Chapter 5: 05

Maxine didn't have time to read the book in great detail, of course, because she had to work overtime. Which is why she was in a dark room in someone's poorly furnished flat in an outer suburb, squinting at their belongings to see if there was anything to be suspicious of. It would be easier if she thought turning on her phone flash light was a good idea, but she didn't trust the occupant of the flat wouldn't arrive, and she needed to keep her presence disguised.

Sam Greene, 37. Boring, untidy house. No dust on his piles of disorganised papers, at least, but nothing worth looking at, anyway, as far as Maxine could tell.

She sighed and started moving back away from the bookshelf on soft feet.

A nearby noise stopped her in her tracks. She froze in place, keeping her breathing quiet so she could be sure it wasn't just her. The steady footsteps of someone striding into the building without worrying about being caught. The sound of water coming from a tap. The heavy tap of fingernails on a counter top.

Maxine shuffled back as quietly as she could, trying to calculate her exit. The front door could only be reached through the kitchen. The window in the bedroom didn't open. She really should have planned this better when she started. Maybe she could just find a wardrobe and hide inside until the person left, like people did in the movies.

But, no, that wasn't going to work. Stealth had never been her strong point, even after all these years of practise, because she didn't really care if she got injured, so she knew her best bet was just charging past the owner and risking getting caught. But she was curious.

So she shuffled closer to the wardrobe, just to see if it could fit a body her size. The doors were stuck tight. She jiggled the knob, which made a particularly unstealthy sound. The nearby footsteps started again, a heavy plodding sound. She wrenched the wardrobe door open with a creek, and a body fell towards her, knocking her on the shoulder as it plummeted toward the floor.

Oh, that was Sam Greene, just like in his pictures, only significantly more dead.

The hope of stealth completely gone, she ran out of the bedroom. And froze in shock when she saw Sam Greene in the kitchen, walking toward her with a serious expression.

The Sam Greene in front of her clenched his fists and swung toward her. Maxine ducked. Body snatcher? Clone? Secret identical twin? He swung his fist again and clipped the edge of her shoulder, sending her tumbling on to the linoleum floor. She scrambled across the floor, trying to find a weapon, and cursing herself for going completely unarmed.

The Sam Greene standing above her grunted, but as she turned she caught a glimpse of the dead Sam Greene in the other room, eyes forever turned to the floor. Shapeshifter, she decided. Just like the old enemy she fought on the show 15 years earlier, but much better at his skill. She assumed the live Sam Greene was the fake and the dead one the real thing, but how could she be sure? She hadn't ever seen what happened to a shapeshifter that died when they were in a new shape. Did they just stay that way forever or revert back to their natural form? And was she going to learn the answer today?

She scrambled to her feet, just as Sam Greene roared and threw his weight at her. Her head hit the kitchen cabinets, and the world got warm and span for a moment. She blinked the after effects out of her eyes and pushed at his chest with an elbow, trying to lever herself out some space. He moved back, but not by much.

Desperate times called for a headbutt. She bit her own lip from the pain. He stumbled back, clutching at his head, giving her enough space to grab one of the kitchen chairs and swing it at his back. He stumbled more, and she swung again. His knees went out underneath him. His eyes were red as he looked up at her. So she swung at his head so she wouldn't have to look him in the eye anymore.

He collapsed.

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He wasn't dead, certainly. She could see his chest rising and falling under his ugly work polo shirt. But unconscious he still looked like Sam Greene, so that solved none of the questions that puzzled her.

Maxine pulled her phone out of her skirt pocket, and dialled her top contact.

"Maxine, any progress on your part in the Sam Greene investigation?" Avery said when she picked up, no small talk whatsoever.

Maxine turned Sam Greene over with her foot and looked him over. "Progress of a sort. You're not going to believe what I've found."

"Aren't I," Avery said, voice flat.

"But you're going to need to get a team in here to document this and contain the scene, because I am not qualified to move this issue to the next level."

Avery groaned. Maxine shared every detail she could, and waited.

*

Hours later, after all the paperwork was done, she walked home from the office in the dark, enjoying the quiet of the dusty alleyways with their graffiti art. Avery was taking her off the Sam Greene investigation and assigning her to something else, which was just fine by Maxine. Sam Greene the visa overstayer with possible links to organised crime might have sounded less exciting than the possibilities of two Sam Greenes of mysterious origins, but Maxine had more interesting mysteries on her mind. Like when did Claire Webster become Tori, resurfacing in Maxine's life after all these years, and was it a coincidence that the book about their past came out around the same time as this surprise meeting.

Maybe it was a coincidence, Maxine thought, smiling up at the brilliant moon. Or fate, fate reconnecting them. Claire had been her first real friend, and as far as Maxine was concerned, there was no reason she couldn't make friends with Tori now. She was bored and needed a challenge.

Maxine reached her own apartment building, smiling all the way to her home on the third floor. Tori's pink shoe was on the top of her shoe rack, incongruous next to all the dark boots. The bow on the top was a little mangled, and the heel caked in unidentified dirt.

"Okay, Cinderella," Maxine said. "Let me see if I can find where you're hiding."

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