The Big Sheep (22 page)

I made my way down the hall, half dragging Priya while holding my gun in my other hand. We got to the elevator without incident, and I mashed the down button with the butt of my gun. The elevator door opened. Empty. So far, so good. We got in, and I hit the button for the lobby.

“April,” I said into my comm.

“What's happening, Blake?” April's voice answered. “Did you find Priya?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We had a little trouble. Are you still parked up front?”

“I'm waiting down the street. I'll be in front by the time you get there.”

“Okay, be ready to leave in a hurry.”

“Got it.”

Priya was leaning against the back of the elevator, and her eyes were rolling again. Her knees buckled and she began sliding to the floor, despite my best efforts to keep her upright. “Priya!” I yelled. “Stay awake! Just a few seconds more.” She stirred and blinked. As her eyes focused on me, I saw no recognition in them.

“Blake!” said April's voice in my ear.

“Yeah,” I said.

“The cops are here. Just one cruiser so far. Two men entering the lobby.”

“Shit!” I snapped. “Roger that. Be ready for us. But if you hear gunfire, get out of there.”

“But—”

I cut her off and gave Priya a hard slap across her face. She yelped and then backed away from me.

“Priya,” I said. “Do you know who I am?”

“F-Fowler,” she said after a moment.

“Right, I'm Blake Fowler. Keane's partner. I'm here to help you. Do you believe me?”

She nodded uncertainly.

“All right,” I said. “In about three seconds, that door is going to open and things are going to get very scary. You're going to be okay, but you have to trust me. Can you do that?”

She nodded again. The elevator chimed.

I slid behind Priya, putting my arm around her throat and holding my gun to her temple. The elevator doors slid open, and I saw two cops with guns pointed at me. A clerk cringed behind the front desk, and an elderly couple cowered in a corner, but the lobby was otherwise clear.

“Don't anybody fucking move,” I screamed, “or I swear to God I will put a bullet in this bitch's brain!”

Priya squeaked in fear and struggled vainly against my grip. I couldn't tell if she was acting or if she really was trying to get away, but I was a lot stronger than she was, and the sedative had taken most of the fight out of her. I moved slowly through the lobby, making sure to keep Priya in front of me as much as possible. “And don't fucking follow me,” I hollered as we approached the front door, “or I'll shoot her in the head and throw her body out the window!”

We made it through the front door, and I shoved Priya outside. April's car was nowhere to be seen. I double-checked in both directions, but it wasn't there. Had the police gotten to her? Seconds were ticking away. The cops wouldn't wait forever. I needed to make a decision, and fast. So: ditch Priya and make a run for it? Hope the police would protect her? I didn't like it, but it was looking like my only option.

“Fowler!” I heard a woman's voice cry. April. She was getting out of the front seat of a cab, parked just down the street.

“Let's go,” I urged Priya, grabbing her arm. I holstered my gun as we ran to the cab. April opened the door and we slid inside. April slammed the door behind us and got in the front. “Go!” she yelled to the driver, an elderly Middle Eastern man.

I looked behind us and saw that the cops still hadn't followed. I must have been pretty convincing with my threats. “What's up with the cab?” I said. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Figured it was safer,” said April.

She was right. The hotel would have cameras covering the front. If they got April's license plate, they'd be on to us damn quick. A cab was practically invisible. As the hotel receded in the distance, I saw the cops pouring onto the street.

“Clear?” April said.

I turned around to face her. I shook my head.

April put two crisp twenty new dollar notes on the dash. “Faster,” she said.

The driver nodded, and the cab leaped forward. Glancing back, I saw flashers in the distance, but I doubted they knew which car we were in. By the time they thought to check the monitors, we'd be long gone.

The cab weaved through traffic, passing cars left and right. “Go right here,” April said, and the driver complied. After some time, she had him make another right, and then another. Soon we weren't far from where we had started. She told the driver to pull over. “Stay here,” she said, handing the driver another twenty. She took off down the street.

