by Diana X Dunn
“I’m Luke,” he said softly as he stared into the mirror.
“Not quite, but you’re close,” she replied. “Mark, you’re close, too, but your hair isn’t right.” Again, it only took her a minute to make the necessary changes.
“You’re very good at this,” Mark said as he studied himself in the mirror.
“You did most of it,” she replied. “Lloyd, you’ve made a good start. You look a lot more like Robert than you did when you came in.”
“I was trying for Dr. Freeman,” the man sighed.
“Really?” Sara blurted out.
Lloyd looked at her and laughed. “No, not really. I was just teasing.”
Sara spent a few minutes talking over technique with him, helping him make his eyes a bit larger and his mouth a bit smaller before she moved on to Luke.
“You look so much like my favorite actor that I think you could replace him in his next video,” she told him.
“Gee, thanks,” he said, tilting his head and looking at her from behind the clump of hair that fell across his eyes. It was the same exact move the actor did in just about every video.
“He’s good,” Lloyd sighed. “You’ll never find him tomorrow.”
“I promised you all an extra hour to practice without me here. Have fun,” Sara said. As she headed for the door, Luke called her name.
“Yes?”
He crossed to her and whispered in her ear. “I want to talk to you, privately.”
She nodded. “I’ll be back in fifty-five minutes. If you don’t want me to see what you’re planning for tomorrow, have your faces washed before I get back,” she told the others. “We can talk in the room across the corridor,” she said to Luke.
Her wrist-con unlocked the empty classroom. Sara switched on the lights and then went and sat at the desk at the front of the room. “What can I do for you?”
“This wasn’t what I had in mind,” he replied.
Sara nodded. “It’s the best I can do at the moment.”
He looked around the room. Sara followed his gaze, noting the security cameras in each corner.
“Let’s go back to my room,” he said.
“The others might need me.”
“After class?”
Sara hesitated and then nodded. Luke left the room, leaving Sara to fill her time by studying the zoo map again. She’d already memorized it, but it wouldn't hurt to go over it again. When the hour was up, she locked up the classroom and walked back into the studio.
Most of the men were all busy washing their faces. Luke hadn’t bothered. “How did it go?” she asked.
“Fine,” Mark said. “I know you’ll never spot me tomorrow.”
“I hope I don’t. Nothing would make me happier than spending my two hours looking at the animals and not finding any of you. Think of how many classes I could remove from my lesson plans if you all are already good enough to hide from me,” she replied.
“You’ll find me,” Lloyd said glumly. “I’m not very good at this hair and makeup stuff.”
“So wear a wig, sunglasses, and a hat,” Mark said. “We used to do that when we went undercover all the time. At a place like the zoo, lots of people will be wearing hats and sunglasses. You could probably get away with it there.”
Sara nodded. “Mark is right, actually. Your disguise doesn’t have to be complicated. We talked a bit in class about blending into your surroundings. We’ll be doing several more classes on that in the next five months, but if you can find a way to blend in, I may well not spot you.”
“How do I do that?” Lloyd asked.
“Find a tour group and join it,” Mark suggested. “Sneak into the staff room and steal a uniform. If you’re dressed like a keeper, you can go anywhere, including places Sara can’t.”
“Are we allowed to go into staff areas?” Bill asked.
“Candie said we have to keep moving and stay away from a few restricted areas. She hasn’t specified which areas will be restricted.”
“The staff areas will not be restricted. Just keep in mind that if you get stopped by zoo security and escorted off the property, that will count the same as my tagging you,” Sara said.
Lloyd frowned. “I just hope you find Tamara or Lacey before you find me. I know I won’t be last, but I’d rather not be first.”
Sara laughed. “Some of it will come down to luck. Even if your disguise is excellent and you’re being very clever, sometimes one little thing will give you away.”
“Like what?” Bill asked.
“For you, it would be your habit of flipping your hair,” Sara told him. “Even when you comb your hair differently, like you did tonight when you were trying to look like Luke, you still kept moving your head to the left and right, moving your hair out of your eyes.”
“I do?” he asked, looking into the mirror.
“You do,” Mark laughed. “I’ve noticed it too.”
“Everyone has little ticks or idiosyncrasies that are unique. Learning what yours are and then learning to eliminate them will be part of your training,” Sara told them.
“What are mine?” Lloyd asked.
Sara glanced at him and bit her tongue. Lloyd had a mass of ticks and habits and now wasn’t the time to start discussing them. “We’ll have this conversation on Monday,” she said. “I’m looking forward to seeing what, if anything, gives you away when we’re at the zoo. Once we’ve been through the exercise, we’ll have a good deal more to discuss.”
“You bite your lip when you’re nervous,” Mark told Lloyd. “You also hunch your shoulders before you talk.”
Lloyd looked surprised. “Do I?”
Mark nodded. “There’s more, but those are the most obvious things.”
Lloyd sighed. “Maybe I could just be sick tomorrow.”
