Clare fussed with plates. "I made boeuf bourguignon."
"Are we celebrating something?"
"No, I just wanted to be clever."
Dru opened the oven, ashamed of her suspicion. Fragrant steam rolled out. Yes, there was a competently-executed casserole bubbling away. "You know it should have a bottle of red wine in it, don't you?"
"Oh, it's in there." Clare cleared textbooks off the table. "There was some in the pantry."
That bottle was Dru's emergency anaesthetic supply. She couldn't be angry, though. "Good. Otherwise I would have worried about how you acquired it."
She really had to shake this suspicion. She was even second-guessing her own daughter. That was the problem with a job that was about watching people and waiting for them to do something wrong. All you saw in the end was sin, even if it wasn't there at all. And people resented being seen as guilty until proven innocent. The act of surveillance poisoned the whole relationship. Dru knew all this, but it had still crept up on her.
The boeuf bourguignon was pretty good. Dru tried to stand back and see her daughter for what she was, just a kid, upset by divorce like any other, getting good grades, doing her chores, not pregnant by some waster, not doing drugs or drinking liquor, not demanding every consumer luxury she saw, and entitled to get things wrong while she learned how to make the transition to adulthood. She wasn't the enemy. She was a fellow inmate.
Is the job making me miserable, or am I colouring the job?
Larry had accused her of being a joyless grey cloud that blocked the sun for him, a phrase that she translated to mean that she'd been unsporting about letting him frolic with twenty-something girls at the marketing agency. Perhaps both meanings were equally true. He'd certainly hit that nail on the head: joyless. But she had a little joy in her now, and it stemmed from stalking prey. It wasn't a great recommendation for her personality.
"Great cooking, sweetheart," she said, having a second helping. "Actually, we do have something to celebrate. I'm probably not going to be laid off when the merger happens. Jobs suck, but not having somewhere to live sucks more. That's being a grown-up, in a nutshell."
"Sad."
"True."
"Have you caught your thief yet?"
"No, but I've seen him face to face now. So he knows what I look like. No more cloak and dagger."
"But you enjoyed that bit."
"Yes." Dru had. She quite enjoyed the thrill of taking the risk. She hadn't admitted it to herself until now. "I did."
"You could always disguise yourself. Change your hair."
It was a thought. If she needed to pay a visit somewhere, it was one of those details that tended to alter an entire description. After dinner, she stood at the bathroom mirror, convincing herself it had to be done.
She was going grey – goddamn grey. It wasn't even a stylish Indira Gandhi kind of greying. She had dull brown hair and now she was going dull grey. Everything that she'd looked forward to was now behind her. It was over, capital O.
Bright red or ash blonde? No. Don't be crazy. Who's going to take you seriously then?
Who cares? It's just a disguise.
And then again, maybe that was an excuse to do something frivolous and just a little desperate.
She made a salon appointment the next day for after work. A stylist called Jay ruffled through her hair with his lips pursed, frowning at her in the mirror.
"How about a nice blonde?" he asked. "Nothing brassy. Because you've got a lot of grey. It'll get rid of that awful mousiness. And maybe some texture." He held his hands just under her jaw level. "Take some length off, too. That'll turn back the clock. Yes, blonde. Blondes can get away with anything."
If he'd been a co-worker, she would have punched him out, but a hairdresser had the same immunity as a court jester.
"Do it," she said.
WESTERHAM FALLS, MAINE
TWO WEEKS LATER.
Weeks of intensive training had started to leave their mark on Ian, and he liked it.
He sat on the edge of the bed, inspecting his biceps in the mirror, left then right. He wasn't sure if it was down to more muscle or less body fat, but they looked bigger. He hadn't really noticed the change before the last couple of days. Then – bang – there it was, a transformation that had nothing to do with morphing.
He'd worked for this. He'd earned it in the gym and on dawn runs and by struggling cross-country with a rucksack that was half his own bodyweight. That was what mattered. He'd made it happen himself, and that meant he was in control of his life for the first time. He wanted women to look at him the same way that they looked at Rob. There were probably more important things in the world to aspire to, but right now Ian couldn't think of one.
