.” His breath was ragged. “I . . . I . . . stopped. Everything. No pills. No nothing. I’m sober. You wanted to know where I’ve been the past six days? This is where. When the search results came up, I thought I was hallucinating. I’ve rerun the data.”
“I’m not questioning your sobriety, you bastard,” she hissed. “I’m questioning your conclusion. Are you honestly suggesting that this woman was my clone?” She glared at him, nails digging into the stone bench.
“No.”
“Good.”
“Jane is five years older.”
Her heart stopped. “Older?”
He nodded.
That means. . .
“You think . . .” She didn’t want to say it. It was too ludicrous. She looked at Mac’s eyes. She had once thought, if they’d been sober, they’d actually be rather nice-looking eyes. Now, all she saw was determination. He really believed it. “You think I’m a clone?” MacKenzie didn’t answer.
“I am Catholic. My parents are Catholic. My mother goes to Mass seven days a week. There is no way in this world, or the next, that I am a shadow.” She waved her hand at him. It was pointless. Saints have mercy. Maybe Father Mark at the local church could give her a prayer.
Dear God, I’m a clone, please don’t hate me.
She tossed her limp sandwich at the bench, where it bounced and fell to the ground. “I’m not a clone.”
“There . . . there are other explanations.”
“Eighty percent accuracy? I’m too good a genetic match. My career is going to hell because of 80 percent accuracy. What were you thinking, MacKenzie? I’m alive! Maybe that should have been your first clue that I’m not the dead Jane Doe!” Sam sucked in air. Hands on her hips, she walked back and forth in front of the bench. “This isn’t happening.”
“I have two victims, with evidence they were killed by the same weapon, who are both genetic matches for living people. I’m not saying that Jane Doe is you—obviously that’s impossible. But what do you want me to say? You’re a robot?”
“You think I’m a robot?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She wasn’t sure she’d stay around to hear that much more anyway.
“No,” he said, meeting Sam’s eyes. They didn’t flinch. “No, I don’t think you’re a robot. But I don’t . . . I don’t have an answer.” He returned to staring at the ground. “Sam, I can’t make the facts make sense. I can’t. I need to run tests. On you. On Melody Chimes.”
“Testing for what?”
“A DNA sample to start. Melody’s DNA sample was too perfect. Either Melody Doe is Melody Chimes, or the woman who signed as Melody Chimes somehow used Melody Doe’s DNA for the security firm’s genetic testing.”
“She was dead nine months before Melody Chimes even got the job, remember! Since I don’t believe in vampires or zombies, I think we can eliminate that possibility.” Sam snapped. Tears burned her eyes. God in heaven and Holy Mary, full of grace.
“Sam”—it was the second time she’d heard him use her name—“I need to test you for clone markers.”
Cleansing breath in, bad energy out. Just like yoga class. She tugged at her blouse, trying to pull herself together. Cleansing breath in. Cleansing breath out. “You won’t find any.”
“You wouldn’t know if you were a clone,” Mac said quietly. “Your parents might not even know. There are cases where ransomed children were replaced with clones. One hospital in Monterrey was replacing high-risk infants with clones and selling the real children.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good moneymaking venture,” Sam growled.
“When the parents were already paying for a shadow? The hospital charged a little extra, gave them the clones, and sold the children who would live past fifteen into slavery.”
Sam glared at him. “Let me repeat: my parents are devout Catholics. Cloning is a sin. I have never had a shadow. It’s never been an option.”
“Did you ever travel out of the country as a child?”
“Yes, my mother was the Spanish ambassador to Canada. We held dual citizenship until Canada joined the Commonwealth.” Europe hadn’t welcomed the Commonwealth with open arms—far from it, in fact. People who held dual citizenships were required to pick a country. Her mother picked Spain. Some days Sam thought the only reason her parents were still married was because her mother enjoyed the convenience of having a Commonwealth spouse. It made getting a visa so much easier. Regardless, they had definitely traveled a lot when she was younger.
Sam looked up at the sky through the lacy veil of leaves. There was no way her parents were involved with cloning of any kind. Which meant this wasn’t happening. Any minute, she would wake up from this nightmare. Maybe.
I’m not a clone. She wasn’t sure how she was so sure, but every fiber of her being—everything about her upbringing and life so far—told her that it wasn’t possible. I’ll prove it if I have to.
“How do we do your test?”
“I send a blood sample to the lab in Birmingham.”
“Why not use one of the test kits we have in the office? They used one on Melody Chime’s shadow.”
Mac coughed. His cheeks flushed red. “You’re too old. The clone marker wasn’t introduced until 2048. You were born in 2047.”
