Dead Ringers

by Fossen, Delores

  That helped level Dana’s breathing, but one glance at Grace, and Dana figured she looked as frightened as her twin. She wanted to assure Grace that it would be all right, but Dana didn’t figure either of them would buy that. This was far from being all right.

  “If it’s the killer, how did he find us?” Dana asked.

  Jack glared over his shoulder at Vince. Vince did the same to Jack. “We both left this house,” Vince stated.

  “Yeah, but no one followed me back,” Jack insisted.

  “Same here,” Vince countered. “So, that means we got a leak of some kind or else one very resourceful SOB.”

  Dana heard the wail of sirens and saw the blue lights slash against the window glass. Rusty stayed put, close by the door with his gun aimed and ready.

  Good.

  Because the killer might use the chaos of the cop’s arrival to try to kill them. That’s what he’d done at her apartment anyway.

  The sound shot through the room, and because Dana’s heart was already in her throat, she gasped. But it was just the house phone.

  “Is it one of your guys calling?” Vince asked.

  Jack shook his head and looked back at the phone on the nightstand. There was another ring, and the answering machine kicked on. The recorded message gave only the number and a prompt to “leave a message.”

  “So, finally you get to hear my voice,” the caller said.

  Grace caught onto Dana’s arm just as she caught onto hers. Everything inside Dana went still and she knew. Even though the voice was mechanically altered, this was the killer.

  “You can run,” he said, “but I’ll find you. I know you’re there, all four of you.”

  “Should we pick up the phone?” Grace asked. “And try to reason with him?”

  “You can’t reason with bat-shit crazy,” Vince answered. “Besides, he might be fishing. He might not know we’re really here.”

  Jack made a sound of agreement and kept his gaze pinned to the front yard.

  “So, why don’t we end this now?” the man taunted. “You must know it has to end. You don’t belong here. You’re soulless.”

  Each word was torture, and each word echoed through Dana’s head. She wasn’t ready to give up, not even close, but she didn’t know how much more of this she could take.

  “We’re stronger than we think,” Grace mumbled. She ran her hand down the length of Dana’s arm. “At least I think we are.”

  For some stupid reason, that made Dana smile. But the smile was short-lived.

  The thick blast rattled the house.

  It was deafening, and Dana automatically caught onto to Grace and pulled her to the floor.

  Jack cursed. “The house next door blew up.”

  “Oops,” the voice on the phone said. “Guess you didn’t see that one coming? It’s from an RPG. A rocket propelled grenade launcher. Not fired by me but someone who’s close enough to make a direct hit. Your house is next.”

  That put Dana’s fear at a whole new level. Would he do that? She didn’t have any doubts that he would. It wouldn’t be the perfect strangulation murders that his sick mind craved, but they’d all be just as dead.

  “Let’s move!” Jack ordered.

  Dana and Grace got to their feet. Vince scrambled across the room toward them.

  “Oh, and Grace?” the voice said. “Thanks for helping me find you.”

  Grace frantically shook her head. “I didn’t.”

  Jack ignored her and the taunting voice on the phone. He got them moving down the stairs with Vince and him in front of Grace and her.

  “Out now!” Jack shouted to Rusty. “He’s got an RPG.”

  That sent Rusty running to the left of the foyer, toward the side garage. They were right behind him.

  Even though Dana had tried to brace herself for another explosion, the violent sound was still a shock. It roared through the house, seemingly shaking it all the way to the foundation.

  “He shot out the top floor,” Vince said. And the words had no sooner left his mouth when the flames and smoke came shooting down the stairs.

  “Don’t look back,” Jack ordered, and he threw open the door that led from the house and into the massive garage. He headed straight for a black SUV with dark tinted windows and threw open the passenger’s door before he hurried to the driver’s side.

  They all piled in--Rusty in the front with Jack. Grace, Vince and Dana on the middle seat. “Get on the floor,” Vince insisted, and he pushed Grace and her in that direction.

  There was another blast.

  Dana couldn’t see what part of the house it’d hit, but she could tell from the sound and the jolt that it had been close.

