Too Perfect
Vex
Me: Stay out of trouble.
Dahlia: I’m not trouble.
Me: Love you, Dahl
Dahlia: Love you, Darling
I set down my phone and stare at the gym walls. Every instinct screams at me to go to Vegas. To be by her side, protecting her from the evils of the world. Instead, I’m going to pound on the speed bag until my arms feel like wet noodles and then work out some more.
She’s safe. Taylor’s men are some of the best in the world.
As much as I’m paying for the service, I can ask for updates whenever I want.
Me: Status update
Taylor: She’s in her suite, which is now on a locked floor with controlled access.
Taylor: There are 12 people with her. All were screened.
Dahlia’s safe .
That should calm me down, but it doesn’t. This is going to be my life for an entire week. A simple workout isn’t going to be enough to keep my mind calm.
Whatever Shock got himself into might help a little bit, but I’m going to need more than that.
A distraction.
Possibly a violent one.
I could spar with Payne.
Me: Wanna go a few rounds before our meet?
Payne: Sure.
Payne: Let me ask Imogene
Women. They change our lives so much. A month ago, Payne wouldn’t have hesitated to say yes to a round or two of sparring. Now he has to clear it with Imogene, and I wouldn’t even think of sparring if Dahlia was in my library.
Payne: Sounds good. My place or yours?
We both have well-equipped gyms.
Me: Yours.
No need to put Imogene out.
***
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I wrap my hands and nod towards where Imogene sits with a tablet in hand.
“She said she’ll be fine. That our training won’t bother her at all.” Payne doesn’t seem to believe the words even as he says them.
“We don’t pull our punches. What if I give you a black eye or something?” What I don’t need is a crying woman, glaring at me for the rest of my life.
“Imogene is stronger than you think. She’s got this.”
Hopefully, he’s right. I pull on my gloves and secure them .
Payne and I have done this so many times before, the dance takes longer as we search for a weak spot. Just to test the waters, I let Payne land the first blow. I’m going to feel that in the morning.
Imogene doesn’t even blink.
Good. I can relax and enjoy the fight.
***
“You guys do that a lot, don’t you?” Imogene sets down the tablet.
“Vex likes to beat me up on a regular basis.” Payne grins.
Payne hasn’t won a sparring match once, but he’s tied a few times. He just doesn’t have the heart of a killer. “I like to keep you in shape. Want to hit the mat?”
He looks at Imogene for a long moment.
She’s all smiles in a body that still looks skeletal from starvation.
“Sure.”
We pull off our gloves and shoes and move to the mat.
Payne has a bit of an advantage on the floor since he’s lighter than me.
He flips me onto the ground in no time. I let him get comfortable as I wait for an opening to turn the tide.
There it is, a small opening. I hook a leg around him and we swap places.
Payne grins as I drive a fist into his side.
“NO! Don’t hurt him.” Imogene flies across the room, landing on my back, pummeling me with her weak, little fists. “You can’t hurt her. I won’t let you hurt her. I won’t let you hurt me.”
And that ends us practicing for the day.
Payne scoots out from under me and squats down to Imogene’s eye level. “Immie Baby, Vex isn’t hurting me. You’re safe. You’re not with the monster anymore.”
Like that’s going to be enough to talk down this woman. She’s not hurting me. She doesn’t have enough strength yet to do anything significant, but it is messing with my head to have a crazy woman screaming at me and hitting me with her bony fists.
“Immie, open your eyes. You aren’t in the pit. You’re safe.” Payne moves closer.
“Stop hurting her.”
Imogene’s cries are worse than any blow Payne could ever strike.
“Immie, It’s Payne. You’re safe here. He’s dead. That monster can’t hurt anyone ever again.”
“Dead?”
“Dead.”
She stops moving and almost falls off my back. Payne scoops her up into his arms. I slowly inch away.
Should I walk away and give them some privacy?
Sudden movements might set her off again.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I attacked you.”
That was a very poor attempt, but admirable considering her weakened state.
“I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?”
Payne laughs. “You’d need a sledgehammer to hurt Vex. He’s built like a tank.”
Imogene couldn’t even pick up one, let alone swing it in a way that would hurt me, but we can pretend.
“Are you sure?” She stares at me.
“Positive. No harm done. But we can change that.”
“Huh?”
“Payne and I could teach you how to protect yourself.” After she puts a little muscle on her bones or else we’ll end up hurting her more than helping her.
She shakes her head at us. “Doesn’t work. I already took self-defense classes. Almost every woman living alone in Urbium takes them. They didn’t help.”
Payne grunts .
“What? You don’t think I can defend myself?”
“Vex wasn’t offering you a ‘self-defense’ class. He was offering to train you to fight. Those are two very different things.”
“Huh?” Her eyes move between the two of us like we’re speaking a foreign language.
“Self-defense classes teach you basic techniques to scare off an attacker. Vex taught me all the dirty tricks to survive a street fight.”
“Dirty tricks?”
“The dirtiest.” Payne nods.
