A Billion Echoes
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Free book offer
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Free book offer
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Long Dark Night Teaser
One
Keep Reading
Thank you
A Billion Echoes
Kindle Edition
© 2017 Janci Patterson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except for use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Cover by Melody Fender
Cover image from istock.com/Aleramo
Author Photo by Michelle D. Argyle
For Isaac,
Who is the most excellent of friends.
Would you like to get a prequel to A Thousand Faces for free?
Join my readers' group and grab the prequel, written from Kalif's point of view!
In addition you'll receive notification of new releases, discounts, free books, and contests. And of course, you can unsubscribe at any time and the bonus novella is yours to keep.
What are you waiting for? Join now.
One
I walked up to the Systems Development building wearing a gray pencil skirt and a matching blazer, my hair a slightly duller version of my usual brown and pulled back in a tight bun. As I always did when I went into work, I'd aged my face slightly, just enough that no one would question my resume, which referenced my age as twenty-two instead of sixteen. My face muscles looked relaxed and happy—not so much that I'd appear ready for a day at the beach, but enough that my face didn't settle into a nervous scowl. In my outstretched hand, I carried a cardboard tray filled with three hot cups of coffee and a breakfast bagel.
Over the last month, I'd stopped feeling naked when I walked into work with a version of my home face. I'd stopped feeling like I needed to catalog the exits—mostly because I had them all memorized. But the tense feeling I got when I neared the building hadn't gone away, and I was confident it never would.
So I shifted my eyes softer and made sure my posture was open. I made myself into a new Jory—a Jory who was grateful for her job as Oliver Carmine's personal assistant, who was eager to climb the corporate ladder and get ahead. The Jory who worked for Oliver Carmine did not hate him. She didn't see her father's killer every time she looked in his eyes. She didn't collapse or freeze as she walked over the patch of concrete where her father had bled out on the ground.
The Jory who worked for the Carmines was calm, determined, and dedicated to her employers.
And today, like every day, my job was to appear exactly like that Jory.
As I swiped my key card outside the glass doors, I allowed myself one glance down at the concrete. It was embedded with small, shiny stones that grew slick when it rained.
It had also been impeccably cleaned.
Love you, Dad, I thought. And, as always, I hoped that if Dad was a ghost, he wasn't bound to this place. I didn't want him to watch his daughter walk into work every day, cooperating with the people who kidnapped and killed him.
On the other hand, if I succeeded, this would be the best con of my life, and I had to believe he'd be proud of me for that.
I moved down the hall past the information security office where Kalif worked tending the Carmines' firewalls and keeping people from doing what he'd once done—hacking into their system and stealing their data. From there he was working to gain access to all kinds of things the Carmines didn't want us to see.
But not footage of the torture basement—or at least, not yet. Kalif said that after our escapade with my parents, the Carmines had changed the cameras so they didn't record, presumably to prevent us from continuing to spy on them. We didn't know who might be down there, even now, chained up and cut on for refusing to cooperate with the Carmines.
I used my keycard to take the elevator up to the top-floor office of the man who held the knife. I passed by the desk of Jeanette, the thirty-three-year-old receptionist with permed red hair. She leaned one elbow on the desk, twirling a long, kinked strand of hair around one finger. I'd followed her home one night and watched her sleep. She wasn't a shifter. Also, like my own, her apartment was fully bugged. Even the Carmines' non-shifter employees were being carefully watched in their off hours.
She might have been faking it, of course, but after a month of observing her, I was almost positive she had no idea who she worked for.
"Good morning," I said.
"Good morning," Jeanette said back.
I walked to my office and dumped my purse on my smaller version of Oliver's rectangular desk. For a moment, I looked out the floor-to-ceiling tinted-glass windows, letting myself take in the view of the willow treetops that shielded Systems Development from the rest of the business complex. Then I turned on my computer monitor, opened my email, and took a bite of my bagel. Oliver and Wendy seemed to operate on coffee alone, but if I didn't get some carbs in the morning, I'd be a walking disaster by lunch.
Disasters didn't keep secrets.
Twelve new messages popped up: Oliver was terrible at answering his email, partly because he liked to make people wait. So as his personal assistant, a large part of my job was either answering the emails in his place, or physically knocking on his door and telling him who urgently wanted his attention, even though he could have plainly seen it for himself.
At first I'd combed through the email, searching for communication from other shifters, evidence that they had field teams working for them, possibly all over the world, policing rogue shifters and generally maintaining the balance of power, with the Carmines seated comfortably on top.
