Dead Double

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

* * * * *

  Logan climbed up into the trailer, feeling it dip under his weight. The movement would alert everyone inside but if they hadn’t already known he was approaching the van, then they weren’t worth their salaries.

  Elias looked up as Logan closed the door behind him. The craggy black face creased into the familiar furrows of disapproval. “Jeans?” Elias said. “I said buy some new clothes. As in, clothes. Real garments.”

  “You said to blend in with the locals. So I blended in.” Logan shrugged and rested his shoulder against the bank of communications equipment next to the door. The walk back up Noriega to Golden Gate Park and almost the full length of the park itself, to the northern location where Elias had moved the van, had released enough endorphins to lift away the immediate sleepiness but the long-term weariness from too little sleep was a low-grade ache in his bones.

  “Last I heard, downtown San Francisco was still wearing suits.”

  “I didn’t go downtown.”

  “Ocean Beach, right?” asked Nelson Ortega, as he stepped around Elias.

  “Did you have a tail on me, after all?” Logan asked sharply, looking at Elias. They’d had this discussion about inappropriate and unannounced tailing of their own staff many times before. Logan braced himself, quite ready to have the discussion again and at the top of his voice if necessary.

  “Not you,” Nelson shot back, waving a fistful of black and white photos. “On Seoc.”

  “When Seoc and I were finished, I headed one hundred and eighty degrees away from him. The complete opposite direction. What the hell was he doing in Sunset?”

  Nelson lifted the photos again. “He tailed you there.”

  Logan felt his gut tighten. “What?”

  “He tailed you,” Nelson repeated cheerfully. “Must’ve wanted to make sure you were alone like you said.” He started spreading the photos out across the tiny Formica table top. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice the tail. That’s not like you.”

  Logan felt an ice hand clamp around his chest. His heart creaked under the impact. “I wasn’t looking for a tail. Seoc doesn’t usually have that much imagination. Anyway, he’s a neutral courier.” He spoke absently, running through his mind what he’d done since leaving the park that Seoc might have witnessed.

  He realized that Nelson looking at him expectedly. “What’d he see in Ocean Beach?” His lips felt rubbery, disjointed.

  Nelson finished spreading the photos on the table and stepped back, his arms crossed, a proud grin on his face. Photography was a new interest for him and like everything else electronic to which he’d turned a hand over the years, he had taught himself and had quickly become an expert.

  Logan leaned over the table, his heart thundering.

  There she was, his hand on her arm, staring up at him with her back to the camera. The strawberry blonde hair looked almost pure blonde in the black and white shot and Logan realized once again why she had caught his eye as she’d jogged across the street. The grunge look was deceptive but her height and shape, the way she moved, the way her hair had swung around her shoulders…it had all been freakishly like Micky. Seeing her hair as pure blonde confirmed it. He hadn’t been losing his mind. He’d had good reason to think it was Micky.

  He had been so sure of it, so caught up in the angry astonishment roiling through him that it had taken thirty seconds for him to see past his memories and actually look at her.

  One proper look with the scales gone and he’d been able to see it wasn’t Micky. Besides, in the later years Micky had never shown such tact and kindness, even to strangers. That alone would have confirmed it wasn’t her.

  Let me buy you a cold drink, something to help you. Her voice had been melodious, like Micky’s but full of warmth and caring.

  Elias’ finger pointed to the same photo but two inches to the left. It was Seoc, standing on the other side of the street in the shade of one of the big fixed awnings over the stores. He was watching her speak to Logan. From that angle Seoc would have had no trouble seeing her face at all.

  Sick pressure roiled in Logan’s chest and gut. “Seoc watched it all?”

  “Yeah. Nice redhead,” Nelson murmured, sliding the photo aside, moving onto the next one.

  “She’s strawberry blonde,” Logan muttered, already pushing his way to the door. He grabbed his jacket from the hook next to it as he went out. The weight of the gun in the pocket reassured him.

  Chapter Five

  The very tall man was wearing a suit, which looked incredibly out of place along Noriega Street in the middle of June, especially in her store. The suit was rumpled, as if he’d been wearing it for far too long. The wraparound sunglasses he wore didn’t match the suit, or him. They were too trendy.

  Sahara pasted a smile on her face and nodded to him as she reached him. “Hi there. What can we do for you today?”

  He had very short black hair. He reached for his sunglasses and removed them slowly. “You are really going to pretend?”

  Sahara stared at him. “Excuse me?” she said at last, unable to make sense of what he had said. She wondered if she had merely misheard what it was he was looking for in the store and if he repeated it, she might get it this time.

  His eyes were black on black and staring at her frankly.

  “Please, stop this, Ms. Micky. Your ex-husband gave you away. You surely have not been here so long in this city that you have forgotten I would naturally follow him?”

  This time, for two or three heartbeats, Sahara really was sure she was losing it. Nothing he’d said made any sense. Yet she felt a sickening drop in her stomach, like she was on a popular—and terrifying—midway ride.

  She grasped the one word that made sense. Micky.

  This man thought she was the mysterious Micky, too. This meant Micky’s ex had to have been the man in the middle of Noriega this morning.

