Resistance (Replica) (30 page)

Agnes sniffled and lowered her eyes, and Nate felt like a bastard. She opened that little purse of hers, and he assumed she was looking for a tissue to blot her eyes. He practically swallowed his tongue when she pulled out a gun instead.

“You are
not
putting me in that trunk,” she said, pointing the gun at Dante, who glared at Nate as if this were all his fault. Which, come to think of it, it was.

“Where did you get that?” Nate asked, shaking his head. There was no way Agnes habitually went to the opera with a gun in her purse.

“It was in your bodyguard’s ankle holster. I was holding his ankles, remember?”

She sounded calm enough, but there was a slight tremor in her hands. Obviously, she’d had an inkling she’d be coming along from the moment she’d helped him with Fischer, but she probably hadn’t given herself enough time to think it through.

“You’re not really going to shoot anyone, are you?” Nate asked. Five minutes ago, he’d have been
saying
that, not
asking,
but he had obviously underestimated Agnes.

“Not unless someone tries to lock me in the trunk.”

Nate and Dante looked at each other.

“I thought she was supposed to be shy and quiet,” Dante said. There was a thread of anger in his voice, and the look he was giving Nate was anything but friendly, but it didn’t seem like he was particularly bothered by having a gun pointed at him.

“I did, too,” Nate said, then turned to Agnes again. “You don’t even know what’s going on or why we think Nadia is in danger, nor do you know what we plan to do.” Actually, Nate didn’t know what the plan was, either, and it would be rather hard to discuss it if they couldn’t ditch Agnes.

Agnes let out a shaky breath. “I know something extremely fishy is going on in Paxco, and I’m damn well going to find out what it is before I find myself locked into a marriage agreement. I agreed to the match because I thought it was for the good of my state, but now I’m not so sure. No one’s going to tell me the truth, so I’m going to have to learn whatever it is firsthand.”

Nate couldn’t blame her for not wanting to be locked in the trunk, and he supposed the whole situation had alarm bells clanging in her head. The haste with which the marriage agreement was reached, the “hiatus” in the Replica program, the introduction of Dorothy, and now this. She was more than prepared to take one for the team, but the match probably wasn’t looking so ideal right about now.

“You have no idea what you’d be getting yourself into,” he told her. “The less you know about it, the safer you’ll be.”

“Perhaps you should have thought about that
before
you dragged me out of the theater,” she said quite sensibly. “I’m now thoroughly involved anyway.”

Dante scowled at her in a way that probably would have been intimidating if she weren’t holding him at gunpoint. “You don’t get it. You come with us, you could get
killed.
This isn’t some stupid game, and we don’t need you coming along for the thrill.”

It was hard to tell in the darkened car, but Nate thought Agnes’s face lost some of its color, and he was sure Dante had made his point. Her hand wavered, but she regained her resolve before the muzzle lowered enough for anyone to try to take the gun away.

“I’m coming,” she said firmly. “And we’re wasting time here. Stop trying to figure out how to get around me and let’s go.”

“She has a point,” Nate admitted reluctantly. “We don’t have time for a long standoff. Unless you’re willing to gamble that she won’t shoot.”

He felt about 90 percent certain she wouldn’t, but she’d surprised him so many times tonight he wasn’t about to rely on his instincts.

Dante shook his head in disgust. “Fine. We’ll take her along. And when she gets us caught before we get to Nadia, it’ll be all your fault.” He got out of the car and slammed the door behind him, then stalked over to the blue sedan and unlocked it.

Nate followed suit, as did Agnes, who kept a careful distance between them and didn’t actually get into the sedan until Dante did. She stopped pointing the gun at Dante’s head when they were all in the car, but she didn’t put it away, and Nate knew she was poised for any attempt to wrest it away from her.

