by Robb, J. D.
“Oh, they . . .” She stopped, eyes widening.
A cab pulled up, and its rear doors flew open.
“They’re home! Oh God, they’re home.”
So they were, Eve thought. She stepped forward to intercept them—the big, broad-shouldered man with a mane of wild red hair and fierce green eyes, and the tall curvy blonde.
“What’s going on?” The blonde tried to push by Eve toward the house. “What’s happening? Where are my babies?”
“That’s exactly what I want to ask you.”
CHAPTER TWO
As his gaze tracked—police vehicles, barricades, then fixed on Eve’s face—Ross MacDermit wrapped a beefy arm around his wife’s shoulders. “They’re in school, Tosh—relax. What’s going on?” he demanded of Eve. “Did something happen to Darcia? Our nanny?”
“Again, your wife has that answer.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s happening here? Where’s Darcia? Ross, contact the school, make sure Henry and Gala are okay.”
“I’m talking about you coming home a few minutes before midnight last night, Ms. MacDermit. And when Darcia Jordan let you in, you stabbed her to death.”
The woman’s ice-queen pale face went sickly gray. “What? What? Darcia—”
Once again, Eve blocked the woman’s push toward the house. “Then you drugged your children and brought them out to your car, put them inside, and took them to another location. Where are the children?”
“Our children?” Her eyes, wild with fear, wheeled toward the house. “Henry. Gala. Somebody took our babies?”
This time it took Eve and Peabody to hold her back, and several uniforms to restrain Ross.
“Your home security clearly shows you arriving at eleven fifty-four last night, six minutes before Darcia Jordan’s death.”
At Eve’s words, Tosha let out a wailing sob. “No.”
“And the vehicle you drove is registered to you. It clearly shows you departing, at twelve twenty-three, with the children.”
“That’s impossible.” Ross bellowed it as he fought to jerk free of the uniforms restraining him. “We were in New Zealand, for God’s sake. What’s the time difference? God!” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Seventeen hours ahead, seventeen ahead,” he murmured, the words shivering out like a prayer. “At midnight in New York we were in New Zealand having drinks by the pool with a couple we met at the resort. Dom and Madeline Porter, from Oxford, England. I have their contact information. I have the contact information for the resort. The cocktail waitress can confirm, the towel boy can confirm. We were in New Zealand. We were halfway around the damn world.”
“We’ll check on that, and we’ll have your security disc analyzed. Until that time . . .”
Eve trailed off as Tosha had gone very still, and the tears glazing her eyes seemed to freeze. “Ross.” She groped out for his hand. “Maj.”
“No. No, it can’t be. It’s all just some horrible mistake.”
“Who is Maj?” Eve demanded.
“My sister.” Tosha shuddered when she said it. “My twin.”
BECAUSE SHE WANTED THEM BOTH CONTAINED, AND wanted to move quickly, Eve took them through the small gate, across their own rear courtyard, and in through the kitchen.
“Check the alibi,” she told Peabody.
“I think, damn math, I think it’s maybe the middle of the night there. Or tomorrow. Either way, I’ll wake somebody up, get it started.”
The MacDermits huddled together, hands locked, in a sunny nook where Eve imagined the family typically had breakfast.
She slid in across from them.
“There’s no data on a sibling, Ms. MacDermit, much less a twin on your official information.”
“No, there wouldn’t be. I . . . You can contact Wanda Sykes. She was my legal representative when I came here, here to New York. And, and Markus Norby. He’s police in Sweden. Paul Stouffer, who was with Child Protective Services there. And, ah, Dr. Otto Ryden, he was the psychologist assigned.”
“Assigned to what?”
“The case. I was legally permitted to omit Maj from my data, to legally change my maiden name—Borgstrom—after . . . after Maj killed our father. She killed Papa like she killed Darcia. She tried to kill me. We were twelve. I haven’t seen or spoken to Maj in over twenty years.”
“You’re identical twins.”
