The Double Read online

  When I was eighteen, I went up to the roof of the apartment block. I was so lonely, so beaten down, I was at the point of jumping. But I was worried about my mom. If I left her alone with him, he’d start beating her again.

  That’s when I saw it, balanced right on the edge of the roof. A bird’s nest, with a mother bird perched on the edge, feeding her young. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I was so close: the birds were completely unaware of me.

  And I realized that my invisibility was good for something. I was so quiet, so unobtrusive, I could get closer to animals than anyone else.

  I started to head out into the city, slipping unnoticed through abandoned buildings, finding bats and stray cats and mice to watch. Being around those little bits of wildlife was just enough to keep me sane.

  One day, exploring a derelict factory, I found I wasn’t alone. An old African-American guy, his hair gunmetal gray, was photographing the birds I was watching. I was cautious at first. I was amazed someone had even noticed me. But he was friendly and, over weeks and months, we became close. His name was Rufus and, back in the day, he’d been a war reporter. His apartment was covered in yellow, faded photographs of Iraq, Kuwait, and Sarajevo. He gave me one of his old cameras and, from the first moment I tried it, I was hooked. My invisibility meant I could get close to the animals I loved, and the camera meant I could share what I saw with the world. A few weeks in, Rufus looked at a photo I’d taken of a nest of newborn mice, cuddled up together for warmth. One had opened his eyes and peeked up at me and, reflected in those big, black orbs, you could see the New York skyline, the big bad city they were about to go out into. “You’re a natural,” Rufus told me. “You have an eye for detail.”

  I’d finally found my thing.

  For two years, my life was protecting my mother at home, working at the grocery store to earn money for rent, and a few precious hours each day learning from Rufus. He asked about the bruises and I knew he was mad that someone was hurting me. But I also knew Tanner would kill him if they fought, and Rufus was becoming like a father to me, so I kept quiet.

  Then, when I was twenty, Tanner died, stabbed in a bar fight. I knew I should be sad, but all I felt was relief, which made me wonder if I was a terrible person. I thought my life would change, but my mom and I were still stuck in New York: we didn’t have the money to risk shutting down my mom’s store and re-opening it back in Wisconsin. So I kept working, learning, looking after my mom, hoping one day I could get somewhere green again. I dreamed of becoming a wildlife photographer.

  One night when I was at Rufus’s apartment, there was a yell from outside. One of the local dealers was beating up a woman, right outside the door. When Rufus went to help, I grabbed his arm. He was almost seventy, for god’s sake!

  But he turned to me, one hand on the doorknob, and said, “Someone has to do something.”

  And before I could stop him, he ran outside and pulled the dealer off the woman. They rolled on the ground together, then the dealer got on top, raising his fists….

  By the time the cops arrived, the dealer had run and so had the woman. And my friend and mentor was lying dead on the ground. The cops knew the dealer: everyone in the neighborhood did. But they claimed there wasn’t enough evidence to bring him in. The truth was, they’d been taking bribes from him for years.

  At Rufus’s funeral, I was the only mourner. I stood there with rain mixing with my tears, the hot, bitter injustice of it filling me from the inside out until I thought I’d explode.

  I wasn’t brave. I was no one.

  But someone had to do something.

  So I took my camera and packed a bag with food and water. And for three days straight, I followed that dealer like a ghost, hiding in alleys and on rooftops, documenting his every move. My eye for detail let me get the little things that would make a difference: the scratches on his car that proved it was his, as he pulled away from picking up a package of drugs. The tattoo on his hand, as he handed over bribe money to the cops.

  I sent the photos to the head of the Vice Unit, going over the heads of the bribed cops. A few days later, the dealer was arrested. But another dealer moved into his territory. People were getting hurt. Kids were being recruited to sell on street corners. And no one else in the neighborhood could do anything.

