The EMT was a woman who looked around Riley’s age and obviously knew Desmond. She gave him a once-over and told him she was glad he was okay before turning her attention to Riley. The once-over came with a look of acute concern, followed by a recommendation that they go to the hospital. It created a new surge of panic. She must have read it in Riley’s face. Her expression softened.
“Everything looks like superficial wounds but it’s better to be safe than sorry.” She pointed to the Jeep. “You were in that when it flipped, I’m assuming?”
“I was.”
The EMT gave an apologetic smile.
“Then I think we should get you checked out. Just to make sure you’re alright. Okay?”
Riley conceded and soon she was sitting on the gurney. Detective Santiago joined her, taking the side seat and producing a notepad out of her purse. The shoulder holster she had on was quite the contrast to her gown. She asked questions and Riley answered them the best she could while being caught up in the bustle of the EMT and the driver. So much so that she didn’t notice when Desmond slipped away. He didn’t come back and soon they were on the road and pointed to Overlook Hospital.
Riley tried not to look for the cowboy who had saved her. Or feel the sting that he had disappeared without a word.
* * *
THE HOSPITAL FLUORESCENTS were in no way flattering. Not that Riley had a chance of looking anything other than rough. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror and tried to decide what looked the worst.
Was it the darkening bruise across her cheek from, she assumed, the airbag deploying? Or maybe the small cuts along her forehead from glass? Maybe it was the fact that all of her makeup had streaked down her face when she lost it and sobbed into a relative stranger’s shirt.
It would have been the state of Jenna’s dress had she still been wearing it. A once beautiful and daring piece had been torn in several places, including a thick tear over her hip. She’d seen her lacy black underwear through it the moment she’d stepped into the ER lobby. Now she was in a hospital gown, wearing safety socks that were hiding bandages for her poor feet. Like her purse and phone, she’d forgotten her shoes in the Jeep. There were other little cuts and bruises across her body that would probably make onlookers do a double take, but thankfully, no injuries extended past minor aches and pains.
Still, she had been glad for Detective Santiago’s presence as she waited for the nurse to take her to get X-rays. Once everything had calmed down, Riley realized her neck was throbbing—because her nerves were officially shot. It didn’t help that she spent the time between recounting what had happened on Winding Road and at the gala with Brett. Neither woman could think of a reason for his actions but the detective promised they’d get to the bottom of it.
Now, alone in the bathroom attached to the small room she’d been assigned, Riley decided to stop dwelling on her appearance. After the night she’d had, she was just thankful to be alive.
A knock sounded against the room door. Riley gave herself a nod of reassurance in the mirror and went out of the bathroom and back to the bed. The movements made her wince. Her feet were still tender from running through the woods.
“Come in,” she called once she was back in bed. She positioned the blanket over her lap, self-conscious about her mostly bare legs.
Desmond Nash appeared around the door, sans cowboy hat. He did, however, have a purse in his hands and a smile on his face.
“Sorry I didn’t get this here sooner,” he greeted. “My truck got blocked in and then Declan got blocked in and, well, let’s just say Winding Road wasn’t made to handle fifty-plus gawkers, their cars and an active investigation.”
What had been long strides at the gala had now become a noticeable limp as Desmond brought her purse over. Riley had assumed the limp she’d witnessed in the woods was due to an injury from the fight but now she wondered if it was from an older one instead.
Either way, she wasn’t about to pry. Not when she was filled with equal amounts gratitude and guilt. She addressed the first feeling with her own smile and open arms for her bag.
“Thank you so much for getting this,” she said, sincere. “I forgot about even trying to find my phone or purse until I was in here already. Thank you!”
Riley could have cried for joy. She hadn’t remembered where her phone was before the crash. Now she found it within the folds of faux leather.
There were five missed calls. All were from Jenna.
Riley felt that second emotion bubbling to the surface.
Guilt.
She had convinced herself to wait until the doctor officially said Riley could leave before calling Jenna. But really it had been more about keeping herself sane. She knew the moment she saw Jenna, the emotional dam would break again. Just like it had in the woods with Desmond.
Now, though, Riley knew she had to face the music. She didn’t want her sister to worry more than she had to, but first, Riley had to address the other well of guilt within her.
Desmond was studying her, his brows drawn together in thought.
“Are you okay?” he asked, simply.
“Yeah. It all looks much worse than it is.”
“I heard you got some X-rays done?”
She nodded.
“My neck was hurting but they said it was just the whiplash.” Riley felt the heat of a blush before she continued. “Now I’m just waiting to make sure I don’t have a bad reaction to the pain meds they gave me. It was a, uh, shot.”
Right in the butt cheek, she thought but definitely didn’t say out loud.
“I already feel a lot better,” she added. “I’m just tired now.”
“Good,” Desmond said. “That’s good.”
“What about you?” She traced the mark across his jawline. She hadn’t been able to see the punches being thrown in the woods but she’d heard the hits landing.
Desmond shrugged.
