I learned that the hard way.
I also learned that one-night stands and quickie flings expelled a lot of loneliness and took care of plenty of my needs without the drama of trying to make sure someone else was happy.
After several years stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and a yearlong deployment to a war zone under my belt, I got sent where I am now, Allentown, Pennsylvania. It was a lot quieter here than the other places I’d been, except for that whole business with my friend Nathan and his lady Honor. But that was over, Nathan moved away, and now everything I owned sat boxed in the back of my truck.
After rechecking the tie-down straps over my belongings, I yanked the keys out of my pocket and walked up the stairs to the apartment I shared with two other Marines. They were still at work; they were still enlisted.
I planned to leave the house key on the kitchen counter and then drive away without a glance in the rearview mirror. Just as I was swinging the door around, a black four-door sedan pulled haphazardly into the gravel-filled driveway, blocking in my truck.
Three men in black suits and gray ties stepped out. It reminded me of the movie Men in Black. Hell, if it wasn’t so overcast today, they would likely be wearing those black sunglasses too.
“I was just about to pull out,” I called down to them, hoping they’d get the hint and get the hell out of my way. They could hunt for aliens somewhere else.
“Are you Sergeant Tucker Patton?” one of the men asked, completely ignoring my suggestion he move.
Suspicion laced through me. Immediately I riffled through my memories of last night. Yeah, a lot of it was hazy from all the beer I ingested, but I was almost one hundred percent sure I didn’t do anything that would warrant a visit from some cops pretending to be movie stars.
“Who’s asking?” I called.
The man who was driving flashed a gold badge with the letters FBI in plain sight across the front.
What the fuck?
The three men proceeded up the steps toward me.
“What’s this about?”
“That’s him,” said one of the men on the steps, like he was somehow able to confirm my identity without me showing him my ID.
“We just need a moment of your time,” said the agent closest to me said.
I studied them a moment longer then curiosity got the best of me. It wasn’t every day the FBI came a calling. Pushing open the door once more, I motioned them inside.
After closing the door behind us all, I stood there regarding them quietly.
“I’m Agent Collier. Perhaps you should sit down,” the man who was driving the car said.
“I’m good where I am.” I wasn’t about to offer them coffee or tea. I wasn’t even going to shake their hands. In fact, the longer I stood in their presence, the more I understood this wasn’t going to be a pleasant call.
“We’re here on behalf of your brother, Maxwell Patton.”
Max was more than just my brother. He was my twin. We were born just minutes apart, me being the “younger” one, and even though we looked exactly the same, our personalities were like night and day. Mom used to joke that someone messed up when they were giving us traits because instead of each having a balanced personality, both of us were extreme.
Max got all the responsible, successful, and determination traits. And me?
I got to be the charming, irresponsible one with a girl on each arm.
It’s clear I got the better deal.
It was because of the wide gully of difference between us that Max and I weren’t as close as most twins are. I hadn’t seen Max since I joined the Corps, but even still I found it very hard—if not impossible—to believe that Max was in trouble with the law.
“Max asked you to come here?” I questioned.
Charged silence filled the space between the agents and me. Tension coiled in the back of my neck, making it feel as if all the muscles and nerves were wound tighter than a double-knotted shoestring.
Agent Collier cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to inform you Maxwell is dead.”
The words hit me hard. Shock rippled through my body as disbelief filled my head. There had to be some mistake. Max wasn’t dead. He was too young to die. He wasn’t even thirty. I snapped my stare back up to the men watching me with solemn expressions.
“Come again?” I asked, thinking I heard wrong.
The man cleared his throat and shifted in his polished black loafers. “It happened last night. It was a car accident.”
So I had heard right. An aching hollow feeling opened up in the center of my chest. It settled just beneath my ribs where the pain lodged and continued to hurt. It was the kind of pain no one ever described to me before; I wasn’t sure this feeling could be put into words. If it could, they were words no one should ever have to hear.
Suddenly I felt lighter, as if part of whatever held me to the ground was no longer there. I looked down at my feet, at the boots still anchored on the floor. It was strange because it seemed I should be floating.
Part of me was gone.
Ripped away.
Empty.
The hollowness within me flared, and I had to make an effort not to hunch over. I had to work not to let these men in bad suits see how much the death of my twin hurt.
“I’m thinking the FBI usually doesn’t make house calls to inform people about their relatives’ death.”
“Maxwell’s death was not an accident.”
“You came here to tell me that my brother was murdered?” I asked, deadly calm. I might not have been close to Max, but he was my brother, my family, and I loved him.
“Maxwell was assisting the FBI in a corporate espionage case. He was the inside man. The fact that he was working with us was kept under wraps.”
“Obviously not if someone killed him because of it.”
The silence that followed my statement filled the room. If these men thought they could come here, tell me that my brother died helping them, and not be met with some sort of angry animosity, they seriously did not know who they were dealing with.
