The Double ( or More ?) Life of The Fake Heiress

Nick adjusted his glasses and started digging through the files with his colleague. The beauty of having paper records is that they act as a backup in case digital data ever goes missing. That's why the massive archive room was packed with decades' worth of records.

Each year's documents were neatly labeled, making them pretty easy to sort through. Nick's eyes scanned the shelves until he stopped at the section marked for fifteen years ago. He shifted slightly, noticing his colleague bent over, looking through some files below. Casually, he twisted the bezel on his watch, waited a couple of seconds, and smoothly pulled out one of the sealed bags from the shelf.

The watch was a special gadget Mirabella had modified for him. It had a built-in signal jammer that could disrupt signals for two minutes. Nick had tested it a few times, and it was top-notch, even better than the latest jammers on the market. It allowed him to create a brief window where no one would notice anything out of the ordinary.

With quick hands, Nick opened the sealed bag. Fifteen years ago was a year loaded with records-around forty to fifty bags, none labeled with their contents. With time being tight, he could only go through a couple of bags each visit. Up until today, he had managed to sift through just half of that year's records.

Today, though, the bag he picked had fewer documents. As he flipped to the last few pages, Nick's expression shifted. He'd finally found what he was looking for. His fingers tightened slightly, and he started skimming through the pages at lightning speed.

Just then, his colleague straightened up, still focused on the papers in his hands, and said, "Nick, I found an experimental report from a couple of years ago. Think it might be useful?"

around, and Nick had already slipped the documents back into the sealed bag, looking up with a calm

sealed bag Nick held but thinking

through it rapidly and nodded. "This must be the report the

"Since

file. As his colleague turned away, Nick quietly

et yel

both left the archive room shortly

out, the interference signal was lifted. In the monitoring room, no

day, Nick got home and

it went straight

dialing Grady instead. This time, the call went through