—she’ll meet Reed Aldridge.
A transient childhood. A single parent. A tragic car accident and a fatality.
A history of isolation.
A fake past tailored with enough similarities to Reed’s to evoke empathy. A past that will remind him of his own—all of it available with a few clicks of a mouse thanks to Zane and his contacts. Newspaper articles, database records, paper trails; when it comes to Avery Carter, it’s all there.
As for my actual past, Zane obliterated it. You can’t find a mention of Bailey Nichols anywhere. I don’t know who he hired to do it, but they did an incredibly thorough job: all my high school and college records, every business article I’ve been a part of, my time at PricewaterhouseCoopers and all my client presentations are gone. There are no stray images of me still floating around the Internet. Even the articles about the wreck and the deaths of my family have been wiped clean. It’s like the crash never happened at all.
I take hold of my drink, the glass cool against my palm. “So, everything’s good to go, then?”
Zane sips his beer and deadpans me. “What do you think?”
“I think Paula was right.”
“Yeah? About what.”
“She said you were good.”
He gives a nonchalant shrug. “You get what you pay for.”
I have. Zane is good. Very good. After taking the job, he gave me an entire library’s worth of books on adaptability and persuasion.He spent days educating me on compartmentalization and how to maintain my composure in tense situations. We role-played various scenarios for hours. Any time I said or did something out of character, he stopped and explained exactly what I did wrong and why.
There can be no slips. No mistakes. Not with Reed.
I have to be different from his prior targets: a confident woman, strong enough I can’t be manipulated, but not so strong I scare him off. A fun, flirty, fresh, cool-ass woman who challenges him in the best of ways, all while validating his grandiose sense of self-importance. I’ll need to connect my past with his and remind him of the girl he once loved. But I’ll have to be different from her, too. I’ll need to make him believe that, unlike Taylor White, I won’t abandon him—wouldneverabandon him. Not when I’m meant for him.
“Listen,” Zane says, “I know you think you’re ready, but you never really are. You have to be perfect. There’s no room for error when you go undercover like this. You say the wrong name, you mention something from your past—your real past—and it’s over. You forget your backstory for a second, it’s over. You act in a way that isn’t congruent with who Avery Carter is, and it’s over. I know you know this, but what you’re about to do is dangerous, Bailey. It’s dangerous as hell.”
I tilt my drink toward him. “You did it, didn’t you? And you’re fine.”
“I worked in NARC. I never had to sleep with my targets. And I still found ways to fuck up at times. It’s incredibly difficult to act against your instincts in high-pressure situations like this. You have to ignore every emotion screaming at you to get the fuck out of there. But that’s exactly what you have to do. Ignore them. Once you commit, you need to go all the way. There can’t be any half measures.”
“That’s fair. But I can handle it.”
He assesses me for a long moment, his eyes turning clinical again. I fight the urge to shrink back. His gaze is a fearsome thing. One minute everything’s fine, the next you feel like you’re sitting across from himin an interrogation room, guilty of murder.
He runs a hand over his chin, then gives me the ghost of a grin. “You know what? I actually think you can. You do everything exactly like we practiced, and you’ll have your shot.”
My cheeks warm as I smile. I can’t help it. Zane’s compliments are as rare as shooting stars—blink, and they’re gone.
“Thank you for doing this.”
“Trust me,” he says with a quick laugh. “It’s not out of the goodness of my heart. Now come on, let’s get out of here. We both need to get some sleep.”
Zane calls the waitress over and pays the tab. We’re nearly halfway to the door when something catches his attention.
“What is it?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he stares at the bar, which is crowded with people—some seated, some standing. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. Nothing but Zane, who suddenly heads for a man with thinning hair and glasses wearing in a salmon-pink polo. He looks up from his stool as we draw near, his eyes slowly widening in recognition when they land on Zane.
“Hello, Doctor,” Zane says, coldly.
“Oh—hello, Mr …”
“Jenson,” Zane finishes.
“Right,” the man mutters. “Sorry. Mr. Jenson. How’s your daughter?”
