The Double

“Get out of there!” yelled Calahan, so loud it hurt my ear.

I started moving. “What? What’s going on?” I reached the edge of the food court and merged into a crowd of shoppers. “Talk to me!”

“I found Christina’s mother,” said Calahan breathlessly. “She died four years ago.”

30

Hailey

I RACED into the restrooms and shut myself in a cubicle. “What the hell is going on?” I asked Calahan.

“Well, clearly Christina wasn’t coming here to meet her mom. It must be an errand for Konstantin. A delivery.”

I stared at the gift for a second. Then I sat down on the toilet and opened it up.

The whole thing was filled with stacks of $100 bills. I ran some rough math in my head. “There must be a quarter of a million here,” I croaked.

I could hear Calahan rubbing at his stubble. “Makes sense. Konstantin knows the FBI are watching him so he gets Christina to deliver it for him.”

“But why did Christina have it in her calendar as meeting her mom?”

Despite everything, I heard Calahan chuckle. “You’re adorable. You think she’s going to carry around a phone full of stuff like, ‘Meet arms dealer for lunch,’ and ‘Pay bribe to politician’?”

I flushed. I wasn’t cut out to be a criminal. Then I checked the time. “It’s noon,” I told Calahan. “I need to go to the meet.”

“What?! No!” I could hear the fear in his voice. “A quarter of a million dollars? This is something big. It could be dangerous!”

I stood up, trying not to let my legs shake. “That’s why I’m here, right? To find the something big. This could be what we need to bring down Konstantin.”

“You don’t even know who you’re meeting or what they look like!”

“We’ll just have to hope they recognize me.”

Before he could argue, I walked out of the restroom and back into the food court. I started threading my way between the tables, looking at every face. Could he be a criminal? Her? Them?

I felt a hand grab my wrist and tug. Before I knew what was happening, my ass was on a seat and I was staring at a slender, dark-haired guy across a table.

“Jesus, he said it would be gift-wrapped,” said the guy, nodding at the garish package. “I didn’t expect that.”

He grabbed the gift from me. And then, before I could speak, he was up and walking, pushing his way through the crowd. “He’s getting away!” I whispered to Calahan. “I have to follow him!”

“No! He’ll know there’s something wrong. I’ll try to get him on the mall security cameras.” I could hear him frantically pressing buttons and calling for help. “Shit! We don’t have agents in place in the parking lot. We thought you were just meeting your mom!” I waited, holding my breath. Then, “We lost him.”

I slumped in my seat. We had no idea who the guy was or what Konstantin had just paid him to do. We just knew that something big was happening and that meant the mission would take on a new edge. It wouldn’t be enough for me to passively observe, anymore. I’d have to find out what Konstantin was planning so we could use it to bring him down.

Just as I was developing feelings for him, I was going to have to betray him.

31

Hailey

CARRIE WANTED a conference call so I’d gone to the one place I knew I could be alone: the garden. I was sitting on the moss-covered tree trunk where Konstantin had found me and I’d found a new friend. Moments after I’d sat down, the biggest, fluffiest ginger cat I’d ever seen had emerged from the long grass like a miniature tiger. After just a few moments of cautiously nuzzling my hand, it had sprung into my lap. It was good cover: if a guard saw me mumbling from a distance, he’d assume I was talking to the cat. Plus, stroking it helped keep me calm and I needed that because the more I talked to my friends at the FBI, the more stressed I felt.

“Do you think you can ask Konstantin what the money was for?” asked Carrie in my earpiece.

I shook my head before I remembered she couldn’t see that. “No, that would make him suspicious. He doesn’t tell me anything. I was never meant to know what was in that box, I was just meant to hand it over.”

“We asked Christina,” said Calahan. “Unsurprisingly, she wouldn’t talk.”

That threw me for a second. Then it clicked that he was talking about the real Christina, the one in FBI custody. God, I’d started thinking of me as Christina.

“You’ll have to go digging,” said Carrie. “His laptop: there must be something in there.”

I froze and the cat scowled at me. I resumed my stroking. “The laptop’s impossible. It’s locked with his ring.” But it wasn’t just the risk that had made me tense.