She pointed to the guy’s naked ass. “Is that you?”
“No.” Jack made sure he was as adamant as she’d been. Because he was certain about this. If he’d had Dana beneath him like that, he would have remembered it.
“It’s not me. These photos were obviously doctored,” Jack concluded.
Anthony shook his head. “Rusty tested them first before he ever called you. They weren't doctored.”
Then, there had to be some other explanation because that wasn’t him, and judging from Dana’s reaction, it wasn’t her, either. He didn’t want to be relieved about that, but he damn sure was.
Jack shoved the photos back into the envelope and gave his employee a we’re-done-here nod. “Call Rusty. Tell him I want those background checks on the other four beneficiaries--fast. Even if they’re not complete, I want any and everything that he has. Have him fax them to you, and you bring them to me.”
And by God, those backgrounds better give them some useable info. Or at least more information than these photos had. The photos had only created more questions, and Jack already had enough of those to last him a lifetime.
Anthony returned Jack’s nod and left, making his way back up the sidewalk.
“I hate to keep asking this, but what’s happening here?” Dana was trembling again and looking at him funny. Maybe scared, distrusting funny.
Or maybe sexual funny.
Jack certainly understood the sexual angle. In addition to added questions, the photos were an unnecessary reminder that he wanted his hands and other parts of himself on, and in, Dana.
“I don’t know.” And that was as a good of an answer as he could give her. However, he could give her something else. Safety. At least more safety than they had now. He caught onto her arm. “Inside. Now.”
Maybe because he practically shoved her in that direction or maybe because she was in shock from the photos, she cooperated. Dana unlocked the door to the pub. However, instead of merely walking inside, she turned toward him and step backwards as if she had no plans to take her eyes off him.
They carried the scent of the rain inside with them, but it didn’t dilute the lingering smells of the liquor. Not that that was the first thing he noticed. The first thing he noticed was there were touches of Dana all over the place. No dark and moody bordello colors here. The walls and floor were lime green. Glossy, at that. Purple and silver circular acrylic tables dotted the room.
Dana continued with her funny look. “If all of this is some elaborate scheme to get me in here so you can assault me--”
“No assault plans,” Jack assured her.
In fact, other than getting her inside, his plans were a little vague. Somehow he needed to convince her to let him help her. Oh, and he needed to do that while trying to make sense of the photos, the will, the dead beneficiaries and the heated attraction they felt for each other.
Definitely no piece-of-cake task.
Where’s your soul?
Jack was beginning to ask himself the same Goddamn thing. Was something other-worldly going on here because this certainly didn’t fall into the realm of normal?
Maybe.
He was a man ruled by logic. He wasn’t about to buy into woo-woo shit just yet.
Because she likely needed the support, Dana caught onto a glossy silver column. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Then, she shook her head and grabbed the envelope from him. She yanked out one of the photos and slapped it on the table next to her. She probably hadn’t intended for it to be the one of the butt-naked couple, but it was.
“Why do these people look like us?” She aimed an accusing index finger at the woman.
It was the question hammering through Jack’s head from the moment he heard the photo hadn’t been doctored. “Maybe we have twin siblings?”
Just like that, the fight inside her was gone. She stared at him, obviously processing that. And seconds later, she actually seemed a little relieved.
“Twins?” Dana questioned. “My adopted parents never mentioned anything about twins. Did yours?”
“Not a word.” In fact, he’d pressed them to learn if he had siblings at all, but they’d always insisted that he didn’t. Of course, they could have lied. At the moment, that’s what he was hoping had happened.
Dana made a sound to indicate she was giving it some thought. “So, our twin siblings, that we didn’t even know existed, met and became lovers?”
Jack mimicked her throaty contemplative sound. “And then our siblings were unknowingly photographed, and that picture turned up in a locked drawer in the office of the doctor who left us a fortune.”
Oh, yeah. He preferred a lying parent to this.
Dana touched the picture again, sliding her index finger along his dead ringer’s hand that was clamped against her dead ringer’s bare thigh. Her touch seemed sensual.
All right, anything would have seemed sensual to him at this point.
His body was primed and ready to take her. That’s why he had to get to the bottom of this so he could find the killer and then put some distance between Dana and him.
Even if distance was the last thing a certain part of him wanted.
“Ever had amnesia?” he asked. Yeah, he was reaching. Dana’s stare conveyed that she knew it as well.
“No amnesia.” She drew back her hand, stopping the caress by proxy. “And trust me, there are a few things in my life that I wouldn’t mind having blocked out with memory loss.”
Him, too. But ironically double amnesia was just as plausible as the twin theory. Of course, both theories were thin in the plausibility area.
They stood there. Gazes connected. Both waiting for something. A miracle maybe to explain all of this away. The photos. The murders.
The attraction.
Dana was the first to look away, her attention landing back on the photo. Jack didn’t take his eyes off her, and because he was watching her so closely, he noticed the slight change in her breathing.
She swallowed hard.
And Jack knew what she was thinking because he was thinking the same thing.
Seeing that photo was like personal porn.
