Chapter #13The Other Side of the Hunt by: Seuzz   Less than a minute has passed since picking up Taylor Koudelka's memories, but you can't keep quiet for long. The agent's jacket is wired, and his partners will have been listening in. "Gimme a minute, I gotta shake the dew from the lily," you growl in a facsimile of Taylor's baritone. "Don't keep me waiting," you mewl back to yourself in a simpering parody of Marta's voice. You scoop the jacket from the floor and carry it with you, so the silence in the bedroom won't be noticeable.
"Get your tits outta that wringer, Conniff," you mutter in Taylor's voice as you walk back into Margaret's old parlor. "I'm trying to extract myself."
You completely understand Taylor's sudden shyness now. If the Hardestys don't have a roommate, as you'd told him, then that means one of them has to be the shapeshifter, and who knows what a shapeshifter needs to copy a target. Just a good look at a naked body? Or does it need DNA? You know that the 28-year-old agent wouldn't mind sleeping with Marta, but he wasn't going to leave any DNA inside her, and he wouldn't want to get naked with her, either.
"House is empty except for us," you say aloud as you drop the jacket onto Margaret's old dressing table. "If it's not her, it's her husband. I hope it's him. I hope this thing isn't so good it can change sexes. But I'm not taking any chances." You use one of your sigils to unlock a bottom drawer, and from it take the emergency golem mask. It has multiple images inside it, and you flick rapidly through its faces--including Frank's--until you find Marta's. Into the inner surface you pour your most recent memories. That done, you collect the jacket, stop in the rest room long enough to flush the toilet, then return to the bedroom. You lay a palm against the side of Taylor's face and lift a copy of his physical imago to go with the mental. Then you lay the mask onto Taylor Koudelka. He vanishes, and Marta Hardesty appears.
Her eyes are already open, and they narrow over a knowing smile. "There you are. Where were we?"
You close your eyes and grunt as you draw on Taylor's imago, wrapping it about you like a cloak. The floor is noticeably farther away when you open them again. You groan as you crouch on the bed over her, and help her draw off Koudelka's too-large clothes. "You really are inviting," you groan, and kiss her. "And I'm-- Umph. But this is too fast for me."
"You mean we're not--?" She clasps you around the neck and dangles there, dragging you down as you pull the jeans off her.
"How about tonight instead?" you say. "A date?"
"You're not serious, are you?"
"I think I am, ma'am. You really do seem-- Oh God." You suck at her tit as she lifts Taylor's t-shirt off. "A morning quickie would be-- Whoa. But if you really want to change your, uh, partnership arrangements-- Look, I think I'm interested, and I don't want you thinking I'm just some asshole you picked up on the street."
"Well, maybe I'm into assholes I can just pick up on the street," she pouts as you scramble off the bed and pull on Taylor's underwear. Despite the playacting, and the delectable woman in your bed, you've no discernable erection, because it's yourself that you're pretending to make out with.
"I need a job, ma'am," you say. "You are very exciting, and that business you say you have-- There's a lot of traveling?" Marta grunts hungrily. "I would love to head out to some of the places that you-- Mountain climbing? Deep sea diving?"
"Exploring hot, wet, steamy rain forests," she says, and snatches at you as you buckle your belt.
"I want it," you say. "I want it and I think I want you. So I want you to want me."
"I do want you, Tyler--"
"Taylor."
"So come on, give me--" She grinds down into the bed, legs parted, and strokes the inside of her thigh. The fake is good playing along, as it would, being a manifestation of yourself.
"Then lemme pretend to be a gentleman. Lemme audition to replace your husband everywhere." You slide the t-shirt over your torso and pick up the socks and boots.
"That's very tempting," she says, and nibbles on a fingernail while grinning. "But I can't get away tonight. Frank-- Fuck."
"Tomorrow morning? Starbucks? Nine?"
"What's your number?"
"Just meet me there if you're interested." With your fingertip you trace a cell number onto her forearm, and she mouths it back to you perfectly. "Nine. Or earlier. I'll be there at eight-thirty."
"Can't we talk about it now?"
"Don't you have someplace to be?"
"Oh, fuck, you're right. My asshole husband--"
"I'll show myself out." You slip on the boots and pull on the sports coat.
