THE NEXT DAY, when I’d slept off the sedative, I asked to be allowed home, saying that I felt much calmer. Calahan wasn’t fooled and wound up having another screaming match with Carrie in the hallway outside my room, but she and Doctor Franklin overruled him and discharged me. They wanted to believe I was okay.

At first, when I got home, I was jumping every time I caught my reflection in a computer monitor or a glass door. The sickening, violent wrongness of it surged up inside me and I’d almost have a meltdown. But the human brain is scarily adaptable. After just a few hours, the reactions started to taper off. When I went to bed that night and saw my new face in my water glass, it was barely a jolt at all.

That was almost scarier than freaking out.

The next morning, I groped for my glasses and couldn’t find them. I opened my eyes to search for them...but everything was already sharp. That’s when I remembered I didn’t need them, anymore. It should have felt liberating but, as I put them away in a drawer, I couldn’t help feeling a pang of loss.

Carrie had sent over Christina’s luggage from her trip to Italy. There were four cases and every one was filled with eye-wateringly expensive clothes from top designers: dresses and blouses, sweaters and skirts...God, even her underwear was gorgeous. I tried on a dress as a test. With a bit of wiggling, it slid on fine over my lower half. But... crap. I’d been right. My breasts were bigger than hers. Everything was going to be a little tight, and some of the low-necked stuff would be a no-no unless I wanted to pop out of it. It wasn’t Doctor Franklin’s fault: I could imagine Christina posing like a model, expertly thrusting out her boobs to make them seem bigger than they were, while he flushed and mumbled. And meanwhile, I did my best to hide my bust under shapeless clothes. No wonder he’d overestimated her and underestimated me. But what if Konstantin noticed?

One whole case was full of shoes, most of them towering heels I was going to need practice to walk in. I picked up a pair at random and—

Oh, no….

I tried another pair, but they were no better. Christina was a full shoe size smaller than me.

No one had thought to measure our feet. Shit! How could all of us have missed something so obvious? I could buy a few replacement pairs for now, but when I got to the mansion, none of Christina’s shoes were going to fit. I slumped down on the couch, my heart hammering in my chest. What else haven’t we thought of? If I messed this up, if I was even a little off in my portrayal of Christina, Konstantin would know.

On my way to work, I had my hair dyed black and cut and styled just like Christina’s. With my newly-blue eyes, the effect was uncanny.

When I arrived at Calahan’s desk, he glanced up and then jumped to his feet. It was the first time he’d seen the full effect and he actually reached for his gun, thinking Christina had somehow escaped. Then he just stared at me sadly.

“Not bad, right?” I quipped. “Now I can find out what it’s like to be a ten.”

His mouth tightened. “You were—”

I frowned, curious.

He looked away and shook his head. “Nothing.” He waved his hand at the dress, the hair, the whole thing. “It’s good. You look just like her.” And he turned and stalked away.

For the next two weeks, I practiced moving like her, laughing like her, tossing my hair like her. I immersed myself in Christina and wouldn’t let myself surface, like an actor who won’t come out of character. It was the only way I could do it in time. We called in a hair and makeup expert and she coached me on how to use the high-end products Christina used. The upkeep was going to be a nightmare, but I had to get used to it. A tattoo artist came in, his jeans and t-shirt incongruous in the FBI offices, and I knelt astride a chair, wincing, while he tattooed a bird on my lower back. My freckles were removed to give me Christina’s flawless complexion.

I worked on my posture, trying to walk upright and proud, with my head held high. I made my movements languid and seductive, instead of awkward and jerky. As I moved around the building, men from other departments—men who’d seen me a hundred times as Hailey and ignored me—tried to chat me up. Is this what it’s like to be beautiful? But that wasn’t all that was going on. I was holding myself differently, making eye contact….

I wasn’t hiding, anymore.

It felt wrong. I was in a constant state of panic. How dare I be the center of attention? Any second, everyone would realize I was faking it, they’d see I was no one and laugh at me. But I forced myself to keep going.

On the morning I was due to enter Konstantin’s life, my phone rang.

“Hello?” I said.

Silence from the other end. Then, tentatively, “Hailey?”

Oh, shit! It was my mom, and I was still doing my Christina voice. I switched back to Hailey and—

For a sickening moment, I couldn’t find Hailey’s voice. After weeks of that polished, precise voice, I’d forgotten what I sounded like. Then it clicked into place. “Mom!”

“Are you alright? You sounded different.”

I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t even hint at what I was doing. Losing my dad had torn her apart. If she thought I was in danger, too…. “I’m fine. Getting over a cold. Listen, I have to go on a training course. A few weeks, maybe a month….”

I told her I’d make sure to put enough money into her bank account to cover any medical bills while I was away. Things were tight: the bills were brutal and my FBI salary wasn’t high. It made Christina’s lavish lifestyle seem sickening. I was going to be living like a billionaire, but at the same time, I could barely take care of my mom.

Calahan arrived with my plane tickets. Konstantin was expecting to see me get off a flight from Italy so I had to fly there, then fly back to New York and meet him at the airport.

He passed me a tiny earpiece, no bigger than a grain of rice, and helped me glue it out of sight inside my ear. “There’ll be someone at the other end of this twenty-four seven,” he told me. “And most of the time it’ll be me.” I nodded gratefully.

