Going Grey

by Karen Traviss

  "No."

  "Really. Suddenly you're the CIA."

  "It's only goddamn Maine." Shit, she'd lost her temper and let it slip. Never mind. "If I was going to fuck anybody, I'd make him take me somewhere tropical, and anyway, it'd be none of your damn business if I did."

  "Who books a business trip right before Thanksgiving?"

  "For the last time, Larry, it's not a man. It's work. It's god-awful, boring, tedious work, which I have to do because you missed so many child support payments when you went bust."

  "Am I allowed to call if Clare gets sick, then?"

  Dru didn't want Larry calling her cell at the wrong moment. She tore a sheet out of her notebook and scribbled the hotel number on it. "Okay, here's the hotel. Happy? You can even ask if I've got a man in my room."

  "Jesus, Dru, you can take some things too seriously."

  "If I told you what the job was, you'd never believe me anyway. If I can make it back earlier, I will, okay?" She peered around him in case Clare had been summoned by the raised voices. "So now you're getting back on your feet again, I expect you to pay your share. I'd prefer Clare not to have to see me take you to court."

  "I'm fully aware of my responsibilities, thanks. Enjoy your trip. Remember to bury your parachute when they drop you behind enemy lines."

  Dru drove off, trying to think if there was anybody she had a completely cordial, relaxed relationship with these days. It looked like there was just Clare. She was at war, acknowledged or otherwise, with everyone else.

  It didn't matter now. If she drew a blank on this trip, she could write it off as a respite that she was long overdue and just enjoy a break somewhere pretty and rural, even if that meant staying in her hotel room with a bottle and the TV for company. A change was as good as a rest.

  That evening, she laid out her equipment on the bed before repacking it to make sure she'd covered whatever angles she could. Without someone like Grant to call on, she was relying on her own resources. She had Larry to thank for honing those.

  This was the Betrayed Wife's Divorce Kit. The security guys at work had been full of great advice on how to check up on Larry when she first suspected he might be straying. She had his old binoculars, a camera with a good zoom, changes of clothes that made her look different, and a small spy cam that she could stick on doors or use freehand. And she had the burner phones from the office. There were plenty of surveillance devices and software she could have bought online, from phone trackers and bugs to the countermeasures for all of them, but she couldn't afford to have any evidence of purchases like that on her own credit card or KWA's. She had to improvise. It was a sobering moment to realise how much she already owned in one form or another.

  Now there were different faces she needed to familiarize herself with. Damn: she'd found Mike Brayne via a search on her own computer. What could be traced back to her if she got caught? Too late; it was already done. She wouldn't be any deeper in the mire if she printed off some images to memorize. She sat studying the faces she needed to know, Brayne and the two versions of the young man she suspected was Ian, and printed an ID-card sized version of each to put in her wallet for quick reference.

  If he really was a shape-shifter, he'd change again. I'd never recognise him anyway. But he can't be. There's a rational explanation for all this.

  Dru didn't enjoy flying at the best of times, let alone around holidays. When she finally arrived in Bangor and picked up her rental car, she was frayed and irritable. But there was preliminary work to be done before she checked in at the hotel or even got her first glimpse of the Braynes' home. She needed to get a feel for the locations. She also needed some props.

  Her first port of call was the mall at Mackay Plaza. She managed to identify the men's room where the shape-shifter footage was taken and stood outside for a while, wishing that psychics were genuine. She could have wheeled a few in, asked them to feel the vibe or the sense the astral or whatever that crap was, and then get an address and a cell number out of it.

  But the real world didn't make things that easy. Now she needed to buy her stage props, gift-wrapped boxes of Belgian chocolates. If she was going to cruise around Westerham Falls gazing into driveways, then a pile of gifts on the back seat made everything look seasonally normal. She was just an ordinary housewife going about her business, dropping off gifts but a little lost. And if she drew a blank, she could always eat the chocolates.

