Dead Ringers

by Fossen, Delores

  Yet another thought Jack pushed aside.

  He certainly had some thinking to do once he had Dana to safety.

  The man ended the call, and a split-second later, there was a loud pop. Too loud for a gunshot. The flames quickly followed. They flared up in front of the bottom stairwell of the adjacent apartment where Jack was certain the killer had positioned himself. Either Vince had indeed managed a diversion or the diversion was a trap for Jack.

  “What now?” Dana asked. There was so much breath in her question that it hardly had any sound.

  Yeah, what now? It was decision time, and Jack did as he always had. He trusted his gut and hoped like hell that his gut wasn’t wrong. He’d been wrong before, but the stakes were much higher this time.

  “We run,” Jack told her. “Now!”

  He latched onto her arm, maneuvered her on the side of him away from that burning stairwell, and they started running toward the parking lot.

  Everything seemed to happen at once. The flames spewed higher. The sirens came. Man, did they. Rusty hadn’t held back in that department. They were loud and lots of them. The shrill screams of the sirens mixed with the shouts from people coming out of the apartment.

  But even with all that going on, Jack still spotted him.

  He caught just a glimpse of the man in the shadows of the smoke and the building, but a glimpse was all Jack needed to see the mirror image of the man staring back at him.

  #

  Grace Fletcher caught onto her throat and gasped for air. The smoke was smothering her. Maybe something else was smothering her, too. Because the sensations came again. The pressure in her chest. As if someone was sitting on her.

  She staggered away from the building that was now on fire. She wanted to believe it was a coincidence, that the fire had accidently started at the exact moment she’d arrived at the San Saba apartments where Dana McNeil lived.

  But it didn’t feel like a coincidence.

  The sirens were deafening. People ran past her, knocking into her. The blue lights from the police cruisers slashed through the rain and wind. Slashed at her. And Grace fought to stay on her feet, to keep moving.

  Just an hour earlier she’d learned about the two dead beneficiaries. That’s when she’d understood this wouldn’t be a social call. She needed to speak to Dana McNeil or the other two, but Ms. McNeil’s was the only address she could find.

  Still clutching her throat, Grace made it to the back of the apartment building. To the edge of parking lot. She could better see the fire now, and it wasn’t the building in flames but rather something in one of the breezeways by the stairs. A trashcan with black smoke shooting from it.

  Relieved, Grace shoved the hooded part of her gray vinyl coat off her head and let the rain fall over her hair and face. She hoped it would help her regain her breath. Her focus. Or anything else that she could dig her metaphorical fingernails into so she could ground herself.

  However, that ground idea went south when she saw the couple. First the man. She got a glimpse of his face. Tall, dark and dangerous looking.

  She was instantly drawn to him.

  No.

  More than that. She knew him.

  Didn’t she?

  He had his arm hooked protectively around the woman whose face she couldn’t see. A blonde who was nearly a foot shorter than he was. There was something about the way they moved together. They were running, yes, but it was fluid and graceful. More like a sensual dance.

  They were no doubt lovers.

  And for some reason that made her stomach clench. Make her heart hurt.

  Wonderful.

  Now, her delusional thoughts were going down this particular path. The letter about Dr. Hartwell’s will had started it all. Then, just hours later, there’d been the physical symptoms: the crushing pain to her throat and chest. The overwhelming feeling of loss, fear and…violation. Then, the question.

  Where’s your soul?

  It was mind-rape, pure and simple, and it brought back worse-than-bad memories. It was straight out of her adopted mother’s parenting philosophy--screw up, think bad thoughts, kiss a boy--almost everything Grace did or would do was a mortal sin. Schizophrenia and the Bible didn’t always mix well, and Grace figured her soul had been scrubbed or beaten out of her a long time ago.

  But apparently not lust.

  Because that’s what fired through her as she watched the dark haired man disappear from her line of sight. She wanted to run after him which was insane, of course.

  God, she hoped she wasn’t turning into her mother.

  She had enough weight on her chest without going dingbat, too.

  Grace took another steadying breath and took out the slip of paper from her pocket. Dana McNeil’s address. It was time to pay her a visit and have a little chat. Maybe she’d have answers about the doctor’s will. And the other stuff.

  “Don’t scream,” she heard someone say.

  Of course, Grace tried to do just that, but the beefy hand slid over her mouth, and just like that, he was dragging her backwards. Away from the parking lot and into end stairwell of the apartment building.

  She fought. Tried to scream again. But he held on.

  “Did you just try to kill them?” he snarled in her ear.

  Grace shook her head, and in the same motion she rammed her elbow into his stomach. She might as well have rammed it into a brick wall because he was solid. That meant he was a lot stronger than she was. But that didn’t stop her. She jerked her body forward, kicking the heel of her shoe into his shin.

  “Fuck,” he mumbled.

  “Not with me,” she fired back, and she went for another jab at his shin. And then she went after something that she knew would stop him--she latched onto his balls and squeezed as hard as she could.

  He still didn’t let go of her, but he gutted out some more profanity and threw back his weight. She lost her grip. Lost her balance, too, and then went crashing into the brick exterior of the building.