Wondering what the hell he’d gotten them all into, Nate buckled in as Dante started the car and pulled out of the space.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Nate
didn’t realize what a complete disaster his situation was until he’d had a few quiet minutes to think about it. He knew he and Dante needed to talk about the plan to get to Nadia, but it was hard to even begin discussing it with Agnes sitting in the backseat and listening to every word they said. She’d as much as said that she was considering this her own personal recon mission, and letting the daughter of a foreign Chairman find out there was a sizable, organized resistance movement in Paxco wasn’t such a hot idea. However, Nate was pretty sure they were going to need inside help to get Nadia out of the Sanctuary, and he was dying to ask Dante about his resistance contacts.

Unable to think how to start a conversation, Nate sat quietly in the passenger seat as Dante drove through the streets of the city, going as fast as he dared when it was imperative they not draw attention. And in that quiet time, Nate realized that his life would never be the same.

If he was right, and Gerri’s death meant she had led the Chairman to the blackmail recordings, that meant there was nothing to stop the Chairman from killing Nadia. Before his mother’s funeral, Nate had assumed he himself wouldn’t be in any real danger, because his father needed an heir and no longer had Thea around to make a blissfully ignorant Replica if he disposed of Nate. But now the Chairman had Dorothy, whom he had publicly acknowledged as his daughter. He could get rid of Nate and still have an heir.

Did his father hate him that much?

Sure, the man had already had Nate killed once, but knowing he could create a Replica—one who hadn’t overheard the Chairman and Dirk Mosely talking about Thea’s human experimentation and therefore wouldn’t make waves—must have made it feel like he wasn’t
really
killing anyone.

Nate’s father had been angry with him for almost as long as Nate could remember. And Nate had taken every opportunity to foster more anger, acting like a spoiled, selfish brat for the sheer pleasure of pissing his father off.

But did that anger lead to actual
hate,
into something so toxic it would drive him to murder his own son?

The fact was, Nate couldn’t be sure. And that meant that once this adventure was over, even if everything went perfectly and they got Nadia out of the Sanctuary without a hitch, he couldn’t go home, couldn’t go back to his old life.

The realization was like a brutal kick to the chest, forcing all the air out of his lungs and triggering a moment of sheer panic. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists as he tried to fight it off, but he felt the sweat beading on his forehead and upper lip. He thought for a moment he was totally going to lose it, right there in the front seat of the car with both Agnes and Dante as witnesses.

“We’ll get her out,” Dante said gruffly, making the natural assumption that Nate was freaking out because he was worried about Nadia. But Dante didn’t have a clue what was really happening.

And then what?
Nate wondered. Neither he nor Nadia could set foot in their homes. Nadia would have no money, no access to money, and nowhere to go. Nate might be able to get hold of some scrip before his father came up with an excuse to freeze his account, but even that would be dangerous, giving those who might be hunting him a bead on his location, even if it was just for a short while. So he might have a temporary supply of scrip, but that would be it. Like Nadia, he would have nowhere safe to go. In fact, the only place he could even
imagine
going was the Basement. He at least had some experience there from the jaunts of his reckless youth, but a sheltered Executive girl like Nadia might as well have the word “victim” tattooed on her forehead in a place like that.

“Maybe now is a good time to tell me what’s really going on,” Dante prompted when Nate failed to pull himself out of his panic nosedive. Dante frowned at the rearview mirror, once again letting Nate know how unhappy he was about Agnes’s presence.

Nate turned in his seat so he could meet Agnes’s eyes. “Can I trust you not to repeat everything I say?”

“Will you believe me if I say yes?” she countered.

Good point. He still didn’t quite know what to make of her. Clearly, she wasn’t the meek little pushover he’d thought, but he had no clue what she was really made of. Hell, for all he knew, she was a spy planted on him by the Chairman to try to eke out his secrets. Though surely if she were meant to act as a spy, she would have better-developed social skills.

“You know, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Tell anyone you think should know.” His neck was getting stiff from the awkward position, so he shifted in his seat and faced forward once more. Maybe it would be easier to talk about what had happened if he didn’t have to look into someone’s face anyway.

“Nadia was arrested on suspicion of treason a few weeks ago,” he started.

“Yes, I know,” Agnes said. “But she was cleared of all charges.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s the why of it all that gets us into trouble.” He sneaked a glance over at Dante, who was watching the road with studious concentration.

