Chameleon Uncovered

by BR Kingsolver

  He nodded. “We?”

  “I don’t know what you told the people at the museum about me, and really, Wil, I am very grateful for the recommendation, but this job is a lot bigger than anything I’ve ever done. My dad is going to be working on it with me.”

  He chuckled. “I’m surprised to hear you admit that anything is beyond your abilities.”

  “Aw, come on. I’m confident, but I’m not arrogant. Overconfidence will get you killed.”

  “True.” He grinned at me. “I have reservations at the best steakhouse in Chicago tonight. I hope you brought an appropriate dress.”

  “Of course I did, but not with the intention of wearing it for you. I brought it to look nice for Museum Director Zhukoff. I do know how to act around the kind of people who populate museum boards of directors.”

  Wil laughed. “Miss Libby, will you do me the honor of letting me escort you to dinner this evening?”

  “Well, I do have to eat, but I’m going to speak to that Deborah Zhukoff about how I’m being treated,” I said with a smile. I leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thanks for picking me up.”

  He took a route through town to avoid the backup from a wreck on the freeway. What should have been an hour’s trip turned into three times that.

  “Have you seen the AIC before?” Wil asked.

  “I was at the Art Institute once in high school, once in college, and the last time a couple of years ago,” I told him. “That time in college, I spent a whole week viewing the exhibits. You know that my minor was Art History, right?”

  “Yes, it’s in your official bio.”

  “And my university records, which I know you’ve read.”

  “Those are private.”

  I couldn’t believe the prim way he said that, and I couldn’t contain a burst of laughter. “Oh, come on. Don’t give me that bullshit. I know your shoe size and when you went to the dentist last. I’m in the business, remember? The only things you don’t know about me are things that aren’t in any computer, or that you’re not good enough to hack into.”

  He blushed and then laughed. “You got me there.”

  I’m tall for a woman, six feet two inches, but I had to wear stiletto heels to look Wil straight in the eyes. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed that people turned to watch us as we walked to our table in a secluded corner of the restaurant.

  The other patrons were dressed to be seen, as were we. He wasn’t lying when he said it was one of the ritziest restaurants in town. If all the women pooled their jewelry, we could have bought an island complete with cabana boys. I doubted I could have calculated the bill without a computer’s assistance. Of course, that was only a guess, since my menu didn’t include prices. Typical corporate treatment of women as fashionable ornaments.

  My filet was tender enough to cut with my fork, the wine Wil ordered exploded like sunshine and fresh fruit in my mouth, and the atmosphere was as elegant as any restaurant I’d ever seen.

  The best thing was the company. I had always appreciated Wil’s effortless grace and elegance. Combined with his vid-star good looks, dinner with him was the kind of experience girls dreamed about. The wine filtered into my brain, and I began to feel very romantic. I backed off on the wine.

  I had no desire to be a corporate trophy wife, not that I fit the profile. I was pretty, but not beautiful, and the marriage market for corporate executives didn’t have a mutant aisle. I had even less desire to be a kept woman. The only other option for a relationship with a man in Wil’s position was to be an occasional bedmate. With his looks, I was sure he already had plenty of applicants. As much as I liked sex, I usually wanted it to mean a little more than a good time. I had the same problem with James, who gave me the feeling he did want a wife.

  When we finished our dinner and the waiter cleared our dishes, I started feeling itchy and uncomfortable in a vague sort of way. I never knew how to describe it, but I’d felt it before.

  “Wil, let’s go somewhere else for dessert,” I said.

  He cocked his head and asked, “Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been wonderful. I mean, I’m really enjoying this, but, well, I don’t know. I’m uncomfortable. Can we go somewhere else? Please?”

  His brow furrowed and he studied me. I could see that his mind was working.

  “If you like,” he finally said and held his hand up. The waiter instantly appeared. “Check, please.”

