Dead Ringers

by Fossen, Delores

  Vince backed out of the church. The bomber didn’t budge an inch, and Vince paused when he made it to the door. With Jack’s men out front and maybe hell breaking loose at the rental house, it would be the perfect time for an ambush.

  That wouldn’t stop him.

  Everything inside him shouted that something was wrong, that he had to get to Grace.

  Vince eased Patricia’s body back into the van, and he started running.

  #

  Oh, God.

  The sound of that shot sent Grace’s heartbeat spiraling out of control. It was bad enough that Vince was in immediate danger from a bomber, and now someone was shooting. She was afraid for herself, but that shot would only delay their escape and delay Jack who’d been going to help Vince.

  “Stay down,” Rusty told them, and he pushed both Dana and her onto the floor of the SUV.

  Because there were no windows, the garage was pitch black so Grace tried to listen. Rusty was whispering something to someone on his communicator. There were footsteps. Other whispers. And Grace’s own too rapid breath. She could feel every raw nerve in her body.

  “We have to help Vince,” she reminded anyone who could hear her.

  Dana slipped her arm around her, tried to comfort her, but Grace knew the only thing that would give her any comfort was seeing Vince alive and unharmed.

  “Don’t open the garage door,” she heard Jack say.

  No. The door was the first step to getting out of there. Of course, someone out there had fired a shot, and that was probably the reason Jack wanted them to stay put, but Grace had to do something or her heart felt as if it might explode.

  “Who fired that shot?” Rusty asked him.

  “Can’t tell, and Wright went running up the street.”

  “He could be going to hurt Vince,” Grace said, but she figured they already knew that.

  “The killer could get a grenade launcher in here,” Rusty concluded. “And we’ll be sitting ducks if we manually open this garage door. How do we get Grace and Dana out?”

  “Through the backyard. Yeah, it’s risky,” Jack confirmed before Rusty could say anything else.

  It was risky, but Grace felt better being on the move than staying put, and it didn’t have anything to do with the grenade launcher. She didn’t want to die in an explosion, but just a couple of blocks away, Vince was in danger from the same thing.

  Someone latched onto Grace again. Anthony, maybe. Dana and she were practically pulled from the SUV. The men surrounded them, and they started moving. Fast. The house was dark, too. None of the streetlights were on outside. No doubt caused by the killer. Maybe he was watching them with one of those thermal monitors, but staying put was just as big a risk as moving.

  Jack led them to the backdoor, and she heard him unlock it. “I’m going left. You’re going right,” he said to Rusty.

  “No,” Dana whispered.

  “I can’t have you near me. The killer will use the tracking device to follow me.”

  “And kill you.” Dana sounded as close to hysterics as Grace felt.

  “Rusty and Anthony will protect you.” And that was it. The only goodbye he spared them. Jack went ahead of them into the yard, waited a few seconds. “Let’s move.”

  Jack went one way. They went the other.

  Beside her, Dana’s breath was gusting, too, and she had a death grip on Grace’s hand. Maybe because she was as terrified as Grace was or maybe she just didn’t want them to get separated.

  Since Rusty was so close to her, Grace heard the chatter come from his tiny communicator. “The bomb didn’t go off,” he relayed in a whisper. “Could be a fake.”

  The relief flooded through Grace. Well, temporarily. Vince hadn’t been blown up, but that didn’t mean he was safe. Maybe the timer was some kind of decoy and the bomb would still explode. She prayed that Vince was far away from it.

  “We’re on the move,” Rusty told whomever was on the end of the communicator. “Pinpoint us and give us some backup.”

  There was no fence, just a row of small hedges to divide it from the backyard of another house. Grace heard a dog bark. Their heavy footsteps. And she tried to pick through the sounds and the murky darkness to see and hear if anyone was approaching.

  Nothing.

  That didn’t mean the killer wasn’t close. In fact, he probably was. He seemed to want Dana more than the rest of them. Or maybe that’d been a ruse, too. Maybe all of this was set up to divide them.

