Twin Genius

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Twin Genius Page 29

by Patricia Rice


  But until I knew what to do about EG, I needed a safe house, and this wasn’t a neighborhood for kids, especially one like EG who got in trouble by opening her mouth.

  As usual when I had some hard thinking to do, I sat down at my laptop. Writing was a recommended anger management technique that I hadn’t practiced enough. As soon as I poured my frustration into these pages, my brain started whirring.

  The first thing I acknowledged was that we’d just made ourselves targets for every gang member in the area. The humiliation of being beaten by a pip-squeak and a gay male model would incite the hoodlums like rabid gunslingers. They’d have to come after us just to prove they were still top dogs.

  I’d been through this enough times to know it was fruitless hoping trouble would go away. Once the rabble discovered my family’s eccentric propensities, we were hounded into either retaliation or escape. Not for the first time, I wished my family were normal with a huge house someplace safe and boring where we could live in peace.

  I didn’t follow that thought to its logical conclusion immediately, because in my family, it wasn’t a logical conclusion. No, the next step of logic was to wonder again why EG and Nick had arrived on my doorstep on the same day and conclude that my first intuition had been right. Something was vastly wrong.

  Had I kept typing, I might have reached the right solution sooner, but the realization that I’d been scammed drove me out of my seat and back to the front room again.

  “All right, no more evasions.” I waited in the doorway, hands on skinny hips, trying to look formidable. “I want a good explanation of why you’re here.”

  Nick had the experience to look suitably innocent. EG didn’t. She shoved a spoonful of my raspberry yogurt into her mouth to cover up, but I had two decades of practice over her. I snatched the cup away and pointed at the door.

  “I get the whole story or I’ll put you on the first train to D.C. and your dad if you don’t spill.” This last was directed at EG. Nick could take care of himself.

  EG’s lower lip trembled, and Nick sighed in resignation. Another woman would have felt guilty yelling at a crying kid, but I crossed my arms to hold in my gut-wrenching dismay and gazed at my half brother for explanation.

  Nick shrugged. “Don’t you ever read the newspapers?”

  “Why? They only make me want to walk the street carrying a sign saying Repent or the world shall end tomorrow.” I hadn’t buried myself in the basement just to avoid family. There was a whole world out there that I would avoid if I could. That way, I could live with the fantasy that the rest of the universe contained sane people, and it was only my piece of it that was nuts.

  EG went to my computer, hit a few keys, and called up a news channel. There, in big bold letters I couldn’t miss, was the headline: SENATOR TEX HAMMOND A SUSPECT IN AIDE’S MURDER.

  Tex was EG’s dad.

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  Evil Genius by Patricia Rice

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