Replica by Jenna Black
Kurt sighed. “Sweetheart, sometimes it’s either laugh or cry. We aren’t supposed to cry, so we laugh instead.” He reached across and smoothed a hand over Nate’s damp cheek.
Nate’s costume was pretty much ruined. He hated to think what his face must look like with tear tracks through the powder, and his wig had come off and somehow ended up underneath him when he and Kurt had wrestled. He could put it back on, but it looked more like roadkill than hair. He supposed he was lucky his contacts hadn’t come out when the waterworks started.
“Why wouldn’t you tell me any of this before now?” he asked.
“Because Mosely doesn’t know I didn’t hear the whole conversation. I made some noise when I ran for it, so they knew belatedly that I was there, but they don’t know what I heard. If Mosely has any reason to think you and I have been in touch, then he’ll think I’ve told you whatever this big goddamn secret is. He killed you once to keep it hidden. I have no doubt he’d do it again. It would hurt the Chairman’s pocketbook to animate another Replica, but he’d rather do that than have you know the big secret.”
“So you … you did it to protect me?” Nate put a hand on his sore stomach, trying not to remember Angel’s goons hitting and kicking him there. As physically painful as it had been, the emotional pain of thinking Kurt had meant to hurt him was far, far worse.
“Well, me too. You did end up leading Mosely’s men straight to Angel’s place. Angel knew the Red Death had taken me in, and if he’d questioned her, that would have sucked.” He gave Nadia a cold, angry look. “I don’t care why you did it. I don’t forgive you.”
Nate had always thought of Nadia as somewhat … timid. He understood that a girl of her station had to exercise a good deal of caution—especially one who was expected to marry the Chairman Heir—but he had often found that caution rather tiresome. But either recent events had changed her, or Nate hadn’t known her as well as he thought.
Nadia didn’t wilt under Kurt’s accusatory gaze. Her lip curled in something that looked almost like a sneer as she put an arm around Nate’s shoulders. “Well I don’t forgive you for hurting Nate like you did. And I really don’t give a damn what you think of me. If Nate didn’t care about you so much, I’d hand you over to Mosely in a heartbeat.”
Nate didn’t believe that, and he suspected Kurt didn’t, either. But Kurt held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture.
“Fine. We understand each other.”
“No, we don’t,” Nadia said firmly. “After all the fuss you made to keep Nate from finding you, why all of a sudden did you arrange this meeting? And why did you insist I come?”
Kurt grimaced and looked away. “Because I really fucked up when I sent that note.” He turned back to them. “But we should get Dante back in here for the rest of this discussion.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“’Fraid so,” Kurt responded, then looked Nate up and down. “Let’s get you straightened up a bit.” He picked up the wig, gave it a close look, then dropped it back on the floor of the van. “Fuck that.” He then reached out and started pulling out the pins that held Nate’s real hair back.
Nadia rose up on her knees and helped, and Nate felt like a monkey being groomed.
“I can do it myself,” he said, trying to reach up to his head, but Kurt batted his hand aside.
“Not as fast as we can do it for you,” he said.
Moments later, Kurt was ruffling his hair. Then he sat back on his heels. “Better,” he declared, then started smoothing out the powder on Nate’s face as best he could.
Nate took a deep breath, trying to calm what remained of his inner turmoil. The touch of Kurt’s hands helped. There were still a lot of unanswered questions left between them, questions that couldn’t be settled in the presence of another person, even Nadia. But Nate was sure he wasn’t imagining the affection in Kurt’s touch or the regret in his eyes. Maybe Kurt had first infiltrated his household as part of a mission, but Nate had to believe it had become more than that to him. And if Kurt distrusted Nate for being a Replica, he certainly was showing no sign of it.
“We good for now?” Kurt asked quietly.