The fact that Max had been doing this at all surprised me. Part of me wanted to ask if they were sure they had the right guy, but respect kept the question in. Respect for my brother. Just because it was out of character for Max to get involved in something like this didn’t mean he hadn’t. He was a hard-working guy, always on the straight and narrow path. He never strayed from his goals; he never had time for fun or anything he considered time wasters.
But he did have a strong sense of right and wrong.
That was likely the only personality quality we shared.
So yeah, it might be unlikely that Max would become involved in some sort of criminal case, but it wasn’t impossible. Especially if whatever was going on had been blocking the path he was traveling.
Respect for him rose up inside me like a bottle of shaken soda. That hollow feeling threatened to pull me under and grief was a pungent taste in the back of my throat.
He can’t be gone.
He’s too young to die.
The man across from me cleared his throat. “No one knows of Maxwell’s passing. You’re the only one who’s been told.”
I swallowed thickly, pushing down the bubbly emotion inside me. I thought about my mother, my father, my sister. I was going to shatter their world today. I swallowed again. “I’ll take care of it,” I told them.
They said nothing, but I felt the change in the room. I looked up, directly into the eyes of one of the agents. There was a reason I was being told first. There was a reason that no one else had been notified about his death.
“The accident scene?” I asked.
“Has been cleaned up.”
Yeah, there was definitely something more going on.
“Sergeant, right before your brother died, he spoke to us.”
“What did he say?” What were the last words my brother would ever speak?
“He told us to get you. To get Tucker.”
; He asked for me. Max’s last thought, his last request was of me.
Suddenly I understood the man’s words. That’s him. Of course they knew it was me on sight. I looked exactly like Max. We shared the same face.
“We need you to step in where Maxwell left off. To assume the identity of your brother.”
It was crazy. It would never work. People would know the minute I opened my mouth that I wasn’t Max.
Perhaps the look on my face made the men think I was going to say no.
“This case has been ongoing for over a year. If you don’t help, all the work we’ve done will have been for nothing. These men will walk.”
“Those men killed my brother,” I said. A sense of revenge overcame me.
No one said anything.
No one but me.
“I’ll do it.”
4
Charlotte
If there was one stereotype that I hated above all others it was that all blondes were dumb. Born a natural blonde I fought against the stereotype my entire life. I even considered dying my hair brown, but that would be like admitting defeat or trying to hide who I really am to appease some people with large mouths that had tendencies to act like assholes.
Besides, I was a walking testament that blondes weren’t dumb.
Plus, brown hair would totally wash me out.
Once I was certain Garlic Breath and his friend were gone, I slipped out of my neighbor’s apartment (They needed a class in organization and hoarding) back into the hallway. I could hear the emergency responders clanking up the stairwell and I experienced a moment of panic.
Then I realized I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Well, except for fail to vacate a building that was potentially burning to the ground.
I rushed back into my place just as the door to the stairwell burst open and men filed into the hallway.
I knew what I had to do.
I removed the clip from my hair and shook out the blond strands so they appeared messy and slept on. I never walked around with bed head, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
Opening the door to my apartment, I stumbled out into the hallway, faking a yawn and rubbing at my eyes like I was still half asleep.
The men in the hallway all stopped and stared at me.
“What’s going on?” I asked, trying to sound tired. In my opinion, I sounded like someone doing a poor imitation of a drunk person.
“What are you doing here, ma’am?”
Great. Not only was I a dumb blonde with uncombed hair today, but I was also a ma’am. I should wander down to the social security office and apply for my senior citizen card while I was at it.
“I live here,” I said, blinking my eyes at them like I was confused. Then I gazed over their fire suits and equipment. “Is there a fire?”
“Didn’t you hear the alarm?” one of the other guys asked, amusement clear in his tone.
“I sleep with headphones and a noise machine,” I said. “A girl has to get her beauty sleep.”
God. I sounded like a complete twit.
“We’re going to have to ask you to vacate the building while we finish searching the area.”
I nodded. “Of course.” I gestured to my apartment. “That one’s mine. There’s no fire in there.”
I pulled the door closed, hoping they didn’t go looking for the noise machine I claimed to sleep with. One of the men held open the door for me and, okay, yeah, I might have peeked at his physique. He was a fireman, a good-looking one at that.
I heard the men laugh as the door closed behind me. I breathed a massive sigh of relief I wasn’t asked more questions. I wasn’t sure I was ready to tell people what happened to me. I wanted to think it through. I wanted to weigh the situation in my mind, think of all the possibilities of what went on tonight.
Downstairs in the lobby, cold air swirled inside from the door leading onto the sidewalk. I slowed my steps. I was supposed to go out there, but I wasn’t wearing any socks or shoes. I’d have frostbite in minutes. New York City in late January could be brutal. The wind, the snow, the low temperatures, and this winter was supposed to be very long and anything but mild.
