by Meli Raine
There is another door on the opposite side of the bathroom. Carefully, I open it to find a hallway. The floorplan Lindsay and Drew made for me flashes through my mind.
One of those doors is the president's private bedroom suite.
My chest rises and falls like I'm drowning, sucking in oxygen in a fevered attempt to save myself. Elevation is in order, so I close my eyes and turn inward.
Turn blank.
And... nothing happens.
“No,” I whisper to myself, wondering how to disentangle this, how to get out and get back to the children, wondering what to do next.
Until that choice is taken away.
Because the door from Glen's office opens, and I find myself looking in a mirror again.
Except this one isn't made of glass.
It's made of flesh.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demands, shutting the door behind her and locking it before the first blow is struck.
In the mirror, it's hard to tell who hits whom.
In the end, it doesn't matter.
Because this is a fight to the death.
Chapter 17
Callum
This is the best I could come up with on the fly.
Pretending the code jockeys got the system wrong.
“Are you kidding me?” I growl at the Secret Service agent, her eyes unflinching as she and two guys block the gate. “My clearance was supposed to be done by now. Get Foster. He's the guy who hired me.”
If I'm right, the lie accomplishes two things: It buys me time, and it gets Drew's attention.
If I'm wrong, I'm kicked off the property and possibly become the topic of a few seconds of tonight’s news cycle.
She sighs through her nose, the emotion giving me hope. “Get Foster,” she says into an earpiece.
“Again?” the guy next to her says. “Since when did he become head of security for the president?”
“Since he married his daughter.”
Duff's in the car, a quarter of a mile away, ready to come after me as backup. We realized on the drive here that it would be too suspicious for both of us to show up.
One of us is enough.
The uneasy feeling that this is too easy rears its ugly head again.
Why aren't we being stopped? Attacked? Ambushed?
Is the point to draw us all here?
And if so, why?
The wait is the hard part. I can't give away any nervousness. Can't get too cocky, either.
Foster comes up the path, not exactly at a jog, but with a fast, compact gait that says he's doing this to get it over with and a little peeved about it, too.
“What?” he snaps at me, nostrils flaring.
“You said today was my first shift. Looks like your HR people screwed up.”
His hairline goes back as his mouth flattens into a grim line. “Second time now. First the project in Branson, now this.” He turns to the woman. “I'll vouch for him.”
“I can let him in the gate, but not in the house without security permissions.”
“I need to take a piss,” I announce, upping the ante.
I feel Drew Foster's grin, even if no one can see it.
“Water the bushes,” he cracks. “This is Southern California. It'll help them in the drought.”
“I'm sure the on-spec fotogs out there would love a picture of the president's son-in-law's security-team member taking a leak in his bushes,” I counter.
“I only put up with you because you're one of the best cyber-security guys in the business.”
“You done? Because my bladder didn't like that lecture.”
Eye rolls abound. Good. It's working.
“Fine,” the female agent hisses, pushing a button that unlocks the gate. “Get in here. There’s another checkpoint over by the house. And you can't get in if your finger doesn't do the trick.”
“My last girlfriend said the same thing to me.” I flash her a flirty grin.
Drew grabs my arm, hard, and yanks me toward the house. “Too much, too far,” he hisses in my ear as I pretend to stumble, the female agent talking to someone on an earpiece.
“Tell them I was high. Explains why I'm not back tomorrow.”
“None of us will be back here tomorrow if you keep this up.”
“What the hell do we do now?”
“Did you code your fingerprints?”
“Couldn't. Long story. Same as Kina's. We couldn't code them.”
“What are you talking about? She breezed right through.”
“That's the point. We didn't do that. What Paulson and I encountered was a set of duplicates. Kina's prints were already in the database. And then the power went out. I tried to contact you.” I look around. “You have backup generators here?”
“No. We've got power. But telecom towers are screwed up. Getting info from outside is impossible. That’s why you're here?”
“What do you think? Kina's in danger. Someone already gave her permission to get into the house. It's a set-up.”
He mutters a curse. “I'm not sure I can get you in.”
“We have to try.”
“New guy,” Drew Foster says to the two men and one woman in black, all working the president's security detail. Foster nods with collegial coolness, pressing his finger against the pad, one hand on my shoulder as if he'll usher me in.
“If you have security clearance, you know the drill.” The female agent motions to the electronic scanning pad next to the door.
“I'm not sure permissions went through yet,” Drew says, stalling.
“No permissions, no access. You know how it works.”
I shrug. “Can't hurt to try.” Drew knows I'm buying time here. The longer we distract them, the better Kina's chances of getting whatever she needs.
Or just plain getting out.
Foster holds his finger up. It scans. He's in. The door closes behind him.
I put my finger on the pad. It scans.
Click.
I'm in.
How? Paulson doesn't have the skills for this. Why was Kina coded in, and now me, too? My fingerprints aren't in any database anywhere. Stateless leaders were exceptionally careful to make sure that stayed true during my years of fieldwork.
How in holy hell did someone clear me?