A few minutes later April pulled up behind us in her car. She helped me transfer Priya to her backseat, and then we took off, leaving the cab behind. She turned right on Wilshire, and I ducked as we drove past the hotel. Several police cars were now parked out front.

“Drive slow,” I said. “We don't want to attract any attention.”

“I've got this, chief,” said April, with a smile.

Half an hour later we were back at the office. April parked in front and helped me carry the semiconscious Priya into the building. I was tempted just to put her in the guest bedroom on the first floor and let her sleep off the sedative, but I thought Keane would want to see her. I grabbed a blanket and put it around her shoulders, and then we got into the elevator and took it up to the third floor. I banged a couple of times on the door to his study and then threw it open. “Look what I found,” I said. Priya had one arm around my neck and the other around April's, and her head lolled from one side to the other, like a drunk in an old movie.

And then I saw Keane wasn't alone. Sitting in a chair facing him was a woman with long black hair. When she turned, my knees almost buckled. It was Priya Mistry.

 

NINETEEN

The two Priyas stared at each other for a moment in shock.

“Well,” said Keane. “This is awkward.”

“Who … is that?” asked the Priya hanging on to my shoulder.

“Just a bad dream,” I said. “We're going to take you downstairs so you can get some rest.” April gave me a wide-eyed glance but was smart enough not to say anything. We escorted Priya back downstairs and carried her to the guest bedroom. I went back upstairs while April tucked her in.

“So it's true,” said the Priya in Keane's office. “They made copies of me.” She was stunned but not hysterical.

I took the chair next to her and looked at Keane. He shot me a pained look. We were going to have to tell her the truth.

“Not exactly,” I said. “We believe the woman downstairs is genetically identical to you.”

“Like a twin,” said Priya. “A perfect copy.”

“More or less,” I said.

She looked from me to Keane, a puzzled expression on her face. “What?” she asked. “What aren't you telling me?”

I sighed. There wasn't any easy way to break it to her. “She's not a copy of you,” I said. “That is … we're not certain you're the original.”

Priya laughed. “Of course I'm the original,” she said. “I wasn't raised in a lab. I grew up in Tucson.”

“What is your real name?” asked Keane.

“I was born Bryn Jhaveri. But everyone knows me as Priya.”

“And the stuff about the copies?”

“Selah put me up to that. She said someone pretending to be me had hired you, and that the only way to get you to leave me alone was to tell you that story.”

“You didn't think that was strange?” I asked.

“I thought it was ridiculous,” said Priya. “But Selah is the reason I'm a star. I owe her everything. So when she asks me to do something, I do it.”

“But something changed your mind,” Keane said. “Something brought you here.”

She bit her lip. “Noogus,” she said. “How the hell did you know about Noogus?”

“You told us,” I said. “Or someone who looked exactly like you did.”

She shook her head. “I've never mentioned that to anybody. Not since I was four years old. When you mentioned Noogus in Selah's office, I was … shocked. I almost broke down. But I've been acting so long, I guess my instincts just took over. I finished the scene and exited the stage.”

“So you see the problem,” said Keane. “Someone who looks exactly like you came to our office two days ago and told us about Noogus. She hired us to look into a threat against her life.”

“That woman downstairs,” said Priya.

I shook my head. “No. We don't know what happened to the original. That is, the first Priya we encountered. I suspect she was killed in that explosion on the set.”

“I was there,” Priya said. “When the bomb went off.”

“You were?” I asked. How was that possible? How could there have been two Priyas on the set without anyone noticing?

She nodded. “My memory is a little fuzzy,” she said. “But I remember the explosion.”

“So you saw the car explode?” asked Keane. I shot him a puzzled glance.

“I think so?” said Priya. “Like I said, my memory is fuzzy.”

“But you were definitely on the set at the time of the explosion.”

“Yes.”

“So you saw the burnt-out wreckage of the car after the bomb went off.”