And if I somehow avoided frostbite, I would get some weird disease walking on the bare sidewalk of the city. My skin crawled just thinking about what could be growing out there.
A few of the people who lived in the building still loitered just inside the door so I took up position beside them. I scanned the faces—not for anyone familiar, but for two men who seemed like they might not belong.
I didn’t get a great look at the men from upstairs, but I knew if I saw Garlic Breath again I would know him. He wasn’t in sight, not inside and not outside in the crush of people on the sidewalk.
What did that mean?
What are you here for?
You.
His whispered one-word reply caused goose bumps to break out over my arms and legs. Why would he say that? What could he possibly want with me?
“Stupid kids,” someone next to me muttered. “What’s this city coming to?”
“What do you mean?” I asked before I could remind myself he probably hadn’t been talking to me.
“Didn’t you hear?”
I shook my head. “I slept through most of this.” I gestured at the crowd, the officers, and the fire truck parked out at the curb.
The woman on the other side of the man chuckled. “Ah, to be young again. I used to be able to sleep through anything too. Now I’m lucky to get four hours straight.”
The man in the center of us nodded empathetically. They were an older married couple, both with graying hair and wrinkles on the outer corners of their eyes.
“It appears some kids pulled the fire alarms and waited ‘til people started evacuating to enter some apartments and rob them.”
My first thought upon hearing this news was disbelief. That wasn’t what happened here tonight…
Was it?
“Who said that’s what happened?”
The man gave me a strange look before replying. “The police.” He motioned outside where two officers in blue uniforms were talking to some of the people I recognized from living in the building. “Seems the kids only burglarized the first floor. They didn’t have time for the rest.”
Is that was Garlic Breath and his friend were doing? Hoping to make easy money in the midst of chaos they themselves created? I hadn’t gotten a great look at them, but I knew they weren’t kids.
Of course the firemen upstairs called me ma’am and this woman down here was wishing she was as young as me. Clearly everyone had their own definition of age.
I was thinking in circles. That never happened. Usually I was analytical and concise with my thoughts. I was just tired, in shock, and yeah, okay… maybe I was a little scared.
I found myself wishing that Max were here. It would be nice to not be alone tonight.
I turned back to the man, to hopefully draw some more information out of him, when one of the officers stepped inside. All his attention was on me.
“Ma’am,” he said. “We’ll need to get your statement.”
“Of course,” I agreed and turned away from the older couple to give him my full attention.
I started to explain why I was late, but he cut me off to ask, “Did you see anyone in the building? Anyone who seemed liked they didn’t belong?”
“Is this about the robberies?” I questioned. A good lawyer always answered a question with one of her own.
He nodded briskly. “We’re trying to gain descriptions from all those who might have seen them as they were vacating the building.”
“I was late vacating. I wear headphones at night.” The lie was easier to tell, like once I had gotten over telling it upstairs, it no longer mattered. I wondered if that’s how criminals felt. Like after their first crime, the ones after it didn’t even matter.
“Did you see anyone on your way out? Anyone you didn’t recognize? Anyone who was acting suspicious?�
��
I thought about Garlic Breath and the way he seemed to just appear in my dark apartment. I thought about how he wasn’t interested in any of my material possessions, not even after I told him he could have them.
I thought for long moments.
And then I lied again.
“No. The only people I saw were the firemen, clearing the building.”
The officer seemed disappointed, but he didn’t question my statement. After a few more general questions and my brief explanation of how I saw nothing at all, the officer moved on to the next interviewee.
I never lied. Lying only got people in trouble, a fact I saw day after day in my job as a lawyer.
But I just lied tonight. To an officer of the law no less.
Why?
Something inside me told me to keep my mouth shut.
5
Tucker
The entire drive from Pennsylvania to New York City was spent sitting in the back of a black SUV and being briefed on my brother’s life. In order to be able to pull off literally stepping into his shoes, I had to know as much as I could about him.
I think the Feds assumed I knew more than I did. I didn’t bother to correct them. In truth, I was mildly embarrassed that I didn’t know more about Max and his life these days. Every detail they told me seemed to affect me in one way or another. I felt amused at how focused and intent on success Max was, but that wasn’t to say I wasn’t impressed. Max was achieving his goals. I never doubted he would.
As we drove, I was handed countless items, like a driver’s license with Max’s name on it, a cell phone programmed with his contacts, the keys to his apartment, and bank cards with his name on them as well.
It seemed wrong to touch the money that belonged to my brother. It wasn’t rightfully mine and likely it was all willed to our parents. When I tried to refuse, I was met with stone-cold silence and looks of disapproval.
I almost laughed.
Like I gave a damn if they liked me or not.
“Take the cards,” the man to my left finally said. He must have realized that I don’t bow under pressure. “The guys who wanted Max dead think he’s dead. When you show up, they’re going to be shocked and probably suspicious. If you start using a different bank or anything that even seems simple, they’re gonna know.”
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