Replica

There was no give in the Chairman’s voice—not that there ever was—and Nate knew his father’s mind was closed and sealed up tight. His father had disapproved of Kurt from the beginning, considering him unworthy of being a valet for any Executive, much less the Chairman Heir. If he saw a way to dispose of Kurt, he’d jump at it, whether Kurt was the killer or not.

Guilt niggled at Nate’s conscience. Kurt’s life in the Basement had been predictably ugly, but he was a natural-born survivor. He’d carved out a place for himself, and he’d been secure in it, no matter how unappealing it might seem to an Employee or an Executive. Nate had told himself he was doing Kurt a favor, rescuing him from that life. He’d been confident he could protect him, as long as they were careful. Had he been fooling himself all along?

“I’m telling you, you’ve got it wrong,” Nate said, wishing the third time could be the charm. “Bishop didn’t do it, and if you decide in advance that he did, you’ll never get the real killer.”

Nathaniel Sr. pushed back his chair, shaking his head. “I’m glad to see my son’s Replica is as naive and foolish as my son himself was.”

The paternal affection was overwhelming. Nate glared at his father’s retreating back. “I’m not as naive as you think,” he said. If his father truly knew him, he’d know just how far from the truth he was. Thanks to Kurt and repeated clandestine visits to the Basement—or Debasement, as its residents called it—Nate knew more about the ugly side of life than his father ever would. And someday, when the Chairmanship of Paxco passed to him, Nate was going to do something about it.

The Chairman didn’t even bother to acknowledge Nate’s words as he jerked open the conference room door and stepped out. Mosely stopped to give Nate a quick, sly smile over his shoulder before leaving. Nate refused to let the bastard see how much that smile chilled him.

He had to find Kurt before Mosely’s security team did.

* * *

No one had openly accused Nadia of having murdered Nate or of being an accomplice to his murder. From the moment the security team had come to her apartment and asked her to come to the station for questioning, they’d been unfailingly polite. She certainly couldn’t blame them for wanting to talk to her when she was apparently the last person to see Nate alive. But being questioned three times by three different officers made her feel very much like a suspect all the same.

She couldn’t be sure exactly how long she’d been at the station, except that it was a long time. There was no clock on the interview room wall, she wasn’t wearing a watch, and they’d confiscated her phone. They’d brought her lunch, and the door wasn’t locked, but she was under no illusion that she would be allowed to walk out.

Where were her parents? When the security officers had come to the house, her father had been at work, despite it being Sunday, but her mother had hugged her—an unusually affectionate gesture—and sworn they’d have her home in no time. But the moment they’d set foot in the station, Nadia and her mother had been separated, and she’d been alone ever since. Her understanding of proper legal procedure was slim, but Nadia thought that as a minor, she would have been allowed to have at least one parent with her at all times. The enforced isolation seemed like a very bad sign, and her imagination filled with images of dank prison cells and iron chains. Which was ridiculous, of course, but also no doubt what the security team wanted her thinking about.

Her cold had worsened overnight, her throat painfully raw and her sinuses so stuffy her head felt like it would explode. She wanted desperately to crawl into bed and sleep for a week. Her requests for cold medicine were ignored, though one of the nicer officers had brought her a box of tissues and a trash can.

The lights in the room dimmed sometime in what Nadia guessed was the late afternoon, and her heart fluttered. Creating a Replica took so much power it could cause a citywide blackout if not managed properly. She hoped the dimming lights meant Nate’s Replica was being created.

Tears stung her eyes as the stark, awful reality slapped her in the face yet again. Nate was dead. Sure, there would be a Replica, and it would be just like him. But it wouldn’t be Nate. Not the Nate she’d known all her life. Not the Nate who was her best friend, who was the only person in the world who didn’t care about her social standing or her political value. Worse, the last conversation she’d had with him had been a bitter argument. She’d been so angry with him last night.… And now he was gone.

How could anyone believe she had anything to do with Nate’s death? Couldn’t they see she was heartbroken?

She couldn’t possibly fall asleep, not sitting in this cold, stark interview room, and not with her constant need to grab for the tissue box, but she did drowse a bit, her mind wandering. Unfortunately, it didn’t wander anywhere she wanted to go. This extended stay at the security station and the veiled suspicion that she might have had something to do with Nate’s death would cast a pall on her and on her family, no matter how unfair. Her parents were going to be furious with her for wandering off with Nate last night and giving the authorities reason to detain her. Perhaps that was why they weren’t working harder to get her freed, or at least get her an attorney. When she’d asked for one herself, she’d been told an attorney wasn’t necessary because she wasn’t under arrest.

Nadia jumped when the door to the interview room squealed open. She wondered if the squeaky hinges were part of an insidious torture technique designed to drive detainees mad. If so, it was working.

Her heart gave a nasty thud when she saw who had entered the room: Dirk Mosely.

Nadia had had little contact with Paxco’s chief of security, but she’d heard the rumors, and they weren’t pretty. A middle-aged man of average height, with a bald spot and just a hint of a paunch, Mosely didn’t look particularly dangerous. If anything, he looked like a mild-mannered accountant, the kind of person who went through life barely being noticed by those around him. But if Nadia were to believe even half of the whispered stories, he was a monster, one barely controlled by the tight leash the Chairman kept on him.

Nadia’s nose started to run; she grabbed for the tissue box, using that moment of distraction to pull herself together. She was the daughter of Gerald Lake, one of Paxco’s most powerful Executives. Mosely wouldn’t dare do anything to harm her. Not unless she were guilty of a crime, which she wasn’t.

“I hear you’ve been under the weather,” Mosely said as he pulled out a chair and sat at the table across from her.

Nadia blew her nose and tossed the tissue into the trash can, which was already halfway full. She figured that was answer enough to his inane observation. She pulled another tissue out, knowing she’d need it sooner or later.

“I’m sorry for the … inconvenience,” Mosely said, sounding not the least bit sorry. “However, you were the last person to see Nathaniel alive, and you could hold the key to us capturing his killer.”

She shook her head, deathly tired of all this. “I’ve been over this at least three times,” she said. “Yes, I went off alone with Nate, and yes, we argued.”

“About what?”

Nadia was certain Mosely had already read the transcripts of her last three interviews and knew the answer she’d given. She was also certain he’d insist she answer again. “He wanted to take more liberties than I would allow.” Which was sort of true, if you thought about it, though not in the way Mosely and his officers would take it.

“Surely you knew he planned to take liberties when you left the party with him.”

“Yes, I knew.” As had everyone else who’d noticed the two of them leaving the room. “I just didn’t know exactly what liberties.”

“So what liberties did our Chairman Heir have in mind?”

Nadia felt a chill of alarm. No one else had asked her that, having made natural assumptions of what Nate was after. She had the immediate suspicion that Mosely already knew more than he should, that he might be testing her honesty. He was said to be uncanny in his ability to tell when people were lying, which meant she had to stick as close to the truth as possible.

“I don’t see that that’s any of your business,” she said. “It’s personal.”

“The Chairman Heir was murdered,” Mosely said, staring at her intently as if he thought she would burst out with a confession at any moment. “Everything about last night is my business.”

“I’m not answering any more questions without a lawyer present.”

Mosely smiled, but there was a hard—and strangely self-satisfied—glint in his eye. “Very well,” he said,