  I began to take them down, one by one, hiding in the shadows and getting the photographic evidence the police couldn’t and sending it anonymously to the Vice Unit. In six months, I helped bring down four dealers. I bought a burner phone that couldn’t be traced back to me and gave the number to the police in case they needed to ask for more pictures of someone. But when it rang, it wasn’t the police. It was a woman called Carrie Blake, and she worked for the FBI. She persuaded me to meet and, over coffee, she asked me if I’d like to come and work for them. “You have an amazing eye for detail,” she told me. “And you get shots no one else can. How would you like to bring down some really bad guys?”

  I knew I was nothing like an FBI agent. I wasn’t brave, or heroic. But my mom’s medical bills were piling up and the FBI paid a lot better than the grocery store….

  So I went to work at the FBI’s New York office as a specialist and met Sam Calahan, and Alison, and Gwen and Kate, and they were real FBI agents, cool and confident field agents who kicked down doors and pointed guns—even Kate, who was only a little thing of 5’2”, but could take down a bad guy better than anyone. They tolerated my quietness and they all became friends, especially Kate, and I really missed her when she moved to Alaska.

  Carrie became like a second mother to me and I worked hard, surveilling anyone she pointed me at. In my first year, I got the goods on every bad guy I was told to watch. I was good at my job, but I was still hiding behind a camera lens, invisible... and very, very lonely.

  Then one day, Carrie showed me a grainy black-and-white photograph of the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. This is Konstantin Gulyev, she told me. And you and I are going to bring the bastard down.

  For two years, I tried to do exactly that. I watched his every move, listened to his calls, but he was too smart, too careful: I couldn’t get the evidence we needed to bring him down. And I started to find myself drawn to him. I couldn’t understand why. He was a criminal, and criminals had killed or hurt everyone I’d ever loved.

  Then there was Boston, and what happened in his hotel room.

  And now, everything was different.

  7

  Hailey

  THE MORNING AFTER Boston, I needed three vanilla Americanos just to keep my eyes open. After we’d packed up my equipment, Calahan and I had made the long drive from Boston back to New York, but heavy rain and howling winds had slowed the traffic and what should have taken five hours took closer to seven. I’d only arrived home an hour before I had to get out of bed again and I’d spent that hour lying awake, going over and over what had happened in Konstantin’s hotel room. I was still shaky from how close I’d come to getting killed. But there was that look I’d seen in his eyes, right at the end, when I’d told him I was no one…. At that moment, he’d stopped being terrifying. He’d seemed almost...protective.

  And the way he’d looked at me, when we both realized his leg was between mine....

  Under the covers, my hand had crept slowly down, over my stomach, and into my panties. It had started off slow and gentle, just a way to calm me down so I could sleep. But it gradually got faster and more urgent, little details driving my fingers faster and faster. The feel of his pecs against me, the way his muscled leg had spread my thighs, the hot hardness of his cock through his pants…

  My heels dug into the mattress, my knees came up, and suddenly I was rocking and gasping, my thighs crushing my hand between them. And then, panting in the aftermath, what the hell is wrong with me? This is Konstantin Gulyev!

  Now, slumped at my desk, I was struggling to stay awake. Calahan had been silently brooding all morning. I knew he was worried about Alison. We both were. She was at the hospita
l right now, and any minute the operation to transform her into Christina would be starting. Thanks to us failing in Boston, in a few weeks she’d be sent right into the lion’s den.

  I busied myself pulling together everything we had on Christina. Compared to Konstantin, we knew very little about her. She’d suddenly appeared in his life about four months ago, sexy and glamorous and always dressed in amazing designer clothes. I stopped for a second, staring at a photo of her and Konstantin as they prepared to board a private jet. That bit of my brain that noticed details was scratching at my mind, trying to tell me something was off, but I was too tired to figure out what I was seeing. I kept going and only stopped again when I came to a close up shot of Christina. She was gorgeous, but there was something about her I just didn’t like, a cruelty in those clear blue eyes….