And what does all of this mean?
“See? Our techies aren't as stupid as you thought,” Foster says with a grin, in a show for the agents surrounding us. “I'll show you the layout and you can get started with training.”
As we walk down a long hall that maps out with the floorplans he and Lindsay showed us, the grin fades.
“What the hell? I thought you said you didn't hack the system? Your print went right through.”
“I didn't. That's the problem. Someone's luring us in.”
“No kidding.”
“And they've already got Kina in here.”
Chapter 18
Kina
I’m trapped.
The first sucker punch from Glen hits me in the jaw, her middle knuckle protruding intentionally to hit the nerve cluster right under my earlobe. A ringing pain, the kind with tendrils that climb like the only sunlight they've ever seen is behind my eyeballs.
“I should have done this years ago. Jason should have done it. You're ruining everything by being here,” she hisses as her forearm braces against my collarbone, one foot sweeping under me to take out my balance. My ass slams into the sink's countertop and my hip screams, knees caught on the tight constraint of my skirt as I stretch.
Pivoting doesn't work as she bends me, my back muscles straining, my vision turning dull.
The high-heeled boots have me in an unfamiliar stance, but as I bring a knee up and sacrifice the bridge of my nose, I move enough to bash her, hard, in the head while my heel digs at her shins.
She gives just enough for me to twist away.
And then I'm down, slammed face first into the tile, a chip snapping off a molar in the impact.
<
br /> “You,” she says. “You’re all she can talk about. Sawyer this and Sawyer that and I should be more like Sawyer and and and. Our mother can't stop talking about you. It’s sickening. Sickening,” she says as her hands creep up to surround my throat. I'm bucking and heaving, trying to get some leverage as she rants and raves about a woman we haven't seen since we were four.
A woman Glen denied existed, until now.
“Do you have any idea how hard I've worked to get here, Kina? How much effort it takes every day to make sure I'm doing my duty? And you're all she talks about. You.” She's sitting on me, her ass bones digging into the backs of my thighs.
I go slack. I let my eyes go glassy, half open. I relax my tongue.
“I'm not stupid,” she says. “We were trained to do that. We were trained to do so many useful things, Kina. Like disposing of a body. You had to come here, though, didn't you? Secret Service everywhere, and Harry about to have a meeting with me and want what he wants, his way only, and I have to do it his way, right? I have to do it everyone else's way so I can win. It's the only way. But not you. You got to do it all your way.”
I have no idea what she means. The words turn tinny, though, like she's talking through a broken speaker, a metal pipe, an HVAC duct. The echo increases as my vision dims.
How could I have been so stupid all these years? She really did try to kill me the night of The Test. She’s the one who really killed Angelica. Reality — the kind I’ve denied in needing to believe my sister wouldn’t hate me so much she’d want me dead — comes throbbing through the fortress of denial I’ve built.
This is how I die. At my sister’s hand.
But she stands up, the shock of losing more than a hundred pounds on my back so intense that I leap to my feet, breathing hard, like my lungs are a drinking straw. The air whistles as it comes into me.
“Tell me why she loves you more. I'll give you another minute if you just tell me that one thing.”
“I don't know what you're talking about. Our mother is–”
The kick comes up, her lunge anticipated, my spin enough that she hits the doorknob, the uneven surface making her stabilizing leg quiver. It's enough that I can grab her hair and slam her face into the edge of the counter.
“I'm sorry,” I hear myself say, the words so weak, so empathic, so...
Wrong.
Because I'm not sorry.
I'm not sorry because of Judi.
I'm not sorry because of Janice.
I'm not sorry because of the children.
She was never sorry for any of them.
And nothing that happened to them–or, now, her–is my fault.
She attacked first.
I'll be damned if I won't get the last blow.
This isn't my sister. I can't think of it that way. She doesn't view me as fully human, and it goes against every ethical fiber inside me to dehumanize her right back. But where do we draw lines? Killing her to stop her from killing me is self-defense.
Killing her to preserve the children has become my one and only mission.
“Who let you in here? How did you break in?”
“You're in control here, Glen,” I say calmly, not answering her question. “One scream from you and I'm done.”
“You think I'm that stupid?” Her hand goes to her sacrum, automatically reaching for a weapon she doesn't have. “If they know you're here, my cover is blown. No one here knows I have a twin.”
“Marshall Josephs does.”
“Oh. Them. They know. Harry knows. Hell, he wants a threesome with you.” Her leer makes tingles run up and down my calves. “Maybe if I deliver that to him, he'll like me even more.”
“Why, Glen? Why are you doing this? Why did you betray me? You made me stay at the compound, had them turn me into the training body–”
“I told you, I don't have that kind of power.”
“Bullshit.”
“I don't! I wish I did. Kina,” she pleads, going soft, moving slowly toward me. There's no weapon I can use to fight her. Her appeals are fake. Everything I thought for most of my life wasn't just wrong in terms of Stateless.
It was wrong in terms of my own flesh and blood.
How can a piece of me want to end who I am?