  And it had.

  Vince and Jack were off on their own, and Dana and she were here, struggling to get to some place safe.

  “Shit,” Anthony gutted out as he stumbled.

  For one terrifying moment Grace thought he’d said that because he had seen the killer, but then Grace tripped over something. Probably the same thing that Anthony had because they both went tumbling to the ground. Grace landed hard on her butt.

  The grass was damp and cool, but whatever she’d tripped over wasn’t. It was warm.

  A body.

  She gasped and scrambled away from it. Until she realized that it could be Vince. Maybe not dead. Just hurt.

  “Vince,” she whispered and tried to see the person’s face. But Anthony latched onto her, yanked her to her feet and got them moving. And not just moving. He got them running.

  “The guy has a bomb strapped to his chest,” Rusty spat out.

  That didn’t stop Grace from struggling. “It could be Vince,” she insisted.

  He didn’t listen, though Dana, too, was trying to go back.

  The sound, however, stopped them cold. Not a shot. This was more of a swish, and it was a sound Grace had heard before. In front of that catfish diner.

  Someone had fired a tranquilizer gun.

  Dana made a funny sound. A rattled gasp. And her hand flew to her chest. To the dart that’d just slammed into her.

  Grace caught her so she wouldn’t fall, but there wasn’t time to move or get out of the way before there was another of those swishing shots.

  And another.

  Grace dragged Dana to the ground and then braced herself to feel the sting of the dart. The numbing sedation that it would bring. But nothing.

  Not for her anyway.

  The darts slammed into Anthony and Rusty, and even though both men tried to move. Tried to run. That didn’t happen. They collapsed onto the ground.

  “Finally,” someone said.

  Grace reeled toward the sound of the voice. Toward the two men who were making their way toward them.

  The scream didn’t even make it past Grace's throat before one of the men fired the dart directly into her chest.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Jack cursed and tapped his communicator. “Rusty?”

  Nothing, and there should have been plenty of something. Rusty should be relaying news that he’d gotten Grace and Dana away from the house.

  “Anthony?” Jack tried, and he came to a complete stop when the PI didn’t answer either. He tried to switch frequencies to get another of his men, but he still got nothing.

  Hell. Something was wrong, and with everything else going on, Jack had no trouble imagining that this was the worst kind of wrong. He could hear sounds from Rusty’s communicator. Mumbles and maybe movement, too, and that meant he had to hurry.

  Jack turned and started running back toward the house.

  With each step, the bad thoughts pounded in his head. This was the nightmare he’d been trying to avoid, and he had thought that he could outsmart this guy. He’d been stupid, and Jack prayed his stupidity didn’t get the others hurt.

  Or worse.

  He ran as if his life depended on it. Because it did. It was Dana’s life at stake. Grace’s, too. For that matter, Vince could also be in immediate danger.

  Jack kept behind the string of modest houses and tried not to make too much noise. He certainly didn’t want one of the residents thinking they had a burglar. That kind of delay could be deadly.

  The lights were sti
ll out, and there were filmy white clouds cutting across the moon. Not nearly enough illumination, but it might work in his favor. If he couldn’t see the killer then that meant the killer couldn’t see him.

  Well, probably not.

  Unless he, too, was using infrared, but Jack couldn’t worry about that now. He already had enough worries.

  It seemed to take a lifetime or two for Jack to make it back to the house, and he pulled up behind a twisted-trunk oak so he could try to assess the situation. Oh, shit. There were three people on the ground. Not moving. Maybe dead.

  Please, don’t let it be Dana.

  He couldn’t go there. Just the thought of it crushed him, and it wouldn’t help to think the worst.

  Jack’s gaze fired around the yard. He couldn’t see anyone else, so he hurried to the bodies. He saw Rusty first. Then, Anthony. There didn’t appear to be any blood, but Rusty had a dart sticking out of his neck. Anthony had one in his right cheek.

  Both were alive.

  But Jack didn't breathe easier yet.

