Clone: A Contemporary Young Adult SciFi/Fantasy (Swann Series Book 3) Read online

  Tying off the Loose Ends

  1

  Jamison DuPont, now sixty-four, lamented on what he was now certain appeared to be the disintegration of the once illustrious Virginia Corporation. He had be trying Warwick Bundy’s phone for weeks now, but his charming, near-psychotic friend was not answering. No one knew where he was. Everyone was saying it was like he just vanished off the face of the earth.

  Jamison feared the worst. With Atticus having retired, Christine Kennedy now dead via the sidewalk swan dive, and Warwick no where to be found, only Tate Russell remained. Unfortunately, him being under forty, Tate seemed more intent on chasing tail and buying fast cars than keeping the Virginia Corporation from completely disintegrating.

  At first, Jamison thought he was being too dramatic. Perhaps everything was alright. But as the days wore on, he came to realize he never went this long without talking to Warwick. Even calls to his friend’s family weren’t returned. Then again, no one in the Bundy family cared much for Warwick. His proclivities toward violence were steep and noticeable, and for this, Warwick had become the proverbial black sheep.

  These being times of great conflict and concern, Jamison did what he always did: he walked his dogs, smoked his cigars, soaked his liver with overpriced whiskey. And of course, he contemplated his future. On a day like today, he certainly felt conflicted. And he most certainly had concerns.

  The Virginia Corporation was about health and youth; it was about quality of life. It was about immortality. Warwick often teased the group saying one of their greatest assets was nearly one hundred years old, yet he looked and acted forty. Warwick said the man was not always so fortunate, but a break in genetics and regeneration science restored his youth. For Jamison, this held so many possibilities.

  Unfortunately, Warwick never told the group who this man was, even though Jamison suspected Atticus knew exactly who this man was, and he’d eluded to it being someone on staff, perhaps Gerhard.

  Now, with Atticus gone and Warwick in the wind, Jamison was left to wonder what the course of his years might bring. He was so desperate to be young again. So desperate to leave his horrible wife.

  So positively desperate…

  Twice this morning he tried to call Tate, and twice the boy answered telling him he had “guests.” Although his guests sounded more like a pack of giggling girls than anyone respectable.

  “Do you think this company will survive without Warwick and Van Duyn?” he asked Tate.

  The kid simply said, “Warwick was a prick,” and that was that.

  Thinking about Tate surrounded by all those girls made him think of the women of his youth, and how he’d settled when it came time to choosing a wife. His wife—now a frumpy, silver haired hippopotamus—went on and on about the society pages of whatever publication she was reading, or charity fund raisers, or…whatever. The point being, she was so damn annoying he often thought of taking his own life right before her eyes just so she would know she’d driven him to it.

  He had to get out.

  Jamison slid on his walking shoes, gathered up the leashes and the dogs and ventured into the countryside for a long walk. Today, however, was a difficult day. The dogs were restless. They were pulling him, wreaking havoc on his knees and back, exhausting his dying lungs as he tried to keep up.

  “Slow down Dante!” he said, jerking the leash. Dante slowed, but Faust barely noticed. Faust was a hyper son of a bitch sometimes.

  Finally he got the dogs under control, and then he got his breath back. He heard the big engine a ways back. It was impossible in this kind of quiet to not hear everything. He stopped and hushed the dogs. They sat back, their mouths open and panting, their pink tongues heavy and wet and hanging out of their mouths.

  “Goddammit boys, shut up!” he snapped, looking half at his dogs, then half glancing over his shoulder. The dogs closed their mouths for a second, then opened them again and continued their boisterous panting.

  The countryside was a tall sea of green with a two-lane asphalt road cutting through the middle of it. He lived on two-hundred and eleven acres of lush countryside with a sprawling estate parked in the front five acres. Traffic moved slowly around these parts. Not fast like the motorist gunning their engine further up the road.