And how do I kill a piece of my soul?
She lunges, quickly, and the questions don’t matter.
But I'm ready.
Grunts and hisses are the only sounds we make as she slams my ear into the wall, the ringing pain like liquid silver shot into my teeth.
“You don't get to win again,” she says, breathing hard. “I'll be the one she loves more.”
She?
“Win again?” I gasp as she aims for my ribs, grazing me with a right jab. I can't turn fast enough to avoid it, absorbing it instead. Watching her body for an opening.
“The only way I win is to kill you. It's your fault, Kina. All your fault. I didn't have the guts to do it the night of The Test. I had actual emotions for you then. My weakness has come back to haunt me. It won't happen again.”
Her fingers go for my eyes. I'm strong, but she's stronger, and more determined.
Crazier.
One finger goes up my nose and as I dip my head to get away, she shoves me down, on my knees, my twists useless. Her forearm goes under my hyoid bone and shoves up, hard, until I feel my vertebrae crack, the popping sound impossibly long.
Slamming my head forward, I crack into the wall at my hairline, seeking escape, seeking air, seeking a break from the relentless pain, my hamstrings screaming, my pelvis in agony. Can no one hear us? I don't care about being discovered now. About being seen.
White blur is all I see.
“Ehhh,” I hear–is that me or her?–but she's hard and firm, her arm muscle contracted as she pulls up and away for extra measure, as if the pressure as she strangles me isn't enough.
Callum. The children.
All of this was in vain.
“Now I have to find a way to get your body out of here, Kina. Damn if you aren't going to be an obstacle in death, too.”
I love you.
The words make no sense, but they come into my mind anyhow, except they're not for Glen.
It's Callum's voice I hear.
The last words before Glen succeeds in her ultimate mission.
And before I fail utterly, again, weakened by my greatest strength:
Emotion.
Chapter 19
Callum
“That's her office.”
Drew grabs the doorknob and turns it slowly before stopping.
“I can't go in there with you,” he says gruffly. “I need to stay out here in case someone gets suspicious.”
What he's really saying is: I'm on my own in there.
“Gotcha,” I say, opening the door to find a sparse office, everything neatly arranged, but no one present.
The door shuts behind me.
Instantly, I zero in on another door inside, where a thump just made every impulse in me rush into my fingers. No weapons on me, of course.
I have to be the weapon.
The door is locked, the doorknob clicking as I twist it side to side.
“Ehhh,” is all I hear, then a sick, wet cough.
A hiss.
“You always had to make it all so hard, didn't you?” a woman's voice says.
“Ehhhh.”
A running start to break down a door is a given, but as I take steps back, the lock rattles. The doorknob starts to twist. Someone unlocked it. The door ripples in front of me with the force of someone hitting it hard with their body.
I grab the knob fast, yanking hard, relying on sheer force to gain advantage.
It's Glen I yank through, with Glen on top of her, fingers around Glen's throat.
So many Glens.
Wait. One of these women is Kina.
Which is which?
“Epp,” says the one on the ground, the one on top choking her now, their suits slightly different, my mind rus
hing to pattern match exactly what Kina wore when she left today. Instinct makes my decision for me, my knees unlocking, one leg going up in a sharp kick that throws the attacker off the attacked, sending her back into the shower door, one foot slipping on the rug, the sounds muted enough not to bring anyone running.
Not only do I have to kill Glen, I have to do it quietly.
But first I have to figure out which one is Glen and which one is Kina.
“Callum!” she gasps, looking down at her sister. “I’m so glad you’re here!”
The twin on the floor can't speak, her eyes bulging, tongue protruding, gulping air her only goal.
“You can do this the hard way or the easy way, Glen,” I guess, prepared for this moment, assuming she’s the attacker.
“I’m Kina! Can’t you tell?” Her eyes plead with me, a hint of disappointment making me waver.
I go numb. If I get this wrong, I kill the woman I love.
I can’t get this wrong.
The one on the floor shakes her head viciously, pointing to her red throat, then to the one standing.
“I’m not playing this game,” I grunt, reaching for the waistband of the one on the floor, eyes on the standing one the entire time.
“Looking for her birthmark?” the one standing asks, turning her ass to me, pulling down one side of her skirt.
Bare skin. No birthmarks.
“See? Told you. I’m Kina. I can’t believe you’d question it!”
The reproachful tone doesn’t fit.
I come damn close to elevating before the one on the floor pulls up her sleeve, revealing a tiny wound, right where the chip was removed.
Kina.
Glen frowns and kicks me in the knee, hard enough for pure fire to ripple through my nerves, but not with the power to make me fall. I grab her boot, twist until she drops, and we stand, panting heavily, our breath a death rattle.
“You — were — killing — me,” Kina gasps, finally able to speak, betrayal spilled across her face as she stares at Glen, both on the ground, like carbon copies.
“Of course I was. And now I'll have to kill you both.” A small pair of scissors, taken from a now-open drawer, is her weapon, clenched in a hand determined to win.