  Wait, am I jealous? Is that why I don’t like her? I felt myself flush and got on with my work. Alison was going to have to mimic every detail of this woman: the way she walked, the way she spoke. I started going through the most recent photos of Christina, taken by an Interpol team while she was in Milan. One, taken shortly before the crash, showed her climbing into the sports car, the wind lifting the back of her loose blouse to reveal—

  I jumped to my feet, my eyes wide.

  “What?” asked Calahan, immediately alert.

  I grabbed my phone. “We have to call Carrie,” I said as I dialed. “We have to stop the operation!”

  He grabbed his phone and called the hospital, but the receptionist refused to pull Doctor Franklin out of an operation to come to the phone. And Carrie’s phone went straight to voicemail. I knew she was at the hospital, keeping watch over Alison. The hospital must have made her turn it off.

  I looked at the door. The hospital was less than a block away. “Keep trying,” I told Calahan. And ran. I pelted down the stairs to the street and then along the sidewalk, dodging tourists and street food carts. By the time the huge, gray bulk of the hospital loomed up ahead of me, I was red-faced and panting, and wishing I’d joined Kate on all those runs through Central Park she used to do.

  I asked a startled nurse which operating theater Doctor Franklin was in and then crashed through the doors. Everyone around the operating table looked up in shock. Masked and gowned, Doctor Franklin looked very different, but I’d have known those big, bushy white eyebrows anywhere. And yes, that was Alison on the table, her face a mess of marker pen lines.

  “What the hell are you doing?” snapped Doctor Franklin. “Get out of here! You’re not sterile!”

  I leaned against the door. “Stop,” I panted. “Stop the operation!”

  “What? Why?” Doctor Franklin looked towards a window for help and I saw Carrie standing on the other side, equally confused.

  “Christina has a tattoo,” I managed, still out of breath. “Low down on her back. We didn’t know it was there.”

  Doctor Franklin sighed. “You came in here for that?! That’s not a problem, we’ll give Alison the same tattoo when we’re done with the operation.”

  I shook my head. “But she already has a tattoo in the same place!”

  Everyone froze.

  “You’re sure?” asked Doctor Franklin, after a few seconds.

  I nodded. “About a year ago, some of us went to a karaoke bar and Alison danced on the table. Her top rode up and I saw.”

  Doctor Franklin cursed. “Help me roll her on her side,” he told the nurses. They did, and when he lifted Alison’s robe, we saw the tribal band she had across her lower back.

  “What does Christina have there?” Carrie called through the window.

  “A bird,” I said forlornly.

  “Could Alison’s tattoo be removed by laser?” asked Carrie desperately. “And then the new one tattooed on?”

  Doctor Franklin shook his head. “A tattoo that big would take a whole course of treatments to remove. There’s not enough time.”

  A bang made everyone in the operating theater jump. It was Carrie, slamming her fist against the glass in frustration.

  The whole undercover operation was off.

  * * *

  Back at my desk, I stared at my monitor without seeing it. Our once-in-a-lifetime chance was gone. Our only shot at taking Konstantin down.

  We could go back to watching him, but I knew we were never going to get lucky. Konstantin was too damn smart. Carrie’s plan had been our one chance to turn the tide. Now the FBI was going to lose, all because there were no female agents who could do the job. It had to be someone from our team: we were the only ones who knew Konstantin well enough to stand a chance of passing as Christina. Alison had a tattoo in the wrong place and Kate, even if we brought her back from Alaska, was way too short. And those two were the only women on the—

  I suddenly caught sight of my reflection in my monitor and my heart seemed to stop.

  No. No, that’s insane.

  But I was the same height as Christina. And the same build. And I didn’t have any tattoos.

  I can’t be her. Christina was glamorous and cool. She was the center of attention everywhere she went. The complete opposite of me. I could never pull it off.

  But…. I looked around. Not just our little team, but the whole of the floor looked despondent. Konstantin was going to cover this city like a black cloud, blocking out the sun. Another month, maybe, and he’d grow so powerful that the other crime bosses would be forced to fight him. New York would see the sort of violence it hadn’t experienced since the 1930s. Hundreds of innocents would die. And when Konstantin eventually won—and I was certain he would—we’d be looking at a city run by a criminal. He’d have too much power for anyone to stop, even the FBI.