  The waiter handed him the bill, and Wil swiped his card. I stood, and Wil hurried around to pull out my chair.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as we walked to the exit. “I should have known you’d be tired after your flight.”

  “It’s not that,” I answered. “I don’t know how to describe it. Sometimes I get sort of itchy, as though something isn’t right and I need to move.”

  The air in Chicago was much worse than in Toronto. We stopped to put on our masks, then stepped outside. Wil handed his claim check to the valet, and the world exploded.

  Actually, the restaurant did. Glass and flame and the pressure of an explosion burst forth from inside the restaurant, slamming into me. I felt searing heat on my back and I flew through the air, hit the street, skidded, and rolled. When I finally stopped moving, I felt as though I had just received a good beating. I lay there, my mind blank and unable to focus on any thoughts.

  People were screaming. Pushing myself to my feet, I looked around at a nightmare. Bodies littered the street, but I was only looking for one. I spotted Wil lying in a twisted heap against a limo, entangled with the valet attendant and a woman in an evening gown. The fire raging inside the restaurant lit the whole scene.

  I started to rush over to him and almost tripped over my high heels. I reached down to take them off, then noticed the sparkling shards of glass and debris all over the pavement. Deciding I was lucky I still had my shoes, I tottered over to where Wil lay.

  Something niggled at the back of my mind that there could be another explosion. Throwing caution to the wind, I peeled Wil away from the other people and dragged him around the limo to the side away from the restaurant.

  I checked his pulse and his breathing, and heaved a sigh of relief. The skin over a large bump on his head was split and leaking blood, but otherwise he looked okay. Rolling him over, I saw that his back was completely clean except for a couple of shards of glass embedded in his right shoulder. That’s when I realized that my back still felt as though it was on fire. I had been standing between him and the restaurant.

  Reaching behind me and brushing my hand down my back, I felt pain in my fingertips and in my back. When I looked at my hand, I saw it was covered in blood. My first thought was that my dress was ruined. My second thought was how dumb and inappropriate my first thought was.

  I fished in Wil’s pocket and pulled out his phone. I pushed the speed dial button and then punched one.

  “Explosion at Torbert’s on Rush Street,” I said when someone answered.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “The woman Wilbur Wilberforce took to dinner. He’s unconscious and the restaurant is on fire.”

  Silence, then, “We have people on the way.”

  It was late morning before they would let me see Wil. I walked into his hospital room and said, “You certainly have a unique way of showing a girl a good time.”

  He looked over at me and did a double take.

  “What the hell happened to you? You look like a mutie.”

  I ran my hand over my bald head. “It’s my new look. Don’t you like it? It’s all the rage this season.” In addition to dealing with bruises and scrapes over most of my body, the doctors had spent more than two hours picking glass and splinters of wood and metal out of my backside, including my scalp. My shoulder-blade-length blonde hair was gone.

  “My head hurts,” he groaned.

  I tried to be upbeat. “Lucky you landed on your head. The doctors were afraid you had a fractured skull, but I told them it was soli
d bone, so no problem.”

  Wil gave me a sickly grin. “Are you all right?”

  We were wearing matching hospital gowns. I turned around and held the back open so he could see the bandages that covered me from head to ankles.

  “Nothing terribly serious or deep,” I said, turning back to face him, “but since I was covered in blood, they kinda freaked out. I won’t be sitting down or lying on my back for a while. They actually gave me a transfusion. I asked if they had any blood from a mutie who could fly, but no such luck.”

  Lying on my stomach across the foot of his bed, I asked, “Who is Democracy Now?”

  He blinked at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “The bomb at the restaurant. The news feeds say that a group called Democracy Now is claiming responsibility.”

  With a groan, he said, “A bunch of stupid terrorists.”

  “Well, they certainly know how to pick their targets. Boatloads of corporations are scrambling to figure out their new organization charts this morning.”