  Still keeping watch around the yard, he checked the third body. This time there was blood. And a bomb. The timer wasn’t ticking down, but it was strapped to what was left of him.

  Rory Sullivan didn’t have a dart in him but rather a gaping bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

  Jack looked around, frantically searching for anything else.

  Where the hell were Dana and Grace?

  Where had the sonofabitch taken them?

  The panic came, hot and acidy, racing through him, but Jack forced himself to stay calm. Not easy to do, but he also forced himself to keep looking. Finally, he saw the drag marks.

  And they let directly into the house.

  He’s killing them now.

  That thought rammed through him like a heavyweight’s fist, and Jack made a beeline to the already opened back door. He sensed the movement before he heard it, and he ducked just in time. The dart flew through the air and smacked into the wall.

  Jack turned, made a split-second assessment of his attacker. A male wearing dark clothes. It wasn’t one of his men nor was it Vince, and when the guy took aim at him again, Jack double tapped the trigger of his gun. He didn’t aim for the chest but rather the head.

  And he didn’t miss.

  The man fell, the tranquilizer gun clattering to the floor. Between that and the shots, Jack figured there was no chance of sneaking up on the killer. That didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered now was speed. He hurried to the living room, his gun ready.

  Jack found them.

  His heart nearly stopped beating when he saw both Dana and Grace. But Jack didn’t hurry to them. That’s because they weren’t alone. Nor were they being strangled. A man wearing a dark raincoat and baseball cap was kneeling beside Dana, and he had a gun pointed directly to her head.

  “A bullet’s not my first choice of ways to kill her,” he said. “But take one more step, Jack, and it’ll have to do.”

  Jack didn’t move, but he didn’t need to see the man’s face to know who held that gun. He recognized the voice, and he finally knew the name of the killer.

  August Janski.

  #

  Dana silently cursed and forced her eyes to stay closed. It was hard. She wanted to see for herself if Jack was okay, but opening her eyes would be a huge risk. Janski thought she was drugged, and he hadn’t figured out yet that the dart had hit the underwire of her bra. The makers of that garment might be pleased to know that it’d saved her life.

  Well, it had given her the chance to be saved.

  After Janski had dart-drugged Rusty, Anthony and Grace, Dana had noticed then that Janski had a real gun. One that could create a hole in her head as it’d done in Rory Sullivan’s. She figured her best bet was to pretend to be drugged, too. Because eventually Janski was going to put down that gun so he could strangle her. That would be her best bet at fighting back.

  Or it would have been.

  But now that Jack was here, it could make things better or worse. Jack could help her fight off Janski, or he could be killed.

  “Put your weapon on the floor,” Janski ordered Jack. “Now,” he added several seconds later. He yanked up Dana’s top and shoved down her bra. “Or you get to watch me destroy her beautiful breasts. I’m not into mutilation, but in this case, I’ll make an exception.”

  He pinched her nipple, hard, and it was all that Dana could do to keep from yelping in pain.

  She heard Jack move, and she peeked out and saw him put his gun on the floor.

  Great. Now, he was unarmed, but if their positions had been reversed, she would have done the same. There was no way she could have stood there and watched someone hurt him.

  “Are you in place?” Janski asked into the communicator attached to his collar. It was almost identical to the one Jack and the others were using. “Good.”

  Dana didn’t think that good was good for Jack, Grace and her. A few minutes earlier Janski had ordered someone to come and guard the house. From the sound of it, that was now in place.

  “We won’t be disturbed,” Janski calmly informed them. With the gun still at her head, she felt him adjust his position a little. “This is a feast. Three at once. Where do I start?”

  She thought he might have licked his lips.

  “My suggestion?” Jack said. “You start with the insane asylum because you’re crazy.”

  “Obsessed,” he corrected as if that explained everything. “Blame it on Cornelia. She experimented on me, injecting Layton’s cloned cells into mine. I hate to give the bitch any credit, but it worked. I finally saw what he saw in Alyssa.”