“Nearly. She has a birthmark. Here.” Tosha touched her fingers between her left breast and shoulder. It trembled there. “It looks like a pentagram. A sign of witchcraft. I know how that sounds,” she went on when Eve said nothing. “I can only tell you she’s evil. She has a darkness in her, more than a sickness. They said she was sick, but . . .”
She lowered her hand, once again gripped her husband’s like a lifeline. “I think she hated me even when we were in the womb, for being part of her, for preventing her from being the only. The One, she would say. There can only be one. Now she has my children. You have to find our children.”
“We already have the alert out. Where do you keep your car, your four-door black sedan?”
“In a private garage on Fifty-seventh,” Ross told her. “What difference does it make? What difference? We have to find Henry and Gala.”
“We’re looking. The alerts are out, and we’re already looking. Everything you tell me, everything we learn, is going to help. You say you haven’t seen or spoken to your sister in more than twenty years, yet she arrived here, in your vehicle.”
“I can only tell you she’s very smart and full of hate. Still, we shared a bond, as twins can. We would know what the other was thinking or feeling. She would hurt me whenever she could, so I learned to know when she meant to, and hide from her. And to keep my mind very, very still so she couldn’t find me. She’ll hurt our babies. She’ll hurt what’s mine. Please.”
Tosha reached across the table to grab Eve’s hands. “Please, find her before she hurts them. They’re only seven years old.”
“We’re going to set up a tap. She may contact you, may demand a ransom.”
“It’s not money she wants. She wants to bring me pain.”
“If she hurts Henry and Gala, I’ll kill her.”
Tosha turned her face into her husband’s shoulder at his fierce and quiet words. “I never thought she’d find me, us. I should never have left the children. I should never have left them.”
Peabody came back in, gave Eve a nod to indicate the alibi checked. “Is it all right if I make coffee?”
She spoke directly to Ross, got a momentary blank stare. “Yeah, sure. Ah.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“One minute,” Eve said, and rose to have a quick word with Peabody.
“You said she killed your father,” Eve began when she sat again. “Where’s your mother?”
“She died giving birth to us. It was a very difficult birthing, complications, unexpected complications. Maj blamed me. If we had been one instead of two, our mother would have lived, she would say to me. I came second, and so I killed our mother. I should never have been born.”
“What happened to Maj after your father’s death?”
“What does it matter?” Ross exploded. “Sitting here isn’t finding Henry and Gala.”
“Right now, there’s a full, global alert out on both children, and another on Maj. We have the vehicle she was driving, and every cop in the city will be looking for it. We’ll arrange the wire so that if she tries to contact either of you, we’ll know. But the more I know about the person who took your kids, the more ammunition I have to find her. What happened to her?”
“She was committed to the Borj Institute for the Criminally Insane in Stockholm,” Tosha told Eve. “I testified against her, and I told what happened to the police, to the psychiatrists, to everyone.”
“What did happen?”
“She came to kill me. To end me once and for all. Papa had punished her that day because she took my new doll to the garden and burned it. She marked it wi
th my name, and burned it, and he took her new doll away, and she was confined to her room. She couldn’t go outside to play or talk to friends. For a week, he said. She was so angry, and she came to kill me.”
Tosha pressed her lips into a thin, trembling line. Her eyes, an arctic blue, pleaded into Eve’s. “I . . . saw inside her mind, and I knew. I ran outside and I hid, and I made my mind still. But hers wasn’t still. She couldn’t find me, and instead she went to Papa’s room, and while he slept, she stabbed him with the knife from the kitchen. She stabbed his heart, and she cut his throat. She stabbed, and stabbed, and she made a mark on him, like her birthmark.”
“She carved a pentagram on him?”
“Yes. And she . . .” A sob broke through though Tosha muffled it with her hand.
“What?”
“She . . . drank. His blood. She licked and lapped at it. Oh God. God, Ross. I can still see it. I saw it in my head, and I see it now.”
“Tosh. Tosha. It’s over.” He took both her hands, pressed his lips against them. “It’s done. I’m right here.”
How many times, Eve wondered, had Roarke said those same words to her when she woke from nightmares?
