Love is a destructive force.
~ Excerpt from The Heart of Fear by Liedjie Slaan I1–2071
Friday June 21, 2069
Alabama District 3
Commonwealth of North America
A shadow fell across Sam’s desk. Glancing up, she saw Senior Agent Marrins frowning down at her. “Yes, sir?”
He kicked the spare chair away from her desk and dropped into it with a heaving sigh. “How did you ever become an agent, Rose?”
“Sir?”
“A little slip of a thing like you? Born in Canada?” He shook his head. “Yet here you are, in the States, running around and getting lucky.”
“I don’t understand, sir. Why would it matter what part of the Territories I was born in?” Never mind that: “getting lucky?”
“We weren’t born in the same country, you know. The vote to join the Commonwealth was the narrowest in the history of the United States. One little change, a handful of people thinking differently, and you never would have sat in this office,” Marrins told her as if she’d slept through modern history class. He held up an efile. “I wrote up your quarterly eval, looked over your record. It’s not stupendous. I’m sure you know you aren’t the best agent in the bureau. Good agents spend their junior-staff time in big cities getting trained for the real work.”
And if I hadn’t had to take care of my father, that’s exactly where I’d be. Not this dungheap you call Alabama.
“Has my work been unacceptable, sir?” Under her desk, her fists clenched.
Marrins sneered. “It’s not bad. Working the hard crime cases would do you good. I put that recommendation in your file. You’re not fully trained, and they need to know that before you transfer.”
Sam gritted her teeth at the implication. He seemed indifferent and continued on.
“You’re also cleared of the charges of murder and conspiracy to murder Mordicai Robbins. The time of death isn’t exact, but we have Detective Altin’s eyewitness report that you were home alone during the time frame. He pushed it through against my better judgment.”
Sam cocked her head to the side. “I’m a bit surprised it’s official, myself. I could think of a few ways around those alibis.”
“Are you trying to talk yourself into a murder conviction?” Marrins asked.
“No, sir. I just wish I had a solid alibi that would stand up in court.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Marrins said. “This isn’t going to court.”
“Sir?”
He shook his head. “How Robbins became a security guard I’ll never know. He had a criminal record, drug charges. I’ve seen kills like that before. A shot across the neck at close range? That’s gang-execution style. I saw it when I worked as a junior in Laredo.”
“But why my house?”
Marrins looked out the window. “I guess that’ll be the great mystery of our time.”
“Not reassuring, sir. Someone broke into my house and got past my dog.”
The senior agent nodded. “Robbins was a drug dealer. Connect the dots, Agent Rose.”
“Sir?”
Marrins sighed. “This is what I mean, Rose. No experience. Can you name the local druggie? Who was he dealing with? Who had access to your property?
“Means. Motive. Opportunity . . .”
Sam gasped. “MacKenzie?”
“You’re a sweet girl, Rose. I hate to destroy your innocent view of the world, but drug addicts do strange things. Agent MacKenzie has been a wreck since we inherited him from the old United States DoD. No one wanted to see him waste his life on the pills, but some people can’t change.”
“I don’t think that’s quite the case, sir.” She licked her lips, weighing how much to tell Marrins.
The senior agent rapped his knuckles on her desk as he stood. “Stay in your weight class. Keep away from MacKenzie. I’ll make sure he doesn’t give anyone else trouble.”
“Yes, sir.” She wanted to dive for her phone as Marrins walked out, but she didn’t want anyone overhearing. Flipping the efile into her computer, she read over what Marrins had to say. Damning with faint praise was a hitherto unexplored talent she hadn’t known Marrins possessed.
By his account, she was an uninspired, plodding junior agent who sought out direction rather than taking initiative. The words “woman” and “girl” were liberally sprinkled throughout, as if gender was any indicator of work ethic. Twice he mentioned her ties to Canada—he used the old country name—and he attributed some of her failings to homesickness.
Misogynistic, prejudiced bastard. Was he trying to say she was useless because she was born in Toronto, or get her transferred home because he thought it would help her career? There was no way to tell.