“She was wearing a transmitter when she was arrested,” Nate said. “I went to try to help her, and got into a big fight with my father and our late chief of security, and they said some things they would never have said if they’d known about the transmitter. They said things so incriminating that once they found out Nadia had been transmitting to a secret location, and that she’d set it up so that the recordings would be released if she died or disappeared, they had to let her go.”

Nate stalled out, remembering the horror of seeing Nadia strapped to a table with Thea poised to vivisect her. Nadia had been gagged, unable to reveal that she had the transmitter on her and therefore unable to use the information to save herself. If Nate hadn’t figured it out …

“I don’t understand,” Agnes said. “You got into a big fight and they said ‘incriminating things.’ In front of you. I mean, I get that they didn’t expect Nadia to be able to tell anyone about it, but what about—” She interrupted herself with a gasp.

“You’re a Replica…”

Dante frowned and looked at Agnes in the rearview mirror. “Surely you already knew that.”

Nate couldn’t help turning in his seat again, despite the stiff neck. Agnes’s shocked expression told him that whatever she might lack in social graces, she had one hell of a sharp mind. She was making all the connections, despite having very little information to go on.

“He felt free to talk in front of you because he was planning to kill you,” she said in a horrified whisper. “Then he was going to use an old backup to make a new Replica who hadn’t heard any of his secrets.”

Nate nodded, but Agnes wasn’t finished making connections yet.

“What happened to the original Nathaniel Hayes?”

Nate and Dante shared a look. Dante knew the answer to that question because Kurt had witnessed the murder. It had been passed off to the public as the work of Dirk Mosely acting alone. But after everything Agnes had figured out so far, she was never going to buy that story.

“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Nate answered grimly. “The only reason my father didn’t kill me the second time was because of those recordings. And the only thing that’s kept him from killing Nadia is that she had those recordings hidden and had arranged for them to be released if anything happened to her.”

Nate had turned to face front once more, so he couldn’t see Agnes’s reaction to the news. “I got word during the opera that Nadia’s sister had just died in an ‘accident.’”

“And you think she led your father to the recordings and now he’s going to go after Nadia,” Dante finished for him.

Nate nodded and chose not to mention the likelihood that
he
was on the Chairman’s hit list as well.

There was a long silence as everyone stewed in their own thoughts.

“What do you know that’s worth killing so many people over?” Dante asked.

“I can’t tell you that.” Even if he trusted Agnes and Dante completely, he doubted he’d tell them about Thea. She was dead and gone, and telling people about her would serve no good purpose.

“Did you tell Bishop?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but no.”

“Who’s Bishop?” Agnes asked.

Nate didn’t consciously intend to answer that question with any real honesty. He could tell her Kurt was his old valet, and it would be completely true. But his subconscious had other ideas.

“He’s my boyfriend,” Nate blurted, then blinked in surprise. But really, what was the point of keeping that particular secret any longer? Under the circumstances, he had no choice but to flee his Executive life anyway, so why should he keep pretending? He’d always hated having to hide that side of himself, hated having to live a lie.

Nate didn’t look to see how Agnes was taking the revelation. Dante shrugged, as if it were no big deal—which to an Employee, it wasn’t.

“I must admit,” Dante said, “I’d wondered about you two. You seemed way more attached than an Executive would normally be to his valet.”

“Well, now you know.” Nate resisted the urge to squirm. He felt like Agnes was probably staring daggers at him from the backseat, but he didn’t have the guts to check. It wasn’t like she’d been hoping for high romance in her marriage with him anyway, but he supposed the news still had to come as something of a shock. Maybe she was now regretting having helped him. He was certainly regretting his impulse to bring her along in the first place. When he and Dante had tried to leave her behind in the trunk, Nate had tried to warn her what kind of danger she was walking into, but he hadn’t fully appreciated it himself at the time. It wasn’t just her reputation she had ruined by running off with him; it might well be her very life. What were the chances his father would believe Agnes didn’t know any damning secrets after all this? Finding out the truth about his sexual preferences was the least of her troubles.