The Pretender (The Soren Chase Series Book 2) (7 page)

Soren was looking through crime scene photos at his office when Glen bolted through the door out of breath. Soren glanced up at him from his desk.

“Oh yay, it’s you again,” he said.

“Damn it, Soren, I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Really? Where did you look?”

“Well, I went to your apartment and then I . . . err . . . came here.”

“Not exactly ‘all over’ then, is it?”

“For you, it is,” Glen replied. “When you weren’t at your apartment, I thought you’d gone off to throw yourself in front of a train or something.”

Soren looked thoughtful.

“You know, that’s another great idea,” he said. “Can you add that to my list over there? I should have consulted you before.”

The look on Glen’s face was priceless, somewhere among frustration, amusement, and anger. Then he focused on what Soren had been looking at before his dramatic entrance. They were photos of the Yong crime scene.

“My god, it actually worked,” Glen said. “You took the case.

Soren nodded. “I actually ran into the pretender who did this last night.”

“What happened?”

“The usual. I chased it; it tried to kill me; it got away,” Soren said. “Clearly, I need a better strategy.”

It was an understatement. Even though he was a pretender himself, he still had no way of knowing how to defeat them. It was ironic and infuriating at the same time.

“So where are we now?” Glen asked.

“Here’s how this is going to work,” Soren said. “You’re rehired, at least temporarily. But you work for me again, not Terry.”

Soren was so angry at Terry, he didn’t know where to start. He was even ticked off that Terry had moved Soren’s desk back out to the front room. He’d liked his little office in the back.

“Anyway, if you’re working for me, you can stop following me around,” Soren finished.

“I can only do that if you agree to stop trying to kill yourself.”

“Deal,” Soren said. “But only for now. At the moment, all I want is to find this pretender, and figure out what the hell she’s up to. Once that’s done, all bets are off.”

Glen looked dubious “Okay, I guess,” Glen said, and sat down in the chair in front of the desk. “But what do you mean, you want to find out what she’s up to? I thought all pretenders pretty much just lived for the kill. Present company excluded, of course.”

“Gee, thanks,” Soren said. “Let me back up. When a pretender attacks a person, they make physical contact and transform their body into a copy of them. Then they kill the original target. They pretty much have to because they can’t properly assume an identity if the victim is still wandering around unharmed.”

“I know this. I’ve worked here for months.”

“Yeah, but here’s the problem. If Audrey Yong was replaced by a pretender, then the pretender should have killed the real Audrey and stashed her body somewhere. Maybe she buried it in the woods or took it to an incinerator. Who knows? The point is, she wouldn’t keep the body around because if someone stumbled upon it, they would naturally have questions. And those questions would eventually expose the pretender.”

“Okay, I’m following you,” Glen said.

“Well, I just got a call a few minutes ago. Audrey Yong’s body is at the morgue. Not the body of the pretender, who I met last night, but Audrey’s actual corpse. And according to the coroner, Audrey died at the same time as the rest of her family. Additionally, her manner of death was consistent with someone who put a gun in their own mouth and pulled the trigger.”

“Wait. When did Audrey allegedly get replaced by the pretender?”

“Two weeks prior to her death,” Soren replied. “So now we have a puzzle. If Audrey was replaced two weeks before she died, her corpse should reflect that. The police shouldn’t be saying she died at the same time as her family.”

Glen pursed his lips.

“Maybe the pretender kept her drugged somewhere?” he asked. “And then killed her once it was done murdering the family? That way nobody would know it was a pretender that committed the crime.”

“That’s possible, but it’s not exactly a pretender’s style,” Soren replied. “I’ve never heard of them being into cover-ups. Generally, they take someone’s place, they wreak havoc, and then they leave.”

“This one could be branching out, taking up a new hobby.”

“Okay, so where did she keep Yong? It smells funny to me. We’re missing something.”

“How do you know the police told you the truth?” Glen asked. “They might have just lied about Audrey Yong’s blood test.”

“Ordinarily, I’d agree, but Ken Sharpe was the one who told me,” Soren said. “I ran into him and Sara last night at the Yong house.”

Glen looked confused. “Sara, like your friend, Sara? John’s fiancée? What was she doing there?”