Rob's right. It's down to me. I've just got to put in the effort.
If Ian could have erased everything in his memory before the day that Mike and Rob crashed into his life, he would have been satisfied with the hand that life had dealt him; no lies, no fears, no loneliness, and no recollection of losing Gran. All he would know was that he was different, but that he could make himself whatever he wanted to be, in every sense of the word.
But I don't have to keep reliving the crap. It doesn't matter where I came from or what I wasn't told.
This was probably what Gran had wanted for him, even if she couldn't possibly have imagined how it would happen. Did he need to find out who his biological parents were? They didn't even know he existed. They might never have met outside of a Petri dish. And then there was the surrogate mother – did he want to find her? He wasn't sure yet. Maybe it was better to keep pretending that David Dunlop was his great-grandfather.
There was no point in looking back, only forward. Beer, birds, BMW. All that stood between him and a normal life was a single photograph.
He hadn't morphed noticeably since that day in the sports store. Livvie had taught him a concentration technique that involved thinking about something simple — an apple, a pencil, anything he was familiar with — and imagining every aspect of it from its shape and colour to its smell and how it felt in his hand. It was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. It seemed impossible to keep his mind on the object and shut out the random thoughts that he usually didn't even notice. He built up his concentration by seconds each time, not minutes. Whenever he had a moment to himself, he practiced.
Today he visualized opening a parcel, hearing the rustle of brown wrapping paper, smelling the musty cardboard, and letting nothing else intrude. He could only manage to immerse for short bursts. But he'd begun to recognise that cut-off sensation that told him he'd disconnected from the world around him and had forced his brain to do something different.
Damn: he'd slipped out of the trance again. He felt like he'd woken from a nap. Next time, he'd memorize his face and try to see every pore, freckle, and hair, and hope that it somehow linked all those weird reactive cells to the map he was forming in his brain.
If I morph, I need to know how to get back to the way I looked before. Everything depends on that.
He poked his biceps again to make sure he wasn't imagining the improvement, then went downstairs. The house was silent except for the faint backdrop of fridge, aircon, and clock noises. It was his turn to clean the kitchen. Chores were part of the natural order of things, something he'd done for as long as he could remember, and even Mike had his cleaning duties. Manual work did you good and kept you grounded, Mike said. Ian scoured the sink and polished the steel surfaces on the range. It didn't matter why chores were good for you. They just had to be done.
"You're going to make some girl a great husband."
Livvie made him jump. He was so engrossed that he didn't hear her walk in. "I thought you were working."
"No, I escaped. I'm going to treat myself to a trip to the garden centre. Coming? We can have a coffee there."
Ian's idea of a garden centre was the feed store in Athel Ridge, and they didn't have a coffee bar, just soda on the cash desk. "Only if I can pay," he said,
expecting her to stall him.
Livvie beamed. "That's the best offer I've had all week. Let's go."
Ian was quietly thrilled. He'd been upgraded from problem kid to responsible adult. He transferred some bills to his wallet and prepared to pick up the tab for a woman for the first time in his life. Livvie took the Volvo and drove west through some picture-postcard towns and a beautiful wild landscape.
"Now that's why I need to spend less time in the studio," Livvie pulled over to the side of the road and lowered the tinted windows to look out across a valley. "I've had full spectrum light installed to ward off cabin fever, but it's still like working down a mine."
Ian was in awe of her. She had a no-nonsense way about her, very much like Gran. There was probably a more flattering way of saying that but he hadn't worked it out yet.
"You never talk about what you do," he said.
"Well, live interpretation for businesses is pretty dull, and the government work tends to be sensitive material. Mike and Rob do the really interesting stuff."
"Were you angry when I showed up?"
Livvie shrugged and started the car again. "Stunned, but not angry. And you didn't have a choice."
"Mike and Rob can be pretty scary."