But of course none of it was sensitive—he had other email addresses for the lawyers and executive engineers about corporate secrets, and no doubt yet others to correspond with his stable of whipped shifters.
It had taken Kalif and me about a week to figure out that we weren't going to undermine the Carmines' operation by sabotaging their tech, either. Systems Development was one of those companies that charged exorbitant sums to do contract work without a byline. Tech companies would get themselves in a deadline bind and farm out their work—relying on Wendy and Oliver's reputation for quality, speed, and secrecy. The Carmines were dedicated to their front business. They were high payers doing cutting edge work, and that allowed them to attract some of the best minds in the hardware field. All of their work was checked and double checked. All the contracts were gone over by multiple lawyers. Their tech business was strictly on the up and up.
And this was the most dangerous thing about the Carmines: they were good at their jobs, and they covered their tracks. Whatever brand of electronics you used, some of the work on it had pro
bably been done by Systems Development. Which meant that they had back doors into nearly every computer, server, and mobile device in the world.
Good work didn't come without a price.
I combed my way through the email, jotting down a list of all the things I needed to confer with Oliver about, transferring things to his calendar that I knew without question needed to be scheduled. I answered inquiries from firms who wanted to contract with Systems Development, sending the more promising ones on to the appropriate departments. I finalized hotel stays and air travel and dug through stock emails to send answers to tech firms and media outlets alike.
I did my job, and I did it well. But I couldn't believe that Oliver intended to keep me here as his personal assistant and travel planner. I was too valuable for that. He was waiting to see if he could trust me, and that meant I had to wait as well, much as I hated it. The impatient part of me wanted to finish things now, but that was foolish. One slip, and the whole plan would shatter around me. I had to be perfect, this time and every time. I could feel my father watching me, reminding me to be exact. If there was one thing I learned from him, it was that a proper job took time.
I was going to get this right.
The clock on my desk ticked to eight. Time to see Oliver. Usually I'd head into his office for our morning conference, but today I was scheduled for my very first performance review. Whatever came of it, I was going to need my acting skills in sharp form.
I was particularly careful to keep my posture relaxed as I breezed into Oliver's office, carrying the three cups of coffee in their cardboard tray.
They were all for Oliver. In my first weeks here, I'd learned where Oliver and Wendy lived, but from what I could tell, they spent as little time there as possible. Either they slept in the underground dungeon beneath the complex or they tried not to sleep more than absolutely necessary. Given the amount of caffeine Oliver ingested, I was willing to bet it was the latter. I might have done the same, if my public face faded every time I lost consciousness.
This morning, Oliver sat at his desk, his spine rod-straight in his ergonomic chair, his cell phone on the desk in front of him. "Well, why not?" he said into his headset. "It's your job to make it happen."
I set the coffee down on the edge of his desk, sat down in a chair, and waited for him to look up. He never acknowledged me until he was ready to pay attention to me directly. That's the kind of man Oliver was—he focused on only one thing at a time, but his mind could jump from subject to subject with alarming speed.
"See that you do," Oliver said. And then he hung up the phone without saying goodbye. Sometimes I wondered if he'd based his persona on a CEO from a movie, but if he had, it was surprisingly effective.
His gaze turned to me, and I focused on my face muscles, making my mouth turn up in a professional smile—but not so eager as to look like I was trying too hard. Nothing screamed scam like an overeager front man.
Then Oliver extended his hand to me over the desk. I took it and he gave me a firm handshake, like he did every time we met. And concealed beneath our fingers, we shifted our palms, passing back and forth the series of codes that identified us to each other, so we could be sure that neither of us were impostors. No one else was supposed to know our codes—that was the most private of all data, more sensitive than a normal person's social security number. But if I had to guess, I would have said that Oliver and Wendy shared codes and wore each other's personas, as if they were one person in two bodies. In that way, I could never be sure exactly which one I was talking to.
Oliver rested his arms on the desk in front of him. "Let's start with your performance review." He stared at me with a steady gaze, and I locked down my muscles, refusing to wilt. His eyes were green, with tiny flecks of brown in them. They say people don't notice eye color, but I was trained to notice tiny details. What I noticed about his eyes was that they'd be difficult to fake—hazel was the hardest, because it was easy to get the particular mix of colors wrong.
"Bring it on," I said.
Oliver smiled. He liked to work with people who put up a confident front. "How long have you been with us now?"
"A month," I said. "Give or take."
Three weeks, five days, sixteen hours. But counting was a nervous vice, and I needed Oliver to believe I was settling comfortably into my new life, eager to please, when what I was actually eager to do was to knock Oliver Carmine right off his ergonomic throne.
