The Price of Time Page 7

  But he’d handled that crisis and he’d managed his clients. His gravy train remained on the rails.

  Every private contractor hopes for a humongous score, but Tory had not dared to dream this big. It wasn’t the $100,000 he was getting per replacement, or even the $900,000 complete customer satisfaction bonus that might follow. The source of his excitement was the $500,000 annual “maintenance payment” he was set to receive forever after. While technically the half-million was to monitor the replacement identities and manage any complications that might arise, the work involved would likely be next to nothing. It was hush money, and he loved it.

  Looking around the Huntley Hotel room, he had to concede that the Platinum Business Amex credit card that Felix had furnished was also a pretty sweet perk. Near as he could figure, the account was on autopay. And as Amex liked to advertise, it had no preset credit limit. That made this the first time in his life that he hadn’t had to worry about expenses. He didn’t even have to file reports. Whatever he needed, and frankly whatever he wanted, he just put on the prestigious titanium card.

  That even applied to cash withdrawals. Significant financial advances. He hired quite a few subcontractors, and he paid a lot of bribes. Most often in cash. Always without pushback. Felix kept an eye on the account to be sure, and he asked the occasional question, but he never demanded spreadsheets or written receipts. Their focus was never on money, just results.

  They were an interesting bunch, his employers. Incredibly intelligent, but babes in his woods. Felix was a bit of a prick personally, but reasonable and predictable as a business partner. Pierce seemed to be the only one with a solid backbone, although Tory sensed that Lisa could be tough as nails when pressed. The others appeared malleable, more or less.

  Life was good.

  In fact, Tory’s only frustration was that he had no idea who his employers were, or why they needed replacement identities. They had only provided him with the essential information. Everything he needed to locate American lookalikes, but nothing else.

  The most intriguing aspect of the mystery was that none of them had showed up during his doppelgänger searches. Normally, when searching for lookalikes, many if not most of the results would be different pictures of the original person. But during this assignment, Tory’s clients hadn’t popped up a single time. Not one of them. Not once.

  If photographic evidence was all you had to go by, they didn’t exist.

  He’d scanned every database he could hack or bribe his way into, and he’d searched broadly, catching all Caucasians between the ages of twenty and fifty. Not one hit had been a client. Either they’d all effectively scrubbed their internet presences, a practice requiring high-caliber hackers and sophisticated software packages, or they’d never been there, meaning they likely weren’t American.

  The other thing that befuddled Tory was the odd assortment of replacement profiles they’d ordered. Of the nine, two had ordered “discharging veterans from swing states with serious political potential,” while one had asked for “someone with serious acting credentials from someplace other than Hollywood.” Those made sense to Tory. If you were going to become someone else, why not get a leg up on a dream? But the other six had basically just asked for “clean” replacement identities.

  He toyed with the idea that some foreign intelligence service, most likely the Russians, was trying to plant moles. But he didn’t really believe it. Although Felix appeared to be covering an accent, the Russians would almost certainly be focused on specific geographies. Washington, D.C., for starters.

  Unless this espionage ploy was something groundbreaking? An unconventional tactic designed to completely confound the CIA? Putin was as clever as they came, so it certainly wasn’t out of the question.

  In any case, Tory was dying to learn their true identities, and for more than one reason.

  If it wasn’t a foreign government op, and he could crack their secret, Tory was certain that he could up his annual hush-money payment to an even million. Actually, given the apparent cash on hand, he was fairly certain he could up it to an even rounder eight figures. But he knew all too well from his days with Finnish Intelligence and Triple Canopy that pigs got slaughtered, so one million dollars it would be.

  If he ever cracked the code.

  His current best guess was that they were all trying to escape something. But what? He had no idea and little time to speculate. His real job of identifying replacements, running background checks, and setting up scams already had him working eighty hours a week. For now, figuring out the why would have to wait. But it would make for one hell of a “retirement” hobby.

