Replacing Gentry (19 page)

Anna-Beth held my gaze with a cool stare. “Vanderbilt is a well established, philanthropic, research hospital with a world renowned reputation. A great place to recruit some of the brightest minds.”

I thought about the woman from the cemetery.
Biogenetics?
“That woman looked exactly like Gentry except for her eye color,” I said. “The duel shades were very distinctive.”

“Heterochromatic,” Anna-Beth confirmed. “Some ancient civilizations believed it was a mark of superiority. Some people come by it naturally, and some, we think, by choice. The anomaly is rare but not unheard of. And not necessarily a cause for alarm, or accusation.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, agreeing not to assume every person I met with two different eye colors was a member a secret radical group. “But how? I didn’t know it was possible for scientists to change eye color?”

Anna-Beth watched me a moment as if trying to decide whether or not she wanted to proceed. “We’re born with a genetic code that dictates what eye color we’ll express. Eye color is a function of different genes, not just one or two. Each gene evolves proteins in the specific proportions necessary for the expression of that specific phenotype.” She lifted two fingers, one at time, for what she said next. “Eye shape and color,” she added then dropped her hand. “A baby’s eye color can change as he or she develops. It’s kind of like the body switching on certain genes that influence eye color to retain more pigment. That’s why the color becomes darker, not lighter with development.”

Steven was nodding in concurrence.

“But can scientists alter the genes of an adult to change one’s physical appearance?” I asked.

She turned her palms up. “Current gene therapy enables us to suppress the immune system during transplant surgery and even program the body to adapt or learn to live with a new organ. This process is still quite risky but is performed successfully in transplant units all over this country—the world,” she said, then stopped to give me a solemn look. “
If
scientists can replicate what the body does naturally after birth with respect to eye color, they could, in theory, genetically insert the genes that signal a change in pigment and alter one’s genetic library to change color as desired.”

I lifted a skeptical brow. “So this group, the radical faction of the Iphiclesians, has taken the technology used in transplant surgery one step further to change their own eye color?” I asked, now wondering if maybe Anna-Beth was the one losing it. Surely, this group was using nothing more than contact lenses to mimic hetero-whatever-she-called-it.

“As it stands now, we,” she indicated herself and Steven, “don’t have the technology to successfully change a person’s DNA makeup to reflect a different expressed phenotype, but we’re making progress and when we can, we’ll know better how to find those who already seem to have achieved the impossible.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Could it be that all of these unexplained happenings were somehow connected to a secret group that was surgically altering themselves to take the place of selected individuals in influential positions? And possibly even genetically modifying their eye color, and who knew what else, as a show of superiority and/or to identify each other?

Then I thought about Gentry and her position as Daniel’s wife, Daniel’s current legislative dilemmas, and how powerful he could be in the future if he was elected to the US senate. The presidency. “But I don’t understand. Why not simply replace the senator? Why his wife?”

“Who has more power
and
the ability to fade into the background?” Anna-Beth asked. “The senator? Or the person who’s opinion he trusts most?”

My brain was spinning. “Iphicles,” I began, “the force behind the hero, the brains behind the brawn, the one with the true power—the one person no one suspects. The person who’s practically invisible and thus
invincible
 . . .”

Anna-Beth picked up where I trailed off. “Free to pull the strings of those charismatic enough, heroic enough, to be in the forefront, as he or she pleases. Essentially, the power and anonymity to start wars, topple governments, shift the balance of power and no one is the wiser.”

The objectives of this offshoot of the Iphiclesians began to line up before me like a winning hand being laid out on a poker table. I looked to Anna-Beth with saucered eyes. “Such a person, a group, can stop at nothing to get what they want because no one knows who they really are?”

“Reclaim one’s past, reclaim one’s destiny,” Anna-Beth echoed. “Take that philosophy one step too far and you’re left with—control one’s destiny at any cost.”

At any cost
. . .
ran a loop through my brain so quickly I was almost relieved that I was tied to a chair, or I may have lost my balance and fallen to the floor.

Chapter Twenty-one

M
y voice fell to a whisper. “Am I in danger?” I asked as another disturbing thought occurred to me.