"And the job? How are you liking it?"
I fiddled with the edge of my sleeve. "It's fine for now," I said. "But I'm sure that there must be a better way to make use of my talents."
Oliver smiled. "You think you can do more."
"I know I can."
He gave a sharp nod. "Glad to hear it."
I maintained focus on him, keeping my pulse slow even though it wanted to race. A lesser foe might have responded better if I acted cowed, submissive. Even terrified. I certainly had the material to pull from. But I'd quickly learned that Oliver responded best to people who were sure of themselves.
I'd give him whatever it was that he wanted, if it bought me more time to bring him down. Kalif was working his own angle. Damon was ready and waiting to help.
But everything hinged on me.
Oliver nodded. "Perhaps it's time to increase your workload."
I was worried this job would take skills far better than the ones I had. This was the trouble with conning a con man. There was no amount of evidence of my loyalty that he couldn't dismiss as a setup. I knew. My thoughts raced that same track. Plus, there was the minor drawback that I actually was trying to play him.
Oliver reached into his desk and pulled out a single sheet of paper. He laid it on the desk between us, and on it, I could see a handwritten address for a place in Fresno, several hours to the south.
"There's a woman living at this address," he said. "Or perhaps a man. But regardless, I want you to deliver a message to this person for me."
I nodded. "What's the message?"
Oliver opened his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a hard plastic case with an external lock and a carrying handle. My lungs constricted, and I let myself exhale sharply. Even though I'd never owned one, I knew exactly what people kept in boxes like that.
I knew he was going to ask these things of me eventually. But I'd expected him to work me up gradually, giving me tasks that would test my abilities before he sent me after people who defied him.
At the bottom of the sheet of paper, Oliver wrote down a string of numbers.
The combination to the box.
My palms began to sweat, and though I could have pinched the pores closed, I let them.
Oliver Carmine was handing me a gun.
My fingers inched toward it, and then I let myself reach, running my hands along the smooth plastic, then entering the combination and opening the box.
Inside was a pistol with a black hand grip. I barely knew how to shoot a gun—I'd only done it once, when I'd shot Kalif's father in the knee through a wall. But looking at it now, I imagined lifting it, pretending to examine it, turning off the safety.
And then gripping it with both hands and shooting Oliver Carmine in the face.
I held perfectly still. I could do it. I could do it right now.
Except that getting a gun wasn't the barrier preventing me from taking the Carmines down. I was a damn shifter. I could get a gun if I wanted one—hell, it wasn't even that hard.
But if I shot Oliver without Wendy present, I'd have blown my cover. And even without Oliver, Wendy still had field teams of shifters—a threat still opaque to me. If I shot him impetuously, I didn't stand a chance.
Besides, I had something better in mind. The Carmines were the killers. I didn't want to take their lives as much as I wanted to destroy everything they stood for. I needed to win so thoroughly that neither they nor anyone who worked for them ever considered coming after me again.
And that called for a more sophisticated plan.
 
; A plan that would be ruined if I didn't play along with Oliver right now.
"You want me to kill a shifter?" I said. "For my first real job? Are you sure you don't want to test me first?"
"You broke into my own fortified basement," Oliver said. "You evaded us for months, and brought us a man we couldn't find ourselves. I think that's test enough to know that you can handle this."
I was certain I could handle killing someone if I wanted to. Convincing him that I'd done it when I hadn't was another matter entirely.
I looked up at Oliver. That was why he was asking me to do this, of course. Smaller jobs I might be willing to do just to keep my cover. He wanted to do more than just determine my loyalty.
He wanted to turn me into him.
"That's some message," I said.
"Death," he said, "is the final message. Get a picture of the evidence, and clean up the mess. Bring me the body so I know the job's been done."
My heart wormed into my throat. No doubt this shifter was in the same position I had been in, but hadn't done as I had and turned themselves in to join the fold.
"And what if the person has moved?" I asked. "How will I know if I'm giving my message to the right person?"
Oliver's gaze sharpened. "I suppose you'll have to take some time," he said, "and be sure that you get it right."
"How long do I have?" I asked.
Oliver raised an eyebrow. "The sooner the job is done," he said. "The sooner I can give you another."
I allowed goosebumps to form on my arms. I wasn't going to kill for Oliver—or for anyone. This was the first and only rule my dad had taught me: shifters don't kill people. But Oliver operated under a different code, and I needed his trust. And that meant I had to at least appear to go along with him.
And figure out how to keep making it appear that way, even when he asked me to do things that were impossible.
"Consider it done," I said.