Well, apparently he was. He didn’t look even mildly nervous as he opened the gate and beckoned to her. He was a clone made of stone. A stone clone. Danny had to bite her lips to keep from laughing. If she did she might not be able to stop, and hysteria was hardly the most constructive course of action.
She gave him a hard glare as she walked past him into a small courtyard. He was still watching her closely. Was he wondering how long she could keep it together without losing her shit? Let him, she thought; she would show him she wasn’t some poor little victim he could bully.
The moon was high in the sky. It was on the wane but still bright enough that, along with the flow-over from the lights outside the castle, Danny could see his face quite clearly, in more detail than the few glimpses she’d had back in Cartagena. This wasn’t simply a strong resemblance—it really was Henry’s face, his and none other, minus a few years and maybe some mileage. The way clone-Henry was staring at her so coldly, with no sign of recognition, was even more unsettling than Dracula’s castle at midnight. It was like she had taken a wrong turn and walked into a parallel universe where she and Henry had never met on the dock, and instead of teaming up with Baron they had become enemies.
“Lovely courtyard,” Danny said. It was a silly thing to say—the courtyard was lovely but only if you wanted to make a horror movie where everybody died horribly in the end. She had just wanted to see if she could speak without her voice shaking and was surprised at how calm and undaunted she sounded.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Henry’s clone said with Henry’s voice, “but before we go any further, I have to ask you to strip.”
Danny gaped at him. Her attention had snagged on the word ma’am. “I beg your pardon?”
“So I can check you for a wire,” he added, as if that made it reasonable.
“Wait a second,” she said. “Did you just call me ‘ma’am?’”
“I was raised to respect my elders,” he told her in a slightly reproachful tone that suggested he thought her upbringing left a lot to be desired. “Your clothes, please.”
That ma’am was going to cost him dearly, Danny vowed as she took off her top. His death would be slow and merciless; it would last for weeks. No, months. She toed off her boots, pushed her jeans down and stepped out of them. Now she was standing in the middle of a horror movie set at midnight in her underwear. And her socks. She stepped back into her boots but she was pretty sure that wasn’t an improvement. At least she had put nice underwear in her burn bag—not that she had ever imagined this scenario. Although it was a good bet that someone somewhere did, frequently.
She tried to block the idea but it was too late. What had been thunk could not be unthunk, as her grandfather used to say. Meanwhile, Henry’s clone stood in front of her in his fatigues and his Kevlar vest and his combat boots. Was he enjoying this? Did he feel powerful because she was half-naked and vulnerable? That was the whole idea, of course, to make her feel weak and powerless. But why was he just standing there? What was he waiting for—another opportunity to call her ma’am?
Or wasn’t she naked enough?
A cold rage bloomed inside her. She didn’t know what she would do if he went there. But if she just stood in front of him waiting for it she might begin to tremble, and she was goddamned if she would let him see that.
Danny put one thumb under her bra strap and pulled it away from her shoulder slightly, her expression both questioning and hostile. No, she was wrong—she did know what she’d do. Screw the plan.
Clone-Henry shook his head awkwardly, averting his gaze for a moment before he looked at her again and then away, over and over. It was as if he was trying to look at her without looking at her.
The memory of Henry in her bedroom turning his back while she got dressed popped into her mind and suddenly she understood. This wasn’t a power trip for clone-Henry—he was embarrassed. No, it was more than that—he was ashamed.
Good, she thought at him. Suffer, you bastard. And that was only the truth—clones were bastards. They didn’t exactly have mothers, either, which made them double bastards. Maybe she could find some way to work that into the conversation before the night was over.
“Turn around, please,” he said.
Danny made a snappy about-face and allowed herself a fleeting smile of spiteful triumph. Then he came up close behind her and she wished she hadn’t just snapped to and obeyed him like that. She had already yielded to his authority over her by undressing; obeying his next order so promptly told him she accepted him as being in charge. Lesson learned: the next time somebody ordered her to strip at gunpoint and told her to turn around, she was going to flat out refuse. What were they going to do, kill her? If they planned to do that anyway, she didn’t have to make it easy for them.
And the other lesson learned: she was a cockeyed optimist to posit next time when she didn’t even know if she’d survive this time.
Her optimism dwindled considerably when the clone’s Kevlar vest touched her bare back. She forced herself not to flinch as he ran his hands quickly over her body from neck to thighs. But even as he did it, she could sense he was trying to be impersonal, detached, to touch her without touching her the same way he had tried to look at her without looking. He almost managed it… almost. Being impersonal and detached was impossible when you were ashamed of what you were doing in the first place.
It was only when he ran his fingers through her hair that she actually jumped. “I see you like to be thorough,” she said.
“Caution has kept me alive, ma’am,” he said, and she added another week of suffering to his miserable future. “You can get dressed now.”
As soon as she was decent again, he handed her a phone. “Call him.”
Danny hesitated, then decided there was nothing to be gained by giving him a hard time now. She punched in the number; he took the phone back from her and put it on speaker.
It rang once. “Yes?” said Henry.
“In twelve minutes, I’m going to put two bullets into the back of Agent Zakarewski’s head,” clone-Henry said.
Danny all but heard Henry’s blood pressure jump a hundred points. “Your orders were to deliver her safely—”
“My orders were to kill you,” the clone said, and Danny felt a cold chill run down her spine. Their voices were as identical as their faces; it was like listening to Henry argue with himself in the throes of a dissociative breakdown. “Do you know the Quartz Chamber in the catacombs?”
“Oh, hell no,” Henry replied angrily. “We’re doing this someplace visible. Where I can see you.”
“And now we’re at eleven minutes,” the clone said and hung up on him. For all the tough talk, he looked unsettled. Danny wondered if he’d also heard the similarity of their voices. Then he noticed her watching him and motioned at the gate. “We’re going for a ride.”
She added another week to his slow, painful death, just on general principle.