Identity Crisis(23)

‘Jesus,’ Garrett said. ‘Are you serious?’

She nodded. ‘A gift for a job well done. No one knows that, of course. Devon Barnet and everyone else K. Ryde ever worked for are sworn to secrecy. Well, anyone who actually ever met the real K. Ryde. She’s good all right.’

‘Still,’ Ellis said, returning to the grill to check the burgers, ‘I’m surprised she’d even consider working for you, knowing how emotionally attached she is to you.’

Garrett flipped his brother the finger. ‘Kendra’s not working for me. She’s working for Tess Delaney.’

Dee nodded. ‘Well, that makes sense. She’s a ravenous reader, but not of romance, not until she discovered Tess Delaney. Kendra doesn’t believe in romance.’

‘Has she talked to you about any of this?’ Garrett asked.

‘Of course not,’ Dee replied. ‘Kendra loves a good bit of gossip as much as the next person, but when it comes to keeping secrets, the woman’s a fortress, and when it comes to her work, the woman’s a fortress with a shark-infested moat around it. In fact, she’ll probably not be happy that you’ve talked to us about it.’

‘You think she can pull it off, then?’ Garrett asked.

‘Of course she can pull it off.’ Dee sounded like Garrett had just asked her the stupidest question ever.

‘Question is, bro,’ Ellis called over his shoulder, ‘can you let her pull it off and stay out of her way?’ Then he turned and offered a wicked smile. ‘I certainly hope so, because I’m guessing she’ll probably kill you if you mess it up for Tess.’

Somehow Garrett suspected that might just be the case.

Kendra had never needed a lot of sleep. It was a part of what made her good at what she did. If she needed to go to a party at night and do research during the day, she could manage it on an hour of sleep and a cup of strong coffee. Back in the early days, no one would pay any attention to a young woman a little too blonde and a little too pretty to look like she knew what she was doing. But she did know what she was doing, and when that blonde became a brunette and took a job as the PA for the mysterious K. Ryde, she had more work than she could manage. In the beginning, that was cool. In the beginning, she juggled the roles flawlessly. And it didn’t really matter because no one ever saw K. Ryde. Ryde was like Charlie from Charlie’s Angels, only she imagined him much edgier, much scarier – that is, when she imagined him at all. K. Ryde was only male because that’s what people naturally seemed to think, and that suited Kendra just fine. K. Ryde controlled the business from behind the scenes, leaving Kendra Davis free to recreate herself again and again. At first she did it only for the job, only when K. Ryde needed her incognito. But it was so freeing to be someone else. She’d never felt such power. Soon she realized she could just as easily become someone else to explore the night and the people who hung out in it. In the beginning, it was thrilling and exciting. She felt alive and free and totally untouchable. Of course, it was just an illusion. But she didn’t know that back then.

At the tiny desk squished in the corner of her studio apartment, she opened her laptop. With a few clicks, she pulled up an old photo album, one that no one else would ever be able to find if they just happened to be browsing her files. She understood about alter egos far better than Garrett Thorne could imagine. She understood about secret identities, about people who didn’t exist anywhere in the real world, about people who existed only in her head. There had been so many. Most didn’t really have names unless they needed to, and most were gone the next morning, the next week or two at the latest. She pulled up the picture she was looking for, feeling her skin prickle as she viewed it after all this time. It was taken by the man she’d been with that night, a man who had grabbed her phone away and started snapping photos of her. It was later that she’d learned his name. Too late. She hated photos of herself. She tried to get him to stop, but it was only on her phone so it really didn’t matter. She could delete them later. She didn’t know why she never did.

She studied the photo for a long time, as though she could undo it if she stared long enough, as though she could make that night and everything that happened after disappear. Of course, she couldn’t. The picture she could delete, but the scars were permanent. Even she wouldn’t recognize herself if she hadn’t known it was her in the photo. Her hair was black, cut into a bob that just brushed the bottoms of her ears. It was short enough to show the temporary tattoo of a flock of delicately drawn birds ascending over one shoulder and up the pale column of her neck to disappear into the black nest of her hair. The outfit she wore was blood red and strapless, short and form-fitting; the black boots rose halfway up her thighs.