“Nothing a bag of frozen peas can’t help. It coulda been worse.”
“I know the feeling. If you hadn’t been driving by when you did—” Riley didn’t need to finish the thought. She knew later she’d cycle through the several what-if situations and go back into panic mode. She didn’t want that now. “What I mean to say is thank you. And not just for grabbing my purse.”
Desmond Nash sure could smile. Even the small stretch was quite the sight. So, when it snuffed out so suddenly, Riley felt a different kind of panic.
“I’m sorry that it even happened in the first place,” he said with startling venom. “The gala was meant to be a happy occasion and yet you were stalked by a guest. I’m sorry, Jenna. I really am.”
Riley felt the burn in her cheeks. Time to address the other reason for her guilt.
“I in no way blame you for Brett,” she started. “But I do need to apologize to you.”
Desmond’s eyebrow rose.
“I’m not actually Jenna Stone.”
* * *
DESMOND HADN’T SEEN that one coming.
Jenna—or, well, maybe not—let her gaze hit the floor before she dragged it back up to his. Her cheeks had tinted crimson. When she continued her voice had lowered.
“I’m Riley Stone, her sister.”
Desmond liked to think he was a fair guy. After what his family had been through, he had made a life out of striving to do what was right by his loved ones and the people he met through his philanthropy. Those goals had always gone hand in hand with being a straight shooter. There wasn’t room for lies or deceit in his life.
Not after that day in the park when he was eight.
Not after the three days in that basement.
Not after the repercussions of it spread out and consumed his father years later.
The truth, honesty, was important to him.
Important to living a life he hoped to never get as complicated as it
had before, a goal all of his family had been trying to attain with varying degrees of success.
So, despite the trauma that had just happened to the woman, Desmond’s default response went from confusion to deep suspicion to, quite frankly, disappointment.
Also it highlighted one concrete fact Desmond had somehow managed to ignore until that moment given what they’d been through.
He knew nothing about the woman sitting in front of him.
It was a rare occurrence in Overlook, one he should have looked into before rushing over to the hospital to make sure she was okay.
“I can explain,” Riley hurried to tack on, her cheeks turning an even deeper shade of crimson. It contrasted against her pale skin, making her freckles stand out even more. “See, my sister, Jenna, started her own business a while back and really put herself out there to do it, and tonight was supposed to be her chance to finally connect with the local businesses and leaders of the community. But then Hartley, her son, wasn’t feeling good and she panicked and decided to stay home. She was so worried that if she didn’t go people would judge her for being a single mom and not give her a chance to prove herself and so I decided to go in her place.” She let out a long breath, deflating.
“But you told Declan, the sheriff, you were Jenna,” he pointed out.
She gave him an apologetic shrug.
“There was so much going on and I—I don’t know, in my mind I was protecting her image still.”
Desmond understood loyalty but it didn’t take away from the fact that she’d lied to his family, law enforcement.
“This could change the entire investigation. If the attack wasn’t random or because of opportunity, then Brett clearly knew he was targeting you, not your sister. How did you not think this was going to change everything? How irresponsible can you be?”
Desmond started to get hot under the collar. And not because Riley was as beautiful out of her makeup as she was glammed up. He’d nicknamed her the siren at the party and here she was, admitting she’d led him and law enforcement astray.
All at once Desmond couldn’t help but think of anything other than his father. He’d run his life into the ground trying to solve the mystery of what had happened to the Nash triplets and eventually died because of it. Among the stress that had done him in? People lying and hindering his investigation.
Logically, Desmond knew it wasn’t the same situation, yet a wounded heart doesn’t always accept logic.
“How did you even think this was going to pan out? Don’t you think people would have noticed that the woman they met at the party wasn’t the same woman when Jenna came by? We may be a small town but we aren’t small-minded.”
Riley opened her mouth to say something—what could she really say though that would quell his rising frustration?—when a shout from the hallway drew their attention. The door opened behind them. Jasmine “Jazz” Santiago, Caleb’s partner and best friend, gave him a look he couldn’t quite place.
“Uh, Jenna? I think someone is looking for you.”
Riley didn’t correct her as she jumped up and padded by them and out the door. Desmond followed, ready to make the woman admit she’d lied about her identity, when he saw the point of confusion Jazz had latched on to.
“Oh my God,” a woman yelled at the sight of Riley. She was at the end of the hallway, a toddler on her hip.
Riley’s entire demeanor changed. She let out a cry that instantly turned to tears. Both women ran through the distance between them until they collided in an embrace in the middle of the hallway.
“I knew it,” the other woman cried out. “I knew something was wrong. I felt it!”
She buried her head in Riley’s dark red curls, her own dark red curls matching perfectly.
All at once Desmond realized why the switch had been brilliant.
“They’re twins.”
Chapter Five
The lights in the kitchen were warm and inviting.
Riley was so tired she felt like languishing on the floor beneath them if that meant she could get some peace. No matter how brief.
