Replica

  “I think I’ve had enough to drink already,” he said, and wondered if he was slurring a bit. His head did feel a little fuzzy around the edges, and he hadn’t been keeping careful track of how much alcohol he was taking in. Kurt would never have let him be so careless.

  “Suit yourself,” Angel said with a shrug. “I heard you wanted to talk to me. How can I be of service?”

  There was a strange glitter in Angel’s eye, and Nate didn’t like the hard edge in her voice. She was possibly the most intimidating woman he had ever met, and Nate had always had a healthy respect for her, but on the few occasions when he’d talked to her in the past, she’d always seemed perfectly pleasant. She wasn’t a kiss-ass, but she did treat her well-heeled customers like honored guests, going out of her way to make sure they were having a good time, the better to make sure they kept bleeding dollars all over her club.

  With the way Nate had been throwing around dollars tonight, he’d have expected her to give him the royal treatment, but she was looking at him with thinly veiled scorn. The sense of hostility Nate was picking up from Angel made him distinctly uncomfortable, but without Kurt here to help him navigate the dangerous waters, he had to just suck it up and do what he came to do.

  “I’m looking for the Bishop,” he said, using Kurt’s street name. No adult in Debasement used real, honest-to-goodness names. They went by their first names as children, until they’d “earned” their street names. Many Basement-dwellers—Kurt included—didn’t even know their surnames, much less use them. Kurt had gotten a kick out of using his street name for a surname when he had registered with Paxco as an Employee. He had never explained to Nate how he’d earned that particular street name, but Nate knew it had something to do with his former profession, and his imagination provided some ideas. There were definitely some B words he could imagine Kurt being known as the Bishop of.

  Angel threw her head back and laughed, the sound loud and raucous enough to draw a few stares. Nate felt the blood heating his cheeks, but he wasn’t sure what he was embarrassed about. Or what Angel found so damned funny. He ground his teeth to keep from saying something stupid and waited for her to stop laughing at him.

  Angel’s laughter eventually died, though razor-sharp amusement still glittered in her steel gray eyes. “You stupid fuck,” she said, smiling like she was making friendly conversation. “Half of Paxco wants a bite of that boy. Unless you’re the Chairman in disguise, there’s at least a dozen people who could make it even more worth my while to help them find him.”

  Something uneasy slithered down Nate’s spine. Nate’s first trip to the Basement in his alter ego as the Ghost had happened the week after his eighteenth birthday, and he and Kurt had been to Angel’s once or twice a month since then. Never had Angel shown the slightest hint that she might know who he really was. But there was something disturbingly sly about her words and the way she was looking at him.

  Angel couldn’t possibly know, could she?

  But no, that was impossible. If Angel knew who he was, she’d either be trying her hardest to get him out of her club before something bad happened to him and she got blamed for it, or she’d have sent word to the biggest, baddest power players in Debasement and gotten them into a bidding war for the right to kidnap him. He wasn’t sure anyone in Debasement had what it took to hold him without being destroyed—he wouldn’t put it past his father to firebomb an entire block to punish anyone who dared attempt a kidnapping—but there were certainly some who would love to try.

  He was drunk and paranoid, Nate told himself. The only reason he was sensing something “off” about Angel was because Kurt wasn’t here with him to act as a buffer.

  “You’re a mercenary,” Nate said, “but there’s more to you than that.” The Angel of Mercy moniker was mostly sarcastic, but Nate had always gotten the impression there was a hint of truth in it. She might not technically qualify as one of the good guys, but somewhere beneath her fierce exterior, she had a heart. At least, Nate hoped she did.

  “The others who might pay more for the information want to arrest him,” he continued. “I just want to talk to my friend, make sure he’s all right. See if there’s anything I can do to help him.”

  Angel shook her head. “What makes you think he wants your help? If he’d wanted to talk to you, he would have contacted you by now. Take a fucking hint.”

  Nate couldn’t help flinching a little at the words.

  “Go home, Ghost,” Angel said, her voice lower and now almost kind-sounding. “You’re already in over your head. Go any deeper, you’ll drown. Take some advice from someone who’s been around the block a few thousand times.”

  “I’m not giving up,” he said, his fists clenching at the thought. “He means too much to me.” That last part slipped out without conscious thought on his part. Most likely, he was revealing more than he should, letting Angel get a glimpse of his vulnerabilities. But at this point, he wasn’t sure he cared.

  Beside him, Angel sighed loudly. “Fine, then,” she said. “Come with me.”

  She slipped off the stool and started making her way through the crowd without awaiting a reply. Nate blinked in surprise.

  “Where—?” he started to ask, but Angel was already out of earshot.

  Surprise had given her a head start, but it wasn’t hard to follow that table-saw hair. Nate received a couple of angry grunts and glares as he pushed his way through the crowd in Angel’s wake.

  Angel’s club took up the first three floors of the apartment building. She’d had the apartments ripped out of the first two floors for the main body of her club, but on the third floor, the apartments had been transformed into seedy little rooms where club-goers could engage in more private indulgences. It was in one of these third-floor rooms that Nate had first met Kurt. The memory of that first meeting was seared so firmly in his brain that he knew exactly which room it was, even though all the rooms on the third floor looked identical and there weren’t any numbers or other identifying marks on them.

