Jenna Black - Replica

“It seems you have not been completely honest with me, Miss Lake,” Mosely said. “I’m disappointed in you. I had thought a girl of your impeccable pedigree would understand the importance of protecting the interests of her state.”

She couldn’t tell if he was mocking her, or if he was sincerely disapproving. And she didn’t care.

“In my opinion,” she said, “the interests of my state are not served by pinning a crime on an innocent man.”

Mosely gave a condescending chuckle. “Believe me, my dear, Kurt Bishop is a lot of things, but an innocent man isn’t one of them. Did you know he was working as a whore when our Chairman Heir hired him?”

If Nadia was supposed to feel disgusted by the revelation, Mosely had missed his mark. She might not have known the specifics of Bishop’s past, but she’d certainly known there was ugliness in it. “Prostitution isn’t a crime punishable by death. If you think that’s an adequate excuse to—”

“You are such a child. Everything is black and white to you, isn’t it? You would never consider that sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good.”

Nadia clamped her jaws shut to keep from responding. She had a feeling he was probing at her, trying to get her to reveal what she knew without directly asking questions. Her mind raced with possibilities as she tried to figure out how to get Mosely to admit his crimes aloud without giving away too much herself. In the periphery of her vision, the torture apparatus loomed.

Mosely tucked the photos back into their folder and pushed the folder aside. Then he leaned forward with his elbows on the table. Nadia felt like he was intruding upon her personal space even though there was a table between them.

“Where did you go last night, Miss Lake?” he asked.

“You’re the spymaster. Why don’t you tell me ?”

Mosely raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I’d recommend you be more circumspect in your responses, Miss Lake. Need I remind you that you’re under arrest on suspicion of treason?”

Nadia didn’t truly believe there was a way out of the mess she was in, but it seemed reasonable to at least put on a show of trying.

“I haven’t forgotten. Are you suggesting my situation would somehow improve if I were more forthcoming with you?”

“I am suggesting, foolish child, that if you are not forthcoming with me, I will make you regret it for every remaining day of your miserable life.” He glanced pointedly at the apparatus. “You can avoid a great deal of unpleasantness by simply answering my questions truthfully.”

So there was no carrot to be offered. Only the stick. Nadia shivered. She didn’t know what Mosely would do to her if he strapped her to that table, but she suspected that she would lose a lot of her higher reasoning powers to fear. If she wanted Mosely to incriminate himself, she was going to need her wits about her. Which meant she had to do it before Mosely resorted to torture.

“I ask you again: where did you go last night?”

Taking a deep breath, hoping she was making the right decision, Nadia began laying out the rope she hoped Mosely would hang himself with.

“I went to the Basement to rendezvous with Kurt Bishop.”

Natewas standing on the edge of the rooftop garden at Nadia’s apartment, looking out over the lights of the city. The air was completely still, and he was alone, unsure how he’d gotten there. He was supposed to meet someone, wasn’t he? But he was early. Or maybe late. He looked around, confused, unable to remember. The moon hung full in the sky, its light outshining the city. A giant wasp buzzed around Nate’s head. He batted at it, and it went away for a moment. But seconds later, it was back, flying in circles around his head, buzzing incessantly. He tried again to bat it away, but it had become invisible.

Nate’s eyes cracked open, then quickly closed again in response to the light. He wanted to go back to sleep, but the damn wasp was still buzzing around his head. He opened his eyes again, and realized there was no wasp. He blinked his crusty eyes a couple of times as one by one his brain cells woke up and dragged themselves out of his dream into reality. Reality that included his phone buzzing away on the nightstand.

The buzzing stopped briefly, and sleep tried to drag Nate back down into its clutches. He would have been happy to go, but the phone started up again. He considered grabbing it and throwing it across the room to shut it up so he could get back to sleep.

Cursing the damned piece of technology that was supposedly in “silent” mode, Nate pushed himself up to a sitting position and grabbed it. He pulled his hand back to throw it, but before he did, he noticed the flashing icon that told him he had more than a dozen missed calls. Groggy as he was, the realization still sent a burst of adrenaline through his system. According to the phone, it was just past eight in the morning, and a dozen missed calls at this hour was not a good sign.

Shaking his head in an attempt to clear the fog, Nate answered even though he didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?” he croaked, using his free hand to rub the grit out of his eyes.

“Nate! Thank God I finally reached you.”

Nate shook his head again, having failed to clear the fog the first time. The voice was familiar, but whatever part of his brain matched voices to names was still asleep. “Who is this?”

“Dante.”

Dante? What the hell was Dante doing calling him? And how’d he even get Nate’s private number? Of course, he was a professional spy in training, so the latter probably wasn’t that much of a mystery.

“What’s going on?” Nate asked as more adrenaline worked its way into his system.

“Nadia’s been arrested.”

The trickle of adrenaline became a flood, and suddenly Nate was wide awake. “What?” He shoved the covers aside as he scrambled to his feet.

“She’s been arrested. It’s all over the news. They took her from her apartment this morning, about an hour ago.”

Nate was already rushing toward his closet, planning to throw on the first clothes he got his hands on. He had promised not to let Mosely hurt Nadia or her family, and he was going to keep that promise. Somehow.

“She’s supposedly been taken to Riker’s Island,” Dante continued. “That’s what the news says, at least. But that’s not where they took her.”

Nate pinched the phone between his face and his shoulder as he struggled his way into a pair of pants. The fingers of his right hand were stiff and swollen, and Nate fought to bend them enough to manage the button and zipper.

“Do you know where they have taken her?”

“Yeah. She’s at the Fortress somewhere.”

“Why?” The Fortress was not a place for prisoners. Its entire purpose was to guard the Replica technology. It was where you went to get your backup scans, if you were privileged enough to warrant them, and where Replicas, like Nate, were made. It hardly seemed like an appropriate place to be taking Nadia after her arrest.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re the spy. Find out!”

“I told you, I don’t have that kind of access. I’m still in spy training wheels.”

Nate would have torn into Dante for the flippant words if he didn’t hear the concern behind them. And if he didn’t recognize the same kind of inappropriate wisecrack he was well known for making himself.

“Then how do you know they’ve taken her to the Fortress?”

Dante hesitated a moment. “Because I put a tracker on her last night.”

Nate paused in the act of sticking his arms into a shirt. His swollen fingers curled into a painful fist, and he wished Dante were here in front of him so he could punch the asshole again. Never mind that it would hurt him way more than it would hurt Dante.