“You’re going to learn a lot tomorrow,” Sara told him. “Everyone is going to learn a lot, even the people who’ve done this sort of thing before. I expect I’ll learn at least as much as all of you.”
Luke yawned. “It’s getting late,” he said. “Sara, we still have to discuss that issue.”
Sara nodded. “Right, we can talk as we walk. Good night, everyone.”
She waited until the other men had gathered up their things and left the room before she got her own bag and followed them out. Luke took her arm and they walked together back to the housing building.
He stopped at his door. “Do I really look like your favorite actor?” he asked, winking at her.
“You look exactly like him,” Sara said honestly.
“Did you see him in On the Edge of Nothingness? There’s that one scene, where he goes back to his hotel with that girl…” Luke trailed off and raised his eyebrows.
Sara felt herself blushing as she remembered the scene that censors had cut for the video’s general release. She’d seen it a year later, at a private screening on board a yacht in the Pacific.
Luke chuckled softly. “I’ve always wondered if it’s actually possible to…” he trailed off again, this time breaking off only as his lips touched hers.
She felt the world explode as he pulled her close. He was whispering suggestions about what they could do as he unlocked his door and pulled her into the room. They collapsed together on the floor just inside the door.
Chapter 11
Luke lifted his head for a moment. “Total privacy on,” he said huskily.
Sara listened as the security system clicked and hummed. After a minute, an electronic voice spoke. “Full privacy engaged.”
Luke rolled away from Sara and sighed deeply. “We could just carry on,” he suggested.
For a moment, Sara was tempted to agree. The kiss had been amazing and she was sure that what might have happened next would have been just as wonderful. This wasn’t the time or the place for a relationship, though, and Luke was already too important to her for her to be happy with a meaningless twirl.
“I’m going to guess that pause means no,” Luke said, regret evident in his tone.
�
�Under different circumstances, it wouldn’t be,” she told him.
“What sort of circumstances?” he demanded.
She sighed. “There are a lot things that would have to change before this would be a good idea.”
“So I just have to wait until things change. I can do that.”
Sara didn’t bother to argue. He didn’t realize that they’d already met and if they met again in the future, he wouldn’t recognize her then, either. She sat up slowly, adjusting her clothes. “What did you want to discuss?” she asked.
“Maybe I just wanted to get you alone.”
“Did you?”
Luke laughed. “Yes, I did, but I also thought we should talk. Any word on when Dr. Freeman will complete his autopsy?”
“None. Ethel thinks he’s dragging his feet because he doesn’t want to come back here.”
“I can’t say as I’d blame him. If I could get away, I think I’d go.”
“You aren’t happy here?”
“I was very happy a few minutes ago, but most of the time, no, I’m not especially happy. I know you’re doing your best, but very little of the training we’ve been given so far has been useful to me. I’ve considerably more experience than most of the others, of course.”
“I’m doing my best. Robert, Ethel, and I are going to have a meeting soon to discuss setting different training paths for each student. It’s pointless having some of you sit through classes in the basics, but there’s no way students like Lloyd or Tamara can move any faster.”
“Different training paths sound good to me.”
“Was that all you wanted?”
Luke laughed. “You should have a pretty good idea of what I wanted,” he said pointedly.
Sara grinned. “I mean besides sex.”
“It would be good.”
“I’m sure it would be, but now isn’t the time.”
“You’ll have to let me know when it is the time.”
“I will,” she promised lightly.
“I’m a bit worried about Mark.”
“Mark? Why?”
“He’s been talking a lot about how close he was to Jake. We went for drinks to Michael’s the other night and he started telling everyone that he and Jake were the best of friends. He said something to suggest that Jake had told him some of the secrets that he knew.”
“What the hell is wrong with the man? Jake goes around bragging about knowing everyone’s secrets and then he gets murdered. Now Mark is going around saying the same thing?”
“Except Jake wasn’t murdered, remember?”
“Whatever happened to Jake, bragging about knowing people’s secrets is always a bad idea.”
“Indeed. He said something to Tamara that seemed to annoy her, but then they ended up leaving together. I believe they’re, let’s say, intimately involved now.”
“He’s blackmailing her into sex,” Sara sighed.
“Maybe. He upset Donna, too. Heck, from where I was sitting, it appeared he upset everyone, even Ethel.”
“Ethel was there?”
“She comes to a lot of the social events. You should come, too.”
“She said she’d gone to a few, but I didn’t realize that included evenings at Michael’s.”
“We try to do something every night. Last night it was just the guys because you had the women in the studio, so we went and threw a football around for an hour or so.”
“I assume Ethel didn’t join you.”
“No, she didn’t, although she would have been more than welcome.”
Sara laughed. “Did the women do something tonight, then?”
“I’ve no idea. If they did, they didn’t mention it to me, but they probably wouldn’t have anyway. It’s all pretty informal.”
“Maybe I’ll start trying to make an effort to attend.”
“As I said, you’d be more than welcome. If you start flirting with the other men, I might get upset, though.”
“What if I flirt with the women?”
