She walked calmly past the man, brushing close enough to catch a whiff of his cologne. Cheap, pine-scented, and trying too hard to be masculine. He didn’t move.
But his eyes tracked her reflection in the mirror behind the bar.
She ducked into the hallway toward the restrooms, pulled out her phone, and whispered into her comm bead.
“Michael, Daniel. Eyes onThe Fourth on Fifth. We’ve got a tail.”
Outside the restaurant,Michael leaned against a mailbox, arms crossed, watching a pigeon peck suspiciously at a fallen meatball. Daniel lounged on a bench beneath a tree that had produced exactly one leaf, holding a dog-eared self-help paperback,nose scrunched like it stunk in more ways than one.
“She’s been in there a while,” Daniel said, flipping a page.
“Maybe Payne eats slow,” Michael replied.
“Or talks a lot.”
“He doesn’t seem like a talker.”
Daniel squinted toward the door. “But she is. That’s what worries me.”
Their comms crackled to life.
“Michael, Daniel. Eyes onThe Fourth on Fifth. We’ve got a tail.”
Michael straightened, alert. “Where?”
“Inside,” Rayna’s voice said, in her usual calm but direct manner. “Male. Hoodie. Newsboy cap. Blocking the door but not ordering food. I walked past him, and he eyed me through the mirror. Then I decided to have some fun. Next time he checked the table, my conjured doppelganger was sitting there. He did a double-take. Thought he saw two of me.”
Daniel looked up. “Sounds like hedidsee two of you.”
“Exactly. My glamoured self is still inside, sipping chai and batting her lashes. He hasn’t moved. He’s too busy trying to figure out if he’s hallucinating.”
Michael was already moving. “Want backup? We can be in there in two seconds.”
“No. I’m coming out. Meet me at the alley with the horrifying Einstein mural.”
Daniel groaned. “Oh, that thing.”
They headed down the block, slipping into the alley flanked by dumpsters and one disturbingly still rodent.
When she saw them, she said, “Watch what he does when I leave. Will he follow me or the major?”
“Can we place bets?” Daniel asked.
“Sure. Whatever floats your boat.”
They watched Rayna re-enter the front of the restaurant with a new kind of swagger, as if she owned the place.
4
She scanned the room, then headed straight for the reflection in the mirrored wall behind the bar.
The man in the hoodie didn’t notice her at first. He was still watching the back door, waiting for therealRayna to reappear. But when she passed the mirrored surface, something changed. His gaze flickered, eyes narrowing, then widening, before his head jerked slightly to the side to recheck her table.
Rayna's reflection in the mirror smiled at him, giving him a cheery, overly enthusiastic grin and finger-wave. Her real self, just out of view, smirked.
The man blinked. His head tilted slightly, trying to process what he was seeing: the same woman three times. One physically walking past him, another in the mirror, and still another sitting at a table, flirting with a gentleman. He froze for a second, then slowly turned his head to follow her, clearly trying to work out whether he was seeing things or if she might be one of identical triplets.
“Blink twice if you’re stalking us,” Rayna said, her voice a low hum, aimed directly at the man’s ear as she stood behind him.
