“I know.” Mustafa shrugged. “I tried to call you, but you never answer. I thought you moved away.” He was aware Jack lived in the area because she was usually quick to pick up her messages, but he never knew precisely where.
“That’s right.”
“Here.” The Turk shoved the laundry ticket into her hand and turned to go back to his shop.
Jack didn’t look at the stub before she stuffed it into her pocket. “If my friend drops by again, tell him I died,” she called after Mustafa.
“About time,” he replied, and disappeared inside.
Jack went to the kitchen the moment she got to her apartment. Determined to burn the stub, she pulled it from her pocket and grabbed the matches she kept on the counter for the gas stove. She could have tossed it, but she was in the mood for a dramatic ending. She was about to torch the message when she saw the number written on it. It didn’t ring a bell, but what Pigeon had written beneath it did. BIG MONEY.
Yuri Dratshev, the Neanderthal of a Russian mob boss, was trying to reach her. The last time she’d taken a job from him was to find Walter Owens, the serial killer who had once kidnapped Dratshev’s daughter, Nina. Nina had managed to escape, but when Owens resurfaced years later, Dratshev sought Jack out and agreed to pay her three-million-dollar price tag to deliver his head on a platter. Jack did the job and even let the mob boss keep the last half of the payment. She had her own reasons for wanting Owens dead; his last kidnap victim was Cassady. After that job, she’d vowed to stay away from her previous life and everyone in it.
She was about to burn the stub when something stopped her, perhaps morbid curiosity for what was going on in the netherworld. She shoved the number back into her pocket and set about gathering up what she needed so she could get home to Cassady.
*
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Ryden still did a double take every time she looked in a mirror, unable to recognize herself now that the transformation was complete. Once the swelling and bruises were gone and she’d gotten the contacts that changed her green eyes to dark brown, her resemblance to the president was uncanny in its perfection. She was at least grateful that the person she’d been chosen to double was a striking, elegant-looking woman and not someone with looks even more plain-Jane average than those given to her at birth.
Training her to emulate Elizabeth Thomas convincingly, however, was proving much more time-consuming and difficult than even the surgeries themselves. After a month of practice, she wasn’t doing too bad mimicking the president’s slight Maine accent and patterns of speech, but her own vocabulary was radically different than that of the Harvard-educated Thomas. Thomas used a lot of big words Ryden didn’t even know the meaning of, and never cursed—something she herself did with even more regularity than she realized until Tonya kept correcting her.
Learning Thomas’s mannerisms was difficult as well. It was more about learning what not to do than about perfecting what to do. The president practiced excellent etiquette—no elbows on the table, no interrupting people when they were talking, and so on, things Ryden seemed to do constantly without thinking. She also had to break her tendency to run her hands through her hair or raise her voice when she was frustrated or stressed, and instead adopt Thomas’s calm, reserved demeanor in every crisis. Ryden gestured constantly with her hands when she was talking, something Thomas rarely did.
The hardest thing to master, however, was Thomas’s erect posture and the way she walked. Ryden had lived her life in tennis shoes whereas Thomas wore high heels, and she looked as ungainly and awkward as she felt even after weeks of practice.
The single plus in the whole situation, if there was one, was that she was eating like a fiend and they were providing her with all of her favorite foods. She had to gain a few pounds to better match the president’s weight, and since Ryden had always had a fast metabolism, that meant she was consuming four or five big meals a day.
She heard a car door slam outside—Tonya had arrived for today’s lesson—so she switched off the video she’d been watching, a compilation of recent public appearances by the new president. Ryden had seen so many hours of footage she had at least a solid understanding of Thomas’s viewpoints on nearly every subject possible, and she’d grown to admire the woman’s poise and ability to quickly articulate her thoughts and opinions. She’d first thought it impossible to ever match the president’s eloquence, but Tonya had assured her that once she was put into position, someone would script everything she would say in public. The one thing going for her was her excellent ability to memorize.
“How are we today, Madam President?” Tonya said by way of greeting when she came through the door. Ryden hadn’t heard her real name since Tonya and two men in suits had driven her, under cover of night, from the private clinic to a secluded home outside Arlington, Virginia. Tonya came and went, but the two men remained to make sure she didn’t leave or try to contact someone.
She had already corrected her slouch at the sound of Tonya’s approach. “I’m very well, thank you. What is my schedule for today, Tonya?” she replied in Thomas’s Maine accent.
Tonya smiled her approval. “One of your first public appearances will be at a formal dinner, so we’re going to dress you appropriately and teach you the proper utensils, glasses, and so on for each course.” She glanced at her watch. “But first, your patron wants another update on your progress. She should be calling any moment.”
Patron. Tonya always called her that, but Ryden thought of her as the bitch who’d set her up and gotten her into this predicament. She’d learned the sex of her mysterious blackmailer a couple of weeks earlier, when the woman had first checked in via Tonya’s cell to see how the lessons were going.
She still knew nothing else about the woman. Not her name, or location, or even why she was doing this. Ryden only knew her voice and attitude: icy, ruthless, and terrifying. The first time she’d called, Ryden had asked why she’d been singled out for this nightmare, and she literally begged to be set free.
The woman just laughed. She’d calmly told Ryden that she was in far too deep to back out now, and any premature exit from this plan would result in her sudden and gruesomely painful death.
When Tonya’s phone went off, Ryden jumped. Tonya put the ice bitch on speakerphone.
“How is our student doing?”
“Since we spoke last, she’s mastered all the names and faces in her briefing list,” Tonya reported. “And is well familiar with the full agenda we’ve given her. We’re down to the final small social niceties and protocol she’ll need to master for official functions.”
“Excellent. We’re set to make the substitution in two days,” the reptilian voice replied. “Madam President?” Whenever ice bitch used the formal address for Thomas, it always sounded somehow condescending.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m here,” Ryden replied, careful to perfectly mimic Thomas’s accent and intonation.
“Of course you are, dear. Where else would you be?” Her laughter was as chilling as her voice.
*
Washington, D.C.
Two days later, February 24
The crowd amassed at the historic Jefferson Hotel for the posh Democratic National Committee fund-raiser included a host of Hollywood celebrities, but Elizabeth Thomas was still the star of the event. After two hours of nonstop handshakes and picture taking with top contributors to the party’s coffers, she slipped out of the cocktail-hour preliminaries to change for the four-thousand-dollar-a-plate formal dinner. The hotel manager had provided her the expansive Thomas Jefferson suite on the top floor for just that purpose.