Dead Ringers

by Fossen, Delores

“Dr. Hartwell left her estate to us,” Jack said, and he glued his attention to Janski’s expression. “Why?”

  He gave a troubled sigh. “Cornelia Hartwell was a complex woman.”

  And that explained nothing. “Why did she leave us her estate?” Jack pressed.

  “How much do you know about Cornelia’s research?” Janski asked.

  “She was a scientist,” Jack provided.

  Janski’s attention went back to Dana who took the seat across from him. “She was a product of eugenics. Know what that is?”

  Jack had to shake his head.

  “Hitler was into it,” Dana said. “Selective breeding, right? Couples paired up to produce ideal children.”

  Janski nodded, and Jack made a mental note to do some studying on the subject. He looked at Dana to see why she would have known that detail, but she just shrugged. “My mother talked about it.”

  Hell.

  That sent Jack gaze right back to Janski. “Start explaining.” Because if Dana’s adoptive mom knew, then this could be critical information that linked her adoptive mother back to Dr. Hartwell.

  Janski’s mouth quivered. “You even sound like Layton. He wasn’t a friendly sort when in search of answers.”

  “Neither am I.” Jack motioned for the doctor to continue with the explanation.

  “Where do I start?" the doctor mumbled, and then he snapped his fingers as if he'd come up with the answer. "Cornelia’s parents first got involved with the eugenics movement and paired up to conceive her. She, too, became a believer and in turn married Dr. Ernest Hartwell, another genetically designed offspring.”

  Jack thought about that a moment. “So, their son, Eric, was second generation.”

  Janski nodded. “Ernest died when Eric was a little more than a toddler, but the plan was for Eric to be paired with a genetically designed offspring his own age.” He looked at them. “It is very Hitler-esque, isn’t it? Me, personally. I never agreed with it. Nature has an extremely accurate natural selection process without man’s interference.”

  The words struck Jack as odd. Maybe even a bald-faced lie. After all, Janski was a scientist.

  “So…” Dana said and then paused. “Are we part of the eugenics project, too?”

  Janski shook his head again. “I don’t know. But Layton and Alyssa were.”

  There hadn’t been anything about that in the reports, and it was a detail that left Jack even more uncomfortable than he already was.

  “Layton and Alyssa’s marriage was arranged?” Jack asked.

  “More or less. I believe their parents pressed for it, but I don’t think either of them objected.”

  No. They hadn’t. Those photos weren’t of two people being coerced into sex to make beautiful, smart babies. The two had been in love.

  “You’re not their children,” Janski volunteered. “Turns out that Alyssa was unable to conceive. Some kind of childhood infection, I believe.”

  Ironic. If he was to believe Janski, Alyssa had been genetically engineered to be a baby maker. But judging from the photos, Layton hadn’t cared that his wife couldn’t carry on their perfected bloodline.

  “I want to talk to people involved in this eugenics project,” Jack insisted.

  The doctor nodded. “I can do some checking.”

  “I’d prefer to do the do the checking myself.”

  He gave another of those half smiles. “So like Layton.” He looked at Dana. “Alyssa loved cats, modern art and thunderstorms.”

  Dana flinched but quickly recovered her composure. “I’m not Alyssa. But I do like cats and modern art. Thunderstorms, not so much.” She paused, probably getting a few flashbacks of her ex trying to kill her during a thunderstorm.

  “You knew Alyssa well?” she asked Janski.

  “I was in love with her.”

  Jack felt that punch of jealousy. It was stupid because, well, because it just was. But Jack felt it anyway.

  The doctor looked away. “But she only had eyes for Layton. Just as you have eyes for Mr. Cain here.”

  Dana and Jack exchanged glances, and he let her know he didn’t intend to address that subject with this man.

  “I understand you didn’t have such kind feelings toward Layton,” Jack tossed out there.

  “True," he readily admitted. "We had words about some research money that he pulled. Turned out though to be a good thing. I realized the research wasn’t the direction I wanted to go.”

  Jack didn’t let him drop the subject. “Were you angry enough to kill him?”

