Page 4 of Duplicity

Except the one he was looking for.

“Okay, now that everyone has the right answer, we’re moving on. There’s a lot of ground to cover in this class and only a few weeks to do it.”

At the edge of his awareness, someone walked by the door. Officer Alvarez, maybe. He refused to look. He wasn’t a trained operative, but he had some instincts for this line of work. As for teaching, well, he’d only done a certain amount of research. Fortunately, the principal promised to give him pointers on anything she noticed. No reason to jerk the kids around by not knowing what he was doing as an educator.

He wiped the screen of his tablet and wrote a new problem, followed by two more. Which question tripped up the students would give him an indication of who understood what and where he needed to start filling in gaps in their learning.

The screen of his laptop flashed, signaling the target phone was receiving a text. He continued teaching the class while his program wormed its way into a network Simon had programmed long ago. One he’d created. A phone system not tied to any known commercial network, operating entirely off Wi-Fi signals and the nearest cell tower when nothing else was available, finding signal like an untraceable parasite. It enabledcriminals to communicate with no way for law enforcement to track them or gain information from their devices.

In a long list of Simon’s transgressions, this was the one that caused others the most harm. Unless he could gain access and take it down from the inside.

Then he would finally be free of the guilt of what he’d done.

Simon had walked away from everything and everyone and gone completely under the radar to get this done. Hecouldn’tfail.

If he did, then he could never face the life he’d built—and the people he cared about—again.

He may as well never come home.

THREE

Cat’s mother always said the Lord blessed Cat with not being “unfortunate looking.” Whatever on earth that meant, it hadn’t helped her in her role as Officer Catalina Alvarez. No matter what her brother Romeo thought of using his good looks to get suspects to confess and witnesses to cooperate.

Cat sat back in the chair in her office and stared at the monitor of her computer. Halfway through writing up a report on the fight that occurred this morning in the courtyard, she’d looked him up.

The new math teacher.

Mr. Silas Norris. Washington State University, teacher certificate. Some experience, but not much. He checked all the boxes. The background he’d submitted on his resume was clean. She wasn’t going to wonder if it was “too clean.” He was just a teacher.

He certainly was handsome. Something she’d been considering far too much rather than actually writing her report. Definitely notunfortunate looking.This Sunday at their family dinner, she was going to talk to her mother about that entire thing and how she didn’t like it. People couldn’t help what they looked like, and everyone was beautiful in a way. Variety waslovely. Everyone in the world was a little different from the person beside them, even identical twins.

Her hip and thigh started to ache, so she pushed her chair back and stood. Both palms on the desk, she stretched her right leg forward and back, grabbed her foot and held it behind her so she could stretch her hip flexor.

The spot where she’d been shot had gone from a localized stabbing pain to a general ache that only occasionally bothered her. She might never run a marathon, but she’d been able to pass the physical qualification for the police department six months after nearly losing her leg.

She turned to the small one-cup coffeemaker and put a pod in.

While it trickled and sputtered into the cup, a memory surged from deep in her psyche. A flashback was what her trauma counselor had called it. Better not to fight it. Instead, she let the past come back to her mind.

“Go right. I’ll take the middle.”

“Copy that.” Catalina held her gun up, taking the measured steps she’d been taught in the academy. All of it becoming instinct until she barely had to think about her foot placement. She could hear the feminine whimper to her right, one aisle over.

She passed the nuts and chips and headed toward the counter, where a pool of blood already seeped out from behind the register.

The cashier was dead, or he would be in minutes if they didn’t resolve this.

“Benson Police Department!” Sergeant Ellis, her training officer, would be approaching the suspect from the aisle to her left, leaving Cat to flank him and provide cover fire.

She picked up her pace and peered around the end of the aisle.

At the far side of the store, by the window, a woman sat with her knees up, her child gathered to her front. Both were crying silently, but Cat didn’t see any blood.

The suspect backed up, moving erratically. Sweeping his arm around with the gun pointed nowhere and everywhere.

“Put the weapon down!” Sergeant Ellis’s order rang through the store. “Put it down, now!”

The suspect had a hood up, so she couldn’t make out his features. Just enough to know he was young. African American. Maybe late teens. A kid who’d seen too much and done some things no one knew. “Back up! Don’t make me shoot you!”

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