Nate nodded and hauled himself off the floor of the van and back onto one of the milk crates. Nadia sat next to him once more, and Kurt opened the back doors of the van to let Dante in. Nate stiffened as Dante took in the scene—Nate’s dead wig, his real hair, his messed-up makeup, his busted hand—and swore he’d throw his attempts at self-control right out the window if the bastard said one wrong word. But the guy was smarter than he looked, keeping his mouth shut as he and Kurt sat on the crates across from Nate and Nadia.
“You asked why I changed my mind since last night,” Kurt said. “Like I said, I really fucked up by sending that note.”
“No,” Dante interrupted. “I did, by getting caught.”
“Whatever.” He turned another glare at Nadia. “I let our little spy here know I hadn’t left Paxco.”
Nate opened his mouth to defend Nadia, but she beat him to the punch.
“You really want to go there with the finger pointing?” she asked. “Because you’ve been spying on him a lot longer than I have.”
“I didn’t—”
“Stop it,” Dante interrupted, making a chopping motion with his hand. “Let’s try to get through this with a minimum of bickering. We’ve all had our moments in this mess.”
“Who died and made you boss?” Kurt grumbled, but at least he didn’t light into Nadia anymore.
“The problem,” Dante said to Nadia, “is that Mosely thinks you might have been dishonest with him when he spoke to you this afternoon. He isn’t sure, because he says you were drunk when he talked to you.”
Nate turned and gave Nadia a startled look. She’d accept a drink now and then, but she never seemed to particularly enjoy them, and he’d never seen her so much as tipsy, much less drunk.
Nadia gave a half smile. “I knew I couldn’t act normal around him while I was lying, so I figured I’d give him an alternative explanation as to why.”
Both Kurt and Dante looked impressed by the tactic, and Nate felt an absurd surge of pride in her. This morning, he’d been ready to write her out of his life entirely, but somehow between then and now, he’d stopped blaming her. She’d had no choice but to do what she’d done, and if she’d tried to confide in him, he probably would have confronted Mosely. Or his father.
Nate’s mind skittered away from that thought, not willing to deal with what his own father had done to him. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“It was a good idea,” Dante told her. “But he still suspects, and you can’t be drunk every time he talks to you.”
Nadia was sitting close enough that Nate could feel the shiver that ran through her. If Mosely thought she was lying to him, then he’d go to extreme measures to force her to talk. Once upon a time, Nate would have trusted Nadia’s station to protect her from the likes of Dirk Mosely, but now he knew better.
“The problem is worse than you think,” Dante continued, sharing an unhappy look with Kurt. “We, er, haven’t told the leader of our cell about our indiscretion with the note, but if he ever gets wind of it and thinks that Nadia might be taken in for more rigorous questioning…” He looked uncomfortable and let his voice trail off.
Nate was a little slow on the uptake. He blamed it on lack of sleep and emotional exhaustion, but he honestly didn’t know what Dante was getting at. Until Nadia finished Dante’s sentence for him.
“You think he’ll have me killed.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Strangely, the threat to her life didn’t frighten Nadia as much as it should have. Maybe she’d been on the receiving end of too many threats lately and they had lost their power to shock. Or maybe it was just easier to face a threat to her own person than to think something she said or did might cause Mosely to hurt Rory and Corinne.
The same was not true of Nate.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said, as
Nadia leaned into Nate’s body, more grateful than she could say for his staunch support even as she was mildly exasperated by it. Surely by now he should have figured out that right and wrong had nothing to do with it.
“That’s why we didn’t tell anyone what we did,” Dante said, then made a face. “Well, that and we wanted to cover our asses.”
“The upshot is we’re running out of time,” Bishop said. “If we sit back on our heels and wait for things to shake out, either Mosely is going to learn everything he needs to know from Nadia, or she’s going to meet with an unfortunate end. Not that I’d be heartbroken,” he said to Nadia, “but Nate seems to care about you.”
When Nadia had expressed a similar sentiment to Bishop, she hadn’t really meant it. She was pretty sure, however, that Bishop was dead serious. Nate might have forgiven her for her betrayal, but Bishop hadn’t, and maybe never would.