Her cheeks warmed with a blush. That was a first. Most the time people said she was too young. “Won’t they question why a CBI agent’s blood is being tested?”
“We send in known samples to make sure the lab is testing correctly on a routine basis. No one will question the test as long as it has two agents’ signatures.”
Sam pressed her lips together. “And then what?”
“When we get a negative result back, we start looking at the absolutely impossible options.”
She glanced sideways. Hazel eyes were studying her intently. Mac looked drawn and angry, but she realized with a little shock that the anger wasn’t directed at her. “You think the results will be negative?”
“I think it’s almost impossible to fake a gene test with a major security firm, but it takes twenty minutes to hack the CBI database and falsify data if you’re an agent with a clearance code.”
She raised an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”
“I did it this morning when I couldn’t sleep. Marrins spent six minutes as an Indian woman, or at least his genetic profile did. I changed it back!” he said hastily when he saw her expression of disapproval.
“Okay. Fine. Why would anyone do that? Crimes of intent have motives.”
“For Melody Chimes? I think that’s identity theft. Someone wanted her life, and they took it. Melody is dead. Melody Doe is Melody Chimes. The thief had to hack a known system, put in her DNA, and list it as Melody’s. Difficult, but not impossible.”
“And me?”
“Career assassination. Clones are owned things,” he said with disgust. “If you were a clone, wrapping the Jane Doe case as a suicide would be ruled a confession of murder. You’d have stolen an identity, impersonated a federal agent, and killed her in pursuit of your clone agenda. The media would tear you apart.”
Literally. . .
Still, she held out. “If I don’t know I’m a clone—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, cutting her off. “A clone has no rights. With the political climate right now?” He shook his head. “You don’t stand a chance. With a suggestion of being a clone on your record, your career is over. Even being a clone sympathizer is career suicide right now.”
Sam stared at him. “Who? Who would do that to me?”
He looked pointedly at her bare left hand. “Who hates you enough to ruin your career?”
Only one name came to mind. “Ramirez? My ex? No.” She shook her head. “He might not have loved me, but he doesn’t hate me.” Sam paced some more. The clock over the local church chimed one. “I need to get back to the office. What did Marrins say about all this?”
“Marrins?”
“Yes, Marrins, the fat senior agent in charge of my career. What did he say about this?”
“I haven’t told him.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would be even easier for him to change your data than your ex-boyfriend in Toronto. Marrins is a misogynistic bigot with a chip on his shoulder, and you’re everything he hates.”
Sam stared, startled by Mac’s convictions. Finally, she said, “My, what a paranoid imagination you have, Agent MacKenzie.”
He tipped an imaginary hat. “I blame you.”
“How is any of this my fault?”
“If you hadn’t come down to the lab to argue about the case, I never would have gotten mad enough to go digging.” A crooked smile split his tired face. “Initiative is not something I’ve used in the past few years.”
She smiled back. “Are you going to use that newfound initiative to get some sleep?”
“I’ll come home tonight. Right now, I need to bury my tracks in the system and pull up everything I can on Melody Chimes.”
“Altin is going to want a report on that. Can you give him what you have without suggesting I’m Jane Doe’s clone?” She managed to say it without her voice breaking.
“There’s enough evidence. Her address was wrong. Her DNA match is too perfect.”
“You said that, I still don’t understand. Shouldn’t a match be perfect?”
“Only if the sample was recent. Over the years, you mutate, that’s why you age. Your body is changing. The two-year difference between specimens should be evident between the Melody Doe sample and the Melody Chimes sample we have on file. It isn’t there.”
“Which means the person posing as Melody Chimes kept a DNA sample.”
“Or altered the file to match.” Mac nodded. “Unless someone discovered a way to travel back in time to dump bodies that I don’t know about.” He smiled.
She faked a laugh. “Yeah. Let’s not put that option in the report. I don’t need to have a psych eval on my record.”
“I’ll have something for you and Altin by tomorrow. I can do the blood sampling at the house if you’re comfortable with that.”
She wasn’t, but she nodded anyway.
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “It’s not your fault. You’re not the one trying to ruin my life. If anything,” she admitted, “you seem to be helping me.” And why that is, I’m still not sure. The clock chimed again, and she began moving back to her office. “I’ll see you tonight.”
For better or worse.
Sam was too tense to eat dinner. She left the office early and hid at the gym for three hours, working herself into exhaustion. Bri didn’t show. After a six-mile run, her body demanded calories, so, admitting defeat, she drove home. Mac’s truck was parked in the back.
She heard the shower running when she stepped inside. Unless she wanted to hop in and share the hot water, she’d have to stay sweaty.
Sweaty it is.
