Replacing Gentry

by Julie N. Ford

  I tracked his steps with my gaping eyes. A trickle of sweat rolled down from my temple to hover at the base of my jaw. Not only was I incapable of breath but now I found myself unable to blink as I watched him move with unnatural silence through the echoing alleyway. He disappeared from sight, the soft crunch of his footfalls growing to a whisper. As he moved farther away, the steps faded into nonexistence.

  I listened until I was sure he was gone. Sidestepping to the corner, I reached over and tried the knob. Locked.

  I swore under my breath and moved back to my original spot. Pressing my body back against the wall, I held perfectly still, trying to decide how long I should reasonably stay put before edging out and back through the restaurant to the street. But there was nothing reasonable about any of this! I was chasing the ghost of a woman that may or may not have a connection to my husband. And hiding from a man who had no conceivable reason for following me.

  I flicked away the bead of perspiration dangling from my cheek. Drying my hand on my jeans, I sucked in a long breath of stale moist air. With closed eyes, I knocked my head against the cinderblock wall, hoping to jar my commonsense back into place.

  Pull it together, Marlie.

  I opened my eyes and froze.

  The booted man stood at the entrance to the alcove. One hand on his hip, the other scratching his chin, he looked from side to side. His gaze under the brim of a Texas Tech ball cap appeared perplexed. His focus settled on the locked doorknob I’d just tried. A thousand prickly barbs worked their way up my spine then down my arms. He moved to join me in the darkness. He was standing so close to me that I could have reached out my arm and touched his shoulder. I was too stunned to move. Terrified, was more like it. He jiggled the knob.

  But then what was I so afraid of? What could he do to me? He wasn’t a walking cadaver or spooky replica of my husband’s late wife, he was just a man hired by Paul to make sure I kept out of trouble. This wasn’t me. Marlie didn’t fear the common man. The Marlie I’d always known, the woman who worked with criminals and convicts, would confront him.

  Rallying around the absurdity of my situation, I reeled in my trepidation, took a short step toward him, and said, “Why are you—”

  With a jerk that took less time than a flash of lightning, his elbow came up and made direct contact with my temple. Pain rocketed like fissures opening in jagged streaks around my skull. The ground beneath my feet tilted. My focus blurred on the blackened space around me before turning to gray.

  The last thing I remembered was the searing pain of my knee hitting the ground.

  Chapter Twenty

  I stared into the distance at a carousel turning at an alarming speed. The faces of its occupants blurred as they whirled past. A man in a dark suit hastened toward me, his arms swinging with purpose, his focus intent like he had an important message to deliver. Then there was a voice from somewhere else, somewhere beyond my eyes. Only, my eyes were open—or were they?

  “She’s the senator’s wife!” the voice said.

  “So?” came another.

  “You hogtied her and threw her into the back of your Jeep in broad daylight,” said the first.

  Who was talking and why were they speaking so loudly? My brain was rocking, sloshing from side to side like a pitcher I’d filled too full and was trying to carry without spilling. But I wasn’t walking. I was sitting on something cold—metal. My arms were wrapped behind me, supporting the weight of my body. An ache in my shoulders begged me to readjust. My arms were numb. I tried to move them but couldn’t. My wrists were tied. Something tight pressed against my eyes.

  The first voice came again. “What else was I supposed to do, leave her there?”

  “You were supposed to follow her and watch, not assault her,” the second man said.

  “She surprised me and I reacted,” the first said. “How was I supposed to know she’d sneak up on me?” he asked, and I remembered a dark hiding place and a well-aimed elbow.

  “You better hope the boss sees it that way,” the second admonished. His voice was somewhat familiar. If only I could clear the weight from my head. If only I could see. “Or you just bought yourself a one-way ticket back to paper cuts and file drawers.”

  “No, this woman is up to something,” the first said. He must be the one who’d been following me. The one who’d reamed me across the side of my head. “Are we sure she’s just a social worker? She might be one of them.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” the familiar voice disagreed with earnest. “The boss would know if she was.”