"Funny, I still think of Mike as a harmless, over-friendly Labrador. I sleep better knowing Rob's watching his back."
Ian could only see Mike as a soldier, a real man who fought real wars and saved – or took – lives, someone he respected enormously. It was hard to imagine him needing protection.
"Can I ask something personal?"
"Sure."
"When you met Mike, did you know who he was?"
"Did I know he was so rich? Or did I know who his father was? Neither. He didn't tell me for months. I was pretty annoyed when he did. I was only after his body."
Ian's diagnosis of women was confirmed. They were terrifying, powerful, judgemental creatures. They ran the world. He'd never be able to get one to take him seriously.
"He's a really nice guy." Ian searched for a word. "Modest."
"Oh, Leo made sure of that. Mike and Charlotte had a strict upbringing. They had to work for everything and save up from their allowance if they wanted something special. They even had to clean their own rooms and call the staff sir and ma'am. No cosseting at all. They got a lot of love, but they definitely weren't spoiled. It was all duty and discipline." Livvie was speeding along, obviously happy to talk. "Leo detests rich brats. He thinks they should be sent to gulags until they shape up. Or shot. Or both."
It explained everything about Mike and why he was so anxious to serve. Ian hadn't met Charlotte yet. His only window on her was Mike's occasional comments about the Alien Queen.
"Is that why Mike doesn't have many friends?"
Livvie nodded. "He feels safe with regular people. But when they find out who he is, they get scared."
"Rob's not scared of him."
"Ah, Rob operates on another plane of existence." Livvie smiled to herself, all vivid white teeth. "If you want to see how the normal rich live, that'd be Charlotte and Jonathan and their Midwich Cuckoo kids. Mike can't cope with all that. Or Machiavellian politics. He needs everything to be noble, uncomplicated, and transparent."
Gran had always said there was no such thing as a normal family, just degrees of weirdness. Ian wondered if he was settling into life with the Braynes relatively easily because they were so abnormal that he was just one more detail in a life that was completely off the charts. By the time they reached the garden centre, he and Livvie had discussed everything from Mike's deployment to Iraq to how she hated the hormone treatment she needed for every IVF cycle. It was like she'd been let out of solitary, and now she wanted to talk for the hell of it.
She knew a lot about orchids, too. It was almost magical to see something new through the eyes of a person who was passionate about it. She led him through the house plant section, naming fantastic orchids from purple Vanda coerulea that almost glittered in the light to tiny Masdevallia with miniature orange blooms like kites. Some had beads of liquid on their stems that looked like water, but sticky to the touch. When Ian licked his fingers, the sap tasted like syrup. He'd only seen pictures of orchids before. Now this whole new world was there to be touched and tasted. This was just a fraction of the things he never thought he'd see and do. Life suddenly felt exciting and rich with promise.
After a couple of hours' browsing and a coffee, they left with a box of orchid plants, a big copper planter, and bags of compost. The sky was heavy with storm clouds and the first spit of rain hit the windshield. Livvie chatted solidly all the way from the garden centre to the Porton exit, about sixty miles' worth of fascinating details about family, work, and the house. Ian watched the rhythmic sweep of the wiper blades as the headlights streamed towards him on the opposite side of the road.
Livvie glanced in her wing mirror, just casually at first, but then it became every few seconds. After driving with Rob, Ian thought that was perfectly normal, and some people were driving too fast and too close in the rain. But Livvie's conversation trailed off. She slowed down and kept checking the rear-view mirror.
"Go on, pass me," she muttered. "You think the outside lane's invitation-only or something?"
Ian tilted his head to check the wing mirror. "What's wrong?"
"Probably nothing." Livvie turned off earlier than he'd expected, ten miles from the Westerham exit. She was still looking in her wing mirror, then the rear-view, and back again. "Keep your head down."
"Livvie, what's nothing?"
"Okay, there's an Impala that's been on our ass for too long, and now he's turned off with us."
Ian's stomach knotted. "They can't have found me. Okay, they found the ranch. But they couldn't follow a jet."
