Identical Stranger (HQR Intrigue)

by Alice Sharpe

  “Heads,” Jack said woodenly, wishing the image would magically disappear and knowing it never would. “Women’s severed heads.”

  Reece nodded. “He’s been nabbing women for years and bringing them back to that horrible, horrible place.”

  “What about his mother?”

  “She’s in the freezer, too. Nash has been cashing her social security checks.”

  “And Adam Cook’s big secret,” Jack said, “according to Sheriff Donner, who got a wild hair and went up to Cook’s land tonight, is the meth lab he built on the back of his property. I should have guessed what he was up to when I saw that box of lantern fuel in his van.”

  Reece shook his head, met Jack’s gaze and sighed deeply. “And I should have listened to you, Jack. I could have gotten both Sabrina and Sophie killed. If you want a job, by the way, it’s yours.”

  Jack half smiled. “Thanks. Who knows, I may take you up on it. I don’t think Sophie is going to want Sabrina out of her sight for a long time. They have some major catching up to do. But there’s one more thing and that’s Lisa. Nash said he lived in California years ago. He mentioned an ex-wife—”

  “After you told me about that, I checked it out,” Reece said. “The ex-wife lives in San Diego now and Nash was telling the truth, she did hound him for money that was rightfully hers. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to trace Nash back to Lisa, but we’ll do our best.”

  Jack nodded. As far as the law was concerned, their best would have to do. As for him—he knew. Not with proof but with his gut.

  May Lisa finally rest in peace.

  A figure appeared in the doorway, as tall as Jack, a little heavier, bearded and sunburned and wearing a parka that looked like it had become a second skin. Buzz Cromwell’s gaze went directly to Jack, his gray eyes filled with worry. “Where is she?”

  Jack got to his feet. “She’s in recovery,” he said as he went to hug his friend. “She was banged up pretty good, Buzz.”

  “I need to see her.”

  “Come sit down. Let me tell you what her doctor said.”

  The man came reluctantly, nodding a greeting at Reece, who muttered his farewells and left.

  Buzz sat down heavily. “What did that creep do to her?”

  “I don’t know the details, but I do know she’s had a harrowing time. The biggest physical problem was the shot to her leg, but that’s going to mend. If anyone can get through this, she can, you know that.”

  A nurse motioned to them from the door. “Gentlemen,” she said. “You can follow me.”

  As they got to Sabrina’s room, Buzz paused, and Jack saw his gaze travel from Sophie, who stood holding Sabrina’s hand, to Sabrina, whose swollen cracked lips curved when she saw him. Even through their individual scars and bandages there was no mistaking their likeness. Buzz rushed to Sabrina’s side and leaned over her.

  “I didn’t want to worry you,” she whispered.

  He kissed her forehead. “I’m here now, sweetie. No one’s going to hurt you again, I promise.” He laid his cheek against her forehead and closed his eyes.

  Jack’s gaze moved to Sophie, whom he found staring at him. She settled her sister’s hand by her side and moved from around the bed. The nurses had helped her shower and lent her blue sweats. Her forehead and right cheek were bandaged and her skin was as white as ivory. By now he’d heard her story, what she’d done, and he wasn’t sure if the glow that seemed to pour from her eyes came from the outside or the inside. Both, he decided.

  He met her halfway and put his arms around her.

  “Thank you for saving us,” she whispered after a few moments.

  “I love you, Sophie Sparrow,” he said as he searched for a place to kiss her that wasn’t bandaged. “I can’t imagine a life without you.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said, and touched her lips to his. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  * * *

  BEFORE A WEDDING could be accomplished, they decided Jack needed to return to California to tie up loose ends and Sabrina had to get well enough to act as Sophie’s maid of honor. On the day Sabrina was finally being released from the hospital, the two sisters found themselves sitting side by side on the bed. Sophie had been on the phone and now she clicked it off and turned to her twin. “Grandpa is expecting us next weekend,” she said. “Jack will be home by then so maybe all four of us could drive up there together to see him.”

  Sabrina nodded. “I could use a short road trip. What does our grandfather want?”

  “He’s anxious to discuss our inheritance and the house and the island—all of that.”

  Sabrina’s smile was wistful. “That’s nice. What I really want to know from him is what our birth mother was like, if he knows who our father is, if we have any other family—that kind of stuff.”

  “Me, too,” Sophie said. Then she added, “Whether or not we do we both have something we didn’t have before.”

  “Each other,” they said in unison.

  * * *

  Don’t miss the previous book from Alice Sharpe:

  Hidden Identity

  Available now from Harlequin Intrigue!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Incriminating Evidence by Amanda Stevens.

