Chapter 1

I was a professional stand-in, and there wasn't a job I hadn't taken.

I went on blind dates for other people, knocked back drinks for them at business dinners, and showed up at their kids' parent-teacher conferences.

Then Richard Stone, the head of Stone Holdings, offered me 50 thousand dollars a month to fly to Valdria and study in place of Julia Summers, the woman he'd never gotten over.

I figured I could coast through it, so I took the job.

In my first class, the professor lectured on fluid mechanics.

I understood it.

Better yet, I loved every second of it.

The contract said three years, but I ended up studying for eight.

Meanwhile, Julia went back home, married Richard, and had three kids.

As for me, I'd published four papers in top journals, earned a PhD, and was now applying for postdoc positions.

The memo on Richard's monthly payments went from "Thanks for your hard work" to "Are you actually human?"

Personally, I thought that question deserved a research paper of its own.

*****

My name was Daniel Grant, and I'd been working as a stand-in for six years.

It wasn't the movie-set kind of job. I stood in for people in their everyday lives.

I went on blind dates for clients, sat through parent-teacher conferences for them, and showed up at class reunions to make them look good.

The wildest job I ever took was playing a trust-fund kid at his grandma's funeral. I cried so hard and so convincingly that I almost made it into her will.

The business had one golden rule. A stand-in never asked why, never left a trace, and only cared that the money came through.

After six years, I figured I'd seen every weird gig out there. Then an assistant working for a man named Richard Stone tracked me down.

That day, I'd gone to a wedding as a stand-in for a programmer whose ex was the bride. My job was to look better, richer, and more successful than the groom so she'd regret dumping him.

The job went off without a hitch. The bride cried, and so did the groom.

I collected the rest of my fee and was about to celebrate with a burger when my phone rang.

The caller introduced himself as Alex Reed, and he talked fast in a flat voice. Alex said his boss wanted to see me at eight that night on the 47th floor of the Westgate Platinum Tower.

I asked what the job was.

He said we'd talk about it in person.

I asked how much it paid.

He said I'd find out when I got there.

In my experience, people who talked like that were either loaded or running a pyramid scheme.

I knew the Westgate Platinum Tower. It was the headquarters of Stone Holdings, which ruled out the pyramid scheme, so I went.

The 47th floor held a single office, and its floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the city lights.

Richard sat behind the desk with a contract spread out in front of him.

My first impression of him came down to two words: rich and cold. His tailored suit probably cost more than everything I owned put together.

He was good-looking, but his face gave away absolutely nothing, and he looked at people like the whole world owed him money.

He glanced up, and his eyes lingered on my face for two seconds. "Sit."

I sat.

He slid the contract across the desk. "Someone close to me is enrolled at the Institute of Technology in Muni, Valdria. She's two years in, her graduation got pushed back, and she can't finish."

I nodded.

"I need someone to go over there and take her place," he went on.

I kept nodding.

"You'd go to her classes, study her material, and take her exams for her," he said.

I stopped nodding.

"Wait," I said. "Take her exams for her? Isn't that illegal?"

Richard's expression shifted, and a flicker of impatience crossed his face. "Not take her exams. You'll enroll under your own name, but you'll be in the same major, taking the same classes.

"Your job is to figure out the pace of each course, what the exams cover, and how each professor likes to teach. Then you put it all together and send it to her."

"So I'd be, what, her academic scout?" I asked.

"That's one way to put it."

"Then where is she?"

"She came home. She didn't want to stay over there anymore."

I turned the whole thing over in my head.

A girl had gone to Valdria for school, decided she didn't want to stay, and come home. Richard still wanted her to finish the degree, but he couldn't make her go back, so he was paying a stand-in to go instead.

The stand-in wouldn't earn the degree for her. His job was to learn the ropes and help her graduate from thousands of miles away.

I'd never seen anything like it. Was this remote-control tutoring, or was it international academic outsourcing?