  “Even so, this woman’s been looking into matters she shouldn’t. Look at this.” I heard the rustle of paper. “She’s been asking questions about this Jane Doe, visiting unmarked graves. Why would she do that if she wasn’t involved somehow?”

  The pressure drained from my skull with my increased alertness. My head finally grew light enough for me to lift it. I straightened my neck but immediately lost control and my head fell to the other side with a painful snap. A muffled groan escaped from my lips.

  “She’s waking up,” the familiar voice said with urgency. “Take that tape off her mouth, you idiot.”

  I heard the echo of boots on the floor.

  “Okay, Mrs. Cannon.” Cold fingertips touched my cheek. “I’m gonna remove this tape, but I don’t want you to scream. No one will hear you, and you’ll only hurt your throat, so just try to stay calm,” he said then began to pull the tape back, slowly freeing my lips.

  But calm was not in my vocabulary at the moment. Before he could pull the entire piece away I was shrieking, “Where am I? Why am I blindfolded?”

  “It’s for your own protection,” Boot-man said. “We just need to ask you a few questions and then we’ll take you back to your car. Okay?”

  “No, not okay,” I spat back, straining against the plastic ties at my wrists. “I want you to take this blindfold off and untie me. Now!”

  “We can’t do that, ma’am.”

  I slammed my feet against the floor and the chair bounced a few inches backward. “Why, what are you planning to do, drop me in the middle of Broadway, blindfolded and tied up?” I yelled, my head seesawing from side to side as if to show them that, under the blindfold, I had murder in my eyes.

  “I don’t see your point, ma’am.”

  “My point, you moron,” I hissed, “is that I’m going to see you sooner or later and then I’m going to kick your miserable—”

  “I don’t think you understand. We know what we’re doing. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to return a detainee without revealing our identities.”

  “You know what you’re doing?” I scoffed at the suggestion. “Then why did I notice you following me? Why did you mistakenly clobber me in an alley?” I said. “Pathetic!”

  “Ma’am. Just calm down.”

  Anyone who worked in law enforcement or intelligence should know better than to ask a keyed-up person to “calm down.” It only makes the person more agitated. “Why don’t you come over here and untie my hands so you can see how it feels to get an elbow slammed against the side of your skull,” I offered. “Maybe then I’ll consider ‘calming down.’”

  “Ma’am—” Boot-man began, but the whooshing of a pressure-sealed door interrupted his response.

  “What is going on in here?” a woman said, and I caught a whiff of a flowery fragrance I knew well. The sound of her voice matched the scent, but it lacked the drawl, the flirtation. “For the love of all that is merciful! I’d hoped that Steven was kidding when he said you’d brought her in. What were you thinking?” she added, and then I was sure.

  The boots took a few steps away. “I’m sorry, Chief, but . . .”

  “Anna-Beth?”

  A long, deliberate sigh followed by the sound of stilettos clicking in my direction. “Marlie, I’m gonna take this blindfold off, but you have to promise that you’ll simmer down.” She paused, and when I didn’t answer, reiterated in a patronizing tone, “Marlie?”

&n
bsp; I was in no mood to comply but what choice did I have? Expelling a breath from my bottom lip to cool the heat under my blindfold, I agreed. “Fine. But you better tell what’s going on around here,” I stipulated like I was in any position to make demands.

  Her hands came around to loosen the knot at the back of my head. I blinked and looked up to make sure I hadn’t been mistaken. The woman before me wore a perfectly tailored power suit with an official looking ID clipped to the collar. Her blonde hair was flawlessly straightened around blue Bambi eyes and smooth SPF-protected skin. She looked, and sounded, exactly like my best friend since college. Only, her stance and demeanor were commanding, assertive, not flippant or demure. And the ridged set of this woman’s eyes and jaw held a seriousness I’d never associated with my Anna-Beth. A feeling of déjà vu came over me. I prayed to God that she wasn’t some evil look-a-like, like the woman I’d met in the cemetery.

