The Double

by Newbury, Helena

  “I took hold of your ankles and pushed them up and back.” He emphasized the word and I could almost feel myself opening, feel the cool air of the room hitting my folds. “I took your breasts in my hands and rubbed, very slowly, back and forward, until your nipples were scraping my palms.”

  My cheeks were scarlet, my breathing tight. I could feel the heat, throbbing between my thighs, turning to slick moisture. I knew he was describing her, not me, but it didn’t matter. With his voice, it was happening to me... right now. I could feel the rough touch of his hands on my breasts and under my bra I could feel the nipples tightening and rising—

  “I put my face between your thighs and I started licking you. Just the tip of my tongue, parting those lips—”

  I glanced around the room. I was alone and there were no windows.... No. Jesus, no, don’t be stupid, I’m not going to—

  “Then I pushed deeper.”

  Deeper, said in that accent, was almost a penetration itself. It seared into my mind, making me gasp. The heat in my groin became a needful ache. Crushing my thighs together wasn’t enough.

  “Tasting you, plunging up into you while my hands squeezed your breasts.”

  I glanced down at myself. No! I was in the middle of the FBI building, of course I couldn’t—

  “I licked at you until you arched your back off the bed and came. And I made you come again and again. Until you begged me. Until you screamed and kicked and sobbed and begged me to fuck you.”

  The ache in my groin was almost painful. I squeezed my hands into fists. “Mm-hmm.”

  “And then, only then, did I put my cock against you. Do you remember how soaking wet you were? I put the head against you, and you were tight, you weren’t used to me and you weren’t sure you could take me.”

  Oh God. I hauled my skirt up my thighs.

  “But you did take me. All of me. Right. Up. Inside. You.”

  I plunged my hand into my panties and started to rub myself.

  “And I fucked you slow and deep and then hard and fast. Until you clawed at my back and screamed. Until I felt your tight little pussy clench around me as you came for me.”

  I pressed my lips tight together, but I couldn’t make my climax completely silent. It came out as a guttural sound in my throat, a helpless, shameful admission. I folded forwards at the waist, my hand trapped between my thighs, rocking and rocking against my slick fingers as I rode it out. By the end of it, I was so shaky-legged, I could barely stand.

  I realized he’d gone silent. He was listening. He knew exactly what I’d been doing. I drew in a long, shocked breath. Did I really just do that? I hadn’t intended to…. I frantically pushed my skirt back into place. God, the control he had over me, just with that voice….

  “Go and have your surgery,” he told me. “Get well. And come back to me.” And he hung up.

  10

  Konstantin

  I HUNG UP and stood for a moment at the window. The mansion’s overgrown gardens were below me, but I didn’t really see them. I was thinking about Christina. About my weakness.

  It was at night that I missed her most. In sleep, it’s more difficult to maintain control. Before Christina, even with vodka to knock me out, I used to have vague, troubling dreams: cold, black water that sucked me down and leached the warmth from my body until there was nothing left.

  I’d fuck women for the release, but I wouldn’t let any of them share my bed and I wouldn’t ever see the same woman twice. That would be weak.

  Then I found Christina by the side of the road and took her back to the mansion. It was only ever meant to be a one night thing. But after sex with her and a shared vodka, I dropped into a sleep so deep, the dreams couldn’t reach me, so deep I was still sluggish and groggy the next morning.

  By pure chance, I’d met my ideal partner. Christina was as cold and ruthless as me. Cruel, even, in ways that I wasn’t always comfortable with, and jealous. But those qualities meant she had no problem with who I was and what I did. She even seemed to relish my reputation. She didn’t love me and I didn’t love her. She didn’t need conversation or romance, she didn’t care that I shut myself in my office all day, tending to my empire. She didn’t mind my obsession, my taking New York street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, grabbing more and more and more power, anything to fill that yawning, black void where my heart used to be.

