Page 8 of Duplicity

He stared at her. “No, I don’t have a date.”

Then Simon turned away and went back to the class. He grabbed his things and shut the lights off, leaving out a side door that meant he had to walk around the corner of the building to get to his bike. He adjusted the backpack straps and slid on his helmet.

The roar of the engine under him. The helmet muted the world aside from that. All of it was a sensory rest he needed after spending a long morning with people, having their attention on him, and knowing if he didn’t succeed at this job, then he might as well forget everything.

Walk away from all of it.

He weaved through traffic, picking up speed on long straight stretches. Until he checked himself because he was in danger of being pulled over. It could be a cop he knew—which would be awkward when he gave them Silas Norris’s driver’s license.

Simon worked hard to get Catalina Alvarez out of his head. If he spent more time with her, he was going to be in trouble. Cat was absolutely the kind of woman who could test his resolve. Crazy beautiful, astute enough to call him on his mini freakout about that SUV. She was a cop, which meant she valued doing what was right. He didn’t know her history or why she was anSRO, but it didn’t make a difference. No matter which way it shook out…

Bad idea.

If anyone was going to change his mind, it was her. And that was exactly why he was going to keep it professional, with a side of actively avoiding her. After all, when she found out the truth of who he was and even a slice of what he’d done since he had figured out he was good with computers, she would run away as fast as she possibly could, and he would be left with a broken heart.

Again.

GPS in his helmet speakers directed him to the spot where Justice had driven in his old Mustang. It turned out to be a body shop with a car garage next to it advertising twenty-minute oil changes.

No one touched Simon’s bike but him, so he pulled into the diner across the street. He might need a signal boost, but it was close enough to the kid’s location and the phone his laptop was still connected with.

Or it would be as soon as he got on the diner’s Wi-Fi.

Simon slid into a booth and ordered a big enough all-day breakfast special that he wasn’t going to need dinner later.

“Coffee?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

The grizzly-looking waitress said, “Sure thing,” in a voice that betrayed how long she’d smoked.

Simon opened his laptop, angling it so no one would see what he was working on. The waitress poured him some coffee, and Simon said thank you while he stuck his earbuds in. Rather than leaving them in with no music playing—which he did a lot so he could focus—he connected his laptop to the phone across the street and switched on the microphone.

He used a noise filtering app to isolate the voices and clean up the feed enough that he could turn up the volume and hear snatches of conversation.

Justice was humming. A compressor hummed in the background.

A message popped up on his computer. Peter had sent a text to his phone, the one he’d mailed to Wyoming. The communication had grown sparse over the last week, which sort of meant his brother knew something was up—but he’d also give Simon space until he was ready to talk about it. Maybe Pete was suspicious of his sudden need to “disconnect” and vacation by himself, or perhaps he had figured out Simon was nowhere near Yellowstone.

Simon pulled a photo from the folder where he’d stashed images of the national park taken from social media. He hadn’t bothered to use a design program to superimpose his picture onto the image of the scenery. Peter would see right through it.

He sent the image in reply and told Peter he was good. Because that, at least, was true.

Through his headphones, he heard laughter, the kind that followed an inappropriate joke or one told at someone’s expense.

“Guess you’d better pass school so you can be a big shot like the old man.” Male voice. Not Justice.

“I will. Don’t sweat it.” The response came from the teen who’d been in his class this morning.

“You think he’ll let you go if you don’t do what he wants?”

Simon stilled. Everything in him reacted, making him want to run as far and as fast as he could.

Justice asked, “So, I don’t get what I want?” The question was issued like a challenge. He wanted the man talking to him to believe he was big-time.

The person Justice was talking to laughed. “Oh, you’ll get what you want. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of you.”

“It better be a good birthday.”

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