  “Anna-Beth, please tell me it’s you.”

  “Good heavens, Marlie, of course it’s me! Who else would it be?” she said like I was being ridiculous. “Don’t look at me like that. You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “A ghost? Really?” I spat back. “Because that would be a welcome sight after all the freaky stuff I’ve seen since coming to Nashville.” I shot her a look. “What kind of place is this anyway? Turning cadavers into pranks . . . or whatever. Missing documents, dead ex-wives walking around issuing warnings. Iphiclesians—”

  “Did you say ‘Iphiclesians’?” the voice I’d recognized earlier repeated. I looked around Anna-Beth’s hip to see that Steven, her PhD partner and love interest, had just spoken.

  “Shut up, Steven,” Anna-Beth snapped.

  He moved closer. “But I thought you said she didn’t know?” he persisted.

  Anna-Beth turned to him with a razor-sharp look. “That’s because she doesn’t,” she said through tight lips.

  Catching on to what they weren’t saying I asked, “What is he talking about?”

  Anna-Beth turned back to me with a tired sigh. “Look Marlie, I know this seems real confusing and all, but I can’t discuss any of this with you,” she said in an apologetic tone. “At the risk of sounding cliché: it’s a matter of national security.”

  I looked around the room, empty with the exception of one other chair. Overhead and down below, blue tiling sandwiched gray concrete walls, giving the impression of a room slowly closing in. I sucked in a calming breath to stave off the sensation. The man who’d been following me stood off to the side, his ball cap removed, dark hair pressed down to his head. I turned my attention to Steven. Dressed in navy trousers, his tie loosened from his dress shirt, he had retreated and was leaning next to a large metal door. From both of their collars hung ID badges, identical to Anna-Beth’s, but just a little too far away for me to see clearly.

  “What kind of agency is this?”

  Anna-Beth huffed out a breath. “We’re a division of the FBI. Our function is to investigate threats of a more specialized, ‘non-traditional’ nature.” She made air quotes with her finger.

  “Like the X-Files?” I said with a snort.

  Anna-Beth’s lips twitched stringently.

  A surreal feeling overwhelmed my derision. I’d presumed that Anna-Beth and Steven were simply med-students, but now I couldn’t be sure. And what did this all have to do with my little investigation? But one thing I was pretty sure of, whatever was going on here stemmed back to Gentry, back to the woman I’d met that day in the cemetery, and to the Iphiclesians, whoever they were.

  I gazed intently into Anna-Beth’s eyes, hoping to catch a glimmer of the girl I’d known—a speck, in the very least, of the truth. “This has something to do with that group, doesn’t it? And that woman from the cemetery who looked like Gentry?”

  “Trust me, Marlie, the less you know about this, the better,” she said, tightly threading her arms together.

  I hardened my voice with defiance. “The woman from the cemetery is a member of some group called the Iphiclesians, isn’t she? And she, or they, had something to do with Gentry’s death.” She couldn’t simply brush me off. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Anna-Beth released a weighty sigh. “Marlie, you’ve been assaulted, kidnapped, and obviously stumbled and fallen into something way over your head. I don’t suppose there’s any way you’re going to do the rational thing—leave here quietly and forget any of this ever happened?”

  I answered her with a defiant purse of my lips.

  “Why am I not surprised?” She rolled her eyes. “Fine. But anything we talk about in this room stays in this room. If I find out you’ve breathed even one syllable of what I’m about to tell you, you and me both will be tried as a traitors and imprisoned for life.” She paused for emphasis. “Do you understand?”

  I nodded before the conflict inside my head had a chance to settle on a common resolution. “I understand,” I agreed with feigned confidence.

  “You have to be absolutely sure,” Anna-Beth said through tight lips.

  I pushed away any remaining doubt and gave another firm nod. Anna-Beth chewed her lip a moment, looking to Steven for confirmation. He gave her a what-choice-do-you-have shrug and she turned back to me. After what appeared to be another struggle of conscience, she asked, “What do you know about secret societies?”

