by A. D. Roland
The way he filled out his vintage Star Wars T-shirt and ragged, faded jeans didn’t bother her one bit. He was tall and lean, with broad shoulders and wiry, corded muscles flexed in his arm. He passed her earbud cord back to her. She tucked the MP3 player into her pocket. “You’ve spoiled me for other men,” she joked.
“After we land,” he asked, “what’re your plans?”
“I was just going to grab a taxi and go see my grandmother.”
“I’ll drive you, as long as you don’t mind stopping by your father’s place on the way out. My car’s at the airport.”
“Oh, no I don’t want to put you out. I wasn’t really planning on seeing him--them--until I’d spoken with Ruth Ellen.”
“It’s where I’m headed. Me and your sister, we’re almost engaged.” A rock dropped in her stomach. Amazed by her automatic, disappointed response, she forced another smile.
“That’s great. I’m excited to get to know her.”
“Emeline.” He sighed. “She’s a real sweetheart. An absolutely amazing woman. I love her so much.” For the first time the blazing arrows of suspicion stopped firing from his eyes. He squinted at her, studying her. “You don’t look much like her.”
“Sorry. I guess I got the short end of the genetic stick.” Did he just insult her? She wasn’t anything special--dark blonde hair, grayish-blue eyes, maybe a bit on the curvy side--but she’d never considered herself unattractive. She’d seen Emeline in the tabloids for a while after her sex tape leaked. She was gorgeous. Tall, willowy, perfect. Karen had been gorgeous as well.
My dad was probably the milkman.
Anyway, it didn’t matter. All she had to do was make nice with the family, figure out how to get the money for K, and Elaine McKendrick would drop back off the face of the Earth.
West watched her for another long moment. “They’ve been through a lot, Mattie. If you’re out to try something shady, they’ll figure you out.”
Mattie scowled at him. “I don’t need or want their money. I don’t have a lot of my own money, but it’s enough to survive.” Mad at him, she turned toward the window and jammed the earbuds back in her ears. She hated it when people doubted her. Nothing ruined a day quicker. Underestimated all the time, it had affected her entire life. She fumbled with the plug before finally getting it back into the MP3 player. She hit the play button and Godsmack roared in her ears.
K underestimated her now. The further away from him she went, the more confident she became. There was a plan forming in her mind, one that would get her away from him for good. The only reason she was doing this one last job was to pave the way for her final escape. Maybe it wouldn’t even have to involve any sort of scam. There was always the possibility that Ruth Ellen was feeling guilty about sending her bastard oldest granddaughter off with a well-paid maid and wanted to recompense her somehow.
She really didn’t want to hurt anyone ever again, in any way, and avoiding any sort of illegal activity was always a plus. What she was leaving behind broke her heart, but it was necessary. Molly and her family were so much safer if Mattie was far, far away. Everybody she loved was safest when she was far, far away.
***
The barking orders of the flight attendant woke her up. Mattie sat up straight, startled. For a second she wasn’t sure where she was.
“You okay?” West said, raising an eyebrow. “Buckle up. We’re landing.”
“Yeah.” She sat back and buckled in. After tucking her MP3 player into her backpack, she bit her lip and waited for the nerve-jarring impact of the plane’s landing gear against the tarmac.
To her immense relief, the plane didn’t careen off the runway or burst into flame. West tagged along behind her as she headed the exit.
“So, am I giving you a ride or what?” he asked. “Wait a sec.” He stopped at Baggage and waited for his bag to cycle around. Mattie looked toward the doors, wondering if she should just ditch the guy and go on her own. She had Ruth Ellen’s address in her back pocket.
He bumped into her when he lurched forward to snag his bag before it drifted out of reach. He missed and plowed through a group of men in suits and power ties to grab it. “Come on. It’ll be better this way. I know the family. Trust me.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Save yourself some cash, Miss Moneybags. Taxis aren’t cheap here.” Before she could protest, he took her suitcase from her and loped off into the bustle of the airport.
Chapter Two
“It’s nothing fancy,” West warned the curvy stranger who claimed to be Elaine McKendrick. Granted, the Elaine he remembered was perpetually five years old, but she had white-blonde hair that fell in tight ringlets all around her heart-shaped face.
Over the last twenty years, he’d memorized the little girl’s features. He was sure he’d know her the minute he saw her, just as sure as he recognized his own face in the mirror. At the airport, he’d watched the crowd around the terminal, desperate for a glance of a fair-eyed beauty.
James McKendrick made sure he’d purchased a seat next to Matilyn Smith, the soon-to-be-outed imposter. When West sat down next to the curvy woman, he’d been surprised.
She’d looked nothing like Emeline at first.
The more he watched her, though, the more he could pick out things that reminded him of Karen McKendrick. The way she scrunched up her nose when she was frustrated with the seatbelt. The shape of her hands and fingers. The astonished look that crossed her face when she listened to his song.
When he boarded the airplane he’d been certain he could tell if she was just another con artist. There’d been so many over the years. Idiots, really, since the first thing the family did was order DNA tests. Hair could be bleached, features surgically altered, histories created. DNA didn’t lie.