  The news was subdued, a lot less than I would have expected for such a catastrophic event, but some information escaped before the corporations clamped down. Several independent news feeds reported that at least two chairmen of the board and three chief executive officers of different corporations died in the explosion, along with at least a dozen more corporate officers of various ranks. No one mentioned the restaurant staff or the women patrons, but the reports put the body count between eighty and a hundred. I assumed that Wil and I were lumped in with the “forty people injured.”

  I handed Wil his phone. “If you feel up to it, you should probably call Deborah Zhukoff and tell her we need to reschedule our appointment.” It was ten o’clock and we had a meeting scheduled for eleven. I had no idea if people at the museum would know about the bombing.

  He made the call, setting a new appointment for Monday. When he hung up, he asked, “What happened?”

  I knew that a person with a concussion often had gaps in their memory. “What is the last thing you remember?”

  He got a pained look on his face and thought for a while, then said, “When I picked you up at the hotel.”

  “We had a wonderful dinner, I gave you a blow job under the table, then you asked me to marry you and promised to sign a prenup giving me all your worldly possessions.”

  Wil stared at me, then said, “No, really.”

  I sighed. “I knew I should have gotten your signature before you could weasel out of it.” He just glared at me.

  “We finished our dinner and went outside to get your car,” I continued. “We were standing at the valet stand, and I was behind you when the restaurant blew up. Major explosion with some kind of flammable explosive. I don’t see how anyone in the main dining room could have survived.”

  “That bad?”

  “Truly nasty. I’ve played with explosives a little bit, but I’ve never seen anything like that.” I shifted onto my side, trying to find a comfortable position where I could see his face. “Do you think you could ask where my stuff is? After the doctors cut off my clothes, I think my purse and stuff were confiscated by your people or the police.”

  “Yeah, I’ll ask.” He made a call on his phone.

  A nurse came in and shooed me out, but I hung out down the hall and snuck back in after she left. Wil was sleeping, but I lay on his bed and used his phone to surf the infonet. About an hour later, a man showed up with a box.

  “Elizabeth Nelson?” he asked. “Or are you Jasmine Keller?”

  Jasmine Keller was a disguise I had used for an undercover gig the Chamber of Commerce hired me for in Toronto. The identification was totally authentic, issued by the Chamber.

  Wil stirred and opened his eyes. “Hi, Devon.”

  Devon held out the box. “Here are your companion’s belongings.”

  Wil motioned to me, but Devon put the box on the bedside table.

  “An interesting collection.” He held up my garrote. “They found this in her hair.” Next, he put my stiletto and hat pins on the table. “These were in her bra. And this,” he pulled out a compact thirty-two caliber polymer pistol, “was strapped to her thigh. Then we have the purse, which in addition to identification for two different individuals, had a phone, a can of mace, a can of skin-seal, another pistol with a silencer and extra ammunition, an ejector knife with a spring strong enough to break your wrist, and a jet injector filled with a fast-acting barbiturate. Quite the fashionable range of accessories for a young lady going out to dinner.”

  He and Wil looked at me expectantly.

  “After last night, you can’t tell me that Chicago isn’t a dangerous place,” I said. Wil opened his mouth but I hurried on. “And don’t tell me that you’ll protect me. Hell, I ended up shielding you with my body. I should get a medal. I’m a hero.”

  Devon rolled his eyes, and Wil just shook his head.

  I jumped up, gathered all my stuff, and put it back in the box. “Thank you,” I said to Devon, then hurried out and down the hall to my room.

  Chapter 4

  Most of my bandages came off after three days. I had lots of half-healed scars and I was sore, but nothing to keep me in the hospital. Online shopping and delivery provided clothes so I could leave the hospital with some dignity. I wasn’t about to ask Devon to get clothing from my hotel room. He was likely to check my other suitcases, and one held equipment even harder to explain than the contents of my purse. I would feel naked if I traveled without a sniper rifle, but I’d probably have a hard time explaining that to people.

