by Liana Brooks
“Whatever,” she said, her voice annoyed. “Sorry for interrupting your horror show. Next time, I’ll just put in earplugs and let you die.”
Mac shook his head as she stormed out. Then followed, watching her strut through the kitchen and living room. Those hips. He really was brainless. He should have kissed her.
CHAPTER 20
Love is a destructive force.
~ Excerpt from The Heart of Fear by Liedjie Slaan I1–2071
Friday June 21, 2069
Alabama District 3
Commonwealth of North America
A shadow fell across Sam’s desk. Glancing up, she saw Senior Agent Marrins frowning down at her. “Yes, sir?”
He kicked the spare chair away from her desk and dropped into it with a heaving sigh. “How did you ever become an agent, Rose?”
“Sir?”
“A little slip of a thing like you? Born in Canada?” He shook his head. “Yet here you are, in the States, running around and getting lucky.”
“I don’t understand, sir. Why would it matter what part of the Territories I was born in?” Never mind that: “getting lucky?”
“We weren’t born in the same country, you know. The vote to join the Commonwealth was the narrowest in the history of the United States. One little change, a handful of people thinking differently, and you never would have sat in this office,” Marrins told her as if she’d slept through modern history class. He held up an efile. “I wrote up your quarterly eval, looked over your record. It’s not stupendous. I’m sure you know you aren’t the best agent in the bureau. Good agents spend their junior-staff time in big cities getting trained for the real work.”
And if I hadn’t had to take care of my father, that’s exactly where I’d be. Not this dungheap you call Alabama.
“Has my work been unacceptable, sir?” Under her desk, her fists clenched.
Marrins sneered. “It’s not bad. Working the hard crime cases would do you good. I put that recommendation in your file. You’re not fully trained, and they need to know that before you transfer.”
Sam gritted her teeth at the implication. He seemed indifferent and continued on.
“You’re also cleared of the charges of murder and conspiracy to murder Mordicai Robbins. The time of death isn’t exact, but we have Detective Altin’s eyewitness report that you were home alone during the time frame. He pushed it through against my better judgment.”
Sam cocked her head to the side. “I’m a bit surprised it’s official, myself. I could think of a few ways around those alibis.”
“Are you trying to talk yourself into a murder conviction?” Marrins asked.
“No, sir. I just wish I had a solid alibi that would stand up in court.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Marrins said. “This isn’t going to court.”
“Sir?”
He shook his head. “How Robbins became a security guard I’ll never know. He had a criminal record, drug charges. I’ve seen kills like that before. A shot across the neck at close range? That’s gang-execution style. I saw it when I worked as a junior in Laredo.”
“But why my house?”
Marrins looked out the window. “I guess that’ll be the great mystery of our time.”
“Not reassuring, sir. Someone broke into my house and got past my dog.”
The senior agent nodded. “Robbins was a drug dealer. Connect the dots, Agent Rose.”
“Sir?”
Marrins sighed. “This is what I mean, Rose. No experience. Can you name the local druggie? Who was he dealing with? Who had access to your property?
“Means. Motive. Opportunity . . .”
Sam gasped. “MacKenzie?”
“You’re a sweet girl, Rose. I hate to destroy your innocent view of the world, but drug addicts do strange things. Agent MacKenzie has been a wreck since we inherited him from the old United States DoD. No one wanted to see him waste his life on the pills, but some people can’t change.”
“I don’t think that’s quite the case, sir.” She licked her lips, weighing how much to tell Marrins.
The senior agent rapped his knuckles on her desk as he stood. “Stay in your weight class. Keep away from MacKenzie. I’ll make sure he doesn’t give anyone else trouble.”
“Yes, sir.” She wanted to dive for her phone as Marrins walked out, but she didn’t want anyone overhearing. Flipping the efile into her computer, she read over what Marrins had to say. Damning with faint praise was a hitherto unexplored talent she hadn’t known Marrins possessed.
By his account, she was an uninspired, plodding junior agent who sought out direction rather than taking initiative. The words “woman” and “girl” were liberally sprinkled throughout, as if gender was any indicator of work ethic. Twice he mentioned her ties to Canada—he used the old country name—and he attributed some of her failings to homesickness.
Misogynistic, prejudiced bastard. Was he trying to say she was useless because she was born in Toronto, or get her transferred home because he thought it would help her career? There was no way to tell.
The bell at the church downtown chimed noon. Sam dropped her phone and files in her purse. She needed out of the office before she did something fatal to her career.
Like stick my stilettos up the senior agent’s rear end.
Outside, the heat was extreme, but a light breeze and the shade in the city park looked inviting. She hesitated before sitting on the stone bench. This was where she’d sat when Mackenzie accused her of being a clone.
She was a clone.
He was a murderer.
Next, Detective Altin would pull up and announce he was moving to Key West to work as a drag queen. She needed a break in this case before Jane Doe broke her.
She sat on the bench, in defiance of all the drama, and checked her to-do list. Oh, naturally. It was her mother’s birthday. Grinding her teeth, Sam dialed the number. “Samantha.” Her mother managed to turn her name into a full-scale dressing-down.