“So what is it you suggest we do?” Nate asked.
“The only way out is to get Mosely before he gets us. We need to get him to incriminate himself so much that even the Chairman can’t save him.”
“How about telling the world that he stabbed me to death and tried to pin it on you?” Nate said, but Nadia was sure he already knew it wouldn’t be that easy.
Bishop flashed him a sardonic smile. “Because everyone would take my word for it over Mosely’s,” he said with a roll of his eyes.
“Um, I recorded the last interview I had with Mosely,” Nadia said. “I have a hidden transmitter in one of my earrings.” She reached up reflexively to tug on her earlobe, but of course she wasn’t wearing them now. “I’ve got him making some pretty ugly threats.” She sighed. “But it’s not enough,” she conceded before they could tell her so. “All he has to do is say he didn’t mean it. People might not like his tactics, but no one’s going to be really outraged. Not when he was investigating a case of treason.”
Bishop looked at her like she might be more interesting than he’d originally thought. “You’ve really taken to this spying shit, haven’t you?”
“Are we going to start that again?” she responded. “You have no room whatsoever to throw stones.”
“Cut it out, both of you,” Nate said. “We’ve got more important things to talk about.”
“Mosely isn’t stupid,” Dante said, ignoring the byplay. “I don’t think he’d ever guess you were recording him, but he’s still not going to say anything to you he’s afraid might bite him in the ass. But whatever he’s up to, it’s sanctioned by the Chairman, and the Chairman gets regular reports. I know because I have to send copies of my reports directly to him when I send them to Mosely. He’s watching this case like a hawk, and I’ll bet you Mosely talks to him as freely as you like.”
“What are you suggesting, exactly?” Nate asked in a suspicious voice.
“I’m suggesting we take Nadia’s bugging idea a step further.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slim, compact case, and Nadia didn’t have much trouble guessing what would be in it. He opened it to reveal a tiny black dot nestled in white foam. A tiny black dot that closely resembled the microtransmitter hidden in Nadia’s earring. There was a moment of tense silence as everyone stared at the harmless-looking dot.
“You want me to plant that on Mosely,” Nadia finally said, unable to keep the quaver of fear out of her voice. Passively recording their conversations was one thing, but planting a bug on him was another entirely.
“No!” Nate said suddenly and emphatically. “Nadia’s been through more than enough already. If you want to listen in on Mosely’s conversations with my father, then I’ll plant the bug on my father.”
“No,” Nadia and Bishop said simultaneously.
Nate looked back and forth between her and Bishop in confusion. If he could see himself, he might not be so confused. The tendons in his neck stood out starkly with his tension, and even under the remains of the powder, she could see the angry flush on his cheeks. Never mind the look in his eyes, which could reduce the unwary to a pile of ash.
“You don’t dare go near your father right now, Nate,” she said as gently as she could.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.
“He’s not Mr. Sensitivity, but even he would take one look at you and know something was wrong. And I don’t think it’s such a stretch to imagine him figuring out what that could be.”
Nate gave a frustrated grunt. “I know I haven’t exactly impressed anyone with my self-control, but I can do this. I’m a little … stressed right now, but give me a few hours to absorb everything and I’ll be fine.” He made a face. “Okay, not fine. But I’ll be able to fake it better.”
Nadia reached out and took the bug from Dante’s hand. Nate grabbed her wrist to stop her from putting it in her pocket. She closed her fist around the case so that he couldn’t easily pluck it out of her hands.
“I have to do this, Nate,” she said, trying to free her wrist, but he didn’t let go.
“No. If I get killed, there’ll be another Replica, so I won’t be dead dead.”
Nadia’s eyes burned, but she held back the tears that wanted to come. “This you would be.” She’d liked, maybe even loved, Nate Hayes for much of her life, but the man he’d become over the last few days meant more to her by far than the boy he’d been before.