They were never really over.
“What happened then?” Eve asked.
“I ran to the neighbor’s house so they could help, but it was too late. They called the police, and the man, the neighbor, he went to our house. He found her on the bed with Papa, with the knife. He said she was laughing.
“They took her away, and I never went home again. I only saw her again when I testified. She said to me one day she would come for me and take all I loved. Now she has. They’re only children, and so innocent. She’ll hate them for that, for their innocence.”
“We’re going to do everything we can to get them back safe. You said Stockholm. When did you come to New York?”
“When I was eighteen. I lived in the countryside, with a family in Sweden. They were good to me. But I wanted to be away, far away. There had been nightmares until I was almost sixteen. She’d come into my sleep. I can’t explain.”
“You don’t have to.” Eve knew exactly.
“Dr. Ryden helped me. He helped me learn to keep her away, and to keep my own mind from reaching into hers. But when I was old enough, I wanted to be away. I came to New York to live, to study, to work.”
“Are you a sensitive, Tosha?”
“No, no, it’s not the same. Only with her. And now, not even that. I don’t feel her, I don’t see her. If I did, I would have known she was close, that she wanted the children.”
“You came home a day early?”
“Yes, we wanted to come home, to surprise Darcia . . . Darcia.” She pressed her hand to her mouth. “Darcia and the children. We have gifts for them. Oh God, she killed Darcia. She was my true sister. My little sister, and Maj killed her.”
Peabody set a cup in front of Tosha. “I made some herbal tea. You should drink it. Your kids’ faces are on every screen in the country now. Your sister’s, too.”
“I have another question,” Eve began. “Do Henry and Gala know about Maj?”
“No.” Rocking, Ross pressed Tosha’s hand to his lips again, as much for comfort as to offer it.
“I didn’t want them to know, or to be afraid, or to understand, so young, that there’s real evil in the world. She’s from another life,” Tosha added, then stopped, went white again. “We’re the same. We look the same. They’ll think she’s me, their mother. Oh God, they won’t understand.”
“She’s got no reason to hurt them. Listen, listen,” Eve stressed as Tosha began to weep. “If she’d wanted to hurt them, to kill them, she would’ve done it here, right here in your home, where you’d come back and find them. She took them for a reason. She packed clothes and toys for them. Why would she do that if she only meant to kill them?”
Though her breath stayed rapid and ragged, Tosha nodded. “She . . . wants them because they’re mine—and hers—we share blood, we share faces, bodies. We’re almost the same. She wants them.” She turned to her husband, held on, held close. “She wants them, Ross. She won’t hurt them as long as she wants them.”
Only, Eve thought, until she gets tired of them. Or until they fulfilled her purpose for them. But she let the terrified parents hold on to that slim thread of hope.
IT DIDN’T LOOK LIKE A DUNGEON, OR A TOWER. IT LOOKED like a bedroom—the two beds, the two dressers, the toys on the shelves. There was a bathroom, not like the one at home. It had only a toilet and a sink. And no door to close for privacy.
The rooms had no windows, and the only door was locked.
On a big red table sat a blue and white tea set with bowls of little cupcakes, and gumdrops and frosted cookies.
His stomach hurt, and his head.
“Mine, too,” Gala whispered. “And I’m so thirsty.”
They’d told each other not to eat or drink, but they were only seven.
“We’ll have just a little bit,” Henry decided.
But they were so hungry, and the pot held cherry fizzies instead of tea. So they gobbled up the treats.
“Is it a game?” Gala wondered. “Papa likes games.”
“I don’t think it’s a game. Darcia . . .”
“Maybe it was pretend.” Gala’s eyes filled. “Mommy loves us. She loves Darcia. Mommy wouldn’t hurt us or Darcia.”
“It’s not Mommy.” Henry’s handsome little face screwed into fierce lines. “She’s an evil witch who cast a spell so she looks like Mommy, but she’s not.”
“Are you sure?”