Grabbing her phone along with some spaghetti noodles, she dialed Brileigh. “Hey, Bri? It’s Sam. Where were you today? I missed you at the gym.”
“Gym?” Brileigh laughed. “Sammie, I’m not hitting the gym for another six weeks.”
“Why?” Sam looked in her little freezer for vegetarian spaghetti sauce.
“I broke my leg at the lake,” Bri said, as Sam put the pasta sauce in the microwave to heat. “We went up Monday to get away while the AC got replaced, the canoe fell off the car and snapped my leg in two.”
“Ouch!”
“Tell me about it. Hubby had panic attacks. Ruined the whole vacation for us.” Bri bit into something crunchy, and said around sounds of chewing, “Any word yet from D.C.?”
“No, I don’t think I’ll hear anything. I botched the interview and sounded like a schoolgirl on a field trip.”
“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry.”
MacKenzie walked in, towel-dried brown hair sticking up in wet spikes and wearing some gray sweats that were too short for him. Sam nodded hello. “Sit down. Dinner in a minute.”
“What?” Bri demanded. “Who are you eating with?”
“Someone from work. His apartment got flooded out by Jessica, and there are two other rooms for rent here. He’s staying here until he finds other digs. The kitchen is communal.”
“Uh-huh,” Bri said, not sounding convinced. “Is he hot?”
“Excuse me?”
“Hot. Attractive. Filled with pulchritude. Swervable. Curvy. Solar. Single?”
Sam blinked at MacKenzie. Then turned back to the stove before her eyes started wandering. “No.”
“Then why are you making him dinner? Girl, you need to go find someone so solar you get wet when he smiles.”
Sam laughed. “No, thanks. I don’t need any right now.”
“How long is that going to last? When is the last time you had sex?”
“That’s classified information.”
“That long, huh?”
Sam dropped the noodles into boiling water and put garlic bread in the oven to heat. “It’s no big deal. I’m too busy for all of that right now.” She blushed when she saw MacKenzie watching her. He blushed, too, and looked away. “Listen, Bri, this is a bad time to have this conversation. Can’t you come to the gym later this week? Do some weights or something?”
“I can’t drive.”
“How are you getting to work?”
“Bus for at least six weeks. I can barely move my hip. And there’s no way I’m going to the gym in sweats. I can do arms at home.”
“Bri! I need girl talk.”
“So come over Friday, we’ll stay in and watch movies. Hubby can take the kids camping or something.”
“I’ll try. Talk to you later. Bye.” Sam hung up the phone in frustration.
“Sorry,” Mackenzie whispered.
“Why?”
“You’re unhappy?”
“It’s not your fault. Bri broke her leg.” She sighed. “I guess I’ll keep hitting the gym alone. I can ignore creepers. Or I could drag you with me.”
“Like the run Friday?” He looked up at her with a lopsided smile, and her stomach flipped. Cleaned up and human . . .
Curse Bri for putting ideas in her head. So far she’d done her best to ignore what was between them. Not an attraction, but an awareness of the strength and intelligence Mac had to offer. Sam turned around before Mac could see her turn red. “Spaghetti for dinner,” she said just a little too brightly. “And then you can stick me with your thing.”
There was a spluttering sound behind her. “Excuse me?”
Sam stirred the sauce with an innocent air. “The blood test? Needle?”
“Sorry, that’s not . . . my mind was elsewhere.”
Yours and mine both. “Why don’t you go put on a shirt? You don’t want to drip sauce on your, ah”—she glanced back and turned around quickly—“self.” Abs. When did Agent MacKenzie get abs?
He came back dressed in jeans and a green T-shirt. Dinner was fast and silent. MacKenzie brought out a needle after he cleared his plate.
“Do you know how to take a blood sample from a living patient?”
With a ghost of a smile he nodded. “Yes.”
Sam held out her arm with bad grace, looking away as he washed a fingertip. His hand was warm and sure.
“Just a little prick.”
“That’s what they all say.” She scrunched her eyes closed, only to realize he’d frozen. “Mac?”
“Do you always joke around like this?”
“When I’m stressed, scared, and tired beyond all belief? Yes. I can go back to yelling if you like. I used to just yell. Bri’s a bad influence on me. She puts crazy thoughts in my head.”
“I see.” His voice was a little too quiet.
Sam licked her lips. “Sorry. That was unprofessional. I’m not used to being around a coworker after hours.”
He cleaned her finger. There was a pinch, and he squeezed gently. “I’ll send the sample out in the morning.”
She looked down at the blood welling on her fingertip. “When will the results be in?”
“In a week or two.”