“I’d like to learn. Maybe next time—”
“There won’t be a next time, Immie. No one is ever going to hurt you again. No one.”
“You can’t protect me all the time.”
Payne pulls her in closer. “I can and I will.”
And that’s my cue to leave them alone.
My phone alerts me that there’s a message from Dahlia as I walk into the bathroom of the gym.
Dahlia: Sitting by the pool missing you.
She sends me a photo of her by the pool in a dress, grinning at the camera.
Only Dahlia would be fully clothed by the pool. I smile down at her.
Why is there a tattooed arm next to her?
A man’s tattooed arm based on the muscle definition. A woman would need to be a bodybuilder to get those lines.
Taylor better be doing his job!
Me: Status update
Taylor: She’s by the pool with her friends.
Me: Why is there a man harassing her?
Taylor: What? My guys saw no harassment.
But he didn’t say there wasn’t a guy sitting next to her. I’m going to kill someone. Tear them apart with my bare hands. Make them regret even thinking about approaching my woman .
Taylor: Did Dahlia say she was being harassed?
Me: No.
But that doesn’t mean she isn’t being harassed.
Me: Who is sitting next to her? I want him gone.
Taylor: Can’t do that. He’s not bothering your woman. She’s safe.
There’s a man next to her. She isn’t safe.
Me: Get rid of him.
Taylor: Can’t do that. She’s safe.
My hands flex into fists, almost cracking my phone. If Taylor was here, I’d have put my fists into his face.
This is getting me nowhere. Maybe Dahlia will have some answers for me.
Me: Having fun?
Say no.
That’s selfish. I want her to be having fun, even though I want to keep all her laughter and smiles for myself to cherish them like the treasures they are.
Dahlia: Yeah. Most of us hit the pool. But a few of us are gossiping and getting words.
Me: Oh? Who’s there with you?
That didn’t even sound close to me wanting to get to know her friends.
Dahlia: Dylan, Harper, Fiona, and Daria are all allergic to the water like me.
How many men are in this little group of hers?
Dahlia: Oh… One of the other girls brought a guy. I’m not sure if they’re in a relationship, but they should be. He writes poetry and seems sweet.
Poetry?
I hate this guy already.
Me: You think it’s romantic for a guy to write poetry?
Dahlia: Every woman does.
Should I write her a poem?
Dahlia: But this guy is different. He reminds me of you.
WHAT?
Calm .
You are calm. Anger leads to mistakes and death.
Me: How so?
Dahlia: I think he’s a fighter of some sort. Could you check him out to make sure he’s a good guy? Daria is such a sweet innocent person. I don’t want him to hurt her.
I let out a sigh of relief. Dahlia isn’t interested in this guy. She’s looking out for her friend.
Me: Give me his name.
Dahlia: Colin Knight
There’s no need to look him up. I know Knight. He ran The Nest, a refuge for abused women and children, for a long time. I’ve brought enough women there to know he’s trustworthy.
Me: Your friend picked well.
Dahlia: You know him?
Me: I know of him.
Dahlia: Thank you, Darling.
The world settles into place. I love that woman.
***
“Where did you stash Imogene?” I ask as Payne walks into my office a few hours later.
“She’s in Barb’s office.”
“Barb isn’t a people person.” And that’s an understatement.
Payne shrugs. “The two of them seem to get along pretty well. Barb has visited her several times. Not always for medical stuff.”
That’s odd. Never try to understand a woman. “Shock should be here soon. Did he give you any clues about the trouble he’s gotten into?”
“None. But he seems even stranger than normal. ”
Shock and weirdness go hand and hand. “Do you think he’s gotten in trouble with the government again?”
“That will be a pain to fix up. Maybe we should move him to another country. Somewhere with no extradition treaty.”
“Those places don’t usually have the internet capabilities he needs.” Not that I haven’t thought about it many times before. “Maybe we should get him a babysitter.”
“Like we can find one that would have the slightest clue of what he’s doing.” Payne walks over to the window overlooking the club. The view is very similar in his own office.
“We could hand him over to Max. Let him handle Shock. Then outsource our needs.”
“You’d outsource that?”
“No.” But it’s tempting.
“Vincenti wouldn’t rat on us.” They’re liable to steal our marks, not report us.
“Whatever Shock did, we’ll deal with it.”
Payne has always been an idealist.
A knock sounds at my door. Shock pokes his head in. “Good, you’re here.” He carries in a bag, sets it on my desk, and takes a metal box out of it. “Put your phones in the box.” Shock unplugs my desktop computer and unplugs the television from the wall. “Do you have any other electronics in here?”
Definitely squirrely. I give Payne a look and he nods.
Whatever he’s about to tell us is worse than we even thought. Dahlia would ask if we’re spies. Which would be a fair question since this kind of feels like a spy movie at the moment. “No.” I drop my handful of phones in and Payne does the same.
Each phone does a different job.
Shock closes the lid on the box and pulls out another machine. “This should jam anyone trying to record us.” Then he pulls out a laptop and opens it up. “ None of what you’re seeing is live. This computer doesn’t have the tech to stay invisible, but it’s air-gapped, so no one will see what I’m about to show you.”