The woman who claimed to be Elaine raised an eyebrow at his beat-up thirty-year-old Ford truck. She wasn’t very tall—height was a trademark trait in the McKendrick family—and she had abundant curves that made him wonder what she’d feel like pressed tight against him. Those breasts, hips.... He banished the thought, seeking a mental image of his Emeline. Willowy, super-model beautiful, Emeline.
There were a few things about this Mattie that were vaguely familiar. The tilt of her wide blue-gray eyes, the way she crinkled her brow in her sleep. He’d spent most of the flight staring at her, trying to find any resemblance. There was something in her laugh that sounded vaguely like Emeline.
McKendrick had sent him to Atlanta to watch this newcomer. McKendrick had killer instincts. West had long ago learned not to doubt his judgment calls. If McKendrick thought something was up, then something was up.
He put his suitcase and her grungy duffel bag into the bed of the truck. “It’ll fall out!” the woman exclaimed, pointing at the gaping hole. “Nah.” He reached down and tugged the sheet of plywood back over the hole. He used a big chunk of concrete and a bag of potting soil as an anchor. “See?”
The woman laughed and made a helpless gesture with her hands. “If you say so.” She reached for the passenger door. She pulled hard and glanced up. “Is it locked?”
“Nah, there’s a trick.” He gripped it, put his foot up on the side of the truck and leaned back hard.
The door opened with a loud, rusty clunk. “You need a new truck,” she commented as she climbed upside, slightly disconcerted by the lack of a running board to use as a step.
West patted the faded, bubbling blue paint on the truck bed. “This one was my dad’s. He died a few years back. Can’t bring myself to get rid of it. You have to give that seatbelt a great big yank. It sticks.”
She did and the whole thing popped out of the metal wall and smacked into her temple. She yelped and clasped her hand to the side of her head, still hanging on to the seatbelt.
“Oh, crap, are you all right? Let me see?” West leaned over and tried to pull her hand away from her head.
“I’m fine; it just startled me.” She moved her hand. “I’m all right, really.”
; He bit back his chuckle, but he couldn’t hide his grin. “The A/C doesn’t work.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” she quipped, pulling her shoulder-length, dark blonde hair into a ponytail. Nothing like the Mckendrick’s, so far. Every single one of them were white-blonde.
Her eyes, though. They were hauntingly familiar. Emeline’s eyes were nearly the same color, beneath her baby-blue contact lenses. Maybe the shape of her lips echoed Karen’s as well.
He rolled his window down. “That one doesn’t work.”
She raised an eyebrow. “How’d I guess?”
He navigated the horrendous parking lots and pulled out on to a busy highway. To her left was a huge structure she recognized as the Daytona Speedway.
“Ever been to the races?” he asked, hoping to get her to start talking. He didn’t know much about her story, other than she didn’t remember much before her sixth birthday. She’d grown up in Atlanta.
“Me? No. Not my thing. But it’s big up in Atlanta. Everybody’s a NASCAR fan. I don’t care too much for it.” She reached up and fiddled with her necklace. It was a tiny silver baby pacifier with a sparkly pink crystal nipple.
“NASCAR too good for you?” he joked. She rolled her eyes. “All right then, what do you care for?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Music, books, reading, movies. Nothing real exciting.”
“Sports?”
“What’re those?” she said with a smile. West drove over the Seabreeze Bridge. Mattie craned her neck, trying to see out the window to see down at the river. “Wow. It’s beautiful.”
“The Halifax River. When we were kids, my dad would take us out on his boat.”
“We?” she asked, turning curious eyes on him. “You knew me?”
“Yeah. I’m a year older than you. We were inseparable, until—” He cut off abruptly, not wanting to remember, not wanting to dredge up the memories of those awful days after she vanished. He didn’t want to recall the nightmares that plagued his sleep until his teenage years. The night Elaine vanished, he swore he saw something out his bedroom window. Of course, it had just been a dream. Even now, though, as an adult, he had trouble convincing himself that he hadn’t seen a man carrying away a little girl in a white nightgown. For the longest time he’d been convinced it was Elaine. The older he got the more he doubted himself and his own instincts. Ruth Ellen asked him over and over again to look for Elaine, but it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Looking at this stranger out of the corner of his eye, he felt a faint flutter of hope, like the final spasms of a dying butterfly.
“Until?” Mattie prompted.
“Until it happened. You disappeared.” He shrugged. Hopefully she’d take the hint and let the subject drop. She fiddled with her necklace through her shirt but kept her mouth shut.
The McKendricks lived in one of the biggest, fanciest houses along the river. Two stories tall and designed like a Mediterranean villa, it graced the covers of countless local and architectural magazines. West did the landscaping and lawn maintenance himself, so he thought it was absolutely perfect. It was the greenest in the neighborhood.
West hated the hous. It was too perfect. Not even a blade of grass dared to wave in an opposite direction. Every flower seemed symmetrical. The pine needles and oak leaves from the ancient towering trees didn’t even dare fall on the lawn. Mr. McKendrick insisted on it, and paid extra to make sure not a single leaf stayed on the ground.
West pulled up to the gate and punched his code into the keypad. A second later the heavy black iron gate rolled open.