Something a couple would have shot to arouse themselves for future encounters. It worked for him, and he could feel his hands on her. His mouth. How she tasted. All of her responses in that moment before a kiss turned to full blown foreplay. And then sex.
Jack could feel the sex, too.
He cursed because it’d been a long time since he’d lost a battle. He was about to lose this one though.
“I just want to get this out of the way,” he warned her.
The shock registered in her eyes, but he barely had time to see it. He slid his hand around the back of her neck and hauled Dana to him. Body against body. And still cursing himself, he lowered his head and kissed her.
Jack braced himself for the jolt. And there was one all right. But not just the surprise of learning the mystery of how she tasted.
The jolt was—there was no mystery.
She tasted exactly the way he knew she would. Sweet. Cool, not hot. That taste flooded through him and shot to hell any theory that it wasn’t them in the picture.
He knew that mouth.
He knew her.
But how?
Jack pulled back slightly to make sure this wasn’t sending Dana into a panic.
She wasn’t. In fact, she latched onto him and dragged him back to her. She cursed. It was raw and dirty like the thoughts flying through his head. And then her mouth landed on his, and thoughts vanished. He started to think with a different part of his body, one that rarely made good decisions.
“Damn those pictures,” she mumbled against his mouth.
Yeah, he was with her on that, but Jack figured the pictures had only stirred the heat because it’d been there from the moment he’d laid eyes on Dana.
The kiss continued. Not gentle. More like a war, and she wrapped herself around him. Getting close. Until they were fitted together like puzzle pieces.
He wanted her bad. More than his next breath. Maybe more than his life. Definitely more than his soul. But it was that last thought that had him pulling back.
It took a moment. Then, another. Before he could finally speak. “People who get personally involved with me usually get hurt. I seem to have very bad karma in that area.”
“Oh.” The flush of arousal evaporated. “Now you tell me. Thanks. Why didn’t you mention that tidbit before you kissed me?” She didn’t wait for his answer. She extracted her keys from her pocket again. “I’m getting out of here.”
“I don’t think so.” He stepped in front of her to stop her from leaving.
That earned him a huff. “I have to go back to my apartment and change. In case you haven’t noticed I’m soaking wet.”
“I noticed,” said with heavy sarcasm. He got an eye roll from her that time. “Remember our discussion about kill zones? Your apartment isn’t a good place to be.”
“If you’re right about someone wanting us dead, then my pub is part of that same kill zone.”
He couldn’t argue with her there. “That’s why I want to take you to hotel. To some place safe.”
“Safe,” she repeated. “After what just happened, I’d say we’re in more danger from each other than from a killer.”
Jack didn’t disagree.
Her hands went on her hips. “I want to change clothes.” Her stare dared him to challenge that.
He took the dare. Or would have. If she hadn’t reached for the door. But Jack reacted fast. He dragged Dana behind him and drew his weapon. But it was only his PI, Anthony Garza, and he was carrying two more manila envelopes.
Jack didn’t relax though because of Anthony’s nervy body language. Whatever was in those envelopes wasn’t good news.
“Rusty says to brace yourself,” Anthony warned. “He’s says you’re gonna need it.”
Coming from Rusty, that was downright scary. Dana must have thought so as well because she inched out from behind him and took a deep breath when Jack extracted the pages.
Jack’s picture was on one page.
Dana’s, on the other.
They were posed photos, both dressed professionally, like shots people would post on a company webpage. Dana’s hair was longer. Shoulder length and slightly darker. He was wearing a perky yellow tie that Jack was sure he’d never worn. Or owned.
Jack snatched up the lovers’ picture and compared them. The hair wasn’t the same. And there was something else, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Jack shook his head and stared at Anthony.
Anthony shook his head, too. “That’s not you or Ms. McNeil in these pictures.”
“Then who the hell is it?” Jack demanded.
“Patricia Snyder and James Murphy, the two murdered beneficiaries.”
“Oh, God,” Dana said on a gasp, and she repeated it. “They look exactly like us.”
Yeah. But why?
Were these the twins that Dana and he had never known existed?
“You’ll want to brace yourself for this, too,” Anthony warned a split-second before he opened the second envelope. With his hand actually shaking a little, he handed Jack two more photographs.
Another Dana.
She was blond, her hair long and scooped up into ponytail. And was she wearing paint-splattered overalls. The second picture was another of his twin. But different, too. No yellow tie in this shot but instead a military uniform.
“So James Murphy was in the Marines?”
Anthony shook his head. “No. That’s not James Murphy. Nor you. And the woman isn’t Dana McNeil or the dead Patricia Snyder either. Those are photographs of the two other beneficiaries, Grace Fletcher and Vincent Langford.”
Chapter Six
Vince Langford waited in the shadows and tried not to think about the man he’d killed.
He tried.
And failed.
On the outside, he always made sure he looked and acted like a surly badass. Faded ripped jeans. Scuffed-toed boots. The equally scuffed black leather jacket. And the most badass feature of them all—the jagged two inch scar that snaked from his left eyebrow to his cheekbone. All of it made the deceptive front of who he was.
That deception sometimes wasn’t even a deception anymore.