  I tossed the thought around my mind. “Secret societies? You mean like Skull and Bones kinda stuff?” I asked, to which Anna-Beth returned the slightest of nods. “Like how the Founding Fathers and most of the US presidents have been members of one or another.” The ring Daniel, Paul, Johnny, and even Finn all wore sprang to mind. “The University of Virginia is notorious for hosting them,” I recalled aloud, my voice jumping an octave with what I inferred next. “Does Daniel belong to a secret society? Is he an Iphiclesian?”

  Anna-Beth paced in a circle around me. “What would make you think such a thing?”

  “He wears this strange ring with two dragons that form a heart, but I thought it was just his fraternity ring.”

  Anna-Beth appeared in my periphery, talking as if to the air. “It’s an inverted Sankofa, a symbol that has many meanings, one of which is ‘to reclaim our past, to reclaim our destinies.’ The proverb talks about returning to fetch that which is forgotten, pointing to a deeper meaning that one can learn from their past mistakes and correct the future.”

  I watched as her heels took one deliberate step in front of the other. “A secret society that values the importance of learning from the past?” I mused aloud. “Why the dragon?”

  “In ancient Celtic and Chinese teachings, the dragon is a symbol of learning,” Anna-Beth said. She slowed her pace enough to give me a grave look. “In the west, it symbolizes fear.”

  Learning. Fear. Only, understanding was the opposite of fear. Opposites! “Wait a minute, Iphicles?” I blurted out like I’d just been struck with genius. “He was the mortal brother of the god Hercules.” Although I couldn’t fathom what Iphicles and Hercules had to with anything.

  Anna-Beth stopped pacing and fussed with her ID badge. “Some believe Iphicles was more intelligent than Hercules. That without Iphicles’s cunning and intellect behind him, Hercules could have never achieved greatness,” she explained, her baby-blues blinking down at me expectantly.

  “But aren’t those societies more like philanthropic, or networking, organizations—covert-style fraternities? They don’t go around murdering their members’ wives, then having someone impersonate her so she can sneak around making nonsensical threats,” I said, then fished for another detail. “That is, if I’m correct in my assumptions.”

  Anna-Beth dropped her head quizzically to the side. “No, they don’t, do they?”

  “Well . . .” I hesitated, considering where she was going with this. “This group is something different?”

  “Different?” Anna-Beth asked. “How so?”

  After all I’d been through, you’d think she could just come right out and tell me. I took another min
ute to think back to the conversation I’d overheard that night through the vent. If they were all members, or Daniel and Paul at least, why would they be afraid of their own group?

  “An off shoot of the Iphiclesians, an extremist faction of the society, maybe?” I guessed, and Anna-Beth’s silence confirmed my assumption. I shivered at the thought. “But why? Why would they want to look like Gentry or any other deceased person?”

  Anna-Beth looked me square in the eye. “Why indeed?”

  “To gain power, influence—greed?” I said, citing the oldest sins known to man. “But how could they pull off an exact look-a-like? Plastic surgery?”

  “In part, yes.”

  I glanced over at Steven, the plastic surgeon, and then back to Anna-Beth, the biogeneticist. A bad feeling crept in around me. “Is this why you and Steven are studying genetics, because there’s more to how they’re changing themselves than just surgery?”

  Anna-Beth held my gaze with a cool stare. “Vanderbilt is a well established, philanthropic, research hospital with a world renowned reputation. A great place to recruit some of the brightest minds.”

  I thought about the woman from the cemetery. Biogenetics? “That woman looked exactly like Gentry except for her eye color,” I said. “The duel shades were very distinctive.”

  “Heterochromatic,” Anna-Beth confirmed. “Some ancient civilizations believed it was a mark of superiority. Some people come by it naturally, and some, we think, by choice. The anomaly is rare but not unheard of. And not necessarily a cause for alarm, or accusation.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, agreeing not to assume every person I met with two different eye colors was a member a secret radical group. “But how? I didn’t know it was possible for scientists to change eye color?”