The bell at the church downtown chimed noon. Sam dropped her phone and files in her purse. She needed out of the office before she did something fatal to her career.
Like stick my stilettos up the senior agent’s rear end.
Outside, the heat was extreme, but a light breeze and the shade in the city park looked inviting. She hesitated before sitting on the stone bench. This was where she’d sat when Mackenzie accused her of being a clone.
She was a clone.
He was a murderer.
Next, Detective Altin would pull up and announce he was moving to Key West to work as a drag queen. She needed a break in this case before Jane Doe broke her.
She sat on the bench, in defiance of all the drama, and checked her to-do list. Oh, naturally. It was her mother’s birthday. Grinding her teeth, Sam dialed the number. “Samantha.” Her mother managed to turn her name into a full-scale dressing-down.
“Happy birthday, Mom.”
“Happy birthday? You haven’t called home in nearly a month, and you think you can get away with a quick happy birthday? Talk, young lady. What have you been doing?”
That was the plan. “Working.”
“On what?” her mother demanded.
“On work. I can’t talk about it. The cases are classified until they’ve reached the court system, and unless I’m called to testify, I never know when that is.” You know—like I’ve told you every time you ask about work.
“That’s all fine, darling. I know work is important. I even forgive you for not calling after the hurricane to let me know you were alive. It’s not as if I sat watching the Weather Channel for three days straight.”
She winced. “Sorry.”
“I’m sure you are. Now, tell me you got me what I really wanted for my birthday.”
“Name it, and I’ll have it in the mail this afternoon.” There was probably a special hell for daughters like her.
“Wedding invitations.”
Oh, dear holy Mary and all the saints, no. “Ah . . .”
“Samantha Lynn?”
“No, Mother.”
“I can’t reserve the chapel and Father John until I have a date. If you don’t hurry, you’ll have a winter wedding. Winter weddings are atrocious. The garden will be in complete disarray. Everything will look gothic, all black and white. I won’t have it.”
Sam cringed in the face of her mother’s enthusiasm. “Mom, I’m not seeing anyone.”
“What? Why? Didn’t you get my e-mail about that nice young Nieto boy? He’ll be a member of the Madrid Assembly in a few years, and he goes to Mass every week.”
“He also lives in Spain, and I’m a member of the CBI in Alabama. I don’t think the long-distance relationship would work out.” And I won’t marry someone I’ve never met, either, but that’s beside the point.
“I don’t believe there is no one in that awful country who isn’t at least somewhat suitable.”
“There’s a fabulous girl at my gym—”
“Samantha Lynn Rose!”
“What? I’m not Orthodox Catholic, and neither is she.” Of course she’s married, but that’s also beside the point.
Her mother’s exasperated huff made her smile. “I’m going to light a candle for you. Why would God give me such a wayward child?”
“I don’t know.” Maybe God hadn’t. Her shoulders slumped. Maybe the cloning industry had given her mother a wayward child.
The phone buzzed as Mac stepped out of the morgue into the afternoon heat. “MacKenzie here.”
“Agent MacKenzie, this is Dalton Kim over at the Birmingham lab. How are you?”
Mac patted his pocket for his car keys. “Doing just fine. Shouldn’t you guys be knocking off for the day?”
“I’m the weekend lab manager,” Kim said. “Your test results came in. They’re marked as priority. Do you want the rundown over the phone?”
“Yes, please, and the results sent to my files.” Unlocking the truck, he hopped in and turned on the AC.
“Copies to anyone else?”
“Not at this time.” Whatever fallout there was, he wanted control of it. “What do you have for me?”
Dalton Kim laughed. “These were some fun tests. We had people working late just so they could see how everything turned out.”
“Yeah?” That didn’t sound promising.
“Yeah. I won dinner off my supervisor over the results from the third sample,” the lab tech bragged.
“Nice job.” His palms were sweating.
“The first sample, M-1, that came back clone negative, disease negative. You asked us to compare the samples with those in the public database for extant individuals.”
“Yes.”
“We came back with college student Melody Chimes. The sample is a pure match for her current DNA record held by Wannervan Security, where she is currently employed.”