  “Keep watch,” Jack said, and he hit the remote control to open the garage. The moment the door was high enough, he hit the accelerator, and the SUV flew out backwards.

  The lights from the police cruisers were slashing around. The sounds, too. Someone was yelling, but Dana couldn’t make out what they were saying. But she could hear Grace.

  “I didn’t do this,” Grace mumbled like a prayer.

  Dana slid her arm around her and pulled her close. She believed Grace, maybe because she thought their brains were wired the same way, and there was no chance that Dana would have betrayed Jack and Vince.

  “Sonofabitch,” Jack and Vince said at the same time.

  Dana lifted her head to see what had caused them to curse, but she only caught a glimpse of the fireball ahead of them before Vince pushed her right back down.

  Oh, God. It looked as if the person with the grenade launcher had blown up part of the street.

  “Hang on,” Jack warned a split-second before he jerked the steering wheel to the right.

  Dana prayed the blast hadn’t destroyed their only exit. If it had, then the killer had them trapped. Of course, there were cops nearby, but she doubted they’d be much protection against another blast from that launcher.

  “Hang on,” Jack repeated.

  The jolt was like hitting a massive pot hole, and the black smoke slithered against all parts of the vehicle. Jack didn’t stop, didn’t slow down.

  Even when there was another blast behind them.

  The SUV tore through the smoke, and Jack maneuvered the vehicle back on the road. Dana braced herself for another blast and for her own death. Yes, Jack was doing everything humanly possible to get them out of there, but at the moment the killer had more firepower than they did.

  The seconds passed, slowly. Crawling by and yet speeding at the same time. No more blasts. Just the sounds of their heavy breaths and the SUV racing across the asphalt.

  She was about to ask Jack if they’d made it. If they were safe now, but Dana glanced up and saw that both Vince and Rusty had their attention fastened behind them. Jack’s gaze was on the side mirror.

  “Watch,” Jack told Vince. “See if he follows us.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jack pulled into the driveway of the new safe house and glanced back at Vince. Dana was asleep, her head on Vince’s right shoulder. Grace’s head was on his left. The man had an arm around each of them. Jack didn’t care much for Vince’s cocky protective stance, or the fact that he’d been forced to escape shirtless, but he was glad to have an extra gun to help keep them alive.

  They’d gotten lucky that none of those grenades had made a direct hit. And equally lucky that the killer hadn’t pursued them when they escaped. The windows of the SUV were bullet resistant, but Jack hadn’t wanted to engage in an all out fight with Grace and Dana in the vehicle.

  “Wait here a minute,” Rusty said, getting out of the SUV. “I’ll do a final check of the place.”

  The sound of the door awakened the women, and both lifted their heads as Rusty used a key to let himself into the house. Dana rubbed her eyes, looked around, her attention landing on the SUV clock.

  “Six a.m.,” she mumbled. “You’ve been driving around a long time.”

  About three and half hours. That was to make sure
no one had followed them--no one had--and to give Rusty time to make calls to arrange a new place for them to stay. Success on both counts. Now, the trick was the keep the location of the new house a secret.

  “Where are we?” Grace asked, yawning.

  “Just outside San Antonio city limits. A friend of a friend owns the place,” Jack said, causing Dana to smile just a little.

  He was glad to see that smile, no matter how brief. They’d come damn close to dying, and he figured by now Dana and maybe Grace, too, were close to falling apart. Dana seemed to be as okay as possible under the circumstances.

  Grace was a different matter.

  Unlike Dana, she wasn’t looking out at the modest ranch style house. She met Jack’s gaze in the mirror.

  “I didn’t lead the killer to us,” she said, something she’d been mumbling until she’d fallen asleep about an hour earlier. She turned to Vince and repeated it again.

  “What he said was psycho-killer bullshit,” Vince assured her. “It was meant to divide us. Because if he can do that, he can kill us the way to wants. Choking is a very personal kill, and it requires a little bit of alone time. He was probably counting on us tossing you to him.”