  I thought of Rufus, my mentor, about to go outside. Someone has to do something.

  But... me? I’d have to lie, constantly, every day. I’m a terrible liar. And even if I was the best liar in the world, how could I keep up the act with Konstantin when—

  My skin went hot. When I felt like this about him?

  And if I lost focus for one second, if I did something Christina wouldn’t do, or didn’t do something she would do, and he found out I was spying on him, he’d kill me. There’d be no mercy this time.

  I imagined being in the mansion with him, cut off from my friends and with no backup, maybe for weeks or months. The fear hit me fully, then, like someone was pumping ice water steadily up through my veins. This is Konstantin Gulyev we’re talking about.

  A little voice inside me whispered, no one has to know you thought of this. Carrie hadn’t even considered me for the mission. All I had to do was keep quiet and the mission would stay cancelled.

  But...I’d know. When people started dying, when Konstantin took over... I’d know.

  I forced my shaking legs to stand and walked to the elevator.

  Carrie’s office is right up on the top floor, which gave me far too much time to think. I nearly stopped the elevator three times and walking down the long hallway to her door was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. This is crazy. I’m not brave enough to do this.

  By the time I reached Carrie’s door, I didn’t dare stop to knock: if I stopped, I’d just turn around and run. So I barged in and then stood there, eyes wide and chest tight.

  Carrie was sitting behind her desk, in the process of unwrapping a sandwich. An antique clock was just chiming one. She looked up, startled. “Hailey?”

  I couldn’t speak.

  She stood, trying to fill the awkward silence. “I always shut myself in here at this time and turn my phone off. It’s the only way I get to eat.” She walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows of thick, bulletproof glass that formed one end of the room and looked out at the fantastic view of New York. “For five minutes, I just stand here. Reminds me what we’re fighting for.”

  Today, though, she didn’t look inspired. She looked defeated. She loved this city and its people and most of them never even knew her name, or the lengths she’d gone to to protect them.

  If New York has a gu
ardian spirit, it’s Carrie.

  And now she’d lost. She let out a long sigh and dropped her eyes to the floor—

  “I can do it,” I blurted.

  Carrie turned to me and looked blank, which made me falter. That’s how completely unsuitable I was: she didn’t even understand what I meant.

  “I can be Christina,” I told her.

  She cocked her head to one side... and then her jaw dropped. “You—” She looked me up and down and I could see the battle on her face. She wanted it to be possible but she also didn’t want it to be possible. She’s really grown to care about me. “No. No, I mean…. No, you’re not tall enough.”

  “I am. I’m exactly the same height as Alison and Christina. They just wear heels and I... slouch.” I stood up straight.

  Carrie looked ill. She called in Doctor Franklin, maybe hoping he’d rule out the idea. But he cupped my head in his hands, felt my jawline, compared a photo of me to a photo of Christina..., and nodded. “It would work,” he told us. “Any tattoos we should know about?” I shook my head. “Any scars?”

  I froze. Calahan is the only one who knows about my childhood. We were working on a case involving children and one night I just broke down and told him everything. He got this fiercely protective look in his eyes and I think he would have gone straight out and hunted down my stepfather if he was still alive.

  But if I was going to do this, they had to know. I lifted my suit jacket and my blouse to reveal the ugly burn scar on my side.

  Doctor Franklin stooped and took a look at it. “Not a problem,” he said cheerily, and scribbled something on a clipboard. “We’ll say some hot metal burned you while they were freeing you from the wreckage.”

  Carrie’s reaction was completely different. She must have read the pain in my expression because for a second, she looked as if she was going to wrap me up in a hug. She settled for taking my hand and squeezing it tight. She held my gaze for a moment longer and then sighed and shook her head, still undecided. “You have no undercover experience,” she said. “You’re not even a field agent.”