“Happy birthday, Mom.”
“Happy birthday? You haven’t called home in nearly a month, and you think you can get away with a quick happy birthday? Talk, young lady. What have you been doing?”
That was the plan. “Working.”
“On what?” her mother demanded.
“On work. I can’t talk about it. The cases are classified until they’ve reached the court system, and unless I’m called to testify, I never know when that is.” You know—like I’ve told you every time you ask about work.
“That’s all fine, darling. I know work is important. I even forgive you for not calling after the hurricane to let me know you were alive. It’s not as if I sat watching the Weather Channel for three days straight.”
She winced. “Sorry.”
“I’m sure you are. Now, tell me you got me what I really wanted for my birthday.”
“Name it, and I’ll have it in the mail this afternoon.” There was probably a special hell for daughters like her.
“Wedding invitations.”
Oh, dear holy Mary and all the saints, no. “Ah . . .”
“Samantha Lynn?”
“No, Mother.”
“I can’t reserve the chapel and Father John until I have a date. If you don’t hurry, you’ll have a winter wedding. Winter weddings are atrocious. The garden will be in complete disarray. Everything will look gothic, all black and white. I won’t have it.”
Sam cringed in the face of her mother’s enthusiasm. “Mom, I’m not seeing anyone.”
“What? Why? Didn’t you get my e-mail about that nice young Nieto boy? He’ll be a member of the Madrid Assembly in a few years, and he goes to Mass every week.”
“He also lives in Spain, and I’m a member of the CBI in Alabama. I don’t think the long-distance relationship would work out.” And I won’t ma
rry someone I’ve never met, either, but that’s beside the point.
“I don’t believe there is no one in that awful country who isn’t at least somewhat suitable.”
“There’s a fabulous girl at my gym—”
“Samantha Lynn Rose!”
“What? I’m not Orthodox Catholic, and neither is she.” Of course she’s married, but that’s also beside the point.
Her mother’s exasperated huff made her smile. “I’m going to light a candle for you. Why would God give me such a wayward child?”
“I don’t know.” Maybe God hadn’t. Her shoulders slumped. Maybe the cloning industry had given her mother a wayward child.
The phone buzzed as Mac stepped out of the morgue into the afternoon heat. “MacKenzie here.”
“Agent MacKenzie, this is Dalton Kim over at the Birmingham lab. How are you?”
Mac patted his pocket for his car keys. “Doing just fine. Shouldn’t you guys be knocking off for the day?”
“I’m the weekend lab manager,” Kim said. “Your test results came in. They’re marked as priority. Do you want the rundown over the phone?”
“Yes, please, and the results sent to my files.” Unlocking the truck, he hopped in and turned on the AC.
“Copies to anyone else?”
“Not at this time.” Whatever fallout there was, he wanted control of it. “What do you have for me?”
Dalton Kim laughed. “These were some fun tests. We had people working late just so they could see how everything turned out.”
“Yeah?” That didn’t sound promising.
“Yeah. I won dinner off my supervisor over the results from the third sample,” the lab tech bragged.
“Nice job.” His palms were sweating.
“The first sample, M-1, that came back clone negative, disease negative. You asked us to compare the samples with those in the public database for extant individuals.”
“Yes.”
“We came back with college student Melody Chimes. The sample is a pure match for her current DNA record held by Wannervan Security, where she is currently employed.”
“Good work,” Mac said.
“Thank you. M-2, our second sample, came back clone negative, disease negative. It is also a match for Melody Chimes. You asked us to do a full records check. The last DNA data holder for Miss Chimes was Auburn University in Alabama. She gave them a DNA sample when she enrolled two years ago.”
“And?”
“The DNA match is within the limits of time progression, but not a pure match. M-1 and M-2 are a match. From the state of cell decay I would say M-1 came from an older sample.”
Which meant Melody Doe was older than the known DNA sample for Melody Chimes.
“What time span does the test say there is between when the two samples were taken?”
“No more than six months. M-1 is the most recent sample. M-2 was taken and left out. Did you have an incubator break?”
“No. It was just a test. One of the agents thought a decayed sample might give us different results.”
“If I hadn’t done a background check, I wouldn’t have been able to date them. We compared the similarities between the two samples with the college DNA data. M-1 had more points in common, making it the most recent sample.”
“Right. What about J-1 and J-2?” His heart pounded, and it wasn’t even his life on the line. The scene blurred. Panic made it hard to breathe, and he was on the verge of slipping into a flashback. His hand clenched, wanting pills and escape.
“J-2 was sample three. Clone negative, disease negative. This one was tricky, it’s not a good match for anyone in the database.”
“Mmmhmmm,” Mac said noncommittally. His eye twitched.
“We ran J-1, clone negative—”
Mac breathed a sigh of relief.
“—disease negative. J-1 is a conclusive match for Agent Samantha Lynn Rose. That took digging, she’s a government employee so she didn’t show up in our initial search, but we found her.”
The panic ebbed. “How positive are you that the search was accurate?”