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  Incriminating Evidence

  by Amanda Stevens

  Chapter One

  The hammer of rain on her umbrella obscured the sound of any footfalls behind her. Still, Catherine March cast an uneasy glance over her shoulder. Nothing seemed amiss. No darting shadows. No lurking silhouettes. But she knew she was being followed. The certainty tingled down her backbone as she hurried along the rain-slick sidewalk.

  She gripped her umbrella and willed away the icy sensation. She was letting the gloomy day get to her. Grief clouded her common sense. Why would she be under surveillance? She lived a quiet and unassuming lifestyle. Most of her time was spent in a university lab or classroom. She consulted with various law enforcement agencies in and around Charleston, South Carolina, but a sleuthing, gun-toting forensic anthropologist was a figment of Hollywood’s imagination. Catherine didn’t investigate crimes or chase down criminals. Her job was to examine, analyze and inform. The cases on which she consulted were mostly cold, the skeletal remains of the victims picked clean by time, weather and predation.

  Take her current assignment. She’d been tasked with creating biological profiles for fourteen separate sets of human remains recovered from an aband
oned house on the outskirts of Charleston’s famed historical district. The former owner of the residence, a paraplegic named Delmar Gainey, had spent the last five years of his life in a nursing home and the previous two decades confined to a wheelchair. Before the accident that claimed his mobility, however, he’d murdered those fourteen women and sequestered their bodies in the walls of his home and in his backyard.

  The remains of his victims might have stayed hidden forever if not for an ambitious house flipper, who had acquired the property at auction following Gainey’s death. The first gruesome discovery brought the police. The coroner had brought in Catherine.

  Butterfly fractures in the long bones told the story of the women’s brutal captivity while striae patterns on the sternums and rib cages painted a vivid image of their deaths. The victims had been stabbed repeatedly with a serrated blade. All except one. Jane Doe Thirteen.

  She was the anomaly. An outlier. An inconsistency that needled at Catherine even now as she thought about the single bullet hole in the back of the skull. In all likelihood, the entry wound had been made by a full metal jacket fired at close range from a 9 mm semiautomatic. An execution.

  No bone trauma like the other victims. No nicks or fractures. Not even an exit wound.

  Jane Doe Thirteen had definitely captured Catherine’s imagination, but for now she had more pressing business.

  Clutching the plastic bag to her chest, she plunged on through the puddles.

  What were the chances? she wondered as she cast another glance over her shoulder. What were the odds that not one but two old serial-killer cases with seemingly no relation to the other had entered her quiet, ordinary world to wreak havoc on her peace of mind? Delmar Gainey had died in his bed at the Cloverdale Rest Home, no doubt savoring his monstrous deeds to the bitter end. Orson Lee Finch—the so-called Twilight Killer—was still very much alive but destined to spend the rest of his days in the Kirkland Correctional Institution, housed in a specialized unit for the state’s most violent inmates.

  Catherine had been little more than a baby when Gainey and Finch had stalked the streets of her city, each possessing a very different set of stressors, signatures and criteria. Then the remains had been found on Delmar Gainey’s property and, soon after, headlines had exploded with startling new developments in the Orson Lee Finch case.

  Catherine had experienced little more than professional curiosity until her mother’s death unearthed a more personal revelation. Since early childhood, Catherine had known she was adopted. Her mother, Laura, had spoken openly about the circumstances of Catherine’s birth. You’ll have questions as you grow older. At some point, you may even feel your loyalties are divided. That’s only natural. But I want you to know that you can always come to me, Cath. There should be no secrets between us.

  No secrets? Then why hadn’t Catherine known about the loose floorboard in her mother’s closet or the box of newspaper clippings stashed inside the secret compartment? Why hadn’t she been told about the photograph?

  Why had Laura March, so pale and weak on her deathbed, pulled her daughter close and whispered a distressing message in her ear?

  It’s all a lie.

  A car horn sounded in the distance, drawing Catherine’s attention back to the present. She stood shivering on the curb as she waited for the light to change. It was a hot summer day, but the rain and her dark thoughts chilled her.

  She took another quick check of her surroundings. She was alone on the street. No one else was about. No one that she could see. The rain had chased everyone inside. She was tempted to scurry across the intersection against the light, but she could almost hear her mother chastising her from the grave. Careful, Cath. Always look before you leap.

  Grief settled heavily on her shoulders and tightened her chest. She couldn’t remember ever feeling more alone than she did at the moment, huddled beneath her umbrella and missing Laura March more than she would have ever dreamed possible.