“She said she’d hurt us if we didn’t drink that stuff. When she stopped the car and told us to drink that stuff, she said she’d hurt you if I didn’t drink, and hurt me if you didn’t. Mommy wouldn’t do that.”
“No, Mommy wouldn’t.”
“It made us go to sleep, like a spell, so we woke up in here.”
“I don’t want to be here. I want Mommy. I want Papa.”
“They’ll find us.” He took a deep breath. “They’ll send a good witch to fight the bad witch, and to get us out, to take us home.”
“How will the good witch find us here?”
“I don’t know, but she will.” I can’t say it out loud, he said into his sister’s mind.
The magic talk was a secret, even from their parents.
You can’t say it either, or she might hear.
I won’t.
I took the Jamboree to bed with me.
You’re not supposed to!
I know, but I did. It’s in my secret pocket, the one Darcia made for my pajamas. I’m going to send messages to the good witch to help her find us. We can’t let the bad witch know, or she’ll take it away.
But we don’t know where we are.
She’ll know! He heard the door creak. Don’t tell her!
Maj opened the door, smiled broadly. “It’s quiet in here. Just what are you two talking about?”
Gala curled her fingers into Henry’s, and promised not to tell. “We want to go home now,” she said to the witch who looked like Mommy.
“You are home. This is your home now. And look at this! You ate and ate and ate. Cookies and candies and cake. You’ll get fat, fat as little pigs. Fat enough to eat.” She laughed, and Gala no longer thought she looked like her mother.
“Fat enough to eat,” Maj said again. “Yum. Yum. Yum.”
CHAPTER THREE
With Peabody, Eve stepped back into the living area. The business of murder played out around them with the MacDermits safely tucked away in the kitchen with two uniforms. The morgue team had already taken the body, and the sweepers swarmed through the rest of the area.
“Get everything there is to get on Maj Borgstrom,” Eve ordered. “Everything. Add in EDD if you need assistance there.” She pulled out her own ’link as she spoke. “And arrange for the MacDermits to move into a safe house.”
“On that.”
Thinking fast, Eve contacted Dr. Charlotte Mira, the
NYPSD’s top profiler and psychologist. “I need Mira,” she snapped to the dragon who guarded Mira’s gates. “Don’t fuck with me.”
Mira’s admin’s face bunched up like a fist. “Lieutenant Dallas—”
“I don’t care if she’s headshrinking God, do it now.”
If the clenched jaw was an indicator, Eve would have hell to pay later, but the ’link screen shifted to waiting blue. Seconds later Mira’s calmer face came on.
“Eve?”
“Maj Borgstrom. She was committed to the Borj Institute for the Criminally Insane in Stockholm as a minor, about twenty-five years ago. Murdered her father. She’s just killed her twin sister’s nanny here in New York, and abducted the sister’s twin kids—boy and girl, age seven. I need whatever you can find out from her doctors. Anything, everything. And I need it now.”
“How long has she had the children?”
“Since just after midnight.”
“Let me see what I can do.”
“Fast,” Eve added, then clicked off. She contacted the other ace up her sleeve—a man who had connections and sway everywhere she could think of in the known universe.
For the second time she drew an admin, but this one smiled at her. “Lieutenant, how can I help you?”
“I need to talk to him, right away.”
Caro’s smile faded, but she nodded briskly. “One moment.”
It took hardly more before Roarke came on. She saw mild annoyance on his truly stupendous face, just a hint of it in those intense blue eyes.
“Sorry,” she said immediately. “It’s urgent. Who do you know in Stockholm? The heavier the weight, the better.”
“Would the Prime Minister be weighty enough?”
“Sounds like it. Here’s the deal.” She ran it through for him quickly, hitting the high points, knowing her husband could and would connect the dots.
“I’ll make some calls.”
“Appreciate it.”
“That’s smart,” Peabody commented. “Pulling in the big guns, medically and politically.”
“We use what weapons we’ve got.”
“I’ve got the safe house set up,” Peabody continued. “The Belmont. It’s close to Central. I didn’t know who you wanted assigned. But with a kidnapping, the feds—”