Is this going to be one of his techy rants that make no sense to plebeians like us? “What are you showing us?”
“I’m not sure yet, but it’s bad.” Shock starts to open files.
“Barb didn’t do anything bad.”
“No. But the people that had Barb as a baby might have.”
The screen fills with the image of one of those DNA testing companies. “You found her family?”
“No. Yes. Sort of. These companies are made to help people find out about their history. Since Barb didn’t want to do it, I took a hair follicle off of her brush and sent it to a private company under a fake name.”
“That’s wrong in so many ways,” Payne mutters, looking over Shock’s shoulder at the screen.
“It’s not wrong when it may have saved her life.” Shock hits another key.
That got real fast. “Talk to me.”
“As I was saying, since Barb didn’t volunteer for this, I was going to keep everything private. After I hacked into the private testing company’s site and got her information, I went to build a program that would back door information to me without anyone knowing.”
I can feel the but coming.
“But someone had already done that—”
“How does that have anything to do with Barb?” Payne leans forward.
“I’m getting there. The other hacker was looking for something very specific. Which just felt odd to me, so I did a little more digging. They’re looking for siblings. Identical siblings, to be exact.”
Did Shock find another pervert for us to deal with? But that wouldn’t have anything to do with Barb? Why didn’t he just say twins?
“The program was designed to pull the sibling data, then delete all records of them. Everything was supposed to be wiped from the system. ”
He’s bragging now. I don’t have time for Shock to bask in his own skills. “And?”
“I was able to restore the information; names, locations, DNA information, and with a little more research, I was able to get images of each person.”
“Why is this important? We don’t care about information theft.” I couldn’t care in the least about people who just put their information into the system.
“But we do care about murder.”
Points for dramatic delivery. “Are you telling me all the identical siblings are dead?” Payne asks what I’m thinking.
“Not all of them. Some have disappeared. There are missing persons reports on a few, but most were loners already. They just stopped paying their bills one day, and no one cared. I’ve sorted them into dead, missing persons, and just vanished.” Shock pulls up three sets of images.
Not everyone has a match. “Where are the twins?”
“That’s the thing. Their DNA says they are identical, but every one of these matching siblings had something different about them. They weren’t actually identical.”
Why would people look for identical siblings that aren’t identical? “How can that be? Is it a mistake on the computer’s part? Maybe it was a test they were running on their system.”
“Thought about that. It’s not. This wasn’t a test. The DNA doesn’t lie. These people are too perfectly matched not to be what’s considered identical. In each case, one single change was made to their DNA.”
“How do you even know that? Wouldn’t you need to be a geneticist to understand what all that means?” Payne steps away from the computer. “You’re a hacker, not a doctor.”
“But I can read. I can’t tell you what all of those individual genes mean. But I can tell you these two women have different colored eyes. And these three men have different hair colors. These three are all different heights.”
“And that can’t happen naturally?” I want a different explanation than where my brain is going. Something that doesn’t make my skin crawl .
“According to research, yes, but it’s extremely rare.”
But he doesn’t think that’s what happened. The dead bodies and missing people contradict natural causes. “Get back to Barb. How does this have anything to do with her?”
“Barb has an identical sibling.”
What? Barb has family?
Family that might get her killed.
“Which one is she?” Payne leans forward to search the images.
“She’s not dead or missing.” Shock clicks the button again and a woman with Barb’s face and brown hair pops up onto the screen.
“You prevented the match from happening.” I didn’t really need to ask that. Shock has a crush on Barb. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
Shock nods. “No information is getting sent about matches anymore, but if someone looks, it still appears to be working.”
“What’s really happening?” Payne stares at the screen with unblinking eyes.
“I’m collecting information on all the identical siblings.”
“And do you know who was running the program in the first place?” Because I’d like to ask them a few questions.
“No. All the information gets parked on a dark website. The only way to tell would be…”
To give them a name. And find them when they come to kill the person. “We can’t risk Barb like that.”
“How long is there between the name posting to that site and them disappearing?”
Don’t even think about it. “Payne.”
“It’s just a question.”
“Two weeks on average. But it can vary from a day or two to a month.”
There’s no consistency for time. “What about dates?”
“Checked that too. No common dates.”
“Day of the week?” Payne catches on to my thoughts.
“Slightly. All the deaths happened on a weekday. ”
That’s something to go on, but not much. “We can’t act yet. This could be anything from a secret government cover-up to a wacko with too much time on his hands.”
Payne raises an eyebrow at me.
Fine, the former is more likely. Who else would have money or desire some thirty years ago to experiment on people and want to cover it up now? “Barb is going to need protection until we figure out what we’re looking at.”
Shock shakes his head. “Most of that is already taken care of. Her ID was already fake. All I needed to do was change some dates and alter her face slightly.”
Will that be enough?
Will whoever this is come looking for her, anyway?
Shock was right to get squirrely.