by Diana X Dunn
It was tempting to take a nap, but it was too close to her bedtime for that indulgence. Instead, she got up and unpacked her case, dropping the clothes she had worn into the laundry sanitizer as she passed it. A few moments later, after she had cleared away the suitcase into her closet, the machine beeped and she removed the cleaned clothes. She put them neatly away and then walked through the living room to the kitchen area that ran along one wall.
She grabbed a food and drink substitute (FADS) bar from a cupboard, ignoring flavor, instead focusing on choosing one that was designed to be energy boosting. After a moment’s hesitation, she tapped a few times on the flat control screen for her beverage machine. An icy cold glass of white wine was delivered a second later. She took a long sip and let out a satisfied sigh. With the bar in her stomach, she began to feel better as she sat back down on the couch with her wine.
The apartment’s control device was lying on the table. She frowned when she noticed that one of the motion detectors had been activated while she’d been away. Turning on the huge flat panel video screen that took up most of one wall, she tapped into her security system. Several hours of nothing but her empty apartment whizzed past before she got to the interesting part. She grinned as she watched her hugely expensive and amazingly high tech security system focus all of its attention on a tiny spider that had somehow made its way into the building.
Tapping in a few commands, the system traced the tiny arachnid backwards from where it had first been spotted moving across the kitchen floor to its earlier sneaky entry into the apartment. She watched herself carrying a box of fruit into the apartment a few days earlier. The camera was able to zoom in on tiny spider curled up in the corner of the box. Zooming back out, she watched herself crush the box and put it in the automatic recycler. The tiny spider fell, unnoticed, to the floor and hid him or herself against the wall. Diana fast-forwarded past the rest of that morning, watching herself get ready to leave for the Paris job. The tiny spider remained motionless until several hours after Diana had left.
Diana fast-forwarded some more, watching the spider creep around her apartment, finally climbing into a corner of her bedroom ceiling to spin a web. When the video playback brought her up to the current time, Diana checked the live camera to see if the spider was still in a corner of her room. Confirming that it was there, she quickly scanned the live image, checking that nothing was out of place in the room.
Satisfied, she tapped a command into her apartment control, turning on the automatic cleaning system for the master bedroom, bathroom, and closet. A second later she heard her doors sliding shut as the system readied itself for cleaning. She watched the security camera screen as a high-powered vacuum system turned on, vents opening and closing in turn all around the room, sucking all of the dust off of surfaces and floors.
Really, the little spider didn’t have a chance as the vacuum closest to it turned on its powerful suction. Diana watched as the spider and its web were neatly sucked away. Seconds later, the vacuuming finished, a fine mist of antibacterial germicidal spray was released into the room. That would take care of any germs that her temporary pet might have been carrying. She set the cleaning program to automatically do the rest of the apartment in the small hours of the morning. It was overdue for cleaning anyway.
It was out of character for her to drink at all, but she felt like she deserved a treat. After finishing her first glass of wine, she thought about having a second. Since the rarely watched video screen was already on, she absently flipped through the channels, looking for something to entertain her. She settled into an old animated movie about toys that could talk, still considering that second glass of wine.
When her M-ped buzzed, it startled her. If her glass hadn’t already been empty, she might have spilled some wine. She glanced at the device that was just out of reach on a nearby table. She could just see enough of the display to see that a private message had been received. Setting her glass down, she leaned over and picked up the device, tapping on the screen to open her messages.
Are you around?
That was all that the message said, but it still brought a huge smile to Diana’s face. This was the first time in a while that she actually was available when Alexander Knight messaged her.
As she sent back a quick “yes” in reply, she thought back over their brief relationship. They had met in February, on a cold snowy day somewhere in Pennsylvania. Diana had been undercover, but then she always was. He had been nothing but a handsome stranger, but one who had intrigued her. A few months later fate, or something else, had thrown them together again. Diana had been even more captivated. Then Alex had become the prime suspect in his own wife’s murder and the situation had gotten complicated very quickly.
After nearly being blown up together, Alex had left New York to do some research before he and Diana could figure out what, if anything, they were going to do about their fledgling relationship. Since then, Alex had messaged her occasionally, but usually when she was unable to talk, sometimes when she couldn’t even reply. This was a surprising bit of luck, them both being available at the same time.
A moment later her M-ped rang its call tone. She tapped it on and answered the call from Alex. His strong and handsome face filled the screen and she grinned at him, conscious that they were both wearing stupidly happy smiles. His light brown hair was just a little bit too long. It looked like he’d forgotten to get it cut recently. His warm brown eyes looked exactly the way she remembered them, sexy and inviting.
“Hi,” Alex began simply.
“Hi,” Diana replied. She chuckled at herself. She was behaving like a love-struck teenager. She tapped a code into her M-ped and suddenly Alex’s face filled the massive video screen on the wall. As gorgeous as he was, it seemed a bit too much, even for her, so she shrank the image a couple of times, until he was not much bigger than life-sized.
