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CHAPTER ONE
LILY
The picture Rasmussen shows me is of a burnt corpse of a woman.
She's wearing an incredibly stylish summer gown, designer made for sure, and gorgeous shoes to go with it. Rings adorn her fingers, and in the ruins of her ears, there are diamond stud earrings.
Whoever she was, she wasrich.
"Mia Zedona," Rasmussen says. "And before she was killed..."
Rasmussen is a short, but powerfully built man. He has no hair on him that’s visible. The baldness of his head I noticed right away. The missing eyebrows and facial stubble took a second. There’s literally no hair on him at all.
I try not to stare, but…it’s unsettling.
Four years with Homeland Security and people keep surprising me.
He looksmoist. Like he lives under a rock.
The way he ran my old boss out of his own office to meet with me was impressive, if a little scary.
And I liked he never looked at my ass or my chest when I came in. That, at least, was a nice change of pace. How many times had my old boss Harris just talked right into my boobs?
Way too many.
Rasmussen clicks over to another photo. She's wearing different clothes, an evening dress and leather boots. Again, she looks perfectly stylish, but her face has an anger to it, and a coldness in the eyes.
Aside from that, I could be looking in a mirror.
"She looks just like me..."
"Yes. If she didn’t, you wouldn't be here," Rasmussen says, a little testily. "Facial recognition says you’re a 98% match. Almost good enough to unlock her phone with your face, except for the pupillary distance, which is a few millimeters off. Nothing anyone would notice, unless they knew her exceptionally well. Her hair style can be matched, of course. She was dyed blond rather than natural, as you are. But of course, only someone who knew herintimatelywould know that. She was meticulous in maintaining that look, and as far as we’ve been able to tell, she’s never been photographed with her natural hair."
I take a long look at her. It's hard not to feel a kinship with this young woman. If I'd continued down the path I was on before college, I could be just like her now. The beauty queen my senator father wanted. The heiress my mother craved.
It's like looking at an alternate universe version of myself.
"And who is 'we'?" I ask.
"Excuse me?"
"You saidas far aswehave been able to tell. You meant your organization. Homeland? CIA? Who exactly are you with?”
Rasmussen smiles. It's creepy, like a giant baby showing his teeth. And he has very small teeth.
Fascinating.
"You're as smart as they said you were. Yes. I’m liaison with Homeland Security, by way of Central Intelligence. What that means for you is I'm running this show. If you choose to accept this mission, you’ll report only to me. Your current supervisor, Harris, and the rest of your team will forget they ever knew you.
"You will be scrubbed from every corner of the internet we find you on. You’ll cut ties with your family and friends. You’ll be as deeply undercover as it’s possible to be."
The breath goes right out of me. On the one hand, it’s what I've always wanted. A chance to prove myself. To make a difference. And, if I'm being honest, to do something dangerous for once.
To risk my life.
To get an assignment that my overbearing senator father and nosy debutant mother can’t get me kicked off of or sidelined from. A way to win the battle that began the day I stopped doing beauty pageants and applied to Harvard.
I’ve wanted it so bad. But now that it's looking me in the eye, I'm terrified. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know what Rasmussen wants from me. He'll want me tobecomethis woman. Mia Zedona. I'll be going undercover as her, living her life. And probably mixing with whatever dangerous people killed her and burned her.