  Even though Jack didn’t care for the crude way Vince had spelled that out, it was true.

  Well, it was until Grace gasped, and she pressed her fingers to her now trembling mouth.

  That got all of their attention.

  “What’s wrong?” Dana asked.

  “When I was calling the insurance company, my cell went dead. I didn’t have a power cord, so I used the house phone.” Her words were rushed together as if she couldn’t say them fast enough. “Could the killer have traced the call that way?”

  Jack wasn’t sure who groaned louder--him or Vince. Their gazes met, and they exchanged another nonverbal groan before Vince slipped his arm back around Grace.

  “Yeah,” Vince verified.

  “Oh, God.” Grace’s tears came instantly.

  Jack could see the flash of surprise go through Dana’s eyes, and then she gave both Vince and him a scalding glance. “She didn’t know. We don’t have the cop mentality that you two have.”

  “It’s okay. You couldn’t have known,” Jack tried to assure both women. “The killer probably had someone monitoring the insurance office phones. In fact, that’s probably why he set the fires in the first place.”

  Vince made a sound of agreement and tightened his grip around a still crying Grace. “We’ll just have to be more careful.” He dipped down his head, forced Grace to look at him. “And remember, this psycho failed. Even though he found us, he still failed.”

  Failed to kill them, yes. This time.

  “My cell phone,” Dana said, sounding alarmed. “I left it at the house.”

  “Me, too,” Grace snapped toward Jack. “If the killer’s able to get them--”

  “The place has already been sanitized,” Jack explained. “There’s nothing in the place that the killer can use to link back to us.”

  He heard both women give breaths of relief.

  Rusty came out of the house and hurried back to the SUV. “All clear,” he said. “There’s another vehicle in the garage, and I need to ditch this one.”

  Yes. That was standard security procedure. Two hours earlier, they’d stopped so Rusty could run a search of the SUV to make sure it didn’t have a tracking device on it. It didn’t. But since the killer had likely seen the vehicle when they’d escaped, it was best not to use it again. Beside the paint on the sides was a mess from the heat and blast, and he didn’t want that to draw anyone’s attention.

  “I won’t be long,” Rusty assured him, and they got out so that Rusty could get behind the wheel.

  Jack didn’t waste any time getting the others inside. Definitely not the mansion that had just been firebombed. This place had three bedrooms, three baths, a kitchen with a dining-living combination and an office. The quarters would be tight, especially with the four of them plus Rusty. Maybe other PIs, too. But it had one huge advantage over the city house. It was surrounded by twenty acres of pasture land. No trees to hide behind.

  “How secure is this place?” Vince asked, giving the house a once-over with those CIA’s eyes.

  “Internal and external security systems that extend to the pasture. Cameras mounted on all four corners. Motion-detector sensors and lights. If anyone tries to get close, we’ll know about it.”

  Since Jack’s men had already prepared the place as a backup, it was stocked with food, clothes, untraceable pre-paid cells, three laptop computers, monitors for the security system. And weapons. A metal storage case on the dining table had four handguns and two rifles.

  Vince glanced at the weapons and made his usual sound of approval.

  Jack hoped to hell they didn’t need them.

  He locked the front door, armed the security system and with Dana right behind him, he checked out the bedrooms. He picked out one and tipped his head to the bed.

  “You need to get some rest,” he insisted.

  “So do you.” She slipped her arm around his waist, and he realized she was still trembling.

  Hell. Despite that partial smile, she wasn’t handling this as well as he’d thought. That was reasonable. After all, someone had tried to kill them again.

  “A nap will help you,” he said. It was probably a lie, but he had to try.

  Dana shook her head. “I want to help you. I want us to find this asshole.”

  Jack had to admire her tenacity, but he cursed it at the same time. He turned to see if Vince had had any more luck convincing Grace to rest, but it was a no-go for her as well.

  “So, where do we start?” Grace asked. “How do we stop him from doing this again?”

  Vince tipped his eyes to Jack in a go-ahead gesture, and he got busy adjusting the security monitors. No internal ones like the other house, but there were four to cover all angles of the exterior.