Alex had a puzzled look on his face as she made all of the adjustments. “What are you doing?” he asked as she finally smiled at him again.
“I was just putting you on the big screen,” she grinned, “but then I had to adjust you to make you fit properly. Was I making weird faces?”
Alex laughed. “You looked like you were concentrating on something, but my view of you changed as well. Now I have the whole room you are in and you are super tiny in the middle of it, because I’m on my M-ped.”
Diana grinned. “Surely you know how to zoom?” she asked him.
“Oh, right,” Alex’s face was now focused on something and Diana laughed as she watched his fingers flying in and out of focus as he tapped, pinched and poked on the screen he held. Finally he smiled at her again. “Okay, that’s better. How are you?”
“I’m fine, how are you?”
Alex laughed. “This is crazy,” he told her. “There is so much to say and nothing that can be said. I can’t wait to see you again.”
Diana nodded. “I’m looking forward to seeing you again, too,” she admitted, as much to herself as to him.
“So what have you been doing this week?”
“Not much,” Diana told him. “I had to go out of town for a few days. I just got back this evening.”
“Where did you go?”
Diana thought for a minute before she answered. “It is probably best if we don’t talk about that,” she said reluctantly. While the French police were still looking for her, the fewer people who knew about her trip the better.
Alex frowned. “I hate this,” he told her.
“It’s my job,” she reminded him.
“I hate your job.”
She sighed. That had ended up being the problem with every relationship she’d ever had. Eventually, her job became the huge problem that couldn’t be worked around. Usually she broke up with men long before it became an issue. She didn’t do long-term relationships easily or often. Just occasionally she would meet someone who seemed worth the extra effort. Those relationships had all ended in the same messy shouting matches about her work
. She hadn’t yet decided whether Alex Knight was going to be worth the bother, and it already seemed like her work was getting between them.
“I’m sorry.” Alex said. “I know, your work is who you are and I have some nerve being mad about your job when I barely even know you. We don’t have a chance at making this work, or even finding out if it could work, if I’m going to start getting grumpy about your job before I’ve even gotten you naked.”
Diana felt herself blush. “Okay, then,” she chuckled. “I guess that clears the air a bit.”
Alex grinned back at her. “How about I tell you about my week?” he suggested.
Diana settled back on the couch. “I’d like that,” she told him.
Alex wrote several hugely successful series of high-quality fiction books set in the later years of the twentieth century. His work was carefully researched and widely accepted as some of the most historically accurate fiction available. He turned out a vast quantity of titles by researching a time and place in detail and then writing several books across different genres and different pen names, using that research. Because of the wars, destruction, and turmoil of the last century, sometimes his research was more complicated than others.
“I’m in Colorado. I’m hoping to set a romance, a murder mystery, and a political thriller at what used to be a very popular ski resort here.”
“Used to be?”
“They went out of business when global warming made the climate too unpredictable. Now that the Terrashield is in place and the climate is under control, a group of investors have moved in and are working to reestablish the place as a winter vacation destination.”
“Where do you come in to things?”
“They’ve given me a month to go through all of the old buildings that they plan to tear down. I’m recording and taking notes about everything from hotel room sizes to number of bars, restaurants, and shops that were available.”
“That sounds interesting, I suppose.”
Alex laughed. “I find it fascinating. I only have a few days left before they start tearing down buildings, but they’re also giving me access to the old computer systems. I reckon I’ll need at least a week with them in order to get all of the information I want from them.”
“What sort of information?”
“Anything I can get, really, mostly to do with how much people spent on vacations there. I’m hoping I can find a few guests who appear multiple times in the records. I’m counting on having my romance hero be a frequent visitor, but only if I can find evidence to support that.”
They chatted back and forth for hours, talking of nothing much, just enjoying being able to spend some time together, even if they were many miles apart. Finally, when Diana yawned for the thousandth time, Alex wrapped up the call.
“You obviously need some sleep,” he told her.
“I really do,” she answered. “I didn’t sleep last night.” She could read the question in his eyes, but he didn’t voice it.
“Good night, then.”
“Good night.” She watched the screen, waiting for him to disconnect. For a long moment neither of them moved, but finally she tapped the button on her M-ped and then shut off her video screen and went to bed.
Michael had her spend the next day going over all of the reports from the mission in Paris, trying to find where things had gone wrong. She couldn’t find anything and, unfortunately, neither could Michael. The best thing that came out of it all was knowing that Michael would be watching George more closely in the future.