Before leaving you stop in the bathroom to check yourself out: Taylor Koudelka, a tall, rangy farm boy whose excellent grades, cool head, and athletic build scored him rapid promotion into a small, top secret intelligence unit in the American government. You slip on the sunglasses, and saunter out the front door.
* * * * *
"How much of her story was bullshit?" Conniff asks as she noses the Range Rover back toward the hotel.
"Somewhere between one and a hundred percent," you say. "You heard everything I heard."
"But you could see her face."
"I saw more than that," you chortle. "She had all the right bits, exactly where they shoulda been." Conniff shoots you a sidelong glower. "Oh, the things I don't do for this job. The women I don't do."
"You would've fucked her, wouldn't you? Christ, you're an asshole, Koudelka."
"I still might fuck her. Come on, order me to, Conniff. Prove you're not a jealous bitch who'll fuck up an assignment just because--"
"I let you, that one time in Paris."
"Where? Paris, Texas? We've never been to France." Conniff smiles tightly. "Don't try to be clever, Conniff. It's me, not some fucking shapeshifter you think we've picked up. Don't make me prove I'm who I look like, because I know exactly how to--" You lean toward her, but she pushes you back. "Fine. Then I'll just describe your birthmarks, and the magic marker you let me use to--"
"That thing better not still be on," she snarls, and grabs at the lapel of your coat.
"You got the control," you retort. "Besides, I'd be more worried if Anderson didn't know about us. If he doesn't know all our secrets, how the fuck good can we be at worming inside the Allahu Akbar Brigades or any of the other raghead fuckers who--" You glare balefully out the window at a clutch of dark, immigrant faces. "God, I hate this country. If they had the stones to do anything about all the shit they know about--"
"Get it all out before we meet Oliver," she snaps. "He's still sore at the way you stomped on him at the Starbucks."
"That was fun. The look on his face when I told him to go fuck himself."
"You were just supposed to step in if she spotted him, not--"
"I had to make it look good. I did, and I looked good doing it. She wanted to jump my bones, didn't she?"
"Why, I'd like to know."
"You know."
"You're an asshole."
"Yeah. Hey, drop me off here, will ya?"
"Hotel's still a block away," Conniff says, but pulls over.
"As I'll note in my report. But I'm not living in a hotel, not if I'm gonna be meeting with sexy Miss Shapeshifter. There's a block of cheap flats right over--"
"So you think she's the shapeshifter."
"I don't think there is a shapeshifter, Conniff. But I wanna meet up with her and check her out, and I want to fuck her five ways from Sunday from seven different positions while you're in the next room listening." Conniff turns a bright red. "And if she's on the level because Oliver is exactly as competent as everyone else on this stupid island and tracked this Martin creep to the wrong house-- Well, this adventure tour business she's got sounds like fun, and maybe I'll quit and take up with her. At any rate, I need a plausible place where she can think I've crashed for when we meet."
"And I'm supposed to be in the next flat."
You turn full-face toward her. "Don't get all fucked in the head just because I think whatever her name is has a great ass. I'll take her to the hotel because my place has roaches. It will, I'm sure of it."
"So why do you need--?"
But you jump out of the car and slam the door behind you. Conniff guns the engine angrily before pulling back out into traffic.
You head back the way you came, hunkering down as you take out Taylor's cell phone. It can emulate several different numbers, each discrete from the others, and you switch to the one Taylor uses to talk to his parents back in Iowa. It's the one you had "Marta" pass along to Frank, and there's already a text message from your partner: Where can we meet?
I'm in England, Mom. you text back, because the OIC tracks everything that goes through the phone. But you also text back the address of a tea shop you're passing. It might look a little funny when Taylor's records get reviewed, but if the luck of the bureaucracy is with you, it'll be weeks before someone sees it, and its significance will never be appreciated.
* * * * *
"Is this really worth pursuing?" Frank asks. His tone isn't skeptical, but it is challenging.
"They've got a bead on Fane, and an angle we don't," you say. "If I can put them on the right track, and skate alongside them--"
"Should I ride shotgun?"
You blink. That would mean him going undercover with you, under a mask, which makes it an odd offer coming from him.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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