PROLOGUE
“I don’t care how you do it, just get it done!” Governor Bowersox screamed. His face became so red that Lily Knight grew concerned the man’s head was about to explode from the increased pressure. “I want something on that place that will allow me to shut it down and get my daughter back from that… that animal who runs it.”
Lily Knight took a breath before responding softly, “Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.”
“I don’t want your best. I want results.” The man collapsed into the large chair behind his desk, red-faced and panting.
Lily wondered if he was having a heart attack and if they should call someone. She glanced at the man standing beside her, but he did not seem concerned.
“Miss Knight is my best agent for this kind of a mission, Governor. She will get the information you need,” Ian King, her handler and surrogate big brother, said.
“Fine. Now go away and get me results.”
Without another word, Lily followed Ian out of the governor’s private office. They descended the fire stairs two flights to the Department of Special Investigations.
Following Ian’s lead, Lily did not speak until they were in his office with the door closed. This room, like all the private offices on this floor, was soundproof, but she still moved to the corner and turned on the white noise machine as an added precaution. After all, they were talking the crazy business of bringing down a part of the state that kept polite society humming. Or so she’d been told as a teenager when threatened with a trip to the famous institution.
“How am I supposed to get into Bratburg? I’m too old for the program; I don’t have a criminal record, and I worked for The Council before coming to work for you. The minute David Hendricks sees me, he’ll know something hinky is going on.”
Ian settled in his chair and folded his hands together on top of the desk. “You won’t go through a hearing before the Council. If you make a few physical changes, and don’t get too close to David, you should be able to fake your way in. You’ll stay just long enough to dig up enough dirt on the staff to make the Governor happy about closing it down.”
Lily wanted to ask more questions, but had a feeling Ian would not answer them. He might be her handler, but she worked alone for a reason. In the past year with DSI, she’d gained a reputation for being able to get in and out of places and situations no one else could. It had not taken long for her to earn her code name of Chameleon.
Ian stared into her eyes, looking more serious than usual. “I want you back here in two days, and I’d better not recognize you. Hopefully by then, I will have come up with how to get you onto the grounds. After that, it will be up to you.”
CHAPTER 1
The sign indicating they were approaching the Bratburg Institute flashed by the bus window. With a sigh, Lily grabbed her backpack from between her feet and pulled the overhead cord, alerting the driver she wanted to get off. Pushing out of her window seat in the middle of the half-empty bus, she walked to the front and stood in the aisle just behind the driver.
“Please stop so I can get out.”
The driver looked over her shoulder then returned her attention to the road. She slowed the bus, causing the dozen other passengers to grumble about yet another delay. They’d left an hour late for some reason, and this was their third unscheduled stop in the last hour.
“You sure you want off here, honey? There’s nothing around for miles, except wild animals and that Bratburg Institute.”
“I’m visiting a cousin at the institute,” Lily lied smoothly.
She’d gotten so good at lying by the time she turned ten that no one ever knew whether she was telling a lie or not. Most of the time she stuck to the truth, but sometimes only a lie would keep her out of trouble.
Her last series of lies on a mission ended up backfiring when the CEO she was investigating praised the company’s directorof HR for finding him an assistant who lasted more than two weeks. That was when he’d found out she’d never been hired. The director of Human Resources had not questioned why the man stopped requesting another assistant. She had just been glad he’d stopped.
Once her boss found out she’d bluffed her way into the job, his biggest issue was not how she’d gotten the job, but that she’d never signed the company’s standard non-disclosure agreement. By skipping the onboarding process, Lily had been able to share everything she’d learned about the firm’s business practices with Ian. That information led to the SDI raiding the company just hours after her boss had called her into his office to discuss her unsigned NDA. As her boss had been dragged out of the building in handcuffs, he vowed to see her dead, one way or another.
Before she could find out whether the man’s blustering was just harmless threats or a promise of retribution, Ian had sent her on this new assignment. She was now far away from the capital and the possibility of being killed by a hired gun.
The backstory she and Ian had concocted for anyone who asked was as close to the truth as she normally came. She was a woman on the run from her former boss, who had threatened to kill her. She just hoped the administration at Bratburg would not do more than a cursory background investigation, though the truth of her background had been deleted from every computer, everywhere.
Adding truth to the story, she’d cleaned out her bank account just before climbing on her first bus, three days before. Her only luggage was a backpack that held the basics— two days of clothes, an oversized nightshirt, toiletries, her wallet with a little over a hundred dollars, one credit card and her driver’s license in it, and her stuffed gorilla, Percy.
Working for the Council had taught her that shifters were real and ran the Bratburg Institute where supposedly wild andout of control women were “retrained” to better fit into society. She also learned that the rumors that these women disappeared after being sent to Bratburg were not true. Instead they were relocated to other cities with new jobs and enough money to start life over. Sometimes they were even given new identities, if the situation warranted.
The driver frowned at her as she opened the door. “Are yousureyou want to get off here?”
Lily nodded and stepped off. “I’m sure. Thanks. I’ll be fine.”
The driver closed the door without saying another word, and the bus immediately began to roll forward, angling onto the road to continue its trip to the capital. Lily waited three minutes until the bus was out of sight before she began walking in the opposite direction.
Once she reached the road sign that designated the turnoff to Bratburg, she looked around to find the road. It took a moment to realize the road to Bratburg was not so much a road as it was a grass and gravel path. Following it into the thick woods, Lily mentally reviewed the story she would use as to why she was walking to the Institute unannounced instead of arriving by helicopter like the other women did.