  Westerham Falls was conspicuously more affluent than Athel Ridge with its feed stores and battered pickups. Dru drove slowly, making a note of the two coffee houses and a French patisserie. It looked like a community of weekend homes.

  The hotel was about fifteen miles west of the town itself. She checked in and unpacked, enjoying the modest novelty of sitting back in an overstuffed armchair with an unhurried coffee to watch unfamiliar local TV and work out how to allot her time. When she'd worked up some nerve, she'd do a quick recon of the area and decide if she had a hope in hell of seeing anything of the Braynes.

  If they're not already in the Caribbean.

  I'm just looking. I'm just checking whether there's anything at all to see. Nothing more.

  She drove back to Westerham Falls, now shrouded in afternoon dusk, and tried the French pastry place. If nothing else, she'd have happy memories of the millefeuille. It took one to stiffen her resolve to drive north along Forest Road, checking the numbers on the mailboxes until she hit the 2000s some way into the hills. The lights in the gloom grew more scattered before she spotted a small house right on the road, and two more reflective signs standing together, 2762 and 2763. When she slowed and craned her neck to look up the long drive, she could see lights between the trees. The small house looked like it might once have been a lodge for the bigger property up the hill.

  If this was 2763, somebody was home even if it was the Braynes' staff.

  Dru got out of the car and found a spot where she could see a thin vertical slice of a turning circle at the top of the drive. It was almost dark. She could risk using binoculars. A dark-coloured Mercedes SUV stood out front, either black or blue, picked out by the reflected light from the porch, but she couldn't see the licence plates. She didn't know what she was looking for anyway.

  That was enough adventure for one night. She knew where the house was, she knew someone was still at home, and everything else would have to wait until the morning. Her next move would be to find a neighbour to talk to.

  And that required acting. Lying. She'd found it was getting easier each time, and there was a certain skill to constructing false personas on the fly.

  She was adept at it now. Maybe everyone had it in them to be a shape-shifter.

  FIFTEEN

  Hello, Mr Lloyd. I'm sorry to bother you, but your number's in your ex-wife's HR file as an emergency contact, and I assume you're looking after Clare while she's away. Nothing to worry about – I just wondered if she left you a number for her hotel. My secretary can't find it.

  Shaun Weaver, seeking information from Larry Lloyd.

  BYWAY HOTEL, NEAR WESTERHAM FALLS, MAINE

  How did you keep an eye on a house if you had nowhere to hide, no idea of its normal routine, and no buddy to share observation duties with you?

  Dru was finding out. She was awake before the alarm the next morning, checking the weather and grasping the enormity of her task and how little she knew about her target. Come on, how could I know what I'd find until I looked? You can't plan everything, not even with street view maps. But if paparazzi and journalists could stalk their targets, then it didn't take classified technology or military skills. She'd take a look, ask around, and adjust her plan accordingly.

  Around 7.30 a.m., she drove past the Braynes' house and noted one car out front, a dark blue Volvo crossover. The light-coloured SUV was either gone or garaged. That meant activity and imminent trips.

  She still wasn't sure she had the right house, though. It was secluded and obviously expensive, but relatively ordinary for the super-rich. There w
ere no high, wire-topped walls, patrolling Dobermans, or any of the other precautions that she expected the seriously moneyed to take. She needed to come back and check for cameras, but they were no gauge of wealth either. All her neighbours in Lansing had them front and back.

  Dru turned around further up the road and doubled back. This had to be a fast pass. If she slowed enough to get a good look, any cameras would pick her up behaving suspiciously long before she saw them, if she saw them at all.

  She also had to get past the little lodge house unseen. It was doing the job it was probably built to do, acting as a guard house simply by its position. If anyone was watching, she'd stand out like a sore thumb on this quiet road.

  Assume the worst. Someone might have seen me. The next time I go back, I establish legitimacy. Knock on the door at the lodge house.

  Dru did another U-turn and drove into Westerham Falls to kill a couple of hours and buy a few things for Clare as a peace offering. But Clare probably wouldn't need placating. Larry would take her out for fancy meals rather than cook. It wouldn't do him any harm to get used to spending money on his daughter, either. Dru didn't feel too guilty about being absent for once.