“Apparently, she works for the Wallace Institute now. They were trying to track down the pretender.”

Glen cocked his head to the side. “That’s weird,” he said. “Did you tell her what you really are?”

“Sure I did,” Soren said. “I walked right up to her and said, ‘Hey, you remember Soren? He was about this tall, looked and sounded exactly like me? I killed him. Oh, and your fiancé, too, and a couple friends, and a shit ton of other people. Can we still be friends?’”

“I’m serious,” Glen said. “She doesn’t know, right?”

Soren closed his eyes and took a large breath.

“No, she doesn’t,” he said. “Get to the point.”

“Maybe when she saw you turn into a flambé and survive, she put two and two together and figured out what you were. If she’s hunting pretenders now, maybe she’s really hunting you.”

Soren looked up at the ceiling, his mind whirling. The idea should have occurred to him earlier. But he knew Sara. If she’d known what he’d done, she wouldn’t have been able to be in the same room with him. She wasn’t one to quietly seethe in a corner—you knew where you stood with her.

“You didn’t see her,” Soren said. “She doesn’t know. She doesn’t hate me.”

“If you say so,” Glen said. “Maybe she’s just a good actress.”

“I know her,” Soren said. “I’d be able to tell.”

But of course he didn’t know her, not really. Soren Chase knew her, and though as a pretender he had access to many of Soren’s memories, that wasn’t the same.

“I don’t know,” Glen said. “I don’t like it.”

“Well, what’s the worst case scenario—she kills me? Then you should pin a medal on her chest and call it a day.”

“Yeah, Soren, that’s really what I’m going for here,” Glen said. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not on the Falk-must-die bandwagon.”

“Let’s drop it,” Soren said. “I can’t worry about Sara right now. I don’t think she knows. If I’m wrong, I’ll deal with it later. Let’s get back to the case at hand. Why would the pretender keep Audrey alive? What’s the agenda?”

Glen sat back again, apparently mollified. “Well, do you know anything else about the kid? Is there anything special about her?”

Soren started to shake his head, then realized that wasn’t true. The police interviews had even used the word “special” several times. Audrey had excelled at most things she did. “Wait,” he said.

Soren thumbed past the photographs and into the notes. He pulled a single sheet out.

“She was her high school chess champion,” Soren said. “The police talked to her teammates. For the most part, they said the usual stuff, blah, blah, blah, she was quiet, an introvert. But one kid, Diana Romanov, said Audrey was so good at chess, it was ‘almost as if she knew the move you were going to make before you did.’”

“Huh,” Glen said. “So what are you suggesting? That the kid was psy—”

There was a knock at the door, and both Glen and Soren looked at it in surprise.

“Expecting anyone?” Glen asked.

Soren shook his head, and Glen walked over to the door. He opened it to reveal a petite girl with short blonde hair styled in a bob. She was a teenager, wearing boots that seemed too big for her and a bright pink jacket with fur lining. She had a cute, small backpack slung over her shoulders, and was wearing sunglasses with little cartoon cherries on them. She smiled wide when Glen opened the door.

“Excuse me, but is this Soren Chase’s office?” she asked.

“Yeah, but, uh—”

“The detective said I should talk to him,” she said. “I’m a friend of Audrey’s. The detective said Mr. Chase would want to hear what I have to say.”

“Okay, come on in,” Glen said, turning back to Soren.

Her story rang false to Soren, but before he could react, the girl slipped something out of her jacket and pressed it against Glen’s back. Glen’s body began jerking uncontrollably, and he slumped to the ground.

It was over so fast that Soren was still sitting there in shock. The girl stood still, smiling over Glen’s body.

“Hello again, Soren,” she said in a singsong voice. “You and I need to talk.”

Soren pulled a gun from his desk drawer and began firing at the girl, hitting her several times in the chest.

She stumbled back into the doorway while Soren stood up and vaulted over the desk, aiming a foot at the girl’s stomach.

But she quickly shrugged off the bullet wounds and dodged out of the way, stepping farther into the office. Soren landed a few feet away.

“I didn’t come here to fight again,” she said, that same infuriating smile still on her face.

“Oh yeah?” Soren asked.

