Constance (Constance #1)(55)

“Thank you,” she said, hoping it sounded convincing.

“To protect and serve,” Clarke said without a hint of irony and rode the elevator back upstairs.



From the dark confines of the trunk, Con listened tensely as they passed through the growing throng of reporters set up outside the station. No one mobbed the car as it left the parking garage, so it seemed that Clarke’s ruse had worked. Over a loudspeaker, Franklin Butler was pontificating about the arrogance of the elites and the existential threat of cloning. It brought a roar of agreement that Con couldn’t believe was only twenty voices. The fact that CoA had managed to gather so quickly this early in the morning was terrifying. They were like cockroaches waiting for the lights to go out.

Once the car was safely away, she hoped Bennett would pull over and let her sit up front—riding in a trunk was even less glamorous than it sounded—but apparently, Bennett wasn’t taking any chances. By the time the car finally rolled to a halt at the motel, Con had been knocked around like a pi?ata.

Bennett opened the trunk, and Con climbed out, blinking in the morning sunshine, and looked up at the double-decker motel with a green metallic roof that had been retrofitted with boxy, outdated solar paneling. Across the six lanes of traffic, a murderers’ row of fast-food joints jostled for attention. An old gas station stood defiantly against the passage of time. Signs directed traffic onto I-95 North or South, but it could have been any one of a thousand small towns off a thousand interstates.

“Room 211,” Bennett said, leading her up a concrete staircase to the exposed second floor.

“Do you have my LFD?” Con asked.

“Take it up with Clarke.”

Con gestured back toward the fast-food places. “Can I at least get some money for food?”

“Clarke,” Bennett said, signaling with her tone that Con should think about wrapping up the question-asking portion of the day. She opened the room with an old-fashioned key card. Of course it was. The musty room looked like it hadn’t been redecorated in a hundred years. Clarke had really spared no expense.

Con waited by the door while Bennett checked the bathroom and the closet. Satisfied, the officer dropped the key card on a table but not the key to Con’s car.

“So what’s the plan?” Con asked.

“Sit tight. Your face is all over the news, but no one knows you’re here. You’ll be fine as long as you don’t wander off. We’ll have a unit do a drive-by every hour to check on you.” Bennett didn’t sound all that concerned about it one way or another. “Clarke will be in touch.”

“When?”

“Later,” Bennett said, somehow making her nonanswer sound definitive. She turned and left, shutting the door behind her without another word.

Later. Con rolled her eyes and gave the door the finger. They meant to strand her out here. And if she didn’t do as she was told, Clarke could keep the keys and the LFD indefinitely. What recourse did she have as a clone? She wondered—had Clarke moved her for her safety or so that he could lean on her any way he chose, away from prying eyes?

She parted the blinds and watched Bennett amble down to the parking lot, where a patrol car was idling. Bennett got in, and the car drove away. When it was out of sight, Con waited five minutes and went down to the parking lot herself. Sitting tight was not high on her list. She wasn’t sure where to go now but intended to be long gone before Clarke or anyone else came to check on her. What she wanted was to have it out with Levi Greer. She wasn’t about to take Clarke’s word for it that the husband was a killer, but the detective had asked some hard questions.

She crouched down beside her car and felt around inside the wheel well, praying the police hadn’t found the magnetic box that Peter had hidden there. Her hand closed around it, and she pulled it free. Opening it with a thumbprint, she shook the spare key into her palm and gave thanks to majordomos everywhere. Peter was fast on his way to becoming her favorite person anywhere. Her backpack was missing from the back seat, but the go bag was still undisturbed in the spare-tire compartment. She fished out her backup LFD and powered it up.

There was a message from Laleh Askari. It was only an hour old, asking if they could meet. That was interesting. After Levi Greer, Laleh was pretty much at the top of Con’s to-do list. There were questions that only she could answer. Laleh had put on one hell of a show back at Palingenesis. All that Good Samaritan bullshit about helping Con out of a sense of guilt and responsibility. It had been damn convincing at the time, but now, she felt sure Laleh knew more than she had let on.

When Con texted back to ask where, Laleh must have been waiting because she answered immediately and suggested a public park in Washington. She asked how soon Con could be there. Con’s LFD told her it was a little over three hours away, so she said it would take her five. Getting there early and scoping it out sounded like a good idea. According to Gaddis, no one had laid eyes on Laleh since the day she left Palingenesis, so it was awful convenient that she picked now to reach out. Right when Con was out of ideas and out of options.

A less optimistic person might see it as a trap. After all, whoever had put Laleh up to it might have also killed her original. That didn’t mean she could stay away.



The park was a tree-lined triangle of land at the corner of Florida Avenue and First Street NW. The heat wave had broken momentarily, and people were out enjoying a day of unusually mild weather. Con parked five blocks north of the park and walked the surrounding neighborhood until she knew all the routes back to the car. If she couldn’t get back to it, there were three different Metro stops within a ten-block radius. She also made a note of the nearest bikeshare stations should it come to that. It wasn’t perfect, but having options made her feel a little better about being a sitting duck out here.