“Good work,” Mac said.
“Thank you. M-2, our second sample, came back clone negative, disease negative. It is also a match for Melody Chimes. You asked us to do a full records check. The last DNA data holder for Miss Chimes was Auburn University in Alabama. She gave them a DNA sample when she enrolled two years ago.”
“And?”
“The DNA match is within the limits of time progression, but not a pure match. M-1 and M-2 are a match. From the state of cell decay I would say M-1 came from an older sample.”
Which meant Melody Doe was older than the known DNA sample for Melody Chimes.
“What time span does the test say there is between when the two samples were taken?”
“No more than six months. M-1 is the most recent sample. M-2 was taken and left out. Did you have an incubator break?”
“No. It was just a test. One of the agents thought a decayed sample might give us different results.”
“If I hadn’t done a background check, I wouldn’t have been able to date them. We compared the similarities between the two samples with the college DNA data. M-1 had more points in common, making it the most recent sample.”
“Right. What about J-1 and J-2?” His heart pounded, and it wasn’t even his life on the line. The scene blurred. Panic made it hard to breathe, and he was on the verge of slipping into a flashback. His hand clenched, wanting pills and escape.
“J-2 was sample three. Clone negative, disease negative. This one was tricky, it’s not a good match for anyone in the database.”
“Mmmhmmm,” Mac said noncommittally. His eye twitched.
“We ran J-1, clone negative—”
Mac breathed a sigh of relief.
“—disease negative. J-1 is a conclusive match for Agent Samantha Lynn Rose. That took digging, she’s a government employee so she didn’t show up in our initial search, but we found her.”
The panic ebbed. “How positive are you that the search was accurate?”
“Since you’d asked us to look at data tampering for the M-1 sample, we ran it on all the specimens. That’s a smart trick, by the way. I’d never thought to compare progression between current samples and older archived data. There are cases I’d like to revisit with that trick on my free time.”
“What did you find for J-1?” Mac insisted.
“Agent Rose is a well-documented lady,” Kim said. “Her first DNA test was at ten weeks gestational age. There have been regular DNA recordings within a year interval or less through until college. All the progression lines up perfectly. The only thing I don’t know is why her? Did she lose a bet?”
“I couldn’t get anyone in the morgue to volunteer.”
“It’s always like that,” Kim commiserated.
“Did you match J-2?”
“Once we had a clue what we were looking for, we tracked her down. It was an imperfect match for Agent Rose. Looking at the current sample, and taking into account the history of progression, I’d say this is a sample from Agent Rose that’s been aged. How you aged it is another question.”
“We all have our secrets,” Mac said. Right now, he’d kill to know what the secret was. “Do you have a theory?”
“Yeah. We figured you were cloning an organ or growing a skin graft and left the sample in for too long.”
“It didn’t have a clone marker,” Mac reminded him.
“Small organs never do. The clone marker is part of the final brain-development process. If you take a clone from its vat too early, the clone won’t have the marker either.”
Mac nodded. Kim’s theory didn’t fit the evidence, but there was a clue there. “Thanks for getting back to me. Can you send the written report by Monday?”
“Sure thing. Have a good weekend.”
“I will.” There were questions, too many for him to articulate, but it didn’t matter. All he could think of was telling Sam and seeing her breathe easy again. Her eyes would light up, the weight would slide off her shoulders . . . Who knew, maybe this would be enough to win one of her rare smiles, and for that moment he’d be a hero again.
Her roommate’s truck pulled up as Sam tossed another squirt of lighter fluid on the coals. Flames roared skyward, searing the tears on her face dry.
“Let me guess, your phone broke so you’re sending up smoke signals?” MacKenzie asked.
“Go away.”
He made a show of sniffing the air. “Why does it smell like the industrial revolution?”
“Because I wanted steak cooked over a fire. I bought charcoal.”
“Solar grilling works just as well.”
“It doesn’t taste the same,” Sam said. She crossed her arms, refusing to be drawn into the conversation.
Mac leaned against his truck with a smile. “Can we talk?”
“No. I want to cook, not talk. Go away.” She reached for the lighter fluid.