Luke laughed. “I hope, when you say you aren’t looking for a relationship right now, you mean with anyone and not just with me. I’d be hurt if you got involved with anyone else at the school.”
Sara nodded. “I’m not looking for anything more than friends right now. I could definitely use a few of those, though.”
“Just friends,” he said.
She nodded and then stood up. “Was there anything else?”
He got to his feet and took a step closer to her. “Just friends,” he repeated before he kissed her.
When he lifted his head, she had to count back from ten twice before she got herself under control. “Just friends,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, but that’s all I can manage right now.”
He nodded. “Then I’ll walk you back to your room.”
“I think I can make it down the corridor on my own,” she laughed.
“Nevertheless, I’ll walk you home.”
Sara thought about arguing, but she was flattered by Luke’s old-fashioned manners. He opened the door and she followed him into the corridor.
Mark was standing against the wall. He gave them an amused smile. “I was just about to knock,” he told Luke. “I wanted to ask you for a favor.”
“I’m just going to walk Sara back to her room,” Luke told him. “I won’t be more than five minutes.”
“I need to talk to you, too,” Mark said to Sara.
“Really? About what?”
“Oh, things,” Mark said vaguely. “We can talk tomorrow, after we get back from the zoo.”
“I’ll plan on it,” Sara replied.
Luke kept his hand on her back, guiding her down the corridor. It was a possessive gesture, but Sara let it go. Having Mark think that she and Luke were involved didn’t seem like a bad thing. At her door, Luke pulled her into another embrace and gave Sara a fleeting kiss that left her wanting more.
“Sleep well,” Luke whispered in her ear. “Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
“You’re right about that,” Sara sighed.
“Okay, everyone,” Candie said as the transport bus made its way toward the main road away from the compound the next morning. “Let’s go over how this is going to work one final time. We should be arriving at the zoo in about half an hour. When we arrive, Sara will leave the transport. You will all have thirty minutes to change clothes and transform yourselves into other people. When the thirty minutes have elapsed, you will be sent into the zoo. Sara will follow five minutes later.”
“Can’t you give us ten minutes?” Tamara asked.
“Five should be more than enough. There are eight of you and only one of her. If you scatter when you get inside, she’ll never find all of you in only two hours,” Candie said.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Sara muttered under the breath.
“The tagging application is active on all of your wrist-cons. Sara has to identify you and get within five feet of you for the tag to register. If she misidentifies you, you will be given ten minutes to relocate yourself before she can begin to search for you again.”
“What about restricted areas?” Mark asked.
“There are a few restricted areas. The parking lot is off limits due to its size. Additionally, the animal holding areas at the back of the zoo are restricted. You can hide yourselves in other staff only areas, but not in the animal holding areas. They encompass a great many more acres than the zoo proper and Sara doesn’t have time to search them,” Candie explained.
“You must keep moving,” Ethel interjected. “Not constantly in a way that would draw attention to you, but in a manner that is consistent with the behavior of people visiting a zoo. Stopping to look at an animal for a minute or two is acceptable. Slipping into a broom closet for half an hour is not.”
Everyone chuckled at that.
“Ethel and I will be monitoring everyone from the transport. We’ll message you if we see behavior that risks breaking the rules. If you do try to hide in staff only a
reas and get caught by zoo security, message us immediately. We have permission to conduct our lesson here today, but zoo security has not been fully informed. You’ll need Ethel or me to get you out of trouble. If we have to come to your rescue, that will be considered the same as your getting tagged by Sara,” Candie said.
“There goes my plan,” Lacey laughed.
“Does anyone have any questions?” Candie asked.
Sara studied the students. She knew they’d brought suitcases full of clothes to change into as well as their makeup. Some might have brought wigs, as well. The zoo was large. Finding them all in two hours was going to be a real challenge.
Luke moved over to sit down next to her. “I’m going to be trying to keep an eye on Mark,” he whispered. “He’s done too much bragging about his friendship with Jake. If Jake was murdered, he’s made himself a target.”
“You’d think a former cop would know better.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?”
“What did he want last night?”
“It was something about today, so I can’t discuss it with you.”
Sara frowned. “What does that mean?”
“We can talk later, on the way back to the school.”
She wanted to argue further, but Luke patted her hand and then got up and moved back to his seat near the other students. A short while later, the transport turned into the parking area for the zoo.
“Ah, excellent, Robert and Dr. Freeman are already here,” Candie said.
“They are?” Sara asked. No one had told her that the two men were back in the area, let alone coming to the zoo outing.
“Yes, I can see Robert’s transport,” Candie replied. She had the transport driver pull up next to Robert. “Sara, you can get out here and have a chat with Robert and Dr. Freeman while the students get ready.”
“Good luck, everyone,” Sara said as she stood up and walked off the transport. The door shut behind her and the transport pulled away. She watched as it drove closer to the entrance before parking.
“Sara, how are you?” Robert’s voice came from behind her.
She turned around and forced herself to smile at him. “Hello, Robert. I’m happy to finally have a chance to talk to you. I have a number of concerns about the students.”