  Just before 11 a.m., she drove back along Forest Road, working up the courage to stop near the Braynes' drive, and parked close to the neighbour's door so that the gifts on the back seat were visible. She couldn't see any cars outside the house now.

  Do it. Go on.

  She rang the neighbour's bell, trying not to rehearse her lines for once. Spontaneity worked better face to face. Innocent people generally didn't work out what they were going to say. They just opened their mouths and did the thinking as they went. That showed in the delivery. It looked and sounded honest.

  I really wasted my degree. I should have been a con artist. I'd be rich by now.

  An elderly man in a thick Fair Isle cardigan opened the door. Dru smiled hopefully.

  "Hi," she said. "I'm a little lost. I'm looking for Mike Brayne's house. Is that twenty-seven-sixty-three up the drive?"

  "Yes, but you've missed them." The old guy looked her over suspiciously. Maybe she seemed too downmarket to be the kind of visitor the Braynes would get. "They left a couple of hours ago."

  They. That sounded hopeful. Dru hadn't even had to lie to get that information, or even ask much. People were helpful when you were nice to them. It was another natural monkey reaction.

  "Do you know when they'll be back?"

  "No, but they're never gone long." His tone changed. He sounded as if he was warning her that if she was up to no good, she'd get caught while she was stealing the family silver, but that might have been her guilty conscience filling in the gaps. The man took a few steps back as if to shut the door, then seemed to think better of it. "Maybe Rob and Ian are in, though."

  Ian? Ian.

  No, that couldn't be a coincidence. It simply could not. Ian was a common name, but pieces didn't fall together like that. Dru just didn't know yet how to fit them all together. She steadied herself and tried to stay casual.

  "Sorry, I don't know Rob. Or Ian."

  She waited. She hoped the old guy would feel the need to fill the silence if she said nothing, as people usually did. This guy didn't, though.

  "Okay," she said. "I'll try again later."

  "Want me to tell them you called by?" he asked. "You can go on up to the house, you know. Leave a note in the door if nobody's in."

  Yes, and maybe get picked up by cameras. Nice set-up, sir.

  She could have carried on talking, but a few more questions after the natural end of the conversation would start to look suspicious.

  "No, it's okay. Sorry to have bothered you." She gestured vaguely at the drive. "I'll come back later. Thank you."

  She'd said she'd return, so she could drive away without going up to the house and it wouldn't look odd. The last thing she wanted to do was to knock on the door and find herself face to face with Ian or this Rob, whoever he was. She didn't have a plan for that yet.

  What am I scared of? Blowing my cover? A hostile reaction? Or looking a shape-shifter in the eye?

  As she drove away, a thought struck her. Would the old guy make a note of her car? It was just a silver subcompact like thousands of others, but that didn't mean it wouldn't get noticed if she kept showing up. She'd have to think about an alternative if she was going to hang around.

  Okay, go back to the hotel and adjust the plan.

  Dru assessed her results. She knew who lived at that house, that they'd still be there at least for today, and that the chances of picking the wrong Mike Brayne were now near zero. That was a lot of useful information in a couple of minutes. She'd come back later to get visual confirmation, but first she needed to find a vantage point.

  This was the kind of place tourists came to admire spectacular scenery. There'd be somewhere to park. Dru drove slowly, scanning until she spotted a patch of sandy soil at the side of the pavement, and a garbage bin with a twee little sign in antique lettering: PLEASE HELP US KEEP THIS VIEW BEAUTIFUL. She pulled over and checked what she could see without getting out of the car.

  The cute little lodge house with the helpful neighbour was out of sight around the bend in the road, but there was a glimpse of the Braynes' house through a gap in the trees, enough to see part of the front door. Dru checked the map on her phone. She needed cover for repeat visits. She zoomed into the satellite image, looking for tracks or picnic areas in the forest, and found some trails marked for hikers with a visitor centre nearby. Now she needed to check that against the GIS map to find the boundaries of Mike Brayne's property. She drove back to the hotel to check it out on her laptop.