“Do you need help?”
“Your cooking expertise begins and ends with pouring things in bowls.”
“I wash dishes, too,” he said cheerfully.
She glared at him. “Go away.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t ‘Yes, ma’am’ me. I am off work. I don’t need to deal with that at home.”
“Yes, Samantha Lynn.”
She pivoted, shaking her tongs in his face. “Leave. Me. Alone. I am having a bad day.”
He put his hands up in defeat and walked inside, smirking. Idiot. A few minutes later, he reappeared. “What was the name of your friend from the gym?”
“Brileigh. Why?”
“No reason.” Ten minutes later, the back door slammed shut with a creaking thunk as Mac walked out, white china platter in one hand and her phone in the other. “Turn right there, not left,” he told the person on the other end of the phone. He held the platter out to you. “You left this on the counter.”
“Intentionally.” Sam snatched it away and glared at the fire, pretending not to listen.
“Sure. That will be fine,” Mac told the person on the other end of the phone genially. “Bring both,” he told the phone. “Yeah. See you then. My pleasure.” He hung up, still smiling. “Bri is coming over.”
“Why? I told you I wanted to be left alone.” It was smoke from the grill making her eyes water, nothing else.
“You need to talk to someone.”
“And what gives you the right to tell me that? Is it because you’re a man? Or older? Or, what, do tell me, Agent MacKenzie, what gives you the right to run my life as if I were some doll?”
“I don’t have any right. I just don’t want you burning the house down.” He walked away.
She glared at him and went back to cooking dinner.
Food was so simple. Every single time you did the same thing. Every single time you found the same result on your plate. There were no variables. Cake never failed to rise because it was having a bad day. Steak didn’t refuse to cook because you wore the wrong dress. Food didn’t judge you. Food didn’t play games with you. No one told you to avoid food for the good of your career.
No one sane or worth listening to, at any rate.
Blue and orange flames rolled across the black charcoal, a tiny shimmering sea of plasma. The briquettes charred, turning gray. Pockets of orange-white hid beneath the coals. She basted the steaks and flipped them. Eager tongues of fire jumped upward to lick the dripping marinade and kiss the meat.
She dropped the corn on the grill and took the steaks off to rest. The corn blushed deep gold as the smell of browning butter and chili tickled her nose. It was so perfect. Churned cream, a touch of chili powder, farm-fresh corn: three ingredients. No drama.
If weddings were that easy, she would have married Joseph years ago. Man, woman, preacher; it sounded simple, but it wasn’t. There were decorations, flower girls, dresses, colors. Who needed colors at a wedding? The bride wore white, the groom wore a tuxedo. The person who introduced the idea of ribbons and knickknacks should have been beaten to death with a cheap plastic cake topper.
She pulled the corn off the grill and took the food to the house. There were fresh peaches sitting by the apples. Delicious. Leaving the steak and corn in the oven on warm, she took the peaches outside to the grill. Brushed with a little butter, drizzled with a little honey and a pinch of cinnamon, there was dessert perfection in under five minutes. Black grill marks added visual contrast any professional chef would have been proud of. Sam smiled. The door swung open as she walked back to the house.
“Feeling better?” Mac asked with a knowing smile.
She glowered at him. “I don’t need an intervention.”
He looked away rather than answering. “Are you going to share any of this with me?”
She looked at her feast. There was more than enough for her, Mac, Hoss, and everyone else in the county. “I was planning on eating alone.”
“All right.” He headed for the dishwasher, pulled out a bowl, and went straight to the cereal cupboard.
Sam groaned. “Fine. I’ll share. Anything to save you from another bowl of chemicals.”
“There are grains.”
“Gen-engineered rice as the fortieth ingredient does not count as a serving of grains.”
He read the box with theatrical slowness. “It’s not the fortieth.”
“I stand corrected,” she said dryly.
“It’s thirty-ninth.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “Put it away, and I’ll share.”
“Thank you.”
She snarled at him, but he didn’t seem to mind. Loading her plate with steak, salad, corn, and peaches, she sat. Where to start? With the peaches, obviously. Hot, grilled peaches. She closed her eyes, savoring a bite. Juice dribbled down her chin, and she licked it away. “Perfect.”