  Tory turned away from the beautiful beachfront view and returned to the desk. He reopened his laptop and keyed in his eighteen-digit password. He had to get cracking on his next job. It was time to pry Skylar Fawkes from her life—making room for Aria.

  16

  The Fall Guy

  SOMETIMES SCARY DREAMS end with wide-open eyes. They shake us into a consciousness characterized by sweaty palms and a pounding heart. During those first frantic seconds, we struggle to acclimate ourselves while searching for the source of danger. Then, in a revelation that strikes with the speed of a serpent, our minds catch up to our bodies and the world comes into focus. We flop back onto our pillows with empty adrenal glands, exhaling sweet and slow.

  I did not flop back down as my eyes flew open. I did not immediately orient myself. I had no pillow.

  I wasn’t even lying down.

  I was crumpled on the side of a cliff, my bent knees pressing against a boulder. Above me, a steep range of rock. Behind me, a short grassy knoll. Below me, some hundred and fifty feet, a canyon floor.

  Nothing about my body seemed normal. My hearing was impaired and my vision blurry. I felt like Alice in the rabbit hole.

  Everything hurt. My head ached enough to wake the dead. My right knee was on fire. Whoever had hit me hadn’t used the Goldilocks touch this time.

  I found part of the problem when I attempted to cradle my aching head in my trembling hands. Or more accurately, the solution. And the answer. The explanation for my core condition and incredible circumstance. I was wearing a helmet. A motorcycle helmet.

  That finding flipped the switch that brought the story crashing back.

  The Lars lookalike. The car chase. The cliffside trap.

  As for my survival, I had a one-word explanation. Hooah!

  I had completed the Army ROTC program at Princeton. That included spending the summer between my junior and senior years at Airborne school in Fort Benning, Georgia. During the first of three weeks, the Black Hats taught me how to fall. During the second, they trained me to fall from fast-moving objects. During the third, I learned how to leap from aircraft and land alive. Of course, each stage stressed surviving the impact without breaking anything required for combat.

  The trick was learning to land in a way that transferred momentum through your body and into the ground rather than your organs or bones. This was accomplished by funneling the kinetic energy through a pendulum-like leg swing that planted your heels and stopped your slide.

  The reason the Black Hats spent three weeks teaching wasn’t to put the right moves in paratroopers’ minds; it was to meld them into their muscles. To make them automatic. To train their student soldiers to reflexively tense and twist and adjust just right whenever and wherever they “hit the wind.”

  I’d passed then, and apparently I’d passed now.

  I did not recall making those moves after my motorcycle hit the guardrail. I did not remember properly positioning myself for each of the five prescribed points of contact. But clearly, my conditioning had kicked in. The evidence was obvious and undeniable.

  With a deep sense of relief and a satisfying exhale, I began a thorough self-assessment. No cranial contusions. No issues with my neck or shoulders. My hands and arms felt fine. Things got more complicated below the belt. My right knee ached like a mule had kicked it, and my left ankle seemed
severely swollen. No doubt the boulder that had ultimately stopped my slide had taken those tolls, but I wasn’t about to bicker over the price.

  I looked toward the bent guardrail some forty or fifty feet above. I didn’t see the Harley. It must have gone over as well. I looked back down the canyon. It was deep and remote. “You are one lucky soldier.”

  Studying the canyon floor to the extent the foliage permitted, I thought I caught the glint of sunlight off an orange reflector. Then the lighting itself caught my attention. The source wasn’t the afternoon sun. The sun had just cleared the cliffs.

  The required calculation wasn’t complicated, but given the rattled state of my brain, I eased my cellphone from the breast pocket of my leather jacket. Fortunately, it recognized my face and rewarded me with both time and date. I had lain unconscious for about twenty hours. Through the afternoon, evening, and night. The morning sunlight was likely what had roused me. That and my bladder.

  After rolling sideways for a bit of relief, I pressed a button on my phone. “Siri, what’s my location?”