She nodded.

“Did anything strike you as strange about the wreckage? The way the car was parked facing the wrong way on the side of the street, for instance?”

She nodded again. “That was … a little weird, I guess.”

“Or the fact that the car seemed to be made entirely out of mozzarella?”

“Uh … what?” Priya asked.

“There was no car bomb,” said Keane. “A store exploded. You didn't see any blast. You were implanted with artificial memories. The other Priya, the one who hired us, was killed, and you were brought in to replace her.”

“I'm not lying!” cried Priya. “I was there!”

“We don't think you're lying,” I said, glaring at Keane. “We think you've been tricked into thinking you were there.”

Keane continued, “Your memory is fuzzy because you were only given the bare details of what happened. You're trying to fill in the gaps, but you can't, because you weren't there. What's the last vivid memory you have from before the explosion?”

“I was on the set,” she said. “Doing a scene. With Taki, I think.”

“No,” said Keane. “If you have to think about it, it didn't happen. Your brain is constructing false memories based on the coaching you received. Close your eyes. Where were you before the explosion?”

“The hotel?” Priya offered.

“No!” snapped Keane. “Don't think about it. Don't try to put things into sequence, or make sense of events. Just tell me the last thing you clearly remember before the explosion. Quickly!”

“I don't know!” she cried. “Everything is fuzzy. All I see is black.”

“It doesn't have to be visual,” Keane said. “A sound, a taste, a smell … anything that—”

“Licorice,” she said.

“You tasted licorice?” Keane asked.

She shook her head and opened her eyes. “No, I smelled it.”

“Anything else?” Keane asked. “An image or sound that goes along with the smell? Do you know where you were when you smelled it?”

“I'm not sure,” she said. “I remember a place, but I'm not sure if it was a dream.”

“What place?” Keane said. “Where were you?”

Priya sat for a moment, her eyes closed. Her head swayed slightly as if she were drifting with her thoughts. “I was … on a cliff overlooking the ocean,” she said after some time. “It was very peaceful. I wanted to stay there, but then someone made me go inside a building. It was white, like a hospital. That's where I smelled the licorice. It was a … bad place.”

“Who made you go inside the building?” Keane asked.

She shook her head. “I'm sorry. I don't remember.”

“Do you remember anything that happened there?”

“No.”

“And after the bad place?” Keane asked.

“I'm not sure if it even happened,” said Priya. “I … went back to the hotel, I think? It all gets fuzzy after that. I think it was some time ago. A few months, maybe, but it's hard to be sure. I work such long hours on
DiZzy Girl
that everything starts to run together. What does it mean?”

Keane was silent for a moment, lost in thought.

“To be honest,” I said, “we aren't entirely sure.”

“You're a clone,” said Keane, apparently having concluded his ruminations. “You and the woman downstairs. Copies of the original Priya, who may be an actual person, but could be some sort of fictional construct. It's possible you're the original, but the odds are against it. There are at least three of you, and probably more.”

“But why?” Priya asked, horrified. “Why would somebody do this?”

“Partly because the demand for Priya Mistry is too high to be met by a single person. They needed more of you. But I suspect there's another reason as well. A somewhat more troubling reason.”

I wasn't entirely certain I wanted to hear a rationale more troubling than cloning a human being to meet the demands of a populace desperate for more Priya Mistry, not to mention the insatiable greed of Selah Fiore and Flagship Media.

“What is it, Mr. Keane?” Priya asked. “Please, I have to know.”

“The first Priya we met,” said Keane. “Let's call her Priya One.”

“Ritz-Carlton Priya,” I interjected. I didn't want to have to deal with the Priyas fighting over who got to be number one. “You aren't staying at the Ritz, are you?” I asked the Priya next to me.

She shook her head. “The Peninsula Beverly Hills.”

“Okay, then you're Peninsula Priya,” I said. “Sorry. We need some way of keeping everybody straight.”