Shadow Heir

He was wearing a stiff gray suit and had short, neatly trimmed black hair. His face was turned away from me as he rummaged through a briefcase on the table, but he jumped in alarm at the sound of my voice. He spun toward me, face showing the same panic I felt. After a few moments of study, however, his eyes widened, and his body relaxed.

“Eug?”

I stared, wondering how this guy knew my name, and then ... I saw it. I gasped in disbelief.

“Tim? Is that you?”

He flashed me a grin and settled back in the chair. “Of course it’s me. Who else would be here?”

I was dumbfounded and couldn’t answer right away. “But you ... you’re wearing a tie.”

He glanced down and scowled at the paisley silk monstrosity around his neck. “Yeah, it’s a pain, but my job has a dress code.”

“Your ... your job?” I felt like I’d wandered into some alternate reality and had to seek out a chair of my own at the table, lest I faint out of sheer mental exhaustion.

“Yup,” he said with mock enthusiasm. “I’m a productive member of society.”

“You cut your hair,” I said, reduced to simply pointing out the obvious.

“Another requirement of the job.” He absentmindedly smoothed some of his hair back and then brightened. “But they let me wear my headdress.”

“Your headdress?”

He jumped up again and disappeared down the hall that led to the bedrooms. While he was gone, I glanced around, looking for any other signs that I had entered a parallel universe. Nope. Everything else was the same. Tim returned shortly, carrying a full, feathered Lakota headdress that reached nearly to the floor. He put it on and grinned at me triumphantly.

“See?”

I looked him over from head to toe, taking in the formal suit juxtaposed with feathers. “Where exactly do you work?”

“I sell car insurance,” he explained.

“And they let you wear all that to work?”

He sat down again and left the headdress on. “They encourage it, actually. They really support the idea of a diverse workplace and wanted to hire as many minorities as they could. And even though there’s a dress code, it’s really important to them that their minorities express their unique cultural heritage. Wearing this is a way to bring some Native American influence into the workplace.”

“But Tim ... you aren’t Native American.”

This, at least, was semi-familiar territory. Tim, having few employable skills, had spent most of his life marketing what he did have: coloring and features that looked Native American to those who didn’t know any better. He’d rotated through various tribes (usually opting for non-Southwest ones, so as not to get in trouble with the locals) and played the part to help him get laid and sell bad poetry.

“That’s never stopped me before,” he said, following my very thoughts.

“Yeah, but when it comes to the workplace ... I mean, if you’re getting some kind of benefit, you usually have to show documentation or something. And I know you don’t have that.”

He shrugged. “I seemed so authentic that they didn’t even bother doing a background check. There was another guy interviewing for the same position. I think he was full-blooded Apache, but he didn’t do anything to play that up. Just showed up in a suit. If he’d worn war paint, he might have gotten hired over me.”

I groaned. “Probably he was doing something crazy, like—oh, I don’t know—relying on professionalism and job skills. What on earth drove you to get a job anyway? I mean, I’m impressed—well, not with the fake Lakota act—but it’s not something I expected from you.”

“That makes two of us.” His earlier enthusiasm dimmed. “It was all Lara’s doing. She said if you weren’t around, then it was ‘immoral’ for me to keep living here rent-free.” When we’d been roommates, Tim had earned his keep by doing housework and cooking.

I felt a smile creep over my face. “You’re still with her?” Tim getting together with my former secretary had been both unexpected and delightful. It was on par with Rurik and Shaya’s seemingly mismatched relationship.

“Yup.” Tim sighed. “Oh, the things I do for love, Eug. Anyway, yeah, she said it wasn’t right to drain your bank account for the mortgage, so I got a job, and she stopped the auto-deductions or whatever. Now we cover it.”

“So she lives here too,” I mused. I wasn’t surprised that Lara had been able to alter my mortgage payment options. She’d always known more about my finances and business affairs than I had. “Where is she? I’d love to see her.”

He glanced at the clock. “Still at work. That Enrique guy has her working crazy hours, but at least she pulls a lot of them.” That too was welcome news. As my business had dried up, I’d worried about Lara and had introduced her to a private detective who needed clerical help. Apparently things had worked out. “But forget about us. Where have you been? Jesus, Eug. It’s been, what? Almost half a year? I didn’t think you were coming back.”