Copyright 2016 Fritzen Media. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Artwork – © 2016 L.J. Anderson of Mayhem Cover Creations
Cover Model – Mirish – www.mirish.deviantart.com
Prologue
The kid they sent to meet me was nervous. He was pale, sweaty, nearly shaking with anxiety. He couldn’t have been older than eighteen. I doubted that he had done anything like this before—not alone, at least. He was wearing a baseball cap, extremely dark sunglasses, and had his hood up, obscuring his face in dark shadows.
In July.
In Miami.
The kid couldn’t have been more obvious if he had a neon sign flashing the words HEY, I’M HERE TO MEET A SPY.
I ground my teeth in frustration before calming my nerves. The kid was probably just a cutout, someone paid to meet a contact in public. The idea was for the parties involved to hide behind multiple layers of people, so that they could maintain deniability.
It was also so to protect them if the contact was violent.
I don’t really have that problem. I’m my own cutout; I almost never look like myself anyway. And it would take more than these guys could put together in a public café to kill me. You know, probably. I hadn’t really tested it.
I squashed down my professionalism for a moment, stuck it in the back of my head, and ambled over to the kid. He sat rigidly in his chair, hardly moving, his eyes darting left and right, desperately tracking both available exits and the people around him. They eventually focused on me, and I saw his eyes widen behind the tinted lenses of his sunglasses.
I paused a few feet away from the chair across from him. “Sagittarius,” I said quietly.
I saw his eyes widen even further. They must have been in danger of falling right out of his head.
“G-Gemini,” he stuttered. He gestured weakly at the seat across from me, and I sat down slowly, taking care to keep my hands in full view. I didn’t want the kid to vapor-lock on me. I placed my palms on the table, and looked at my contact.
“You’re Deadhead, right?” the kid stammered.
That was what they called me in the industry. You have to have some kind of name in order to build a brand, you know. My real name was Rick Torin. You don’t just give out that kind of information, though. With my abilities, all I needed was an alias, and I was all but uncatchable. I didn’t even like the Grateful Dead.
But the kid should not to be so cavalier about divulging details in public, so I simply stared at him for a few moments, not moving a millimeter. I wasn’t actively trying to scare the poor kid, but I had a reputation to uphold.
“You have something for me,” I said. I kept my voice low, steady.
The kid gulped audibly, then reached into the front pocket of his sweatshirt. He withdrew a plain manila folder, and placed it on the table. With a single finger, he slid it across the surface toward me.
I accepted it with casual professionalism, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you meet a rookie (or anyone else, for that matter), and flipped it open. Inside was a series of photographs of a facility, a group of buildings about four stories tall, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. An aerial photograph showed the overall layout of the compound, like that even mattered to someone like me.
Behind the photographs was a small pile of documents, detailing the kind of security I could expect to encounter at the target. There wasn’t a letterhead on any of them, which was typical. Any corporation or outfit who hired me wouldn’t want to have any kind of easily identified paper trail attached to the job.
“What’s the target?” I asked quietly.
“Blackstone,” the kid mumbled.
“Mercenary outfit?”
He jerked his head in disagreement. “Private security and consultation.”
“Mercenary outfit,” I said with a snort. “There’s nothing in here about what you need.”
“Client list and bidding information. Should be on one of the higher-ups’ computers.”
“Deadline?”
“Ten days. That’s all they told me.”
I nodded my head. “My fee?”
“Cash. Black valise under the table.”
I groaned quietly. “You might as well have stuck it into a big burlap sack with a dollar sign on it.”
“Is… is that a problem?”
I shook my head. “I’ll see to it.” I reached down and snagged the handle of the valise, then rose. “Go order something. Sit here for a few minutes. Drink it slowly. Then pay and leave.”
He nodded his assent, swallowing loudly again.
“Relax, kid. You did fine. Next time don’t pick something so conspicuous. And for God’s sake, don’t wear a hood in the middle of July. Or in Miami. And you might want to consider some kind of anxiety medication.”
The kid laughed nervously. I stared at him evenly for a few moments, then sniffed and turned away.
I headed into the bathroom of the café, near the back of the building. I went in, checked to make sure that it was empty, then slid into one of the stalls, locking it behind me. I opened the clasps on the valise, and peeked inside.
Five stacks of hundred dollar bills lay at the bottom. The case was absurdly large for its cargo. I had no idea what the kid was thinking. Maybe he thought that fifty grand would take up a lot more space than it did. Sighing at the ignorance of youth, I took the money out, flipping through each stack casually, making sure that nobody had slipped in a ten to try and skim something off the top. Then I simply stuck the cash into the pockets of my jeans. It was tight, but they fit without anything sticking out.
I left the valise on the toilet, unlocked the stall, and moved over to the mirrors above the sink. I gazed at my reflection, which actually told a lie that nobody would expect, and concentrated. Ripples slowly began flowing over the surface of my skin, undulating waves that were almost hypnotic. As I watched, my face began to change.
The eyes went first, shifting from a rather striking blue to a dull, unremarkable brown. They drew slightly closer together, and my brow sank by half an inch. My nose narrowed, the bulge at the bridge shrinking noticeably. My hair grew about three inches, shifting from a bright blonde to a dark brown. My ears shrank, too, and slid up the sides of my skull a bit. My chin, which I had kept strong and intimidating, narrowed, weakening.
The rest of my body followed suit, and in a matter of seconds, I shrank five inches, my arms losing the tough, corded muscle I had kept for the benefit of anyone looking. I kept my feet the same size so I didn’t have to change shoes, though.
If this seems weird, then it should. There aren’t a whole lot of people like me. Skinchangers, people who can change their bodies at will, who can become anyone or anything that can be conceived, are few and far between. Aside from my family, I knew a handful of others, people who were part of a small community across the country. We aren’t really sure why we can do what we do, though my parents always said it had to do with our Native American heritage.
Honestly, I don’t really care how it works or why I can do it. All I know is what I can do with it. It made me one of the most effective freelance espionage agents in the world. With enough planning, I
was able to simply walk into anywhere I wanted to go, and if that didn’t work, I could sneak in and out with nobody being the wiser.
Now I had a new job to do. The client was probably some kind of rival mercenary company to Blackstone if they wanted a list of their customers and bidding information. The only thing they could do with the data they wanted was undercut Blackstone and steal their contracts. It was no skin off my nose, so long as nobody got hurt.
I bent down and rolled up the cuffs of my jeans, which hung too low now that I had shrunk a few inches. I unbuttoned my shirt and tossed it into the trash can, keeping only a gray, unremarkable (and unlikely to be remembered) undershirt. Then, money in my pocket, I left the bathroom and stepped into the hot Miami sun.