  “I need to talk to our suspects again,” Jack started. “Janski and Arrington. The PI, Samuel Wright, too. The background report should be ready on him, and we might find something that connects him to all of this.”

  Dana looked up at him. “What if we don’t?”

  “Then, we keep trying. Giving up’s not an option.”

  “No,” Dana agreed. She glanced at Grace. “But maybe I can be bait to draw this guy out.”

  “Hell no,” Jack said before she even finished.

  “Gotta admire your guts,” Vince said, “but that idea has stupid written all over it. This guy used a grenade launcher, remember?”

  “So, we make me bait in a place where he can’t use it or anything else.”

  Jack caught her by the shoulders and got right in her face. “This is not going to happen so the discussion is over.”

  “No, it’s not over.” Dana broke away from him and turned to the others. “We can’t just keep running and hiding.”

  “For now, we can,” Jack insisted. He tried to rein in the temper, but by God he wasn’t intentionally putting Dana in even more danger. “Just give me time to find him.”

  “I agree with Jack.” Though Vince’s expression proved he wasn’t happy about that. “I’ll make some calls and see if I can find out who recently purchased a RPG. Can’t buy those at Wal-mart. Plus, the killer hired someone to operate it, and we know that because he was on the phone talking with us when the first grenade was fired.”

  It was a good start. “And I’ll go ahead and make a call to Janski,” Jack continued, hoping to quell any other talk of bait. Besides, if got down to them needing bait, Jack would put himself out there.

  Jack opened the laptop and found the contact numbers that Rusty had placed in the investigation file, and he used one of the pre-paid cells to call Janski. Too bad this wasn’t a video call because he wanted to see the man’s expression. And he also wanted to see if it’d been as long of a night for Janski as it had been for the four of them.

  The call went to an answering machine.
“Pick up, Janski,” Jack insisted. “This is Jack Cain, and we need to talk now.” If he wasn’t home, then maybe that was a sign that this was the killer.

  But Janski did pick up.

  “Jack?” he sounded as if he’d just woken up, but Jack figured that was an easy response to fake. Especially if this guy was pretending not to be a killer. “Is something wrong?”

  “Plenty.” Jack put the call on speaker so the others could hear. He didn’t mention the latest murder attempt. No use. If Janski was the killer, he’d just deny it, and if he was innocent, he might try to contact the police. “When we talked yesterday, you left out something important about Layton and Eric. They were identical twins.”

  “Yes.” And that’s all Janski said for several seconds. “That was another of Cornelia’s experiments. I didn’t tell you because I’m not exactly proud of what I did all those years ago. But, yes, Layton was her backup plan.”

  If Layton was her backup, then what the hell were they to her? “Did you help her clone them?”

  Another pause. “I assisted. The embryo that created Layton was done the same time as Eric’s.”

  Jack glanced back at the others. Vince was still adjusting the monitors, but he was listening. Dana and Grace were hanging on every word.

  “What about us?” Dana asked. “Were our embryos done at the same time?”

  “Dana,” Janski said, and Jack could hear it purr off the man’s lips. “How are you this morning?”

  “In need of answers,” she said, her tone crisp and definitely not a purr. “Was Jack’s and my embryos cloned at the same time as Eric, Layton and Alyssa's?”

  “As I told you yesterday, I don’t know. If you were indeed cloned, it wasn’t by me or with my knowledge or assistance. If I remember correctly, Alyssa’s parents were only able to come up one with viable embryo. Cornelia had two--Eric and Layton. I suspect she cloned Jack and you after Alyssa and Layton were murdered.”

  “What’s this about?” Janski asked after another pause. “You’re digging at these old bones for a reason. Is it because of Patricia Snyder and James Murphy?”

  “Who?” Jack asked, playing dumb.

  “You’re not the only one who can look into people’s backgrounds,” Janski calmly said. “I saw their photos, I know they’re dead, and not just dead, but murdered. I also know they were identical to Dana and you. How many copies of Alyssa and Layton did Cornelia make?”