  A soft chuckle shook his chest. “No.” And he didn’t offer anything else.

  “Then, who did kill Alyssa and Layton?” Dana asked him.

  Janski leaned back in the chair, rubbed his eyes again. “Cornelia’s son, Eric.”

  “You’re sure?” Jack asked. “Because the cops weren’t.”

  “I’m sure. Eric always believed Alyssa was his, and he was none too happy when his mother approved Layton and Alyssa’s marriage.”

  “You have proof he murdered them?” Jack asked.

  Janski shook his head. “Just the gut feeling that Eric was the one. I think he loved Alyssa in his own way.” He paused. “Or maybe obsession is a better word. Anyway, I believe he killed them, and then when he couldn’t live with himself, he took a nosedive off a bridge.”

  “His body was never recovered,” Dana said.

  The doctor’s gaze slashed to her. “You think he’s alive?” But he didn’t wait for her answer. “What’s going on? Why did you really want this meeting?” Again, he didn’t wait. “Is someone trying to kill you?”

  Jack jumped right on the question. “Why would you think that?”

  He stayed quiet a moment, his gaze firmly planted on Dana. Then, he waved it off. “I just had a moment of déjà vu, I guess. All this talk of Alyssa, Layton, Cornelia and Eric has my mind in a muddle.”

  The doctor stood, fumbled in his pocket and extracted his keys. “I must be going. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of any more help.”

  Jack stepped in front of him. “I want the names of the people to contact about this eugenics project."

  “Of course.” Janski tore his gaze from Dana and repeated it. “I’ll need your phone number.”

  “One of my employees will call you with that information,” Jack answered before she could say anything.

  “You’re a cautious man,” Janski mumbled.

  Yeah, and Jack wasn’t about to apologize for it.

  Dana, too, stepped in front of the doctor when he gave his car keys a jangle. “What kind of relationship did you have with Dr. Hartwell?” she asked.

  “Purely professional,” he answered with a brief smile. “She was old enough to be my mother, and as I said, she was complex woman. She believed in eugenics, was passionate about it and equally passionate about her spirituality. But she believed in reincarnation, too. She was always looking for subjects to do past lives regression.”

  Dr. Hartwell wasn’t complex. She was a new ager. Maybe even a lunatic. Still, Jack asked, “Why past lives?"

  “Because she thought she could control the reincarnation process. That’s why she wanted to team up with me.”

  Jack waited and when the doctor didn’t add more, he gave him a verbal nudge. “What kind of research were you doing?” Though he already had a good idea from what Rusty had told him.

  “Well, it’s common practice now, but at the time it was cutting edge. And very controversial. I was experimenting with harvesting and storing human embryos.”

  Dana leaned closer, her stared fixed to the doctor. “Just harvesting and storing? Because I thought you might be into cloning.”

  Janski’s gaze flew from hers. “I don’t do that anymore.”

  “But you did it then,” Jack reminded him. “What exactly did you do for Dr. Hartwell?”

  “Not what you’re thinking,” he snapped. But his fit of temper was very short. “I shared information with some geneticists that she’d hired.”


  “You showed them how to clone,” Dana accused.

  “I shared the theory of cloning with them,” Janski quickly corrected.

  A theory they could have put into practice.

  Is that what had happened?

  “Did Dr. Hartwell manage to clone Layton and Alyssa?” Dana came right out and asked.

  “I’m not sure.” Janski groaned softly “I backed out of the project early on, as soon as I learned what Cornelia really wanted to do. I know it sounds crazy. It was crazy. But Cornelia thought she could use the cloned embryos to capture a person’s essence at the time of their death.”

  “Essence?” Jack snarled.

  Janski swallowed hard. “Their souls.”

  #

  Grace tried to eat her breakfast, but the scrambled eggs that Vince had just cooked tasted like chalk. She forced them down anyway, along with some black coffee. Her taste buds might have balked, but she had a bad feeling that she was going to need to fuel up.