What if all that Anna-Beth had been implying was true? How could she, my best friend, have stood back and allowed me to marry Daniel, to walk blindly right into this conspiracy, this evil? She had to have known that sooner or later my inquisitiveness would get the better of me and I’d go poking about.

I gave her a guarded look. “How long have you been a part of this agency?” I asked, to which her cold expression hardened to noncompliance. “Come on, I think you owe me some answers,” I urged. “After all these years of assuming you were my best friend . . .”

Anna-Beth gritted her teeth. “Undergrad. I’ve been with the FBI since they first questioned me about my own family’s involvement,” she growled. “And there’s no assuming. I still am, and always will be, your best friend.”

“So you’ve been investigating this group for more than a decade?” I said with a hint of sarcasm. “And you still haven’t caught them?”

“They’re a very difficult, and dangerous, group to infiltrate,” she came back, a touch of discord in her voice.

“That party you took me to in Nashville, the one where I met Finn back in college,” I said. “Was that a part of all this?”

“Yes,” she admitted, the faintest shadow of shame clouding her eyes. “The agency had traced a strong presence for this group back to Tennessee. Since I’m a Nashville native and kin to some of the key players, I was recruited. With my family connection, they figured I could easily blend into the right groups.”

“So, that’s why we were seated at Daniel’s table at the cadaver ball?” I said more as a statement than a question. I was still having trouble believing that all this time my best friend was living two completely different lives. And me, the inquisitive one, not once catching on.

“Yes,” Anna-Beth confirmed with a nod. “But never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that Daniel would go for you.” I shot her an affronted look. “No offense,” she added then proceeded to soften the blow. “He wasn’t exactly your type either. And that you’d go falling in love with him, much less agree to marry him, was even more unimaginable.”

I couldn’t argue that she had a point—Daniel and I were an unlikely pair. Still. “Why didn’t you do something to stop me?”

Anna-Beth tossed her hands into the air. “Oh, don’t even try and blame you being here on me,” she said like all that had happened was my fault. “I tried to warn you but you didn’t hear me. I warned you
so
many times.”

I blinked up at her in confusion. “When?”

“When? When
didn’t
I?” she said, exasperated. “Not directly of course, but didn’t every one of our conversations regarding you and Daniel include me admonishing you to take your time? At the wedding I told you about the rumors surrounding Gentry’s death, and then the missing autopsy, hoping,” she raised her hands to the ceiling, repeated, “
hoping
,” then dropped them back to her side, “that you would press Daniel for the truth so you would know what you were getting . . . had gotten . . . yourself into.” She shook her head disapprovingly. “But you just didn’t hear me.”

I thought about all of the conversations I’d had with Anna-Beth over the last year and how she’d cautioned me to take my time with Daniel. I’d assumed she was simply overreacting because of what had happened with Finn. “When I told you about seeing the Gentry-like woman, you didn’t warn me,” I said. “Why?”

Anna-Beth averted her eyes, giving me only a shrug.

And then her reasons dawned on me. “You needed to find her, didn’t you? And you used me as bait. That’s why you had boot-man over there following me.”

Anna-Beth rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic, Marlie. If that woman had wanted to harm you, what would have kept her from doing so at the cemetary?”

Tears burned behind my eyes. “Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?” I accused. “That as long as no one has gotten hurt, it’s okay to just stand back and wait?”

Anna-Beth’s eyes pulled into angry slits. “Like anything I could have said would have made you give up Daniel?” she pointed out. “Plus, I couldn’t risk jeopardizing my cover.”

I glanced over at Steven’s impassive expression and back to Anna-Beth, my heartbeat rising with the realization that I was now a potential risk to them as well. “Untie me,” I said, feeling vulnerable again, along with a sense of betrayal that was morphing into panic.

Flitting a glance at Steven, she ignored my request. “What do you remember about your meeting with the woman at the cemetery?” she asked, and then leaned forward to capture my full attention. “What did she say to you?”

“She said that everyone was in danger and I couldn’t save them. I should try to fit in, to be like everyone else. If I did, she said, I would never have to see her again.”

