Chapter 11 #2
“Dr. Harrison Copeland, Director of Copeland Laboratories. Best neuroscience research center on the west coast. Sometimes the best in the country, depending on which journal you read.”
Sometimes they beat Bellrose Institute.
Sometimes they don’t.
Which is only one of several reasons I don’t tell him my last name.
“Believe it or not, I’m happy to know you do your research,” he says with the faintest of impressed smiles.
“And it was enough to know you’re either extremely competent or extremely terrifying. Possibly both. I’m still collecting data.”
“I see.”
I drop my tool bag with a soft thud and glance around again, cataloging sight lines, structural seams, any other exits like through the private pool. Habit or survival or obsession. Pick your poison.
“So.” I clap my hands together once. “You said you wanted full internal coverage. Discrete. No visible hardware. Local and remote access. Encrypted. The full paranoid package.”
“I prefer prepared. And, yes. Everywhere except the bedroom.”
“Ah.” I wink. “Got it, Doc.”
I try not to think too much about his reasons for that, about what he gets up to in that bedroom. Harrison Copeland is attractive, like ridiculously attractive. Assertive, in control. Once upon a time, he would’ve been my type. Not anymore.
I used to love bottoming and submitting and crying and begging and hurting and—
Ahem.
But ever since…
Well, let’s just say I don’t anymore.
That part of me will always belong to him even though he’s gone.
Leaning down, I pull my tablet out of my bag. Harrison watches while I bring up the floor plan he sent earlier. I added a few suggestions.
“We’ll start in the main living space. You’ve got several vulnerabilities. Glass is beautiful but also a nightmare. Anyone with a decent scope and too much free time could learn a lot about your routine.”
Harrison picks up a small remote off an end table and presses a button. Blackout curtains extend from the corners of the room and stretch the length of the wall.
I shrug. “Problem solved.”
We move through the condo together while I talk and he listens. Occasionally, he asks a question that proves he’s been thinking several steps ahead. I adjust placements as we go.
Once all the decisions have been made, we start the installation with the living room.
He provided a ladder like I requested, and I climb it nearly all the way to the ceiling.
I slide the first microcamera into a recessed seam in the oak wood paneling, my hands moving automatically. Measure, anchor, test.
Harrison stands below, hands in the pockets of his slacks, silent and observant. It should be unnerving, but it isn’t. I’ve had worse audiences.
Still, every time I glance down and catch those gray eyes, my brain does something stupid, an annoying little stutter. A ghost of recognition.
I focus harder.
Work. Just work.
We move to the hallway, and I climb the ladder again.
“You’re not going to ask?”
I consider Harrison’s question while I install the next camera. People usually expect me to be curious about the jobs they hire me for, and I am. But…
“I think I have enough going for me that I don’t need to add insufferably nosy to the list,” I answer honestly. “I try to mind my own business as best I can. But if you’re in a sharing mood…”
He doesn’t hesitate.
“What would you do if I told you reincarnation is real?”
My foot slips on one of the steps of the ladder, and it wobbles.
“Fuck!”
Harrison steps forward calmly and steadies it.
“Thanks,” I mutter, my heart still in my throat.
I continue working, trying to come up with a response different than the typical, I’d say you’re insane. What the fuck are you supposed to say to the man who just casually brought up reincarnation as calmly as one would the weather?
“Reincarnation as in dying and coming back in your next life as a cockroach or…”
“Not a cockroach. But, yes.”
“So what? Is this some case of you having fucked over someone in your past life and now they’re out to get you?”
He chuckles. “Not too far off. Let’s just say there’s someone out to get the man I care about. I need more than just surveillance. I want to ruin him.”
Ruin him.
Not kill, not stop, not expose.
Ruin.
Yeah, I know exactly how that feels.
I also know what an opportunity looks like…
“Then I’m your guy.”
As I continue working, Harrison fills me in on the exact nature of the job so that I can do everything I need to effectively. I already signed an NDA for him, so he tells me everything. And I mean everything.
And, apparently…
Reincarnation is very real.
It sounds fucking wild. I can’t help but think he is a little insane, but everything he says sure does make it sound true. I guess I’m openminded enough to believe in the supernatural or metaphysical or whatever the fuck you want to call it.
For a moment, I think about him.
Could he have been reincarnated?
Then Harrison tells me the person has to take some drug his father created in their past life in order to remember who they were in the next.
That rules out that possibility.
Harrison’s father was the one originally studying reincarnation and who he inherited Copeland Laboratories from.
The man who Harrison is so totally obviously gone for is apparently a reincarnated soul and also a neuroscientist. Well, he’s a graduate student majoring in neuroscience. But whatever. Nerds are nerds.