  The hiking trail ran to within a few hundred yards of the Braynes' property. If she left the car at the visitor centre, she could walk the trail and skirt along the boundary, and maybe find a better observation point, or simply head down the road and approach the house from the front. With a wool hat and walking gear, she'd look anonymous.

  All she needed was to see who went in and out of the house. Some video or stills would be a bonus. She probably wouldn't be able to stroll up the Braynes' front door and walk away unnoticed or unrecorded, though.

  I just need to see this Ian to check if he's the kid at the mall. That would be enough. Then I can turn the information over to Weaver and wash my hands of it.

  But she needed to hear him speak, too. She had to work out where the guy with the English accent fitted in to all this.

  Dru opened the mini-bar and wondered whether to reward herself with a proper drink. No, she might have to drive again today. She settled for a carton of juice and curled up in the chair to watch TV for a while.

  So what's Weaver really up to?

  Weaver said he knew the way Kinnery thought, and she'd believed that. They'd been very close for years. Now she tried to think like Kinnery again for herself. If she'd had some influence over the mule, or shape-shifter, or whatever Ian Dunlop was, she'd warn him to go to ground. She certainly wouldn't hand over her biggest asset. The mule was her leverage, because Weaver couldn't afford to have officialdom crawling over the company. He had as much if not more to lose than Kinnery did.

  So he can't expose Kinnery. Kinnery's the one with all the power.

  Dru was pretty sure than a man who could sustain this for nearly twenty years would have thought that through. It was obvious now. It always had been, but she'd persuaded herself that there was some science she wasn't aware of that could resolve the problem of a live human who was also stolen goods.

  There wasn't any magic answer. Kinnery wasn't going to be pressured into handing over his mule, and the mule and the genetic material were indivisible. If Weaver wanted the genes, he had to possess the mule too. Unless he was simply going to pay them both a fortune to cooperate and keep their mouths shut – and he'd had plenty of time to make that offer to Kinnery – then the only other method was to abduct the mule and forcibly take or use whatever he was full of.

  Oh God. Weaver's goi
ng to call someone, all right. But it won't be Kinnery.

  It made the hair bristle on her nape. Job or no job, she didn't want to be party to a crime. Even if Weaver got away with it, she'd be implicated and that would hang over her for the rest of her life. Who'd believe that she didn't know?

  Did that boy really change on camera?

  I've got to know. But do I tell Weaver about it if I think he's going to commit a crime?

  Dru was back to square one, to her initial reaction when Weaver first dropped this in her lap. It was industrial espionage. It was a job for the FBI. She didn't know if there was even a law that covered this yet. In the hands of a good defence attorney, the mule wouldn't even be an accomplice to Kinnery's theft, just an innocent who didn't know what was being pumped into him, a victim of malpractice.

  Indecision and fresh fear paralyzed her. She broke off to check her mail in the hope that it might contain some new information to make sense of it all.

  There was no mail from Clare or Larry, but Weaver had sent a cryptic note: 'I'm sure you'd have called if you had any problems. I hope things are working out and that you're taking care. Call when you can.'

  Dru couldn't call him. If she did, he'd ask where she was. She'd have to lie or refuse to tell him. She couldn't let him work out that she was spying on the Braynes, and she was past the point where she could pull out and pretend it never happened. Unless she falsified receipts, it would all come out when she claimed her expenses anyway, because she didn't have the money to write these things off. It was another small but impossible problem that never happened in the movies.

  Stop this. Focus. Think about Ian.

  If he turned out to be the boy in the mall footage, he wasn't much older than Clare. Her mental image had become one of a mature, experienced criminal. Maybe Ian was one of Kinnery's students. Dru could imagine an eager undergraduate being talked into self-experimentation, or lured by the thrill of sticking it to a big corporation.