  We were perfect for each other. And so I asked her to stay. I knew I’d never be close to her, because I’d never be close to anyone. But I gave her money and clothes and she seemed satisfied with that.

  Since she’d been away, the dreams had returned. I knew that needing her—needing anyone—was a weakness, but I couldn’t help it.

  Talking to her on the phone, hearing her breathing tighten as she rubbed herself, had left me iron-hard in my pants. Getting through the next three weeks was going to be hell.

  When she came back, she’d better be ready. Because the moment, the very second her plane landed, I was going to race back to the mansion with her and hurl her on the bed.

  11

  Hailey

  IT WAS TIME for the operation. I was perched on the edge of a bed in a hospital gown, waiting for Doctor Franklin. Calahan sat in a chair next to me, holding my hand, and brooding.

  I looked in the mirror on the wall. This is the last few minutes I’ll ever be Hailey. I was trying to contain my panic, but as the minutes passed, it rose higher and higher in my chest. When it reached my mouth, I suddenly blurted, “It’s just a disguise, right?”

  Calahan had been glowering at the floor. His head snapped up to look at me.

  “Just like wearing a mask,” I reasoned, but my voice was cracking. One I can never, ever take off.

  Calahan jumped to his feet and put his face close to mine. “Tell them,” he ordered. “Tell them you’ve had second thoughts. This is fucking insane! You don’t have to do this!”

  All of the doubts I’d been nursing bubbled up inside me. This was insane. I wasn’t even a field agent. I couldn’t impersonate someone as glamorous and sexy as Christina. The attraction to Konstantin made this even more dangerous. To pull this off I’d have to stay objective and detached and how could I do that when he could just look at me and make me melt? One mistake and I was dead—

  Doctor Franklin burst through the door, followed by an anesthetist. “Sorry we’re a little late,” he said cheerfully. “Let’s get started.”

  Calahan squeezed both of my hands, hard, and gave me a pointed look.

  I opened my mouth….

  And thought of all the people who’d die in a gang war, if Konstantin wasn’t stopped.

  I swallowed.

  And lay down on the table.

  The anesthetist swabbed my arm and I felt the prick of a needle. “Count backwards from ten,” he told me.

  I reached seven, Calahan’s worried face blurring and distorting in front of me.

  And then nothing.

  12

  Hailey

  I SPENT FOUR DAYS in a fog of heavy painkillers, my whole face swathed in bandages and tubes in my nostrils to make sure the swelling in my new nose didn’t suffocate me. At one point, the coverings over my eyes were briefly removed and a machine shone a vivid crimson light into them. Then darkness returned.

  At last, the fog seemed to lift. I was aware of being sat up and then the bandages were being unwound from my face, layer by layer. I opened my eyes. Everything seemed blindingly bright, after so long in the dark, but then it settled and snapped into clear, crisp detail. Doctor Franklin was leaning over me, brushing his fingertips down my cheeks, and smiling with satisfaction. Calahan was there, looking grim. Carrie, too.

  “Everything worked,” said Doctor Franklin. “And you’re doing fine.”

  I nodded. “Can I see?”

  He passed me a hand mirror.

  I brought it up to my face and—

  Wrong.

  Wrong on an instinctual, primal level. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
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br />   It was as if reality had skipped sideways, like a train jumping onto a different track. For twenty-five years, I’d looked in mirrors and seen me. Now someone else was looking back at me from the glass and the raw shock and loss was like being punched in the gut. I’d lost me. My ears were ringing and I realized I was screaming, and couldn’t stop. Where was I?!

  Calahan grabbed one arm. Doctor Franklin grabbed the other, brisk and efficient where Calahan was tender. Behind them, Carrie had one hand over her mouth, her face pale.

  “Hailey, you’re having a normal reaction to major facial surgery,” Doctor Franklin told me. “Try to breathe.”