“Okay. Good.” Standing up, she tried to put some distance between them. This was strange, nerve-wracking, wrong on so many levels. “Good.” She wiped her hands on her pants, wincing when she saw the bloody streak.
MacKenzie tucked the sample into his kit without a word.
“If . . . if it comes back positive, what are you going to do?”
“What do you want me to do?” he asked without turning around.
She studied her hand. “If I am?” She took a deep breath. “If I am, I want to turn myself in.”
“That won’t buy you any leniency.”
“I know. But, if it comes to that, I want to make the choice. It’ll be the last thing I do as a free human being. I want to make it mine.”
MacKenzie tensed. “It won’t come to that.”
“It might.”
She retreated upstairs to recover. The day had been too surreal. A hot shower behind a locked door, then to bed, with the door locked again. Hoss snored on the floor. She dropped an arm over the side and rubbed his belly . . .
She didn’t remember falling asleep, but the ringing of her phone woke her before her alarm went off. Wind whipped the oak trees outside.
Two in the morning.
“Agent Rose here,” she said groggily.
“Agent Rose! You must come down here at once!”
“Dr. Emir?” Sam sat up in bed, resting her feet on Hoss. “Dr. Emir, why are you calling me? At all? Senior Agent Marrins is handling your case.”
“Agent Marrins can’t help me. Can’t help me at all. He doesn’t understand. This work is too important.”
Sam rubbed her eyes. “Right.” She yawned. “You realize that it’s two in the morning, Doc? Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“This is the only time I could come to the lab knowing he would not be here.”
“He? Agent Marrins?”
“No! The other iteration. He comes to my lab. He is stealing my work. Changing my formulas. He sneaks in here when I’m not looking.”
Hoss whimpered. Sam scratched his ear in commiseration. “He, who, Dr. Emir? One of your colleagues? One of your interns?”
“Not he,” the doctor screeched, “me! I have come here. I change things. He and I.”
Sam checked her phone. It looked like her phone, but this was obviously a dream.
“Agent Rose, I implore you. You must save me.”
“From yourself?” she guessed.
“There are others who would kill me for this research.”
“Like the ones who broke your bots and killed the security guard? Except, wait, nothing was stolen during the lab break-in.”
Dr. Emir was quiet for a minute. “Yes. There might have been—” He coughed. “I think there is a better explanation for that. Although the evidence does not fit observed facts.”
“Dr. Emir, have you considered going to a doctor?”
“My cough is not that bad.”
“I was thinking someone with a doctorate in psychology. You should consider professional treatment.” Hoss’s head thumped on the floor as he went back to sleep. Sam wished she could do the same.
“I am in danger, Agent Rose. Very serious danger. Why do you not believe me? How can you not comprehend this? Do you not see how important my research is? Do you not know who you are talking to? I received the Misakat Award for Speculative Science two years in a row. Two years! I am brilliant! And you suggest I have problems?”
“Dr. Emir,” Sam said, abandoning all tact. “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m stating a fact. You are not right in the head. It’s two in the morning, and you’re calling me to rant about, what? I don’t even know. All I know is that I’m awake when I should be asleep.”
“I called you to tell you that I am in imminent physical danger, Agent Rose,” Emir said, loading his pronouncement with scorn. “Another iteration of myself is tampering with my work and coming to kill me. A real CBI agent would have wasted no time in coming to see to my safety.”
“I’m not the agent covering your case. Before I can do anything, I would need permission from Agent Marrins. Don’t you think calling him first would make more sense?”
“Marrins does not want to help!” Emir screamed. “Marrins is a hindrance.”
Sam closed her eyes. “You’ve already called Marrins?”
“Yes.”
“And what did Agent Marrins say?”
“He used some very foul and abusive language that insulted both my ancestry and my intelligence.”
Sam hit her head on the pillow. It didn’t help. “I think Agent Marrins has a point, Emir.”
“He does not understand the gravity of my situation.”
“I’m not sure anyone can.”
“Exactly! This is why I’m telling you. I know others, like yourself, who are not possessed of my intelligence see only random chaos. To my superior intellect, that chaos is an obvious pattern.”
“Really?” Sam lay back in bed, almost enjoying the raving madman. He was delusional, but he was worth a laugh next time she went to dinner with . . . whomever. Maybe she should let Bri set her up on a blind date.
“You are not taking this seriously, Agent Rose.”
“You called me to tell me that you broke into your lab?”
“Yes! Now you understand!”
“No. Now I hang up.” Sam shut the phone off and looked at Hoss. “That man is insane, and he will drive me crazy.” Hoss snored. The phone buzzed in her hand. She shut it off, and, for good measure, slid it under her stack of gym clothes. Emir was Marrins’s problem.