The last thing Agent Sam Rose—probationary Agent Sam Rose—wants? More work on the weekend. Especially a dead-clone case that warrants an exaggerated littering fine at most. She needs a murder case to solve so she can finally get promoted away from the out-dated, disorganized, sexist backwater of District 3.
Sam’s boss wants the case closed fast. Sam’s integrity demands she pursues every lead. But in doing so, Sam discovers a terrifying puzzle leading to one impossible conclusion: a secret with the power to rewrite the entire history of the world.
A secret more personal than Sam could ever have imagined.
It’s time to expose the truth.
Perfect for fans of Blade Runner and J.D. Robb’s In Death series, don’t miss The Day Before: a gripping time-travel thriller about standing up for what’s right—no matter what the cost.
Chapter One
The late Dr. Everett’s Many-World interpretation of quantum mechanics is notable for two reasons. One, it is laughably simple. Two, it is almost correct. Had Dr. Everett recalled that there is no particle without a wave, our research would now be an exercise in tedium. Alas, it is the failing of generations past that they did not consider the wave form and thus anticipate the eventual collapse of iterations not held stable by Pointer States, or einselection nodes.
~ Excerpt from Lectures on the Movement of Time by Dr. Abdul Emir I1–20740413
Friday May 17, 2069
Alabama District 3
Commonwealth of North America
With an asthmatic wheeze, the engine died. It figured. Stuck in a man’s craw, it did. This truck had been his daddy’s and his pappy’s, and before the Commonwealth government forced him to replace the diesel engine with the newfangled water doohickey, he was certain he’d pass the truck on to his son.
He’d been playing under the hood of trucks since he was six, and now he was stranded. Embarrassing, that’s what it was. He climbed out of the cab to check the engine out of habit. The ice-blue block of modern fuel efficiency stared back. Three hundred bucks it’d cost him, straight from his pocket.
Oh, there was a government subsidy, all right. A priority list. Major population centers, they said. Unite the countries of the Commonwealth on a timeline, they said. And what did all that mean?
It meant the damn Yankees got upgraded cities and free cars before the ink was dry on the Constitution, and what about the little man? Nobody thought about the working class. No one cared about a man covered in oil and grease anymore.
He thumbed his cell phone on.
No reception. Figured.
So much for the era of new prosperity.
He’d hoof it. There was a little town about five miles down the road where he could call Ricky to bring a tow truck. It would have been cheaper to pay the diesel fines than get all this fixed.
Off schedule. Over budget. Son of a—
He stared at the distant oaks. Well, it wasn’t going to get any cooler.
He grabbed his wallet and keys from the cab of his truck. The tree line looked like a good spot to answer a call from nature, then he’d see if there was a shortcut through to town.
A meadowlark sang. Not a bad day for a hike. Would’ve been better if it weren’t so dammed hot, but at least the humidity was low. He wouldn’t like to walk in a summer monsoon, not at his age, with arthritis playing up.
Under a sprawling pine tree, he unzipped his pants. As an afterthought, he glanced down to make sure he wouldn’t stir up a hill of fire ants.
A hand lay next to his boots.
He blinked, zipped his pants slowly, and turned around. “Hello?”
Cicadas chirped in answer.
“Are you drunk?”
The quiet field that had looked so peaceful only moments before was now eerily sinister. He nudged the hand with his foot. It was swollen and pale and crusted with blood, just like a prop out of a horror movie.
Maybe it was a good idea to run to the next town.
They say a coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man only one. Where underpaid, overstressed probationary agents fell in that spectrum, Sam wasn’t sure, but she’d bet her last dollar she was headed down the slippery slope of a thousand cowardly deaths. Any sensible person would not have picked up their work phone after eight on a Friday night, or at least would have the spine to tell their boss they weren’t going to work on the weekend.
Which was exactly what Senior Agent Marrins wanted Sam to do.
On a curving old road between two towns untouched by a century of change, in a place where streetlights were still considered new technology, some broke-down trucker had found a body. Three miles west, and it would have been someone else’s problem. In any other district, it would have been the senior agent’s problem, and she would have tagged along to get the work experience needed for promotion.
Sam didn’t work in any other district, though. She worked in Senior Agent Marrins’. Which was why she was driving out to this rural stretch of road.
The wash of the Milky Way glittering overhead was beautiful, if you were into that sort of thing. Sam would have preferred the gaudy show of lights in any major city in any major first-world country. “Saint Jude, pray for me who am so miserable,” she whispered as the crime scene came into view. Three police cars, an eighteen-wheeler, and an ambulance… Not your typical Friday night in Alabama District 3.
An unfamiliar police officer knocked on the window and made a circular motion. “Ma’am, this is a crime scene. I’m going to ask you to keep moving.”
“Officer, I’m Agent Samantha Rose from the Commonwealth Bureau of Investigation, and I’m going to ask you who the hell you think would drive out this far from civilization at this time of night.”
He blinked at her.
“Precisely. Would you please step away from my car and call the officer in charge? Thanks.” Men. They weren’t all idiots, but she’d seen little evidence that these illiterate hicks could prove it.
“Rose?”
Sam closed her car door and looked around. “Detective Altin?” A man who towered a full foot over her should not have been able to hide.
“Behind you.”
She spun and almost tripped into the older man. “I thought you were going to the movies with your wife.”
“She took the kids instead. Twenty-five years married to the force, she’ll forgive me.” Altin’s teeth flashed as he grinned. “You just won me a bet. The sergeant from Cherokee County was certain Marrins would come out himself.”
“Has the sergeant met Agent Marrins?” Sam asked. “The only time that man hustles is when there’s a fresh box of donuts at the secretary’s desk.” She shrugged. “I live on this side of the district. Marrins wrote this off as effective delegation of resources.”
“I thought Marrins would at least try to get this on his resume. The last time we had a homicide where there were actual questions was that horror-house case that hit all the national news stations, and that was over a decade ago. Isn’t that how the bureau promotes?” Altin’s grin widened.
Sam rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but a dumped clone isn’t a homicide investigation. It’s littering.”
“Who said it was a clone?”
“Agent Marrins.”
“He’s psychic now?” The detective raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“He said the police called him about a dumped clone, and I needed to sort it out.”
Altin shook his head. “I wouldn’t jump to conclusions. People might be eager to dump their clones before the Caye Law goes into effect and they have to pay a tax on them. But there are organ-donation stations that take the clones for free. No one’s going to drive all the way out here to chop up a clone and dump it. Too much work.”
“There are still reasons why someone might skip the legal methods of disposal.” Like having an illegal clone. Her first case fresh out of the academy in Langley had been busting an illegal-clone ring using stolen DNA to sell fetish slaves to stalkers. Rows of growth-accelerated children who went from infant to adolescent in under a week, half-starved and chained to the walls of the California mansion’s attic.
Their vacant stares still haunted her dreams. She crossed herself out of habit, then pulled on her forensic gloves. “Okay—let’s go meet Jane Doe.”