But this last kill had gotten to him. Maybe because of all the other piss-ass stuff he was no doubt about to have to deal with.
A new burst of rain pelted him, and he dropped deeper into the alley and took as much shelter as possible from a green awning over the window of a dentist office. Across the street was the bleached adobe San Saba apartments, and Vince watched through the binoculars as the car pulled to a stop in front of the building. Rain spattered on the binocular lenses, but he still had no trouble spotting the man who stepped out of the pricy black rental sedan.
Jack Cain.
Vince knew that from the bio he’d managed to get his hands on. It hadn’t been easy. Jack Cain had buried himself under layers upon layers of security. But Vince had finally managed to get a grainy photo from an old contact at the National Security Agency. One glimpse at it, and Vince had learned something pretty fuckin’ surprising.
Jack Cain had his face.
Vince’s opinion didn’t change when he got a better look at the man through the binoculars. Same color hair. Same eyes. Same everything.
Well, almost.
Cain was polished. Slick as spit in his expensive clothes. Everything about him shouted a good education, money, power. This man had done a lot with Vince’s face.
Apparently, a lot more than Vince himself had.
Cain sported an I’m-in-charge-here expression when he made a sweeping glance around his surroundings. Not an ordinary glance. No. He was being cautious, probably because he knew about the murders of the first two beneficiaries. He also likely knew that he was next on what had become a to-die list. But did Cain know that there were three men, two alive and one dead, who had the same face?
Better yet, did he have an explanation?
Not just for the faces but for these crazy thoughts slicing through his brain. Vince didn’t care a rat’s asshole about the location of his soul, but the question just kept coming along with the clamped pressure on his throat and chest. It didn’t put him in a Little Mary Sunshine mood to know that his other lookalike, James Murphy, had been drugged and choked to death.
Vince wanted to know what the hell was going on. And he wanted those answers fast.
One minute he had been doing surveillance of an international flesh peddler/money launderer, and then he’d gotten the call from a lawyer in Denver. He was a millionaire. Made rich by a doctor he’d never heard of.
Vincent Langford, it’s your lucky day, the lawyer had said.
Holding back judgment on whether that little gem was true, Vince had done a little checking and discovered that the first two beneficiaries were already dead. That might mean that this slick-as-spit Jack Cain could be offing people so he could get even more money.
Vince had come prepared to kill Cain first.
If necessary.
He hoped to hell it wouldn’t be.
Killing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be—even when the kill was warranted.
He watched Cain do another visual sweep of the area. Vince eased back deeper into the shadows, just in case. Eventually, he’d confront this look alike. But not now. Not until he knew what he was up against.
Cain wasn’t alone.
Vince watched as the woman stepped from the car. Blond hair. Dripping wet. Heck, the rest of her was wet, too, and her clothes clung to her like second skin. This was no doubt Dana McNeil, the bar owner, and she was the reason Cain had come to San Antonio. But was Cain there to save her? Or to eliminate the competition?
Like Cain, she looked around. Turning. Until she turned her face in Vince’s direction.
His breath stalled in his lungs.
Holy fuck.
Where had that reaction come
from?
He knew that face, of course. Because he’d seen the pictures of the women. Dana shared that face with the two other female beneficiaries, Patricia Snyder and Grace Fletcher. After studying their pictures, Vince had been prepared to recognize her.
But he hadn’t been prepared for this.
It was instant. Like a sucker punch to the solar plexus. An overwhelming flood of an emotion he certainly hadn’t expected to feel for Dana McNeil.
Vince wanted her—bad.
It’s your lucky day.
It suddenly seemed like it. And as sappy as it sounded, it felt as if he’d found some piece missing from his life.
Vince gave his head a hard shake and forced his attention back on the situation. Cain slipped his arm around Dana’s waist. Protectively.
No.
Possessively.
Vince couldn’t fault his look alike for that. He wouldn’t mind possessing her, too. More than that, he would mind just fucking her brains out.
Cain got her moving, fast, and Vince watched as they went to the lower unit on the far left of the building. They went inside and shut the door. No doubt locked it. Cain owned a big fancy security company so he knew how to take basic precautions.
So did Vince.
Two years of special ops had honed his instincts. Four more years at this present job had created new instincts. And those instincts were talking to him now. Being attracted to Dana McNeil wasn’t good. And it was stupid. He didn’t even know her, but it was as if she’d stirred something basic and primitive in his soul.
He cursed. Vince wasn’t even sure he believed in souls and shit like that, and here he was building a romantic, primitive fire that couldn’t go beyond this unexplainable spark.
His mission was clear. Figure out what was going on. Stop another murder or two, and then collect all that money the doctor had left him. He'd retire to Fiji or some other exotic place where he didn’t have to think about the men he’d killed.
However, even as Vince was mentally going over his life list, he had to add another item. Keep Dana alive. He didn’t even try to figure out why that was suddenly so important to him.
But it was.
Vince reached in his pocket for his phone so he could call Dana McNeil and get this party started, but he stopped in mid-reach because the van quickly snagged his attention.
Dead Ringers Page 4