"Relax. Nobody's going to get near you. They'll have to go through me first."
Ian had just started to feel okay, and now everything had pounced on him again with a vengeance. He could feel his scalp prickling.
Calm. Relax. Don't morph.
Livvie's jaw was set. "I'm going to stop in the most public place I can find," she said. "If that guy doesn't drive past, I'm calling the cops. Okay? Stand by to get his licence plate."
Ian was suddenly full of angry adrenaline instead of fear, ready to take a swing if anyone tried to lay a finger on Livvie. She shouldn't have to protect me. I should be looking after her. A gas station appeared ahead on the right. Livvie indicated to pull in, and a sudden flash of strobing light filled the Volvo's rear window.
Ian took a quick look. It was a dashboard-mounted blue light in the Impala.
"Oh, damn." Livvie sighed. "Unmarked cruiser. Don't worry, he's not after you. Not if he's for real."
She parked away from the pumps and switched off the engine. Ian looked over his shoulder. A state trooper got out of the unmarked car, put on his Smokey Bear hat, and walked towards them.
"If he's bogus, he'd be crazy to try anything here," Livvie said. "Too many cameras."
She lowered the window and put her hands on the steering wheel. Ian could hear the faint chatter of a police radio coming from the cruiser, which sounded real enough. The officer stood looking down at her, then dipped a little to glance at Ian.
"Good afternoon, ma'am. Do you know why I've stopped you?"
Livvie suddenly changed into a meek, polite little housewife that Ian had never seen before. "I'm afraid not, officer."
"You've got one tail light on, which means the other one's out."
Was that all? A tail light? Ian's pulse was pounding in his throat. Livvie shrugged, hands still on the wheel.
"Sorry, I didn't know that. My licence is in my purse, with my concealed carry permit." So that was what you had tell a cop if they stopped you, was it? "I have a Glock Twenty-Six in a carry box under my seat."
Ian knew she had a handgun, but he had no idea that she actually carried it. She didn't look at him as she reached for her purse and handed her documents to the trooper. The guy took a step ba
ck and checked something on his cell. Ian had never been stopped by a real traffic cop before. It was another element from a TV show that had stepped out of the screen into his real world.
"Reason for the concealed carry, ma'am?" the trooper asked.
"This is going to sound awful."
"No problem. Try me."
"My father-in-law's Senator Brayne. My husband's away frequently on deployment. I'm not saying that in a do-you-know-who-I-am kind of way. I'm just explaining why I feel the need for extra security."
"Very wise, ma'am." The trooper didn't bat an eyelash. "Do you mind if I look in the trunk?"
Livvie popped the lock. "Sure. Go ahead."
The trooper poked around in the back, shifting the box of orchids, then walked back to the driver's door. "Is everything else okay? You slowed down when you saw me behind you. You weren't speeding."
So that was why he was making a big deal of this. She'd triggered some instinct in him to check out the car. Ian's heart rate started to slow down again.
"I didn't know it was a patrol vehicle. I just wanted you to pass me." Livvie voice was a stranger's, small and scared. Ian was fascinated by her alter ego, Mrs Harmless. She was putting on a terrific act. "It's pretty scary for a woman if she thinks she's being followed."
She turned her head to look at Ian as if she was going to refer to him, but for a long heartbeat, she just froze. The look on her face said everything.
He must have morphed again. It was the worst possible moment, but then it always was.
But the cop didn't seem to notice. Maybe he was concentrating on Livvie. It was just like Joe or Sheriff Gaskin, though. If they thought they'd seen Ian change, they simply acted as if they didn't believe it, because things like that just didn't happen in their world. Livvie recovered instantly. Her voice dropped to an embarrassed whisper.
"Anyway, officer, you can imagine the kind of crazies we have to worry about."
The officer mouthed a silent ah and nodded. Ian couldn't decide if it was the Brayne name that had made him back off, but his tone changed.
"Yes, ma'am, I can indeed." He put his cell away. "The lights. It's probably just the fuse."