“Since you’d asked us to look at data tampering for the M-1 sample, we ran it on all the specimens. That’s a smart trick, by the way. I’d never thought to compare progression between current samples and older archived data. There are cases I’d like to revisit with that trick on my free time.”
“What did you find for J-1?” Mac insisted.
“Agent Rose is a well-documented lady,” Kim said. “Her first DNA test was at ten weeks gestational age. There have been regular DNA recordings within a year interval or less through until college. All the progression lines up perfectly. The only thing I don’t know is why her? Did she lose a bet?”
“I couldn’t get anyone in the morgue to volunteer.”
“It’s always like that,” Kim commiserated.
“Did you match J-2?”
“Once we had a clue what we were looking for, we tracked her down. It was an imperfect match for Agent Rose. Looking at the current sample, and taking into account the history of progression, I’d say this is a sample from Agent Rose that’s been aged. How you aged it is another question.”
“We all have our secrets,” Mac said. Right now, he’d kill to know what the secret was. “Do you have a theory?”
“Yeah. We figured you were cloning an organ or growing a skin graft and left the sample in for too long.”
“It didn’t have a clone marker,” Mac reminded him.
“Small organs never do. The clone marker is part of the final brain-development process. If you take a clone from its vat too early, the clone won’t have the marker either.”
Mac nodded. Kim’s theory didn’t fit the evidence, but there was a clue there. “Thanks for getting back to me. Can you send the written report by Monday?”
“Sure thing. Have a good weekend.”
“I will.” There were questions, too many for him to articulate, but it didn’t matter. All he could think of was telling Sam and seeing her breathe easy again. Her eyes would light up, the weight would slide off her shoulders . . . Who knew, maybe this would be enough to win one of her rare smiles, and for that moment he’d be a hero again.
Her roommate’s truck pulled up as Sam tossed another squirt of lighter fluid on the coals. Flames roared skyward, searing the tears on her face dry.
“Let me guess, your phone broke so you’re sending up smoke signals?” MacKenzie asked.
“Go away.”
He made a show of sniffing the air. “Why does it smell like the industrial revolution?”
“Because I wanted steak cooked over a fire. I bought charcoal.”
“Solar grilling works just as well.”
“It doesn’t taste the same,” Sam said. She crossed her arms, refusing to be drawn into the conversation.
Mac leaned against his truck with a smile. “Can we talk?”
“No. I want to cook, not talk. Go away.” She reached for the lighter fluid.
“Do you need help?”
“Your cooking expertise begins and ends with pouring things in bowls.”
“I wash dishes, too,” he said cheerfully.
She glared at him. “Go away.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t ‘Yes, ma’am’ me. I am off work. I don’t need to deal with that at home.”
“Yes, Samantha Lynn.”
She pivoted, shaking her tongs in his face. “Leave. Me. Alone. I am having a bad day.”
He put his hands up in defeat and walked inside, smirking. Idiot. A few minutes later, he reappeared. “What was the name of your friend from the gym?”
“Brileigh. Why?”
“No reason.” Ten minutes later, the back door slammed shut with a creaking thunk as Mac
walked out, white china platter in one hand and her phone in the other. “Turn right there, not left,” he told the person on the other end of the phone. He held the platter out to you. “You left this on the counter.”
“Intentionally.” Sam snatched it away and glared at the fire, pretending not to listen.
“Sure. That will be fine,” Mac told the person on the other end of the phone genially. “Bring both,” he told the phone. “Yeah. See you then. My pleasure.” He hung up, still smiling. “Bri is coming over.”
“Why? I told you I wanted to be left alone.” It was smoke from the grill making her eyes water, nothing else.
“You need to talk to someone.”
“And what gives you the right to tell me that? Is it because you’re a man? Or older? Or, what, do tell me, Agent MacKenzie, what gives you the right to run my life as if I were some doll?”
“I don’t have any right. I just don’t want you burning the house down.” He walked away.
She glared at him and went back to cooking dinner.
Food was so simple. Every single time you did the same thing. Every single time you found the same result on your plate. There were no variables. Cake never failed to rise because it was having a bad day. Steak didn’t refuse to cook because you wore the wrong dress. Food didn’t judge you. Food didn’t play games with you. No one told you to avoid food for the good of your career.
No one sane or worth listening to, at any rate.
Blue and orange flames rolled across the black charcoal, a tiny shimmering sea of plasma. The briquettes charred, turning gray. Pockets of orange-white hid beneath the coals. She basted the steaks and flipped them. Eager tongues of fire jumped upward to lick the dripping marinade and kiss the meat.
She dropped the corn on the grill and took the steaks off to rest. The corn blushed deep gold as the smell of browning butter and chili tickled her nose. It was so perfect. Churned cream, a touch of chili powder, farm-fresh corn: three ingredients. No drama.
If weddings were that easy, she would have married Joseph years ago. Man, woman, preacher; it sounded simple, but it wasn’t. There were decorations, flower girls, dresses, colors. Who needed colors at a wedding? The bride wore white, the groom wore a tuxedo. The person who introduced the idea of ribbons and knickknacks should have been beaten to death with a cheap plastic cake topper.