  That bad feeling had a lot to do with the two men who were hovering around the kitchen with her.

  One, Vince, was chowing down on some eggs. The other was Jack’s PI, Rusty, and he had a phone sandwiched between his ear and shoulder while his fingers frantically clicked on his laptop keys. Rusty had been at it for the better part of a half hour.

  For that same half hour, Vince had volleyed looks and glares between Rusty and her. The glares he reserved for Rusty. She got the looks. Heated ones that were a bad reminder of the conversation they’d had the night before. She’d revealed way too much to him.

  Unlike Rusty.

  He hadn’t revealed a thing about Jack and Dana’s whereabouts when Vince had asked. And she figured Vince would ask again when and if Rusty finally got off that phone. In the mean time, the looks between Vince and her would no doubt continue on both their parts.

  Grace didn’t want to participate in the looking, but she’d given up on telling herself how wrong and stupid it was. She’d dreamed about Vince. Not his smoother, creamier version, Jack.

  But Vince.

  Rough, rude and always seemingly ready to haul her off to bed. In her dream he’d done just that, and he’d given her the orgasm of her life. Of course, that wasn’t hard to do since she’d never had one. The climatic dream was her benchmark now, and sadly the real thing (if it ever happened) might not live up to it.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Vince said. He had that little smirky smile that made her think he could actually read minds. Or maybe he was just reading her body again.

  “No way. Especially not for a penny. My thoughts are worth a lot more than that.”

  He chuckled. Ate some more. Looked and glared more, too. Behind them, Rusty continued his softly spoken phone conversation. She’d given up trying to listen in on it because his monosyllabic responses weren’t revealing anything anyway.

  “So, which is it?” Vince asked her. “You think Jack's visiting Dr. Janski or the business partner, Kirby Arrington?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe both.” Jack didn’t seem the sort to leave a stone unturned. Of course, Vince wasn’t that sort either.

  Vince shot Rusty another glare before he got up and carried his now empty plate to the sink. That also put him significantly closer to her. He got even closer when he started to rinse his disk in the sink.

  “So, what?” Vince whispered. “We just eat breakfast and sit around, waiting for them to return with a sanitized version of what they’ve learned?”

  “That’s what I’d planned to do.” She forced down another bite of eggs and tried to ignore the fact that his look was now a stare. “Why?”

  “Because I want more answers than I got right now.” Vince cranked up the water even higher, though the dish was already clean. A ploy maybe to muffle the sound of his voice. “Pretend to kiss me."

  “Excuse me?” Grace borrowed one of his glares and stepped back. She didn’t make it far because he latched onto her wrist. “At least put your arms around me and pretend you have the hots for me. It’s important,” he added before she could say no.

  Grace wanted to say no, but instead she eased her chalky eggs into the sink and slipped her arms around his neck. “This had better be good,” she mumbled.

  But it already was. Just like that, her anxiety level dropped. The heat level didn’t. Her body started to spin that web of insane attraction, and she lifted her mouth and put it to his.

  “I said pretend,” he whispered against her lips. He cursed, hooked his arm around her waist and put his mouth directly against her ear. “Pretend for now. Later, I want the real thing.”

  Grace would have snapped back if he hadn’t held on, and if she hadn’t wanted him to hold on.

  Why did this jerk make her feel grounded?

  She didn’t know, but she hoped Dana and Jack came back with some answers.

  “You might never get the real thing,” she reminded him.

  “I can wait,” he reminded her right back.

  It was a good line, but she doubted he was any better at waiting than he was at trusting Jack.

  “Why are we pretending?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer. Vince glanced over his shoulder, connected gazes with Rusty. “Grace and I are going to check out the rest of the house,” he told the PI, and the way Vince groped at her butt, he answered the pretend question. He was doing this to give them some privacy.

  But why?

  Oh, maybe because she’d given him mixed signals about sex, that’s why.

  Rusty eased his hand over the phone receiver. “The security system is armed. If you open a window or door, I’ll know.”

  “I’m thinking we don’t need a door or window for what we’ve got in mind.” Vince made it sound raunchy. And urgent.

