Chapter 51: Chapter fifty

Present day

 

Alesha was dead and then there was a gunshot.

The order of things is important, Dusk thought as she stood over Mike Jones’ body. If the gunshot had come before Alesha died, then Dusk would have died with her.

Alesha had woken in the middle of the night. She didn’t know what had woken her but Dusk, hidden in the vaults of her mind, did. Dusk had recognized the sound of a key sliding into the motel room’s door. She wasn’t expecting visitors, and the only person who might need to see her, she never would have heard. That meant an intruder and, given who she was, an intruder meant someone was trying to kill her.

Alesha represented the pinnacle of Dusk’s mental prowess; a disguise so real that even she believed it. But that meant that Alesha only had the skills her backstory allowed. She had been a competent detective, a passable gymnast, and proficient with firearms. But proficient wouldn’t cut it if her intruder was a trained killer, which meant Alesha had to die, and Dusk had to live again.

So, Dusk had input Alesha’s self-destruct code within her mind palace. It had been painful to kill a personality after so long, but it was necessary. Dusk would never let sentimentality stop her from doing what needed to be done, especially not when she had already given up so much. So, between one heartbeat and the next, Alesha Price had ceased to exist, leaving behind only Dusk.

Dusk had waited in the motel bed as the door opened and a figure stepped into the room. From the light coming in from outside, she could see that her intruder was Mike, and had waited a moment in case he was there for some benign reason. But no, he had pointed his gun at her, and she could see from the tension in his body that he was about to pull the trigger.

That left her no choice, and she had shot him through the spinal column before he could fire.

Now she stood over his body, her mind running through chains of logical inference that began with Alesha’s partner trying to kill her. And all led inevitably to Kessington Smythe.

Mike had, obviously now that Dusk looked over Alesha’s memories, been indirectly under Smythe’s thumb. But, just as obviously, he had decided to face the consequences of his actions rather than betray his partner. Which meant that Smythe hadn’t learned about her actions from him, but rather from one of his other double agents. Which meant The Wraith.

Now that Dusk was in the driver’s seat of her own mind again, she remembered the things she had done without Alesha noticing. Shooting that thug in the throat, helping Elizabeth Clark escape police custody and making a small explosive device disguised as a piece of chewing gum and slipping it under The Wraith’s desk. That last one had been particularly tricky to pull off as Alesha hadn’t been filled with adrenaline or in a mild state of shock. She had been forced to hide her actions in everyday things that Alesha wouldn’t think about, but it had been necessary once she heard the man had ‘rescued’ The Wraith. That could only be the Program taking steps to place their double agent closer to him.

That, combined with the fact the man had apparently given the information Alesha had taken from the FBI to The Wraith, suggested that the mission was on a tight timeframe. Otherwise, he would most likely run down the leads himself. Which meant that whatever Smythe was up to, it would be happening soon.

Dusk retrieved Alesha’s phone and brought up the photos of the FBI records. The Wraith wouldn’t have bothered to alter the records that the man gave her, knowing his recall to be total, and would instead try to delay with him a false lead long enough for the Program to take him out. Alesha, on the other hand, had been, to all appearances, just an ordinary person and would likely not notice if a couple of digits in a routing number had been changed. They probably wouldn’t risk changing the FBI’s records, though they could, because they kept paper copies of everything and with the amount of attention this case was getting, the discrepancy might be noticed. But Alesha was alone and The Wraith would almost certainly hack her phone and alter those pictures, just in case Mike’s assassination was unsuccessful.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Alesha that was checking the numbers. It would be Dusk. So, as Dusk scanned through the photos that Alesha had taken, a mental representation of herself did the same with the originals deep within her mind, and she compared the two as though they were both right in front of her.

There. Two of Branson’s assigned routing numbers had been changed.

Dusk, standing over Mike’s body and staring down at a phone that had once been hers but now belonged to a dead woman, smiled.

She had them.

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