  Wiping a hand across her damp cheeks, she drew a sharp breath. The feeling was there again. That frigid whisper up her backbone. She turned, almost expecting to find her mother’s ghost floating toward her through the gloom. Instead, she saw a man watching her from a recessed doorway.

  Their gazes collided before he glanced away, but in that fleeting moment of contact, Catherine experienced a flicker of recognition. She searched her mind for a time when their paths might have crossed. The man was memorable, not so much for his crudely tattooed arms but for the aura of danger that shrouded him. There was something sinister in his closely set eyes, something threatening in his body language. He looked to be middle-aged, his hair longish and slicked back, his cheekbones as sharp as razor blades. As if aware of Catherine’s scrutiny, he tipped back his head and blew a long stream of smoke out into the rain.

  Her heart raced as she considered her options. Run away or confront him. Before she had time to think, she found herself walking toward him.

  “Excuse me!” she called out. “Do I know you?”

  Even as she continued to advance, she admonished herself for provoking a stranger on a deserted street, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Grief did strange things to people. Maybe her emotions had been pent up for too long. Maybe her anguish had been suppressed to the point of explosion.

  “Sir? Are you following me?”

  He showed no visible reaction to the question, refused to acknowledge her presence with so much as a glance. He took another drag and then carefully flicked the cigarette butt into a puddle before he turned and walked away.

  Catherine didn’t follow him. She watched until he was out of sight before she went back to wait for the light, positioning herself so that she could keep an eye on the sidewalk behind her. She tried to tell herself again that she was imagining things. The man had been minding his own business. If anything, she’d likely scared him away. What had she been thinking, harassing a total stranger?

  No one was following her. Get over yourself. The only other person who knew of her discovery was her mother’s sister, and she couldn’t fathom a scenario where Louise Jennings would have her watched. Catherine still had a hard time believing her mother had kept secrets from her all these years, but the proof was in the plastic bag she hugged to her chest. The confirmation had been in her mother’s whispered confession.

  It’s all a lie.

  * * *

  THE HEADLINE IN the local paper had called her the bone doctor, a champion of the forgotten dead. Strange that Catherine March would be in the market for a private detective when Nick LaSalle had been reading about her in the paper. The article had highlighted her profession as a forensic anthropologist in general and, more specifically, her efforts to help identify human remains that had recently been recovered from an abandoned house.

  Nick knew the woman slightly from his brief time as a homicide detective. He remembered her as dedicated and meticulous in her work. Quiet and thoughtful in her demeanor. He had forgotten how attractive she was. That part had taken him by surprise when she walked into his office.

  He let his gaze drift over her features as he wondered why he’d never gotten around to calling her once he’d closed the case. The spark had been undeniable. He felt it now as he took in the long, dark hair, still glistening with raindrops, and the wide brown eyes that observed him with a hint of suspicion.

  She wore a fitted gray top with slim black pants and sneakers soaked from the downpour. The only hint of color in the whole of her presentation was an emerald ring that glowed in the too-bright lighting of his office. He’d turned up the glare in order to chase away the dreariness of a rainy day, but a cozier ambience invited candor. He started to get up and adjust the dimmer, but he didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought. Or his, for that matter.

  “When did your mother pass away?” he asked as he pretended to jot notes on a yellow legal pad.

  “Just over a week ago.�
�

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said, noting the shadow that flitted across her expression and the telltale sheen in her eyes, which she quickly blinked away.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re here because you found some old newspaper clippings among your mother’s possessions?”

  “I’m here because I found them hidden beneath the floorboards of my mother’s closet. I hadn’t been by her house since she died. I wanted to gather up a few of her things to take home with me and to try and figure out what to do with the rest. Mostly, I wanted to feel close to her.” She cleared her throat and drew a deep breath as she smoothed her hands down the tops of her thighs. She was nervous. That much was obvious. Uneasy, too. Her eyes kept darting to the doorway and to the corridor beyond as if she expected to find someone listening in on their conversation.

  They had the second floor to themselves and the receptionist wouldn’t be able to hear from her post in the lobby, but Nick got up and closed the door anyway. Then he surreptitiously dimmed the lights a notch. Catherine didn’t seem to notice. She picked up the plastic bag at her feet and extracted a shoebox.

  “You brought the clippings?” Nick walked back over to his desk and sat down.

  She nodded. “I noted a loose floorboard when I went into my mother’s closet. I pried it up and found this box inside.”

  “When we spoke on the phone, you said the articles are about a serial killer.”

  “Not just any serial killer.” Her gaze lifted. “Orson Lee Finch. The most infamous monster in this city’s history.”

  “But not the most prolific,” Nick felt compelled to point out. “Delmar Gainey now holds that distinction.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m working on the remains that were recovered from his property.”