  “Your location cannot be determined.”

  Of course not. “What’s the nearest road?”

  “The nearest road is Deer Creek Road.”

  I dialed 911 and spoke as soon as the call connected. “I’ve been in a motorcycle accident. I need an ambulance.”

  “Are you injured?”

  “Yes. I need an ambulance. I’m a mile or two from PCH up Deer Creek Road.”

  While waiting for help to arrive, I tried calling Lars again. Still no answer.

  After a few minutes of spinning my mental wheels on the mysterious implications, my thoughts turned to the bike. With it totaled, the rental company would hit my credit card for ten grand while my insurance company determined the best way to deny reimbursement. That was going to put a serious crimp in my available cash. Cash I might now need for medical bills.

  The ambulance and fire truck took forty-eight minutes to reach my location. I could hear the sweet siren coming from a mile away. Then they called and we played warmer/colder until a paramedic spotted me.

  Extracting me put another forty-two minutes on the clock. The cliff was steep, and the firefighters didn’t rush once they surmised that my injuries weren’t life threatening.

  X-rays gave me the good news an hour after that. Nothing broken. Just some soft tissue damage. A set of shots, a couple of soft casts, and a pair of ice packs later I found myself in a taxi, headed for the nearest cheap hotel.

  I was surprised that the police hadn’t confronted me, either at the accident scene or the hospital. Apparently, if no serious injuries or third parties were involved, they couldn’t be bothered.

  That was fine with me.

  I’d been happy to accept assistance from the firemen and ambulance, because there was nothing to lose and everything to gain, not the least of which was a ride back to civilization. But I wasn’t about to delegate the law enforcement part of the Lars investigation. That would be an exercise in bureaucratic futility. It would waste time, grate nerves, and go nowhere.

  Fortunately, I knew where to start the search.

  I hadn’t seen the license plate of the skulking SUV, but I had caught a glimpse of the driver. It was my second sighting in as many weeks. The first time I’d seen those chiseled cheekbones had been the last time I’d seen Lars—three thousand miles east of Venice Beach.

  17

  Bad Day Dawning

  LISA AWOKE TO A SENSE OF SATISFACTION and the sound of crows. She had done it! She had gotten the go-ahead to pursue her dream. Sure, it had required some backstage maneuvering and more than a mouthful of guile, but those were the tools it took to make it in Washington. Best to hone them here, on more familiar turf, among friends.

  Upon reflection, the meeting itself had been a bit anticlimactic. Immediately prior to the vote, the tension had been taut enough to tune a piano. But afterward, the objections had evaporated faster than margarita ice in the Florida sun. In the aftermath, she had expected David to try talking them around with his trademark logic. How many times had she seen him obliterate opposing views with his unrelenting Socratic wit? But he’d shrugged it off. Apparently Eric’s death and Allison’s turnabout had taken the fight out of him. Or maybe he was just evolving.

  With David’s dukes down, Ries had lowered his guard. That left Felix as the lone defender of the old way. Being a paragon of practicality, he swiftly surrendered as well. Aria, of course, went along. She wasn’t one to make waves.

  No doubt the wine had helped.

  Lisa had broken out the best bottles in her cellar. Nothing under a thousand dollars.

  She lay still for a minute, staring at the bedroom ceiling, reflecting on where she’d been and contemplating where she had yet to go. The Senate move had been a long time coming. She and Pierce had been discussing it for years. Plotting and preparing, then finally executing.

  The external obstacles were the easy ones. Introductions, advice, and endorsements could all be purchased for the right price. Manipulating their fellow Immortals, however, had called for cunning.

  The biggest challenge had been getting them to vote for replacing real people rather than assuming false identities. Pierce had steered that situation with subterfuge. He had paid consultants to emphasize and exaggerate the government crackdown on false identities, by tying it to the war on terror.