Anna-Beth nodded. “That’s good advice,” she said then gave me a serious look. “And while you’re at it, try to remember what’s at stake here.”

My lip curled into a snarl. “You mean exposing your covert government agency?”

“Yes, and no.” Anna-Beth leveled me a stare. “I’m confident you’re going to keep this unfortunate encounter to yourself. So, do we understand each other?”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Marlie . . .”

“Who am I going to tell?” I chuckled to show that the idea was preposterous. “Like anyone would take me seriously anyway.”

Anna-Beth nodded to Steven. He pushed away from the wall, came up behind me and cut the ties binding my hands. I shook my arms, trying to facilitate blood flow, and then when I could lift my arms again, I pressed a palm to the knot swelling on my temple.

“I barely believe it myself,” I said.

“Good.” Anna-Beth crossed her arms over her chest. “And just so you know, none of this has been easy for me either. It’s been like watching you and Finn all over again, waiting for the worst to happen, and having no idea how to stop it.”

“Finn?” I gulped. “What about him? He was one of them, an Iphiclesian, wasn’t he?” I asked. “And don’t lie to me. I remember his ring.”

Anna-Beth swiped a strand of honey hair away from her face. “Yes,” she said with a hint of derision. “And when it comes to the kind of men you fall in love with, you’re nothing if not consistent.”

The thought that Finn might have been involved in this nightmare tightened like a fist around my heart. “What happened to him?” I asked. “Was the boat crash that killed him really an accident? Or did they kill him too?”

She brushed my question away with a wave of her hand. “All you need to know is that Finn’s gone—in the past—and he won’t ever be coming back,” she said, ending any further debate with a discussion-over look. “You have a wonderful husband who loves you and two boys who don’t deserve to lose another mother.”

“You don’t think I know that?”

“Whatever it is you think you’ve stumbled on to, you need to heed the advice of that woman in the cemetery and take a step back,” Anna-Beth said, her voice stinging my ears. “Do you have any idea what it takes to surgically change the human body to match someone else’s so perfectly that even one’s spouse can’t tell the difference?” She paused a beat, allowing the enormity of the process to sink in. “It takes planning and time, finding the perfect body type—size, shape—months of painful surgery. These people are serious about what they’re doing. They’re not a group to be trifled with,” she said, and for the first time since she’d removed the blindfold from my eyes, I saw a speck of the old Anna-Beth.

The friend who often knew me better than I knew myself.

“If I could pull you out right now without causing suspicion, without jeopardizing a decade of work, I would. But then the investigation would be blown and this group would still be out there, ruining lives and God only knows what else.” She pointed a finger at me. “The only reason I told you any of this is because you’ve
got
to be careful. Marlie, for once in your life, let something go.
Let this go.
”

For the first time since I’d begun my little investigation, I was scared, and not just for myself. I had a family now. “I don’t know—”

“We’re close, Marlie, really close,” she cut in. “Give us a little more time. I know it’s going to be hard for you, so how about I make you a deal?”

I swallowed against a parched throat. “Okay.”

Coming close enough to rest her hands on my shoulders, she offered, “How about you let me and my team take the investigation from here. I’ll keep you up to speed on what we find.
You
keep an eye out for anything else that seems . . . off. But if you find anything, you call me first.” She wagged a finger in front of my face. “No more going it on your own. And if that Gentry person, or any other, shows up again, whatever you do, don’t confront her.”

My life, my new family, could all slip away if I wasn’t careful. I thought back to what the cadaver had said, about me losing everything that was dear to me. A shadow of dread circled my heart. Chasing this mystery was like slicing off the head of a mystical dragon only to have two more grow back in its place. I was navigating a slippery slope that, sooner or later, could get the better of me. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, acting as if nothing had changed, but I had to try.

With a pleading look, I laid out my conditions. “Okay fine, I’ll step back and call you if that woman shows up again or I stumble upon something important. But you’d better keep me in the loop and warn me at the first sign of danger to my husband . . . my boys.” Tears moistened my cheeks. “Say you will.”

Anna-Beth leaned in and wiped away my tears. “Haven’t I always had your back?”