  He and his dogs moved to the shoulder of the road, his heart quickening to the increased sounds of the roaring motor. The driver was easily a half mile up the winding country road. Moments later the truck appeared. He wasn’t surprised to see a huge, lifted Dodge Ram with a brush-guard, a roll bar and four mounted lights; he was, however, shocked to see a woman in the driver’s seat.

  He felt himself go tense then relax.

  Then, at the last minute, the engine gave a mighty roar and the girl swung the wheel to the right, aiming the Ram truck directly at them. She ran over all of them before careening off the road, standing on the brakes and clipping a tree.

  2

  The one in charge of Autumn LeBeau’s body swung the wheel of the Dodge Ram right at DuPont and his skinny dogs, and when she plowed over the three of them, she only felt bad for the dogs. The truck crashed into the underbrush and dragged sideways against a huge tree, spinning the Ram a hundred and eighty degrees around. DuPont lay twenty yards ahead, pitched into a small bush, unmoving. The one in charge of Autumn’s body had no severe injuries to show for it.

  When her mind got right, the one in charge of Autumn’s body—the Delta alter—climbed out of the truck, trudged into the low forest and examined DuPont’s body. He lie on his back, things punctured and broken, blood trailing from his nose, mouth and ears. He was barely coherent.

  His eyes skittered around in their sockets awhile before finding her. He tried to focus, but the strength just wasn’t there.

  “Monarch Enterprises sends their regards,” her mouth said. DuPont coughed up a dollop of blood; it arced from his mouth and plopped in a splat of red on his neck. His nose continued to gush. He couldn’t keep his eyes open so well anymore. The one in charge of Autumn watched the old man fade, seemingly without a thought in her head.

  “Will you just die already?” her mouth finally said.

  DuPont’s eyes fluttered a few more times, then they closed and his chest stopped rising and fell one last time. The one in charge of Autumn’s body turned and trudged up the gentle slope to the dogs. One dog was dead, the other was still breathing. She felt bad for it. With a single, mighty stomp to the head, she ended the bony animal’s misery.

  3

  One day after the murder of Jamison DuPont, the one in charge of Autumn’s body watched Tate Russell drive into his gated neighborhood with two attractive blondes in his S-Class Benz. The likelihood that either of these two girls was more than twenty years old was slim.

  Autumn’s body couldn’t just follow him in and kill him. Not in Beverly Hills. The thing about living on Mulholland Drive is when you live in an exclusive neighborhood, there are always celebrities, so there’s always a gated entrance and extra security.

  The one in charge of Autumn’s body waited until it was dark outside. She waited until well past eleven o’clock.

  Autumn’s hand concealed her Heckler and Koch .45 equipped with the new AAC Evolution .45 sound suppressor. She drove up to the gate. With a big smile and a shirt that was severely low cut and exposing the tops of her areola, she was sure the guard wouldn’t turn her away right away. There were, however, two guards. The one with ogling eyes took a round from the H&K straight to the face. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.

  She aimed her pistol through the window and shot the second guy in the shoulder as he was diving for cover. The one in charge of Autumn’s body got out of the car, kicked the guard-shack door off its hinges, then fired a single shot point-blank through the second man’s head. The one in charge of Autumn’s body didn’t feel an ounce of remorse, because that’s how she was programmed.

  To kill…

  ….and feel nothing.

  She dragged the first body inside the shack, then s
tuffed both corpses under their respective desks. She checked her watch: 11:36 pm. Perfect. The killer in Autumn’s body hurried back to the rented Ford 500 sedan and drove straight to Tate’s hillside estate.

  She pulled up to his house, went around back to gain entry from the rear, and found him sitting poolside, then entire backyard illuminated in a dazzling, near midnight scene. Music was playing and both blondes were topless. One of the girls was in the pool. The other was stretched out on a poolside recliner. The air outside was warm with a light, sensual breeze even she found delightful.

  Autumn shot the girls first, then turned the gun on Tate. He was already sprinting into the house. She missed the next two shots, smashing but not shattering the large indoor/outdoor glass sliders. She ran after him, passing the dead girl on the recliner. She put one more shot into the pretty girl’s forehead, just in case.