  Once Lisa and Pierce had set themselves up with suitable backgrounds, the challenge was getting permission from their fellow Immortals to run. Uncovering Allison’s passion had been the key to that. Paying an agent and casting director to show encouraging interest had sealed the deal. Again, good practice for national-level politics.

  Lying there the morning after on her silky sheets, Lisa could admit that the real reason for her Senate run was that she wanted the challenge. She craved the purpose, passion, and power of achieving and holding high office.

  The others hadn’t felt that pull yet, but they’d be planning their own conquests well before the next twenty-year replacement came around. It was a golden opportunity. Irresistible. The ability to literally step into another person’s shoes—and then run with the energy of eternal youth, backed by all the money in the world.

  Whoever said you couldn’t buy happiness clearly didn’t have a billion bucks in the bank. With that kind of cash, one could enjoy an unbelievably lavish lifestyle on the interest alone. She was plenty happy all right, just not content.

  Lisa walked to her bedroom balcony window and pulled the curtains aside. She was wearing only a skimpy silk nighty, so it felt a bit exhibitionistic. She liked the feeling, and often dressed that way around the house. She enjoyed the constant reminder that her body remained as sleek and sexy as a runway model’s—even if her face wasn’t magazine material.

  She opened her balcony doors and swung them inward. The motion caused a stir below, scattering crows as if Cruella de Vil were stepping into the morning sun rather than Pennsylvania’s next senator.

  California was a West Coast state, so it was all about sunsets rather than sunrises. But the Pacific was still beautiful in the morning. Lisa raised her arms to revel in the glory, letting the cool sea breeze caress her body while it blew into her room.

  While she sucked in the fragrant air and refreshing atmosphere, the crows returned and their cacophony resumed.

  She was twenty feet above the expansive flagstone patio that boasted a sophisticated outdoor kitchen, complete with a fully functional bar and a rotisserie capable of cooking complete beasts. The big black birds were congregating about thirty feet off to her right, directly beneath one of the other balconies.

  She couldn’t tell why. There were too many of them to identify the attraction. But the shape was foreboding.

  A shudder ran down Lisa’s spine, leaving a tingling in her toes. Instead of reaching for her robe, she clapped twice to scatter the pests. Paralleling events of the previous night, they protested at first but obeyed after a second round.

&
nbsp; As the crows dispersed and the shape took form, Lisa’s autonomic nervous system kicked in. Her heart jumped and her lungs jerked and her larynx let loose its first scream in years.

  18

  A Pattern Emerges

  RIES BELIEVED that the secret to eternal youth was running barefoot on the beach. It was an odd conclusion for a biochemistry PhD to make, especially one who could recite the formula for the chemical compound that halted aging. But people were peculiar that way, filled with irony and fenced by incongruity.

  It was the connection to eternity that convinced him. Alone on an empty beach at dusk or dawn with the sand squishing between his toes and the water swishing over his ankles, he couldn’t help but sense how insignificant he was. If he spent his entire life running up and down that beach, he wouldn’t even register as a blip on its timeline. The waves would keep crashing and the water would continue receding for a thousand lifetimes to come. They’d be completely impervious to the fact that he’d ever existed. As they would to the next million men who trod across that sand.

  By internalizing the fact that his entire life would almost certainly be entirely inconsequential, Ries never ever had to worry. And when you didn’t worry, you didn’t age.

  At least that was how Ries Robins, Immortal PhD, chose to look at it.

  Nonetheless, the scream that capped off his morning run gave Ries cause for concern. Forceful enough to put a dozen crows to flight, it wasn’t a simple startle or the overreaction to an insect or mouse. It was a soul-cracking, gut-twisting, glass-shattering shriek of a scream, and it was coming from the back of Lisa’s house.

  Once the air was free of flapping wings, he saw his friend standing on what he presumed was her bedroom balcony, given the fact that she was barely dressed. Already accelerating toward her in a run, he yelled, “What is it?”