  When Angel stopped in front of the room and looked over her shoulder at him, unease flared inside him. Why would she lead him to this room, of all places?

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked. “Sure you don’t want to just trust the Bishop to take care of himself?”

  “What’s going on?” Nate demanded, trying not to sound as unnerved as he felt. But something was just wrong about Angel tonight. He’d never thought of her as a nice person, of course, but never before tonight had he felt this undercurrent of malice.

  Angel stepped aside and made a sweeping gesture toward the room. “Open the door and find out.”

  Nate swallowed hard. Every instinct in his body told him that opening the door would be a bad idea. Whatever Angel was up to, she wasn’t planning to help him find Kurt. The smart thing to do would be to turn around and march out of here. Go back home and do exactly what Angel was telling him to do: trust Kurt to take care of himself.

  But letting Kurt go like that meant letting him take the fall for Nate’s murder. Not to mention letting the real killer get away with it. Whatever was going on, Nate had to see it through.

  Meeting Angel’s challenging stare, Nate reached out and pushed the door open.

  The lights were off inside, and the room was pitch-black. Nate opened the door wider, hoping some of the light from the hallway would spill in and brighten the gloom.

  Something slammed into the center of his back, propelling him forward into the darkened room. He let out a startled grunt as he flailed his arms for balance, but he hit the floor on his hands and knees anyway. He tried to scramble to his feet, but a heavy combat boot smashed into his gut so hard he was surprised it didn’t come out his back.

  The door slammed shut and the lights went on as Nate lay helplessly on the floor, arms wrapped around his middle as he tried fruitlessly to suck in some air. Another kick connected with his back, and he nearly passed out from the pain.

  “I have a message for you from
the Bishop,” Angel said, squatting beside him with a wicked smile and a glitter in her eyes. “This is a direct quote: ‘If I wanted your fucking help, I’d have asked for it.’”

  Nate was dimly aware of three masked figures in the room. Based on their builds, they were probably some of Angel’s bouncers. One of them bared his teeth when Nate met his gaze, then delivered another brutal kick. Nate’s stomach revolted, and he puked up all the liquor he’d been drinking.

  Still smiling, Angel rose to her feet. She swept her bouncers with a commanding look. “Make it hurt real good. But don’t do anything that will show.”

  Nate could do nothing to defend himself. He’d never been much of a fighter, even as a kid—being the Chairman Heir meant that he never had to worry about bullies—and he was already too hurt to stand up, much less fight back. All he could do was try to protect his head.

  They worked him over for what felt like about three hours. The bouncers were methodical about their work, and if they were enjoying themselves, it didn’t show. All in a day’s work was what their body language said. Angel, however, watched every blow with a satisfied smirk on her face.

  When she finally called them off, Nate was convinced he was about to die of internal injuries, and there was not a drop of food or drink left in his stomach. He stank of sweat and puke, and though he hadn’t taken a single blow to the head, he was dizzy and disoriented.

  Angel dismissed the bouncers with a jerk of her head, then came to squat by his head again, her voice low and almost seductive as she purred at him.

  “The Bishop never wants to see you again,” she told him. “He thought you’d get the hint after he stabbed you, but apparently that was too subtle.”

  Nate could hardly breathe through the pain in his gut, but he shook his head vigorously, denying the message. He didn’t know exactly what had happened here, why Angel had turned on him like this, but he refused to believe Kurt had anything to do with it.

  “You think it’s a coincidence I chose this room for our heart-to-heart?”

  Nate couldn’t help making a little sound in the back of his throat, a choked denial. No one but Kurt would know the significance of this room. It had to be just coincidence that Angel had had him ambushed here. Had to be.

  “The Bishop told me what happened here,” Angel said. “Told me it would have special significance for you.”

  “You’re lying,” Nate managed to spit out.

  “Not about this. But the Bishop figured you’d be too pigheaded to take my word for it, so here’s a little more proof that I’m his messenger.”

  She reached for him, and he tried to roll away. The pain of his injuries rose up in a wave so strong it took his breath away, and he practically blacked out. He felt Angel’s hand pawing at his chest, delving under first his jacket, then his shirt. He tried again to resist, but another wave of dizziness made his head spin.

  His heart nearly stopped when Angel’s hand closed around the locket. He wore it under his shirt, and he’d even gone so far as to tape it to his chest to make sure it never became visible here in the Basement, where it might tempt thieves—or even serve to reveal his true identity. Angel ripped the tape off, then yanked on the chain so hard it broke.

  So furious that for a moment he forgot his pain, Nate struck out at her.

  “The Bishop doesn’t want you to have this anymore,” Angel said as she stood up, easily sidestepping his feeble blow. “He was through with the real Nathaniel Hayes, and he sure as shit wants nothing to do with a freak imitation of a human being like you. And if you set foot in Debasement again … Well, let’s just say you won’t like what happens.”

  Angel tucked the locket into her cleavage as Nate lay on the floor and tried to comprehend what had happened, what he was hearing. Trying to find an explanation for it that didn’t mean Kurt was really behind all this. But how else could Angel know who he was, or know about the locket?