“I know you want to be the hero,” Bishop said, and there was a slight edge in his voice, “but we have to be smart about this. You suck at hiding your feelings, and you aren’t going to get good at it overnight. I don’t know if even the best actor in the world could act normal around his dad when he knows the old man ordered him killed. If you try it, you’ll give everything away, and you and Nadia and me and Dante will all go down together.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Nate spat, but though the words were angry, the look in his eyes was more hurt.
“Sometimes the truth hurts, but you’ve got to hear it anyway.”
“Bishop’s right,” Nadia said, wishing there was something she could say to make him feel better. “You can’t face your father knowing what you know.”
He turned his ire on her, still holding her wrist. “Oh, and you can face Mosely knowing he’s the one who killed me?”
She raised her chin. “I’ve faced him knowing he would torture me if he thought he needed to, and that he would hurt a couple of innocent children to punish me. I’ve brought a recording device into our meetings knowing that if he found it on me, he would destroy me, and maybe my entire family as well.”
“But he already suspects you!”
“Yes, about that,” Dante said. “When you meet with him, you should tell him at least some of the truth. If he thinks you’re telling him important secrets, he’ll be less likely to wonder what you’re not telling him.”
“I said she is not doing this,” Nate said before she could answer. “Why don’t you plant the recorder on him? He’s your boss after all!”
Dante gave him a look of exaggerated patience. “Yes, he’s my boss. And I’m undercover. If I chat him up or go to the security station, that would ruin my cover. I haven’t talked to him in person since I was given this mission.”
While Nate and Dante exchanged glares, Nadia reached over with her left hand and grabbed the bug out of her right. By the time the staring contest was over, the bug was tucked in Nadia’s pocket. Not that Nate couldn’t find it and take it away from her if he set his mind to it, but maybe the minor slight of hand would help convince him she was capable of doing the job.
“Look,” Bishop said, “no one likes this, but if we don’t do something and do it fast, we’re all going down. If Nadia’s willing to do it, then you have to let her.”
It was Nadia’s turn to let out an undignified snort. “Nate doesn’t get to ‘let’ me do anything. It’s my decision.”
Nate finally noti
Nadia couldn’t help laughing. “You don’t honestly think that’s going to work, do you?”
Nate let go of her wrist with a grunt of disgust. He made a gesture as if to punch the side of the van again in frustration, then thought better of it. “I hate this,” he muttered with feeling.
Nadia didn’t exactly love it herself. There was already so much riding on her shoulders she could hardly bear up under the weight. Now she would add Nate’s life and the lives of Dante and Bishop and anyone in the resistance they might implicate if they were questioned to the list of responsibilities she carried. The fate of so many rested in her ability to converse with Dirk Mosely tomorrow as if she didn’t know exactly what kind of a monster he was or who held his leash, and her ability to plant a bug on him without him noticing.
“What do I have to do?” she asked, pulling the little box out of her pocket again and opening it to inspect the tiny bug.
Dante gave her a nod of approval. “It’s heat activated. Hold it in your hand for a minute or two to warm it up, and it’ll start transmitting.” He took the box from her and carefully lifted the foam out, revealing a strip of thin, translucent tape underneath. “Peel the backing off one side of the tape and stick it to your hand. Then peel off the other side,” he put the foam back in, “and stick the bug to it like so.” He put his hand briefly down on top of the bug to demonstrate. “The other side of the bug is sticky. Way stickier than the tape. You’ll have to be careful not to let it touch anything—including your hand—until you’re ready to put it on Mosely.”
Nadia nodded and took the box back, trying not to think about all the million ways this could go wrong.
“Obviously,” Dante continued, “it’s best if you can stick it to his skin somewhere. But it would be easier and safer to stick it to his jacket and hope he keeps wearing it until he gives the Chairman his daily update.”
Nadia nodded again. She could find some excuse to grab hold of Mosely’s jacket, surely. Maybe in the course of an impassioned plea to release her from her obligations.