  I flung the mirror away and heard it shatter. Tore free of their hands and jumped out of bed, staggering on legs that hadn’t walked in days. “Put it back!” I screamed. I backed up against the wall. “Put it back! Put it back! Put it back!” I wanted to claw at my new face, shred it and split it and pray I was still there, underneath.

  “I’m going to give you a sedative,” Doctor Franklin told me, sounding panicked. Then, to Calahan, “Hold her!”

  Calahan’s strong hands gripping me. A scratch in my arm.

  And then nothing.

  13

  Hailey

  THE NEXT DAY, when I’d slept off the sedative, I asked to be allowed home, saying that I felt much calmer. Calahan wasn’t fooled and wound up having another screaming match with Carrie in the hallway outside my room, but she and Doctor Franklin overruled him and discharged me. They wanted to believe I was okay.

  At first, when I got home, I was jumping every time I caught my reflection in a computer monitor or a glass door. The sickening, violent wrongness of it surged up inside me and I’d almost have a meltdown. But the human brain is scarily adaptable. After just a few hours, the reactions started to taper off. When I went to bed that night and saw my new face in my water glass, it was barely a jolt at all.

  That was almost scarier than freaking out.

  The next morning, I groped for my glasses and couldn’t find them. I opened my eyes to search for them...but everything was already sharp. That’s when I remembered I didn’t need them, anymore. It should have felt liberating but, as I put them away in a drawer, I couldn’t help feeling a pang of loss.

  Carrie had sent over Christina’s luggage from her trip to Italy. There were four cases and every one was filled with eye-wateringly expensive clothes from top designers: dresses and blouses, sweaters and skirts...God, even her underwear was gorgeous. I tried on a dress as a test. With a bit of wiggling, it slid on fine over my lower half. But... crap. I’d been right. My breasts were bigger than hers. Everything was going to be a little tight, and some of the low-necked stuff would be a no-no unless I wanted to pop out of it. It wasn’t Doctor Franklin’s fault: I could imagine Christina posing like a model, expertly thrusting out her boobs to make them seem bigger than they were, while he flushed and mumbled. And meanwhile, I did my best to hide my bust under shapeless clothes. No wonder he’d overestimated her and underestimated me. But what if Konstantin noticed?

  One whole case was full of shoes, most of them towering heels I was going to need practice to walk in. I picked up a pair at random and—

  Oh, no….

  I tried another pair, but they were no better. Christina was a full shoe size smaller than me.

  No one had thought to measure our feet. Shit! How could all of us have missed something so obvious? I could buy a few replacement pairs for now, but when I got to the mansion, none of Christina’s shoes were going to fit. I slumped down on the couch, my heart hammering in my chest. What else haven’t we thought of? If I messed this up, if I was even a little off in my portrayal of Christina, Konstantin would know.

  On my way to work, I had my hair dyed black and cut and styled just like Christina’s. With my newly-blue eyes, the effect was uncanny.

  When I arrived at Calahan’s desk, he glanced up and then jumped to his feet. It was the first time he’d seen the full effect and he actually reached for his gun, thinking Christina had somehow escaped. Then he just stared at me sadly.

  “Not bad, right?” I quipped. “Now I can find out what it’s like to be a ten.”

  His mouth tightened. “You were—”

  I frowned, curious.

  He looked away and shook his head. “Nothing.” He waved his hand at the dress, the hair, the whole thing. “It’s good. You look just like her.” And he turned and stalked away.

  For the next two weeks, I practiced moving like her, laughing like her, tossing my hair like her. I immersed myself in Christina and wouldn’t let myself surface, like an actor who won’t come out of character. It was the only way I could do it in time. We called in a hair and makeup expert and she coached me on how to use the high-end products Christina used. The upkeep was going to be a nightmare, but I had to get used to it. A tattoo artist came in, his jeans and t-shirt incongruous in the FBI offices, and I knelt astride a chair, wincing, while he tattooed a bird on my lower back. My freckles were removed to give me Christina’s flawless complexion.