“Oh my gosh, wow,” Mattie breathed. She looked a little pale. Her fingers went back to the necklace.
“Home sweet home, Mattie,” West said, gauging her reaction carefully. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he would prove this woman wasn’t Elaine McKendrick.
He wasn’t going to lose Elaine all over again. They had only been children, but she had been his best friend. She haunted his dreams, still, and this woman wasn’t going to sully those memories.
***
A tall, willowy woman emerged from the courtyard gate, gazing inquisitively toward the truck. The way the ornate architecture framed her and the brilliant blossoms of the plants growing in front of it suggested it was all done specifically to frame the woman. Mattie squelched the urge to roll her eyes when the woman posed dramatically.
West gestured to the door. “You have to sort of push against the door real hard to get it open.” He hopped out his side and hurried to the waiting woman, who gracefully turned away from a kiss and only half-assed the hug. Hmm. That must be Emeline. Mattie got the definite vibe, even from a distance, that the relationship wasn’t exactly what West thought it was.
Mattie threw her weight against the door. It didn’t even budge, but it felt like she’d knocked her shoulder out of joint.
She pulled the lever and braced her foot on the door. “One, two, three,” she counted to herself, shoving all her weight into her leg.
The door flew open, and she flew out, tumbling to the brick-tiled driveway. She skinned her palms, scrubbed her knees hard against the bricks, and whacked the back of her head on the bottom of the door. She stopped the door with her hand before it could swing back and smack her in the face.
“You all right?” West called when she finally popped up.
“Just peachy.” I can do this. Just got to fool them for a little while. She smoothed her clothes and headed for the angelically beautiful woman hanging on West’s arm. She hoped they wouldn’t dally long here. She needed to get to the assisted living facility to see Ruth Ellen.
“You’re Elaine?” the woman asked.
Mattie smiled. “So they tell me. Please, call me Mattie.”
“Mattie. Sounds like some old woman’s name.”
Momentarily set back by the weakly disguised insult, Mattie shrugged. “My name’s Matilyn.”
“Madeline. Not so bad.”
“No, Matilyn, with a ‘T.’ You must be Emeline.” The ornate wrought iron, glass, and wood doors across the courtyard opened. A tall, imposing man with white-blonde hair slicked back strode across the courtyard. How in the world was she going to pass as a member of this family? She looked nothing like them.
She and Emeline might share some genes, but Mattie’s were obviously deeply recessive. The man emerged from the courtyard and stopped. His cool blue eyes flicked up and down Mattie.
“Elaine.” He sounded breathless. She didn’t miss the glance he cast at West. For the first time she wondered if it had been a set up. She tensed, wondering if West had seen her with K. Mr. McKendrick didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised to see her arrive with the other man.
She was pretty sure it hadn’t been a coincidence.
McKendrick held his hand out to her. Showtime, she thought taking it. McKendrick held her at arms’ length, looking her up and down once more.
“I would never have recognized you,” he said. “You’re absolutely...pretty.”
Being around these people is going to kill my self-esteem. What little bit I have left, anyway.
“Come in.” McKendrick led her through the fabulous courtyard, then into the house. The house looked more like something out of a home-and-garden magazine than a lived-in home.
“You have a beautiful home.”
“Yes, I do. I’ve worked hard for it.” Odd statement.
“It’s lovely.” Another woman—another spitting image of Mr. McKendrick—glided into the foyer.
“This is your Aunt Justine. Do you remember her?”
“I really don’t remember anything from my childhood.”
“Convenient,” Emeline whispered from behind her. Mattie flashed a glance over her shoulder. Her ‘sister’ stared back with icy blue eyes filled with suspicion.
“Emeline,” McKendrick chided without the slightest hint of conviction.
The younger woman hung on West’s arm. “Sorry, daddy.”
Justine g
lided forward. She took Mattie’s hand in both of hers. “My dear, it’s an absolute miracle to have you home again. We’re so happy you’ve come home at last.”
“Thank you. I’m glad to be here.”
The older woman hugged her. The embrace was tight, but it felt cold.
Instinct tugged at Mattie’s heart, urging her to get out as quick as possible. She didn’t like the way Justine and Mr. McKendrick kept glancing at one another. It set off alarms in her head. What did she expect, though? Ruth Ellen said half a dozen women had claimed to be Elaine over the years. It was only natural that they doubt her until proven otherwise.
The aloof family ushered her deeper into the cool, too-perfect-to-live-in home. Each room was as impersonal as the last. Justine prattled on and on about how much the family had missed her, how much money had been spent on private investigators.
“We had long ago given up hope,” she said. “Then Ruth Ellen told us she’d found you.”
The little entourage stopped in a small round room with just a few luxuriously padded benches. The room had a hushed, reverent atmosphere, like a chapel in a hospital.
Mr. McKendrick stepped forward and pulled a curtain away from a painted portrait on the wall.
A tiny girl with white-blonde hair gazed down at her from the canvas. The room gave her the creeps. Mattie rubbed at the chillbumps on her arms. A dozen gold-framed photos of the same little girl littered the narrow, curved table beneath the portrait. Mattie released the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.