  Oh, God, yes. The man was sick.

  “You’re killing people because someone injected cells into you?” Jack cursed. “Like I said, start with the insane asylum.”

  Because Janski’s leg was against her ribcage, she felt his muscles go rock hard. Part of her didn’t want Jack to antagonize this man. The other part of her just wanted Jack to kill him on the spot.

  “Not just cells,” Janski snarled. “She believed a person’s so-called soul was in the DNA, and she gave Layton’s to me. And because Layton was acting like a jackass and trying to ditch the Zeus project, she also gave me Alyssa.”

  Dana peeked out the corner of her eye to see how Janski was holding his gun. If Jack’s questions could distract him, maybe she could knock the weapon from his hand and then Jack could make a dive at him. If it came down to a fist fight, Jack would win, and she would help. Of course, he’d have to jump over Grace to make that dive since her unconscious sister was between Jack and her.

  “I’m guessing Alyssa didn’t like the fact that Cornelia gave her to you,” Jack said. He moved, too, inching closer.

  “She didn’t take it well,” Janski snapped.

  “And that’s why you killed her.”

  “I killed her because she was a stupid whore, and her stupid whoring soul died with her.”

  “Then, what?" Jack asked. "You let Dr. Hartwell believe Eric had murdered Layton and her?”

  “I did.” There was something different in Janski’s voice now. An eerie calmness that Dana didn’t like. With the gun still gouged against her head, he moved and straddled her. She nearly gagged when she felt his erection press against her lower stomach. “Cornelia was overcome with guilt, but I didn’t know she was so overcome that she’d cloned both Layton and Alyssa.”

  Clones.

  So, that’s what they were.

  The info had not come at a good time. And maybe it wasn’t even true. Dana wasn’t about to trust the rantings of insane man who strangled women he couldn’t have and then raped their corpses.

  “You found out about the cloning when she died,” Jack supplied.

  “When I saw the letter she’d left with her lawyer. I hacked into the computer so I could destroy any files. No statute of limitation on murder, and I didn’t know if she'd connected the dots.”

  So, Janski had been looking to destroy any evid
ence and had found them instead. “Imagine my surprise when I got a glimpse of Patricia’s face and realized what Cornelia had done.”

  “Move another step,” Janski warned Jack, “and she dies fast.”

  “Turn that gun on me,” Jack insisted. “Let me be the one who dies first and fast. After all, I have to believe you hated Layton as much as Alyssa. And it’s his blood in me. Not just a few cells either. I am Layton.”

  Dana's stomach was churning, and that sure didn’t help. This was beyond goading. Jack was trying to get Janski to go after him, and then it would come down to who could get a shot off first. She had a lot of faith in Jack, but she didn’t want Janski getting a lucky shot.

  “You don’t say?” Janski mumbled into the communicator. “Well, bring him in.”

  Janski’s smugness had returned, and a few moments later, Dana realized why. She peeked out and saw the two armed men, and they were dragging something. It took her a moment to realize what.

  Or rather who.

  They were dragging an unconscious Vince into the room.

  #

  Jack was relieved when he saw that Vince was breathing. That meant the two goons hadn’t killed him. But there was a flipside to Jack’s relief because now he had three armed men to stop. He only hoped the presence of the goons meant the exterior of the house was unguarded. If so, maybe his own men could get close enough to help him out of this.

  “I want Vince dead first,” Janski announced. “Get him over here, and then one of you hold this gun to Dana's head.”

  Hell. Janski was going to strangle Vince, and with that gun on Dana, Jack’s options were limited. He glanced around trying to figure how to stop this.

  Basically, he had a slim to none plan.

  He couldn’t just stand by and let Vince die, and that meant he’d have to reach down, pick up his gun, take out the gunmen, then Janski.

  Yeah, there was serious potential for failure here.

  One of the goons held his gun on Jack, the other dragged Vince closer and dropped him next to Janski. They were about to trade spots so that Janski could start the strangling. That was Jack’s cue to get ready.