REPLICAS AREN’T PEOPLE.
ABOMINATION!
THE DEAD SHOULD STAY DEAD!
YOU WILL BURN IN HELL!
He suspected some of the stuff they were screaming and chanting was even worse, though he couldn’t make out the words. The protest was peaceful enough, and there was no sign that the crowd wanted to fight past the barricade and rush the limo, but their anger was a palpable force. Nate tried to look straight ahead and ignore it all, but it was still a shock to the senses.
Nate was used to being well liked. Even his scandalous behavior was usually treated as roguish charm by the press and the public. The vehemence of the crowd’s anger was more than a little unsettling, though perhaps he should have expected it. Even he had to admit that Replicas were a bit disturbing. The idea that anything he remembered in his entire life actually happened to someone else was going to drive him insane.
It was well past dark by the time he finally escaped and was able to drop the forced smile he’d been wearing all day. He still struggled with the idea that someone had actually stabbed him to death the night before. He could be an asshole sometimes, he knew that, but generally that wasn’t a crime punishable by death.
His bodyguards performed a thorough examination of his penthouse suite before allowing Nate to enter, but once he was inside, they retreated to the vestibule and he was finally able to close the door on the outside world. He had moved into the penthouse on his eighteenth birthday, a little more than six months ago. His father thought his eagerness to move out from under the same roof had been an act of rebellion, and it had. But more importantly, it had granted Nate the only modicum of privacy he was ever likely to have.
His knees feeling suddenly weak, his chest tight, Nate helped himself to a tumbler of expensive whiskey, closing his eyes and savoring the smooth burn as the alcohol slid down his throat. Technically, he was under the legal drinking age, but no one was going to refuse to sell to the Chairman Heir. His hands were shaking, his heart pounding. The pain and the panic he’d been fighting all day tried to swamp him as he finally had a chance to face them without an audience.
Nate gulped the rest of his whiskey, not caring that it was supposed to be sipped. He’d never developed a connoisseur’s palate, despite the expensive tastes he was expected to cultivate, and he didn’t make much of a distinction between the finest aged single malt and rotgut. They both contained alcohol, and that was all that mattered. He smiled tightly, thinking how his father sneered at his lowbrow tastes. The Chairman considered him to be about as cultured as a Basement-dweller, and Nate took pride in it.
The whiskey helped soothe away the panic attack, and Nate paced in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that fronted his living room, looking out at the twinkling lights of the city. He had a breathtaking view of what everyone still called the Empire State Building, despite the fact that it had been officially renamed the Paxco Headquarters Building. Usually, he appreciated the view, but tonight he was struck by how vast and dangerous the city was.
Kurt was out there somewhere, alone, hunted. Nate put his hand on the glass and closed his eyes, wishing he could sense Kurt’s presence, wishing some magic would flow into his body and show him where to find him. Surely, Kurt would contact him eventually, would reach out for the help only someone of Nate’s station could offer. All Nate had to do was wait and be ready when the time came.
He’d feel a lot more ready if he had some concrete plan for how he was going to help Kurt when he found him. Obviously, he would have to find some way to smuggle him out of Paxco. Even if Nate could find the real killer, Kurt would never be safe in Paxco again. He was supposed to be presumed innocent, but that wasn’t how things worked in the real world, and the stain would never wash off.
“Hurry up and contact me,” Nate whispered, as if willing Kurt to do it would actually make it happen.
Kurt had friends in the Basement, Nate reminded himself. Well, maybe calling them “friends” was a bit on the generous side, but he had connections. People who’d be willing to hide him and protect him from Mosely’s security forces, as long as he had money.
As soon as the thought hit him, hope surged in Nate’s chest. To survive in the Basement when he was being hunted, Kurt needed money. And Nate knew exactly where he could have gotten his hands on what he needed if he’d been daring enough to try for it.
Setting his empty glass down, he closed the drapes to protect from any unwanted watchers, then crossed to the bar with its impressive array of bottles and decanters. The floor of the bar was rich green marble, but the bar itself was of carved mahogany. Mahogany doors hid a minifridge from view, and beside the fridge was a decorative carved panel that looked like solid wood.
Nate felt along the sides of the panel until he found the little metal protuberance, then pushed. Something clicked, and the panel came loose in his hands. He laid the panel on the floor behind the bar, then peered into the thin vertical compartment the panel had hidden.
Ordinarily, the compartment held stacks of neatly banded hundred dollar bills. Real dollars, not company scrip. Scrip was the currency of choice for all legal transactions, and your ordinary Employee never laid eyes on a real dollar bill. But if you were going to spend any time in Debasement, you wanted the real thing. Oh, the black marketeers and sundry criminals in Debasement were perfectly happy to relieve you of your scrip, in epic quantities. But if you had real dollars, you could buy just about anything your heart desired. Without any official record of the transaction.
Nate, in his official capacity as Chairman Heir, had access to dollars that would make any Basement-dweller’s eyes gleam with greed, and he’d been squirreling them away ever since he’d gotten old enough to understand their significance. He and Kurt had always tapped into that supply whenever they’d made their illicit trips to Debasement together, so Kurt knew exactly where the stash was hidden.
His eyes told him that the hidden compartment was empty, but, like an idiot, Nate had to reach in there and feel around anyway. But no, there was not a single dollar bill left in the compartment. Which was good news. It meant that Kurt had enough money to buy his way out of Paxco. Human smuggling was big business in the Basement, and Kurt would know just who to contact.
The less heartening news was that Kurt hadn’t left anything for Nate. No note, no good-bye, no explanation. Kurt was a beginner at reading and writing—skills that weren’t highly prized in the Basement—but Nate had been steadily teaching him. Kurt could have managed a note, even if it would have been clumsily written and riddled with spelling errors.
For half a second, Nate wondered if he was being the most naive human being on the face of the planet. To anyone but Nate, the theft of all those dollars with no explanation would be evidence of the most damning kind.
Was there a chance Kurt was guilty?
Nate dismissed the thought. He didn’t care what anyone else thought. He knew Kurt, and Kurt hadn’t done this. He’d taken the money, but Nate could hardly blame him for that. Every second he’d spent at the apartment would have increased the danger that he would get caught. So Nate couldn’t hold it against him that he hadn’t taken the time to write out a letter of explanation.
But the thought that Kurt was now forever out of his reach, doomed to live the rest of his life in hiding, sat heavily on Nate’s shoulders. As did the realization that without Kurt’s account of what had happened on the night of his murder, Nate might never know who had really killed him.