  “Go home,” Angel said with a sneer. “Go stick your silver spoon up your ass and live the good life with the rest of the haves. The have-nots can get by just fine without you.”

  Straightening her clothes as if she herself had delivered the beating, Angel turned her back on him and left the room.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When she regarded herself in the bathroom mirror Wednesday morning, Nadia was appalled. The shadows under her eyes were as deep as bruises, and she looked as if she hadn’t slept in a week. Makeup could only do so much, but she did her best to camouflage the telltale signs of stress. The last thing she wanted to do was walk around broadcasting her mental state to the world.

  Last night, Nate had ventured into the Basement wearing the tracker Nadia had planted on him. She hoped for everyone’s sake he’d had no more success finding Bishop last night than he had the night before. She hoped he hadn’t even come close to making progress. Which was certainly possible. Surely Bishop was more skilled at navigating the murky waters of the Basement than Nate was. Surely he would make himself so hard to find that an amateur like Nate would have no chance.

  But even if nothing bad happened to Bishop or any of the Basement unfortunates Nate had talked to, she would still have to find a way to live with what she had done, what she had chosen.

  “You had no choice,” she told herself, giving her image in the mirror a fierce glare.

  But, of course, she had had choices. She could have chosen to tell Nate the truth. Or she could have appealed to her parents for help. Maybe she was wrong, and Nate wouldn’t have lost his temper and insisted on confronting Mosely. Maybe her parents would have found another way out, would have been willing to face down Mosely’s threats in the name of doing the right thing.

  “Stop it!” she said out loud, still glaring at herself.

  Second-, third-, and fourth-guessing herself wasn’t going to help. She’d made the best decision she could under the circumstances, and there was no use crying about it now.

  Nadia couldn’t face a formal breakfast with her parents this morning, so she rang for a tray instead. Breakfast in bed was a rare indulgence for her, but if anyone asked, she would claim she was still a little under the weather from her bout with the flu.

  To forestall any immediate questions, Nadia made sure to be in the bathroom when the tray arrived, and she called out to the maid to leave the tray on the bed. “Your phone is ringing,” the maid informed her, but Nadia didn’t care. She didn’t venture out of the bathroom until she’d heard the bedroom door close behind the maid.

  The scent of eggs and bacon made Nadia’s stomach rumble longingly, but her hunger died when she glanced at her phone and realized the call she had missed was from Mosely. Worse, he had left a message.

  Nadia wished she could ignore the message and eat her breakfast in peace, but she knew she’d never be able to choke her food down while worrying about what Mosely had to say. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that at least he couldn’t hurt her over the phone.

  Gritting her teeth in anticipation—these days, even hearing his voice was an ordeal—she played the message. It was brief and to the point. And it nearly stopped her heart.

  “Nathaniel wore the tracker into the Basement last night. Approximately two hours after he entered the Basement, the tracker stopped transmitting. Find out what happened.”

  Nadia hugged herself, trying to remain calm. Her first thought was that Nate had discovered the tracker and disposed of it, but she knew that couldn’t be. If he’d found the tracker, he would know, or at least suspect, that she had put it there, and it was him she would have heard from, not Mosely. He’d have been so furious he’d probably have called her in the middle of the night to tell her what he thought of her.

  But if Nate hadn’t found the tracker himself, that meant someone else had. The locket meant more to him than anything in the world—and it also hid his greatest secret. He wouldn’t let anyone touch it. Not voluntarily, at least. But someone obviously had; someone in the Basement; someone dangerous; someone who would have h
ad to have hurt or even killed Nate to get to it.

  Nadia grabbed for the phone and called Nate’s personal number, her hands shaking so hard it took three tries. Nate had been taking his life in his hands by asking questions in the Basement. She didn’t even want to think about what might have happened to him when some Basement-dweller found a tracker on him.

  “Oh please, please, please be all right,” she mumbled to herself as she listened to the phone ring. She almost screamed in frustration when her call went to voice mail. She tried again, even knowing it was futile. A whimper rose from her throat when voice mail picked up immediately.

  There was a soft knock on her door. “Do you need anything else, miss?” a maid’s voice asked.

  “No!” Nadia said, fear making her voice sharp. She tried to soften her tone, but didn’t have much success as her heart continued to pound in her chest and her stomach upped its rebellious churning. “I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

  “Very good, miss,” the maid said, sounding stiff and insulted. Nadia was usually much more polite to the servants than this, and she reminded herself to apologize later, when she was in her right mind. Assuming she’d ever be in her right mind again. She darted to the bedroom door and locked it while she tried Nate’s land line. Unlike his personal cell, that number went through to the security desk at his apartment, and Nadia had to fight her way through a human barricade, becoming more frantic with each transfer, until the phone in his apartment rang. Of course, even that wasn’t enough to actually put her through to Nate, and it was his butler who picked up.

  “This is Nadia Lake,” she said, “and I need to speak to Nate right now!” She practically shouted the words, terrified that Nate was once again lying dead, this time somewhere in the Basement. The thought that the Chairman could simply create another Replica if this one was dead was no comfort.