  Vince caught onto her hand and led her out of the kitchen. Okay, so the kiss really had been a pretense since he didn’t seem to have more kissing on his mind. They wound their way through a formal dining room. A library. Finally, to a laundry room with a back door.

  Grace eyed the door. Then, Vince. “Please don’t tell me you’re thinking about leaving.” Her heart started to pound, and she hadn’t even heard his answer yet.

  “I just need to check out some things, and I don’t have the resources to do it here.”

  “You can’t,” she insisted. “Rusty’s not going to allow you to leave.”

  “I think Rusty hasn’t got balls big enough to stop me.”

  Good grief. Grace had expected to have a no-sex argument with him, but not this. “It’s possible that all the security measures are in place to keep us safe.” And yes, she doused that heavily with sarcasm.

  “Or to keep us locked away until Jack can try to pin this on one of us,” Vince disagreed.

  “No way.” She studied his expression and realized he was serious. “You think he believes one of us is a killer?”

  “One of us is,” Vince growled. Then, he cursed.

  Grace froze. She wanted to turn and run. But her feet were frozen in place, too. “What do you mean?” However, she was afraid that she knew exactly what he meant.

  “I’m sure by now one of his PIs has told Jack that I work for the CIA. I kill people for a living.”

  She mumbled an Oh, God, but what she felt was relief. This wasn’t about her. It was about Vince, and Jack didn't believe she was a killer.

  “You don’t seem ready to lose it,” he mumbled. “Or surprised.”

  “I am,” she assured him. “But I can’t follow your argument. If Jack knows you work for the CIA, then he also knows you’re one of the good guys.”

  Vince got right in her face, stared into her eyes. “I’m not good. Will that stop me from trying to get you beneath me in a bed? No. But I’m under no illusions how bad I am. You sure as hell deserve a whole lot better.”

  He was wrong. She didn’t deserve anything that qualified as better.

  “You’ll be careful on this errand?” she asked.

  “Careful is for pussies, but in this case, I’
ll make an exception.” Vince slid his hand around the back of her neck, eased her to him and kissed her.

  And Grace let him do it.

  The arrogance was gone, and in its place was a tenderness that she’d never expected from this man.

  He pulled back. Made a sound of surprise and kissed her again. It was quick, barely a peck, and in the same motion he let go of her. He pressed in some numbers on the security keypad.

  “Lock the door behind me,” he warned.

  And just like that, Vince was gone.

  Grace watched him cross the backyard, running, and he made it to the fence before she heard Rusty’s footsteps. Either the numbers that Vince pressed in hadn’t disarmed the security system or Jack had created some kind of backup because even though there was no alarm, something had alerted Rusty.

  Rusty pushed her aside and cursed when he spotted Vince scaling over the fence. Before he could even get the door open, Vince was already out of sight.

  “You should have stopped him,” Rusty snarled. He whipped out phone and made another call.

  “Right,” was all she said. She would have had an easier time stopping the earth’s rotation.

  Rusty was no doubt calling Jack, and Grace tried to hear what his reaction was to Vince’s escape. However, her own phone rang, and thinking it might be Vince adding one of his smart-assed one liners, she pulled her phone from her pocket and answered it.

  “Grace Fletcher?” the man on the other end of the line said.

  Not Vince. In fact, it wasn’t a voice she recognized.

  “Miss Fletcher,” the man continued. “I’m Detective David Ryland, Austin PD.”

  A cop. “Yes?” she managed. And she held her breath. God, it couldn’t be Jack or Dana. They couldn’t be dead.

  “I got some bad news for you, Miss Fletcher,” the detective said. “Someone torched your art gallery. By the time the fire department arrived, there was nothing left to save.”

  It felt as if someone had punched her. Grace was thankful that it wasn’t Jack and Dana, but that gallery was her life. All her paintings. God. Everything.

  “Miss Fletcher, have you had any trouble recently?” the cop asked. “Maybe a bad breakup with a boyfriend or a disgruntled employee?”