  Grace whirled around, ready to gouge out his eyes.

  But she stopped cold.

  She shook her head. Blinked. But the person in front of her was real. “It’s you.”

  Chapter Eight

  Dana was freezing again. It was her second drenching of the day, and even though Jack had the car heater blasting on her, she still felt the chill all the way to her bones.

  “Keep looking for him,” Jack said to the person he’d called.

  His PI, Rusty, maybe. But he’d made five calls from the time they’d gotten into the car and sped away from her apartment. He had also taken her cell phone and changed the settings. Something to do with the location menu. Jack had said it was so that no one would be able to use her phone to pinpoint their location.

  If it was the killer trying to do that pinpointing, then the settings change was a stellar idea, but Dana prayed that the good guys could get to her if it came down to another fight. Of course, that meant she had to first figure out who the good guys were.

  “Your men didn’t find the dart shooter?” she asked the moment Jack ended the call.

  He shook his head. “They’ll keep looking, and I’m bringing in some additional help.”

  Yes, she’d heard him request that with one of the calls. Or rather demand it. Jack was definitely a take charge kind of man, but Dana wasn’t hopeful that it would stop this killer.

  “I’ll need to make a call,” she let him know. “Someone will have to open the bar.” Yes, it was a minor thing, considering her life was falling apart, but it was something sane to hold on to.

  “You can’t tell anyone where you are,” Jack warned.

  Actually, it was a repeat warning, one that he had issued the second they got into the car. A warning she would heed. If she told any of her employees where she was or what had just happened, it would put them in the middle of this dangerous mess.

  Even though her hand was shaking, Dana took her phone from her purse and called her head bartender, Sarah Gray. S
arah didn’t answer, but Dana left a message and told the woman that she’d had a family emergency and had to leave town. Hopefully, that would prevent any of her employees from worrying about her. Well, unless her name managed to get on the news.

  It would happen--eventually.

  Someone would connect these killings and attacks. It was just a matter of time.

  “I can get you some dry clothes soon,” Jack let her know. He didn’t have his attention on her but rather on his rearview and side mirrors.

  Dana kept watch, too. She didn’t recognize the scenery, but they were somewhere on the north side of the city. No apartments or trendy bars here. No fires, either. Just sprawling houses on streets with names like Whisper Oaks and Eden Waters.

  “You haven’t asked where I’m taking you,” Jack pointed out.

  “I’m assuming some place safe,” she mumbled.

  Away from a dart shooting killer who’d try to incapacitate them with carbon monoxide. If she hadn’t been so exhausted and weary from it all, she might have been on the verge of another of those choking-smothering attacks she’d had just a half hour earlier. Or on the verge of trying to get away from Jack, a man she wasn’t sure she should trust.

  But she did anyway.

  Still, her options were bad and worse right now. And Jack at least seemed to be working toward keeping them safe. Getting her away from the apartment was for starters, but he’d also made some calls to his PIs to get them started on finding Vincent Langford and Grace Fletcher. Especially Vincent since he’d perhaps been the one who had helped them escape.

  Or course, Vincent could be the reason they had to escape.

  But Jack’s calls seemed to be attempts to get to the bottom of that as well.

  He pulled into the drive of one of those massive houses. A sand-colored stucco and limestone place, three floors, situated on at least an acre of perfectly groomed grounds. Jack stopped, and dodging the rain, he got out and entered a code on the keypad on the side of the garage door. A moment later, the door opened. He hurried back to the car, drove them inside, but he didn't get out until the garage door was closed.

  “Will he find us?” she asked, stepping from the car.

  Jack didn’t answer her until he’d pressed in more codes to open the door to the house. “Maybe.”

  She wished that he would have lied, and her heavy sigh must have conveyed that.

  “I don’t know what kind of resources he has.” Jack drew his gun and walked in ahead of her. The moment she was inside, he armed the security system.

  Dana followed him as he started a search of the place. That gun and his button-pushing quiet vigilance didn’t do much to steady her nerves.

  “He had the resources to find my apartment,” she pointed out.

  “That would have been easy. I found you in under a minute. And that’s the reason I didn’t want you to go back there.”

  “Yes. I got that now.” They checked out a living room that looked as if it’d jumped off the page of a decorating magazine. No photos or personal touches. Just a picture perfect room decorated in muted tones.

  “I thought this was supposed to be a safe house,” she said.

  “Rusty had it checked out, but I just want to be sure.”

  And he was sure all right. They went through the rooms on the bottom floor. All eleven of them and then headed upstairs. Nine perfectly decorated rooms there and about a mile of hallways. When they reached the third floor, she saw that it was a massive bedroom suite. It was also one giant glass room with floor to ceiling windows on all three sides. The rain was snaking down them and creating some interesting shadows.

  Creepy ones, too.

  “The windows are bulletproof,” he explained, “and tinted so that no one can see inside.”

  It was impossible to tell that just from looking at them. “You know a lot about this place. How?"

  “It belongs to someone who can’t be connected back to me.”

  Which, of course, didn't answer her question at all.