He turned, grabbed the chair where his clients usually sat, and winged it at her. She dodged it, but Soren was ready for that. As she sidestepped the chair, he launched himself at where he knew she would go. He successfully collided with her, knocking her back. Soren didn’t pause, but grabbed her head and slammed it repeatedly against the wall. After all this time trying to kill himself, it was immensely satisfying to put that energy into trying to kill something else.

He thought he had the upper hand, but she managed to press something into his side. He tried to twist away from the stun gun, but was too late. A shock of voltage coursed through him. For a few precious seconds, he couldn’t move. He felt like he couldn’t breathe.

The girl withdrew the stun gun from him, and then punched him in the face. He went down easy, still unable to fight back. He crumpled to the floor, a few feet from where Glen lay motionless. But at least Soren could breathe again.

“Like, what’s your problem?” she said. “I said I wasn’t here to fight. Are you deaf or just stupid?”

Soren stared up at the girl, and tried to remember if he had anything stronger than a gun in the office. He had a veritable arsenal left over in his car from the guai attack, but that wasn’t going to help him now.

The girl stood over him, nudging him with her foot.

“That really hurt, you know?” she said, rubbing the back of her head. “I thought you might not be such a total dickweed if I just came to you. But apparently, I was wrong.”

She kicked him again without much force.

“Come on, get up, I didn’t even have this at full power,” she said, still holding the stun gun in her hand.

Soren flexed his toes to make sure his body was working again. When he determined it was, he suddenly swung his legs out, knocking hers out from underneath her. As she fell, he focused not on finding his own weapon, but on taking hers.

She hit the floor and Soren went for the stun gun that she was still clutching in her hand, scrambling on the ground to reach it. He grabbed her right wrist as she started punching him in the face with her left hand. He let himself take the blows, which were surprisingly strong for a girl so small.

Soren wrested the stun gun from her hand. He looked at her with a smile on his face.

“Let’s see how you like it,” he said, flicking the switch and jamming it into her wrist.

He held it against her for several seconds. The girl started to buck slightly on the floor, her entire body seizing up. Soren could see the pain in her eyes and it made him feel happy for the first time in two months. He wanted to drown this thing in a river of pain.

Spoken like the true monster that you are.

As if he’d been slapped in the face, Soren stopped smiling and withdrew the stun gun. The girl wasn’t moving anymore; she still looked at him, but she appeared to be immobile. Soren jumped up, opened his desk drawer, and pulled out a roll of duct tape. He put the stun gun on the desk and returned to the girl. It took him several minutes, but he got her over to a chair and carefully wound tape around her from her ankles to her shoulders, using most of the roll of tape. He put extra tape on her wrists to hold them in place and secured a piece over her mouth so she couldn’t scream for help, pretending to be a helpless teenage girl.

When he was sure she was secure, he checked on Glen. He tapped him gently on the face, pulling out a bottle of water from the small fridge in the corner and splashing him with it. It took a moment for Glen to wake up.

“What happened?” he asked, looking dazed.

Soren pointed at the girl now tied up to a chair.

“We caught ourselves a pretender,” he said. “And now we’re finally going to get some answers.”

Glen quickly identified who their attacker was—or who she used to be, at any rate.

She was Sharon Lizt, a sophomore at Langley High School who had posted several public messages on Audrey Yong’s Facebook page.

Soren glared at the pretender while Glen paced nervously back and forth.

“We ought to call Terry,” Glen said.

“For the last time, no,” Soren said. “I don’t trust him. I barely trust you.”

“This is a rare opportunity,” Glen insisted. “We shouldn’t blow it over petty differences.”

“Keeping secrets from me is not a petty difference,” he replied. “Now shut up about it so we can finally get some answers.”

Soren pulled up a chair and looked at Sharon, who stared back at him defiantly. He held the stun gun in his right hand, prepared to zap her again.

“I’m going to take the tape off your mouth,” Soren said. “But so help me God, if you even twitch in a way I don’t like, you will get the shock of your life. No games, okay? Just answer my questions.”

He reached over and pulled off the tape slowly. Sharon grimaced in pain and then coughed. She looked at him angrily and then did the last thing Soren expected—she burst into tears.