  Inside the house, she couldn’t find him. The estate was enormous. He could be anywhere. The one in charge of Autumn had been trained to clear a house before. The assassin inside her relied on said training as she moved from room-to-room, clearing the house, tracking her prey.

  Upstairs, in what looked to be a guest bedroom, the eyes found him. The way the mind could slow an unfolding situation of impossibly high tension almost to a standstill surprised the one in charge of Autumn. But there he was, standing there in his bathing suit. The eyes saw the shotgun in his hands. Saw it aimed right at her. The eyes even registered the flash of orange fire.

  And then…nothing.

  4

  Tate picked up the phone and dialed Jamison DuPont. The woman who answered had obviously been crying.

  “I need to speak to Jamison,” he said, business-like in spite of the overwhelming sense of panic. No one had ever tried to kill him before.

  “He’s gone,” the woman blubbered. Tate couldn’t help thinking, he finally ditched that bag of wrinkles. Good for him.

  “When do you expect him back?” Tate asked, looking down at the dead girl. She was beautiful, he thought. Her face must have been lovely before he blew it off just moments ago.

  “Never,” she cried. “He was…hit by a…truck. On a walk. The dogs, too.”

  Fresh panic tore through him. He thought, someone’s taking us out. The Virginia Corporation. Wiped out. He didn’t remember dropping the phone. Didn’t remember if he even asked if Jamison was officially dead.

  All he knew was he was kneeling over a corpse. Studying her. Trying to understand the woman who killed his dates. And Jamison. He suddenly snapped into awareness. Standing with purpose, Tate went to his garage, rifled through the cabinets. Moments later he returned with the portable black-light.

  He stared at the girl—really just an in-tact body with a punctured cantaloupe for a head. After adequate appraisal, he went back downstairs and returned with several black bags, a handful of zip-ties and a pair of scissors.

  He slid a large, clear plastic bag over the girl’s ruined head, held it in place with a daisy-chain of interconnected zip-ties. It was a bloody affair. The carpet and walls were definitely ruined. Of course, the more prudent part of him thought there was no reason to make matters worse.

  With the scissors, he cut the girl’s clothes off. He then flipped off the lights, immersing them in perfect darkness. He clicked on the black light and ran it over the girl’s body. The purplish light lit the shoulders and clavicles, the breasts, the belly button, the pubis and the legs.

  Nothing.

  He ran the black light up and down the body again, including the sides. Satisfied, he rolled the body over. He ran the wand of light up the calves, thighs and buttocks, and that’s where he found it: the glow-in-the-dark Monarch butterfly. Tattooed squarely on the left butt cheek.

  He sat back, blew out a breath and felt himself getting both pissed off and scared. The audacity of those bastards! The gall!

  After that, he got to work. He had three bodies to dispose of. Three corpses he would eventually have to answer for, or at least lie about if he didn’t get things right.

  Or he could call it in to the authorities and take his chances with the legal system.

  In his house were three dead girls, two of whom he’d recently had sex with. One of whom he had shot in the face with a shotgun. No matter the spin, it wouldn’t look good, because, really, who in the hell survives that kind of thing? Especially with the media getting so many people whipped into a frenzy over guns? This shotgun saved his life. It also took a life. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be?

  He picked up the phone. Put it down. What was he going to do? He picked it up and dialed the emergency number. The man answered sounding groggy.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “It’s me.”

  “Tate?” the voice said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is this line secure?”

  “Jesus, man, I’m embarrassed that you asked.”

  “Have to be sure,” the man said with a deep yawn.

  “I know.”

  “Why are you calling?”

  “Monarch came after me tonight. A woman. I don’t know why, or really what to do.”

  “What?”

  Tate gave the man the blow-by-blow on the evening’s casualties. Then: “I shot her in the face with a shotgun. In the face!”

  “Jesus,” the man muttered

  “They might come after you next.”

  “They won’t.”