  The doctors kept Wil until Sunday, and the Chamber sent a limo for him. The doctors strictly prohibited him driving until his headaches stopped.

  I rode with him to his home, dying of curiosity all the way. I had long fantasized about what kind of mansion he had. His position was the equivalent of a corporate associate vice president, which meant a salary and bonuses large enough to pay even my fees if he wanted to.

  We drove to what they called the West Loop and a fancy apartment complex. Wil’s place was nice, new, modern and shiny, but a major step down from most of the places I’d robbed. As far as I could see, the main attractions of the apartment complex were the bar and a health club on the roof, which Devon told me provided a lot of opportunities to meet the opposite sex.

  “I’m disappointed,” I told Wil. “I figured you had a thirty-room mansion nestled in acres of unspoiled wilderness.”

  “I apologize,” he said. “I’ll have my realtor find something suitable immediately.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll design your security system. Ten percent off because you’re a friend.”

  “You’d charge me?”

  “You had your chance to get it free, but you weaseled out of the prenup.”

  He just rolled his eyes.

  We had delivery pizza, and then his limo took me back to my hotel.

  Bright and early Monday morning—or bright and early for me—we showed up at the Art Institute to meet with Deborah Zhukoff and Malcolm Donnelly, chairman of the museum’s board. Donnelly was also Chairman and CEO of Tarden Corp., a manufacturer of steel building materials.

  Wil seemed to think ten o’clock was fine for a meeting and couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. I’d barely had time to get in a quick workout in the hotel fitness room, the first time since I was injured. I hoped my stomach would stop growling before our meeting.

  “You have hair,” he said in a slightly shocked voice when I walked out of the hotel and got in his limo.

  “I’m part lycan, didn’t I tell you?”

  He scrunched his lips and said, “You bought a wig.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t want to walk into an interview looking like I got jumped by every gangbanger in Chicago.” I hadn’t bought a wig, of course. My chameleon abilities covered up all the bruises, scrapes, and other damage.

  Usually, official online pictures are heavily doctored, reflecting how the person looked when they were ten y
ears younger, and/or were staged in the most flattering of ways. Deborah Zhukoff looked good in her picture. In person, she looked better—strikingly beautiful, especially for a woman in her forties. A voluptuous hourglass figure encased in a form-fitting designer dress didn’t hurt her first impression.

  Donnelly was a bit shorter than I was, slender, with salt-and-pepper hair and brown eyes. According to his bio, he was fifty-two years old, but he looked older, his face creased and weather-beaten.

  We sat in a conference room and exchanged pleasantries, talked about how awful the bombing was, and the weather in Toronto. When my stomach growled loud enough that people looked around for lions, we finally got down to business.

  I told them my rates, and said I would need to spend a week, possibly two, at my base rate to define the scope of the assessment. After that, I’d give them a quote, and my associate and I would delve into the details.

  “And how long do you think the entire assessment will take?” Zhukoff asked.

  “My guess is six to eight weeks once we get started, if you include all of your storage facilities. I’ll provide a draft report of my findings two weeks after that.”

  Zhukoff and Donnelly exchanged glances. “We were hoping we could get it done sooner,” she said.

  “Securitas installed your systems, is that correct?” I asked.

  “Yes, they did.”

  “They’re one of the best in the business,” I said. “Of course, on a project this size, there’s always the possibility they screwed something up, or missed something. My guess is that at worst, you’re only ninety-nine percent secure. If you’re willing to live with that, then you don’t need my services at all.”

  They squirmed in their seats and looked uncomfortable.

  “What I’m saying,” I continued, “is that any holes in your security aren’t going to be glaring. A firm like Securitas doesn’t make obvious mistakes. If you want complete assurance, then my company will have to check a hundred percent of your installation and compare it to their specifications and a complete risk profile. That’s going to take time. Some other firms might have more people so they can do it faster, but the level of expertise we provide is uncommon. It’s up to you.”