He showed me Christina’s luggage and then the secret compartment he’d fitted into one of the cases. Inside was my FBI ID and a gun. “Just in case things go south,” he told me.

I blanched. I’d never even fired a gun. Calahan patiently took me through how to handle it and aim it, while I watched and nodded and tried not to sound terrified. If Konstantin found me out, would I even have time to grab it?

Being Calahan, he insisted on driving me to the airport. We took the elevator down to the lobby, started across it and—

“Shit!” He tried to push me back into the elevator, but the doors had already closed. What? What had he seen?

And then an ear-splitting scream broke the air. I spun around and—

Another of those horrifying reality shifts. The floor seemed to lurch, the room spun. I was looking at myself, but it wasn’t a mirror—

Christina. The real Christina. She was being led across the lobby in handcuffs, one agent holding each arm. And she was staring at me just as I was staring at her.

“What are you doing?” bellowed Calahan at the agents. “Take her out the back, assholes!”

But the damage was done. Christina had paled for a second, but now her face was coloring with anger. “No!” She sprang towards me and the two agents had to fight to haul her back. “You can’t do this!”

“Get her out of here,” yelled Calahan. “Now!”

The two agents dragged her away but they couldn’t stop her screaming over her shoulder, her eyes locked on me. “You think just because you look like me, he’ll think you’re me? He’ll know, you bitch! He’ll know!”

And then she passed through the doors and was gone. Calahan and I stood there panting, shaking with adrenaline. “They must be moving her into protective custody,” Calahan said. “We can’t put her in jail until we arrest Konstantin: she might talk to someone and word could get back to him. I’m sorry. I had no idea they’d bring her out this way.” He put a gentle arm on my shoulder. “It doesn’t matter that she knows. There’s nothing she can do about it. She’s going to be in a safe house with a couple of guys watching her until you’re safely home.”

I nodded, but I couldn’t speak. I wanted to throw up. What if she was right? What if Konstantin could tell?

Outside, we found Carrie leaning against Calahan’s car. She motioned for him to give us a moment and he moved a short distance away.

Carrie looked downtown, towards the swathe of territory Konstantin controlled. Then she turned a slow circle: all the territory he would control. “We need to stop him,” she murmured. “To save this city, we need to stop him. And I want this guy, Hailey, I want to bring him down so much….”

I nodded.

She took a deep breath and turned to me. “But.”

She left it at that one word, but I understood what she was saying. She was giving me one last chance to step back from the brink.

But it was too late. I reached up and stroked my new face. “I already….”

She shook her head and took my chin between thumb and finger, her grip surprisingly firm. “You’ve got her face, but you haven’t done anything, yet.” She stared into my eyes. “Hailey... are you sure?”

I drew in a deep, shuddering breath and thought of all the innocents who’d die if Konstantin went unchecked. I looked Carrie in the eye and nodded.

She pressed her lips tightly together, looking for a second like a tearful, proud mother. “Just don’t forget who you are, okay?” And she turned away, wiping at her eyes.

At the airport, Calahan pulled up outside the doors and we sat for a second, looking at each other. I’d be able to talk to him through my earpiece, but this was the last time I’d see his face until I was extracted and that might be weeks—maybe months. We nodded to each other, both of us too worked up to risk a proper goodbye. I climbed out of the car and—

“Hailey!”

I turned around. He’d lunged across the passenger seat and thrown open the door. For long seconds he just stared into my eyes, knuckles white where he gripped the door.

“Just... be careful, okay?” he muttered.

I nodded. And walked away.

Two hours later, I was on an economy flight to Italy. When we landed in Rome, I booked a first class ticket back to New York on Christina’s credit card. Then I took out Christina’s phone and texted Konstantin with my flight details. A text came back within seconds. I’ll meet you at the airport.

The flight was a culture shock: artfully-presented food on real china plates, glasses of champagne, bags of high-end toiletries, all brought to my huge leather armchair of a seat. It felt so unfair: if I’d flown economy, the difference would have covered my mom’s medical bills for months. But Konstantin would get suspicious if he looked at Christina’s credit card bill and saw an economy flight, or the medical bills of some unknown woman.

I cleared customs, getting steadily more nervous with each step. This will work, I kept telling myself. I looked just like her. I walked just like her. None of me showed through the Christina shell I’d built, and even if it did, no one ever notices me.

I was walking into the arrivals hall when I saw him. He had four bodyguards with him, all of them tall and heavily muscled. But somehow, all that protection didn’t make him look small, or weak. He was bigger than any of them, both in size and in presence. A slate-gray suit set off the light gray of his eyes, the expensive fabric stretched tight over that broad, hard chest. He looked amazing.

And then he saw me. And instead of waiting for me to get to him, he marched straight towards me, against the flow of passengers. The crowd broke either side of him like a river hitting a rock. Then he reached me and when I saw the raw hunger and need in his eyes, I went weak. I only just had time to let go of the luggage trolley as those big hands closed around my waist and he lifted me off the ground—

And froze.

He stood there holding me, our faces less than a foot apart, and the sea of people around us forgotten. He studied my face, my eyes... and frowned.

He knows.