  “The bodies they found in Prague, I think they were Savannah’s and Warwick’s. The man, he was shot to death and soaked in acid and we still don’t know who did that.”

  “I think Gerhard did that.”

  “Jamison’s dead, too.”

  The man yawned, but not because he was bored. It was late and he sounded tired. He said, “You need to disappear.”

  “Like you?”

  “Like me.”

  The only reason Tate realized he was picking his nails was because he stopped at the suggestion that he disappear himself. Permanently. He wiped sweat from his brow and the back of the neck, then he said, “But I like me. I like this life I created.”

  “I did it, Tate, and it’s working out fine. Better than fine. A lot of people are doing this. Don’t be such a Neanderthal.”

  Tate never once considered this option. He never considered himself a candidate for the full makeover. For changing his face, his DNA, his life. He only focused on the life he made for himself and the hundreds of millions he could earn. As of that moment, he was worth one point two billion dollars and handsome. He was an eligible bachelor and he lived in Beverly Hills, on Mulholland Drive for heaven’s sake. All this before forty. Forget his ego, or materialism, or even the power his wealth-matched-with-his-youth had earned him. He was happy!

  “Be reasonable, Tate,” the man said. “You have three dead girls in your house. It doesn’t matter what the truth is. Your life is over. You will always live under a cloud of scrutiny and suspicion. You might even be arrested. Doing things my way, what have you got to lose?”

  “Uh, I don’t know, my entire life? This fortune I’ve amassed?” He seethed for but a moment before his body went deathly still. The truth had teeth. He was done. Done with this life, this house, his good name.

  Pulling himself together, Tate apologized and said, “Can you get in touch with Gerhard?”

  “Gerhard is in Canada tending to a separate issue.”

  “You’re still plugged in?”

  “Barely. You’re one of less than a handful of people who have this number.”

  “Can’t you call him?”

  “I don’t want to call him. If you knew him, if you knew his real history, you’d force yourself to forget there was ever such a creature as Wolfgang Gerhard.”

  “So you turned out alright?” he said, switching subjects. “Because I never considered this for myself. Never even tried the idea on.”

  The man laughed gently and Tate felt himself relax. “I turned out better than alright. I don’t even look my age.”
/>   “Can I ask you a question?” Tate said.

  “Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?” he mused.

  “That wasn’t Savannah who died, was it? In Prague? That was someone else, right?”

  “Savannah’s safe.”

  “Atticus?”

  “Yes?”

  “What am I going to do?”

  “First, I think you should get this situation under control. Then, and I may regret this later, I think we should talk about the future of the Virginia Corporation.”

  “What? Are you serious? All you ever talked about was getting out. Now that you’re out, what—you want back in?”

  “I got out because of Warwick, because my daughter was finally who she was supposed to be, because I was old before my time and exhausted and I wanted to be…better. Younger. I am no longer Atticus Van Duyn. He’s dead. Just like you. Get the treatments, Tate. Then get back in touch with me. Okay?”

  “I’ve never gotten rid of a body before,” Tate said, desperate for direction.

  “Dispose of them.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know how. I’ve never done it before either.”

  He groaned audibly, purposely avoiding looking at the dead assassin.

  “You’re smart, Tate. Figure it out, then get on a plane to New York and leave your life behind. All of it. And forget Gerhard.”

  “What about the money?”

  “How liquid are you?”

  “In my accounts?”

  “Yes. And in safety deposit boxes.”

  “Three, maybe four hundred thousand liquid. Three million between four safety deposit boxes.”

  “You’ll have to slum it for awhile, but you won’t be you, so you won’t have anyone to impress.”

  He blew out a weighted sigh. “That’s true.”

  “Get rid of the bodies, get on a plane to New York right away, use offshore accounts to pay for the procedure. That’ll make it harder to trace, if it ever comes to that.”

  Picking his nails again, now looking at the dead girl on the floor and thinking of the two dead girls outside, he weighed his options. Finally he said, “Okay, I’ll do it. But we have to do something when we restart the company.”