  “There are security cameras,” he went on. He pressed a button next to the light switch, and a panel rose behind the desk that was against the one regular wall. The panel was a like a large TV screen, and images began to pop up on it. Each little box showed a room in the house. Several boxes covered the exterior.

  “Is the owner paranoid?” she asked, only half joking.

  “Cautious.” Jack crossed the room, went into a walk-in dressing area and came out with a fluffy white bathrobe. He tossed it to her. “Change before you catch pneumonia.”

  Dana wasn’t going to argue with him. She felt like a Popsicle. But when she started to peel off the top, she realized Jack wasn’t budging.

  “I’m not leaving you alone,” he insisted.

  “Well, you can at least turn around.”

  He gave her a flat look. “I know every inch of how you look naked.”

  She gave him a flat look right back and dropped her purse on the floor. “You’ve seen pictures of my naked body double. Or my twin or doppelganger. You haven’t seen my body.”

  Or her scars.

  Yeah, it was stupid that Jack seeing those scars would trouble her more than seeing her butt naked. But it did.

  He stood there. Drenched, too. Hair hair tousled. His desperado stubble past the desperado stage. With his shirt clinging to his chest. She’d seen a facsimile of that chest in the photos. His butt, too. In fact, the only part of him that she hadn’t seen was the part that she was dead certain could heat her up in a New York minute.

  “You know eventually we’ll have sex,” he tossed out there.

  She wanted to argue. Heck, she wanted to smack him upside the head with the robe. But he wasn’t being cocky. He was just saying what they both knew was true. Soon, they would get naked. Soon, she’d get to experience firsthand that part of him that she hadn’t seen yet. It would be a horrible mistake, especially considering a killer was after them, but Dana didn’t think this was a free will situation.

  She huffed. “You think we’ve been brainwashed or something? Or given some kind of aphrodisiacs?”

  He motioned for her to change. “That wouldn’t explain our look-alikes.”

  Dana apparently didn’t move fast enough for him because he went to her and stripped off her soggy brown sweater. He tossed it on the floor and put the robe over her shoulders. In that same motion, however, he looked at her body.

  Sure, she had one of her usual cotton bras. A wet one with no padding. It showed the outline of her nipples. But it wasn’t her nipples that had his attention.

  It was the scars.

  Dana quickly snapped the robe shut. Or she tried. Jack grabbed the sides and held on.

  Something went through his eyes. Pain. He flinched hard as if he’d been the one to take those blows from Trey’s knife.

  He groaned softly, lowered his head and touched his mouth to the scar on her right shoulder. Then, the one on the top of her left breast. He didn’t miss the one slightly below it. Jack mouth-touched the one on her ribcage next. The two on her stomach. Without stopping, he unbuttoned her wet jeans, slid down the zipper and kissed the seventh scar on her right hip.

  That put his mouth dangerously close to her panties. Dangerously close to where she really wanted him to kiss her. But Dana fought that urge. Fought the heat trickling through her.

  She caught onto his face with both of her hands. “You shouldn’t be doing this. I barely know you.”

  “You know me,” he corrected. Jack pushed her hands away and proceeded with one very gentle kiss on the hip scar.

  Dana let him finish. Okay, maybe let wasn’t the right word. She didn’t stop him, that’s for sure. Not even when his mouth moved from her scar to the top of her panties.

  Then, an inch down.

  Oh, mercy.

  She could feel his mouth and breath even through the sensible cotton fabric. And she was definitely no longer cold. That trickle of heat was turning into fire.

  Without moving hi
s mouth, he peeled the wet jeans off her. Dana stepped out of one leg. Then, the other. And Jack shoved them aside. He gripped onto her backside, pulling her closer to him, and his fingers worked their way into the elastic panty legs until he was touching bare skin.

  Correction: until he was caressing bare skin.

  Still, she didn’t stop him even when she thought he might cause her to melt.

  He looked up at her. Moved his mouth lower still, until he was nearly at the exact spot.

  Nearly.

  Dana’s body reminded her that nearly would drive her crazy if he kept this up.

  “Yes?” he challenged.

  Oh, she wanted to say yes. She wanted to shout it, grab onto him and put that clever mouth right in the center of all that heat. Better yet, she wanted her panties off and her knee on his shoulder. She wanted Jack to send her flying in this rain-washed room where they were hiding out from a killer.

  “What’s happening between us isn’t normal,” she somehow managed to say. Chrome couldn’t stand up to this kind of heat.

  “I think I’m just very attracted to you and vice versa. It’s happens. There’s nothing supernatural about it.”

  Uh. Maybe.

  But she’d never felt anything like this.

  Even though it was the last thing she wanted to do, she caught onto his shoulders and dragged him upright. It put his mouth in a position to kiss hers, but at least she wouldn’t get an orgasm from that.

  Well, maybe not.

  She was working on a very short fuse here.

  The fuse and heat clouded her judgment because she stared at his face. Alarmingly good looks. So, she focused on his clothes instead. He, too, was drenched to the bone as she’d been before he had steamed her up.

  To give herself something to do, Dana went to the closet. It was massive like the room itself, and she located a second bathrobe. She brought it out and tossed it to him.

  “You’ll catch pneumonia,” she echoed.

  Of course, that was the least of their worries.