Jenna, on the other hand, was not in the mood to let Riley get off that easily. Since the embrace at the hospital two hours earlier, she hadn’t left Riley’s side. Not even when she’d had to go to the restroom after downing a full bottle of water.
“Next time I get chased down by a madman that no one seems to know and look like I’ve been put in a blender, we’ll see how you handle it,” she’d said when Riley had complained.
Not that Riley was surprised. In fact, she wasn’t even upset. After what her sister had been through in the last year, she knew Jenna was even more determined to protect what was left of her life. And Jenna was fiercely rooted in the belief that her twin was under that purview.
Now, looking wistfully where Jenna was standing in the kitchen, with both hands on her hips, Riley knew she was about to receive an earful.
“Do you know that I had to run past the hospital guard and go around yelling before they could finally calm me down enough to direct me,” she said, voice low but still throbbing with anger. Hartley had been asleep since they’d been given the green light to leave by the doctor and the sheriff. Riley had expected to be kept longer once she’d pulled the sheriff aside and admitted she’d given him the wrong name but neither he nor Desmond had berated her—at least not for a second time—or pulled out the cuffs and read her her rights. Instead Riley had been told to go to the sheriff’s department first thing in the morning so they could sort everything out.
“I said I was sorry already,” Riley tried. “I was going to call you when I got released. I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Worry? Worry?” Jenna placed her hand against her chest. “There I was just making your favorite cookies and I felt it, Riley. Right here in my chest. I was so sure that something happened to you that, when you didn’t answer your phone, I drove out to the ranch, fully prepared to hunt you down. But I never got there, did I, Riley? Why is that?”
This part Riley had been briefed on earlier. Still, she repeated the answer.
“Because you got stopped at the roadblock... Where you saw the Jeep flipped over on the side of the road.”
Jenna nodded with angry enthusiasm.
“When no one could tell me if you were alright after being taken by ambulance to the hospital, I had to drive there with a three-year-old and honest-to-God fear in my soul all because you didn’t want to worry me by calling.”
At the last part Jenna’s voice broke. Like Riley she’d nearly sobbed when they’d first seen each other. Now her eyes were as swollen as Riley’s. Still, they rimmed with tears.
“Next time—though there better not be a next time—you call, Riley. Plain and simple. You. Call.”
Riley nodded.
“I promise, Jen, I will.”
Seemingly satisfied, Jenna gave her sister one more long embrace before shaking herself and moving to the pantry. She pulled out a festive container and set it down on the countertop.
“Now it’s time we finally had some snickerdoodles then.”
Riley’s exhaustion was replaced by acute hunger for the cookies. Jenna had only eaten one by the time Riley had consumed three.
* * *
IT WAS ALMOST three in the morning when Riley finally settled into bed. Jenna’s house was small yet cozy, including the two bedrooms. Hartley slept on a bed in Jenna’s room while Riley was tucked against a full-size mattress that almost took up the entire room. It was a far cry from the massive house Jenna had resided in with her ex-husband over a year ago but Riley couldn’t help but love the small home much more.
Its walls were filled with memories; its space filled with knickknacks, decorations and furniture all carrying sentimental value and function to Jenna’s and Hartley’s lives. It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t void of feeling. It wasn’t a prison.
Riley lay on her back and stared at the ceiling fan she’d helped Jenna install after it had been Riley’s turn to downgrade and move in. They’d fought after Jenna had dropped a screw and then Riley had dropped the screwdriver. Hartley, ever curious, had cried from his gated play area because he couldn’t grab either item and put it in his mouth. It had been a disastrous half-hour ordeal and yet there the fan was. They had made it work. Now it was a part of the house’s story. A memory that was ingrained in its fabric.
An ache of sentimentality cracked open in Riley’s chest. Loneliness and loss reverberated through those cracks. She rolled onto her side, wincing at the shot’s injection site, and let out a long, body-sagging breath against the pillow.
Riley thought about Davies, about Jenna, about the jobs she and her sister had both loved and had to give up, about the malicious Brett and then about the prepossessing Desmond Nash.
Claiming to know Desmond was foolish. However, seeing the disappointment and then hearing the anger at her lie?
That had been somewhat painful.
Less than a year ago life had been simpler.
Now it was proving to hurt more often than not.
* * *
“WHAT’S THE SAYING? All press is good press?”
Caleb took off his blazer and flung it over the dining-room chair. His detective’s badge was still hanging around his neck. Declan had opted to go to the department instead of calling it a night like the rest of them. It was almost four in the morning. The sheriff was dedicated to a fault.
“Any press is good press ‘as long as they spell my name right,’” Desmond corrected. He scrubbed his hand down his face.
Caleb chuckled.
“Well, as much as we’re in the paper I’m sure they’ll get your name right.” Caleb was trying to lighten the mood, something he’d been attempting more since he’d met his wife, Nina. Her optimism, coupled with their mother’s fierce belief that you should try any and everything to remain as stress-free as possible, had turned many scowls and silence from the man into teasing jokes and grins.
Identical Threat Page 4