“Indeed.”
She shot MacKenzie a sharp look, but he was cutting another bite of steak.
“What marinade is this? I’ve never tasted it before.”
Sam took a bite of steak before answering. “It’s blueberry teriyaki.”
He paused midbite. “Blueberry?”
“Is there a problem?” She raised an eyebrow, daring him to fight.
He swallowed. “We might run out of steak. Can we talk now? I have news.”
“I don’t care if you’re the new Pope. I’m eating dinner. Unless you need the ER right now, it can wait.”
Mac shrugged. “Sure. It can wait.”
The doorbell rang when she was finishing her second helping. Hoss went wild, jumping and barking like a fiend. “That’s probably Bri,” Mac said, wiping his mouth on his napkin. “I can take care of the dishes.”
A healthy meal was enough to take the edge off her temper. Sam smiled. “Thank you.”
Bri stood on the porch, supported by her husband, a short, plain man only made attractive by stunning aquamarine eyes.
“You didn’t have to come,” Sam said by way of apology.
“Nonsense.” Bri balanced a hand on Sam’s shoulder.
“She needed to get out of the house,” Jake said. “The kids and the mess are driving her crazy. If you can keep her entertained for a couple of hours, I can get everything cleaned up, and maybe tomorrow she won’t threaten to bulldoze the house and build a new one.”
“I think it’s a fabulous idea,” Bri grumbled. “Jake, baby, carry me over to the couch, would you?”
Jake set Bri on the couch, with her leg set on the new coffee table. “When’d you get this?” Bri asked, running a hand along the couch. “It’s comfy.”
“It’s Mac’s. One of the few things he managed to rescue from the flooding.”
“And where is Mac?” Brileigh craned her neck, looking purposefully at the stairs.
“In the kitchen. We just finished eating.”
“Oh?” Bri patted the couch. “Come sit, Sammie.”
“What time do you need your coach, pumpkin?” Jake asked.
“Give me four hours,” Bri said, and she blew her husband a kiss. “Love you!”
He winked and waved good-bye. “Love you, too.” He blew Bri a kiss and left.
“He’s sweet,” Sam said.
“He’s amazing.” Bri smiled. “And you, I hear, are having a miserable week. Why did your roommate call me?”
“Because he’s a meddlesome fool?”
“Sammie,” she said reprovingly. “He seems sweet.” She craned her neck again, looking at the door this time. “Will I get to meet him?”
“No. Bri, please, don’t. I should have called you back and told you to stay home. I’m not good company today.”
“What happened?”
“I called my mother.”
Brileigh curled her lip in disgust. “Why? I only call my mother if someone dies, and even then, it has to be someone I like.”
“It’s her birthday.”
“That’s what e-cards are for. Why waste phone time? Think of the poor starving birthday-card artists who will go without pay this week because you didn’t buy your mother a card. What did she do, try to set you up with a new boyfriend?”
“Some politician’s son in Madrid. She said she wants wedding invitations for her birthday. I should have stayed with Joseph.”
The temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees. “Excuse me?”
Sam pulled her knees up, curling into a ball at the end of the couch. “If we’d stayed together, we could have had a fall wedding.”
“Not just no, sweetie, but never. Dumping him was a good thing, I promise. You can’t let your mother bully you like this. It’s your life, you don’t need to live it to please her.”
Sam sniffed. Tears blurred the already-dim room.
“Listen,” Bri said, “you don’t really feel this way about Joseph. He was a cheating scumbag, someone you once called—and I quote—‘a tiny-dicked douche bag’ that you hoped ‘caught syphilis from his own mother.’ Sound familiar?”
Sam rubbed her hand over her eyes. “I never called him ‘tiny-dicked.’ ”
“I assumed.” Bri grinned. Sam couldn’t help it: she grinned back.