That evening, having finished with the tedium of reading the reports, she was still working. The man who had been Mike Moore until yesterday was still somewhat inexperienced at establishing identities. He’d come to the agency after over ten years of service in a variety of different governmental agencies, some of which were involved in intelligence gathering, but none with the same sort of scope of that of the agency that had now hired him. After the mess in Paris, he had now been reassigned as Ryan Whitman, and Michael asked Diana to help him settle into his new identity.
They met at Ryan’s new apartment, a few blocks away from Diana’s. Ryan was a middle-management banker with a small firm that dealt mostly with foreign investment. He was going to be spending a lot of his time traveling around the world, working with various businessmen who had money invested in his firm. Diana pressed the buzzer for his apartment, mentally noting the low level of security in the building. Ryan cleared her through the security door and she took the waiting elevator to the tenth floor where he was waiting in his apartment’s doorway.
He was still blonde, but now he had ice-blue eyes that combined with the hair color to make him look Scandinavian in origin. His nose had been lengthened slightly and his eyes had a minutely different slant to them that hinted at some other exotic ancestry in the mix. His lips were still full and sexy and Diana felt unexpectedly pleased that they hadn’t interfered with them when they had done the work on his face.
“Hey, thanks for agreeing to help,” he said as a greeting.
“I wasn’t given a choice,” she told him coolly. Then she smiled to take any sting out of the remark. While she hadn’t been given a choice, she really was happy to help. She felt a bit sorry for the man who had been stuck with M10 for a partner for the last several months.
“Sorry about what happened in Paris,” he told her. “I did exactly what I was told to do. I don’t know where things went wrong.”
“Let’s not worry about Paris. Things happen,” she replied lightly, determined not to let him know how angry she was at his former partner. She had not doubt that the mistake had been M10’s, whatever Michael thought.
“So where do we start?” he asked her eagerly.
She laughed, amused by his enthusiasm. “Is this your first new identity?” she asked him.
“Well, yeah, aside from Mike Moore. I wasn’t Mike Moore when I was hired, but they gave me that identity already made up and ready to go.”
Diana nodded. The agency hired people in a variety of different ways and, once hired, they dealt with them differently as well. Field agents, like herself and Ryan, would often be given a starter identity when they were first hired that would allow them to immerse themselves in their new lives without having to worry about all of the necessary background. Once that first identity had to be abandoned, for whatever reason, the agents themselves were responsible for much of the work for creating their next self.
“Let’s see the file,” she said.
Ryan handed her his M-ped, already open to the complete biography of Ryan Whitman. She scanned her way through the documents that were included, reading high school and college transcripts, resumes and letters of recommendation from old employers, and a police report from a break-in that had occurred at his previous apartment, where he had lived until last month. She read through a job description of his current job as well as the brief biographies of his coworkers.
Finally she read the brief background information on his personal life. Apparently he had been in a long-term legal partnership that had broken up only a few months ago. He and Betsy Hensen had been together since high school, so presumably Ryan might be struggling to get over their break-up, even though the file did say that Ryan initiated it.
“Right,” she smiled at him. “They’ve given you a lot to work with and some of it has been designed to make your life easier.”
Ryan nodded uncertainly. “Great,” he grinned. “Like what?”
Diana laughed. She sat down on a couch in the small living room and patted the seat next to her. “Here, look,” she told him. Then she slowly walked him through his new character.
“You’ve just broken up with a long-term girlfriend, one you were with since high school. That means you only have one name to remember when talking about your love life and you can be shy and quiet about your personal life if you want to be. You also get to choose whether you are still upset and mostly sitting around missing her or if you are going out and going crazy
to celebrate getting rid of her.”
“What would you suggest?” Ryan asked.
“Oh, if I were you, I would go with the crazy celebrating,” she answered airily. “That’s bound to be lots more fun for you in the long run.”
Ryan nodded and looked relieved.
“Your previous apartment had a break-in, so no one will question why you are going to be loading this apartment with the highest level of security you can get,” she told him. “I’m sure that Michael has that arranged.”
Ryan nodded. “The security team will be here tomorrow morning to install the most sophisticated system I should be able to afford on my banker’s salary.”
“You have a detailed work history and you need to memorize that, but at least you are working for a company that’s an agency front, so no one there should be asking about it. You just need to know it for when you are traveling or dating.”
Ryan nodded again. “I’m working on learning it all.”
“The important thing is from this moment on you have to be Ryan Whitman all the time,” she told him. “You have to try to think like a banker, whatever that means. You have to think about your ex-partner. Decide what she was like and why you broke up and fill your brain with lots and lots of memories of your time together. I’m sure you can remember several former girlfriends. You need to link them all into one long relationship that just didn’t work out. Make sure you know why and how it all fell apart.”
“It’s all kind of complicated,” Ryan told her. “Does it get easier over time?”
Diana considered the question. “I suppose it must,” she told him. “I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve been over the years.”
“Don’t you ever just want to chuck it all in and become someone permanent again?”