  I worked on my posture, trying to walk upright and proud, with my head held high. I made my movements languid and seductive, instead of awkward and jerky. As I moved around the building, men from other departments—men who’d seen me a hundred times as Hailey and ignored me—tried to chat me up. Is this what it’s like to be beautiful? But that wasn’t all that was going on. I was holding myself differently, making eye contact….

  I wasn’t hiding, anymore.

  It felt wrong. I was in a constant state of panic. How dare I be the center of attention? Any second, everyone would realize I was faking it, they’d see I was no one and laugh at me. But I forced myself to keep going.

  On the morning I was due to enter Konstantin’s life, my phone rang.

  “Hello?” I said.

  Silence from the other end. Then, tentatively, “Hailey?”

  Oh, shit! It was my mom, and I was still doing my Christina voice. I switched back to Hailey and—

  For a sickening moment, I couldn’t find Hailey’s voice. After weeks of that polished, precise voice, I’d forgotten what I sounded like. Then it clicked into place. “Mom!”

  “Are you alright? You sounded different.”

  I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t even hint at what I was doing. Losing my dad had torn her apart. If she thought I was in danger, too…. “I’m fine. Getting over a cold. Listen, I have to go on a training course. A few weeks, maybe a month….”

  I told her I’d make sure to put enough money into her bank account to cover any medical bills while I was away. Things were tight: the bills were brutal and my FBI salary wasn’t high. It made Christina’s lavish lifestyle seem sickening. I was going to be living like a billionaire, but at the same time, I could barely take care of my mom.

  Calahan arrived with my plane tickets. Konstantin was expecting to see me get off a flight from Italy so I had to fly there, then fly back to New York and meet him at the airport.

  He passed me a tiny earpiece, no bigger than a grain of rice, and helped me glue it out of sight inside my ear. “There’ll be someone at the other end of this twenty-four seven,” he told me. “And most of the time it’ll be me.” I nodded gratefully.

  He showed me Christina’s luggage and then the secret compartment he’d fitted into one of the cases. Inside was my FBI ID and a gun. “Just in case things go south,” he told me.

  I blanched. I’d never even fired a gun. Calahan patiently took me through how to handle it and aim it, while I watched and nodded and tried not to sound terrified. If Konstantin found me out, would I even have time to grab it?

  Being Calahan, he insisted on driving me to the airport. We took the elevator down to the lobby, started across it and—

  “Shit!” He tried to push me back into the elevator, but the doors had already closed. What? What had he seen?

  And then an ear-splitting scream broke the air. I spun around and—

  Another of those horrifying reality shif
ts. The floor seemed to lurch, the room spun. I was looking at myself, but it wasn’t a mirror—

  Christina. The real Christina. She was being led across the lobby in handcuffs, one agent holding each arm. And she was staring at me just as I was staring at her.

  “What are you doing?” bellowed Calahan at the agents. “Take her out the back, assholes!”

  But the damage was done. Christina had paled for a second, but now her face was coloring with anger. “No!” She sprang towards me and the two agents had to fight to haul her back. “You can’t do this!”

  “Get her out of here,” yelled Calahan. “Now!”

  The two agents dragged her away but they couldn’t stop her screaming over her shoulder, her eyes locked on me. “You think just because you look like me, he’ll think you’re me? He’ll know, you bitch! He’ll know!”

  And then she passed through the doors and was gone. Calahan and I stood there panting, shaking with adrenaline. “They must be moving her into protective custody,” Calahan said. “We can’t put her in jail until we arrest Konstantin: she might talk to someone and word could get back to him. I’m sorry. I had no idea they’d bring her out this way.” He put a gentle arm on my shoulder. “It doesn’t matter that she knows. There’s nothing she can do about it. She’s going to be in a safe house with a couple of guys watching her until you’re safely home.”

  I nodded, but I couldn’t speak. I wanted to throw up. What if she was right? What if Konstantin could tell?