“That’s settled, then. No more talk of weddings unless it’s about your having met a wealthy, handsome man who brought you to multiple orgasms and you’re flying off to Vegas tomorrow. No?” Sam shook her head, and secretly thanked Mac for calling her best friend over. Bri shifted and reached for the table. “Good. I brought some movies for you. How about we watch assassins, soul-stealing fiends, and an epic battle in the maze of glass?”
“The higher the body count, the better.” Sam sat up, wiping her face on her arm.
Bri handed her the movie. “Here.” Sam put it in the player. “Is the TV new? I thought you didn’t have one.”
“Mac bought it yesterday. His insurance money came in, or part of it, at least; I didn’t get all the details.”
“And he put it out here?” Brileigh raised an eyebrow. She leaned forward. “You’re sharing electronics? Sam, what aren’t you telling me? Was I close about Vegas?” She smiled slyly. “The orgasms?”
She studied the remote intently. “Mary have mercy, Bri, drop the roommate thing. Mac shares a kitchen with me, that’s it.” Sam wasn’t sure why she felt like she was blushing. Probably because I am.
But now she wasn’t sure why she was.
“You call him Mac.”
“And I call you Bri, and myself Sam. I don’t like long names.” She sat back, arms crossed across her chest. They were not having this conversation. Ever.
“Fine, forget him. But it’s only healthy, Sam. Find some guy you won’t mind spending an evening with, go to dinner, and have some wild sex. Or skip the dinner. Just get it out of your system,” Brileigh advised. Her eyes went wide. “That’s not why you have the roommate, is it? No, I’m sorry, I promised I wouldn’t ask. Wait, no I didn’t. So is it? You’re going to have an office romance with him, aren’t you? Clandestine meetings in the break room maybe?”
“No!” Sam pulled her knees closer. “I’m not dating Mac. We have nothing in common.”
“Well, you work and—apparently—live together.” Bri raised an expressive eyebrow. “I think she doth protest too much.”
“You’re wrong. There’s nothing there. No attraction. No interest. We tolerate each other; and then only when we have to. I’m not going to have anything with Mac except maybe a discussion on how to load the dishwasher correctly,” she said hotly.
The kitchen door creaked shut, and Mac cleared his throat. “Um, sorry. I brought popcorn and walked in on the wrong part of the conversation.”
“Mac!” Bri gushed. “I’d jump up and give you a hug, but I’m not jumping much at the moment. It’s so nice to meet you. Sam’s been telling me all about you.”
“Really?” Mac sounded dubious. He approached the couch slowly, popcorn held between him and them like a shield.
“Sorry,” Sam whispered, miserable.
Mac gave her a lopsided grin. “You don’t need to apologize.”
Bri smiled up at him. “You have gorgeous eyes. Sam, why didn’t you tell me he had nice eyes?”
“Because you’re married.”
“I could start a collection. MacKenzie, have you ever considered the benefits of living in a reverse harem?” Brileigh asked.
Mac coughed. “Um, no. Thanks though. I’ll, uh, um.”
“Mac isn’t interested,” Sam translated. “Not every breathing male on the planet falls flat on their face for you. Mac, how do you make this remote work? I want to watch the movie.”
He reached down and hit three buttons. Light flared on the television.
“Thank you.” Sam stared hard at the TV.
“Anytime. I like to pretend I’m useful,” Mac whispered by her ear, and her cheeks grew hot.
“You can cook,” Bri said cheerfully.
“I can pour things in bowls.”
“Sometimes that’s all that needs doing—it’s never a bad thing for a guy to know where to put things.” Bri took a handful of popcorn and smiled; Mac blushed. Sam wondered if there was room to crawl under the couch. “You could have far creepier roommates, Sam,” Bri said. “I approve.”
Mac laughed. “You didn’t tell her about the screaming.”
Sam leaned her head back to look at him. Bri was right, he did have amazing eyes. She narrowed her gaze to a glare. “I’m still not talking to you, tattletale.” He blinked, looking a little hurt. “Besides, what you scream in bed when I’m in your room is none of Bri’s business.” She hit the PLAY button while Bri squeaked a wordless demand for information. Mac left laughing, and Sam remained stubbornly silent on the whole subject of nocturnal activities while they watched the movie.