  Without trying, she found herself recalling his blue eyes and the pain in them he’d tried so hard to hide.

  This man said they were following him. They were following him.

  He was in danger. Possibly more danger now they had seen Sahara with him. She didn’t know enough to know if he being seen with “Micky” was a good or a bad thing. But surely, if she let this man know she wasn’t Micky, then the man with blue eyes would be as safe as if he hadn’t spoken to her this morning.

  The complete train of thought passed through her mind in the space of two heartbeats, creating another midway-scare that pushed the sickness into her chest and squeezed her heart.

  She smiled brightly at the man in the wrinkled suit. “I’m Sahara. You’ve obviously mistaken me for someone else.”

  He considered her and shook his head, slowly starting to smile. “Ms. Micky, you are joking with me, I think. The hair, the clothes, those things—” He flicked his fingers, indicating her bracelets, her neon green Converse sneakers and the cut-off jeans. “They do not hide the real you from me.” Then his smile faded. He reached inside his jacket. “You should have at least moved countries.”

  Does he have a gun in there? Sahara wondered, her labouring heart slamming against the wall of her chest. Am I about to be held up with a lethal weapon?

  “You need any help, Sahara?” Tiffany asked from just behind her.

  Sahara nearly shrieked in shock and alarm. She had forgotten Tiffany in the back aisle but her friend had clearly heard enough to alarm her and here she was, coming to Sahara’s rescue.

  Sahara wanted to cry “Run, Tiffany!” but all her words jammed up in her throat, as the man’s hand emerged from his jacket. He had a gun in it.

  Sahara had never seen a real gun before. She had only ever seen weapons on TV and in the movies. This one looked surprisingly small, until he pointed it at her. Suddenly the barrel seemed a mile long and the dark eye at the end of the barrel about six feet wide.

  She gave a tiny moan. Her mind had seized up. She had no idea what to do. She couldn’t string a clear thought together.

  “Bloody hell!”
Tiffany said, using her father’s favourite expression. Her voice was a tiny squeak.

  The fear tightening Tiffany’s voice unlocked Sahara’s paralysis. She held up her hands like a good victim and took a step closer to the man, hoping it would draw the gun away from Tiffany and onto her. “It’s okay,” she assured him. “It’s fine. You can have whatever you want. Tiffany, empty the cash register, will you? Put it in the bag beneath the counter.”

  She looked the man in the eye. “There’s no need for a gun,” she told him as calmly as she could manage. Her heart was scudding along, the speed making it hurt. “Why don’t you just put that away, huh?”

  “Are you crazy, ’Hara? I’m not giving him all your money,” Tiffany declared in a rough whisper behind her.

  “Just do it.” Sahara’s words came out sharp and hard.

  “Stay right there,” the man said, waving the gun toward Tiffany. “I don’t want your money.” It was a snarl. “Just stop the playacting, hmm, Micky? It is me. I can see it is you. Just stop.”

  Sahara shook her head. “I’m not Micky.” She said it as firmly as she could. “I don’t even know who Micky is.”

  He smiled, showing very white teeth. It was almost a grimace. “So what did Señor Wilde want with you this morning, if you are not Micky? I hear as well as anyone. I know the trouble you two had. He would not speak to someone just because they look like you. He would run in the opposite direction.”

  “Problem with you, Seoc, is that you have no imagination.” The voice came from behind her. It was his voice, the man with blue eyes. The man Seoc called Señor Wilde.

  Tiffany gave a little breathless sound that might have been a squeal if she’d had the air to voice it.

  The man in front of Sahara instantly moved his gun to point somewhere to the right of her shoulder. His eyes widened. “Señor Wilde,” he said and Sahara saw him swallow—his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down quickly.

  “This puts you in a tricky position, Seoc. You do understand that, don’t you?”

  The man, Seoc, remained silent, his eyes big and fixed on Mr. Wilde, who was still somewhere behind her. Sahara had no intention of taking her eyes off the gun to check, though.

  “For years you’ve insisted on your neutrality,” Wilde continued. “Everyone’s gone along with you, because you were useful. Right now, this moment, your usefulness has ended. You’re never going to be able to work as an independent courier again.”

  “My English may be bad, Mr. Wilde, but my brain, it works.” Seoc smiled. “I made a decision.”

  “A bad one, Seoc.”

  Finally, Sahara saw motion from the corner of her eye. Wilde was getting closer, an inch at a time.

  Seoc’s brow wrinkled, the first hint of anything other than complete confidence that she’d seen from him.

  “Not only have you picked a side and destroyed your neutrality,” Wilde said, “but you picked up a gun, too.”

  “When one chooses sides, Mr. Wilde, one needs the gun.”

  “Yeah but you’ve never used them before. Did it occur to you, Seoc, that when you broke your neutrality, people were free to start shooting at you?”

  Seoc remained calm and silent.

  “And here’s where you made another big mistake. Instead of nosing quietly around the lady, checking her out and then leaving her alone, you had to come in here waving that pea shooter of yours and scaring innocent women. That’s why you’re in a tricky position. You can’t just walk away after showing them the gun, can you? So what were you going to do with them, huh?”

  Sahara turned her head just enough to look at Wilde but still keep one eye on Seoc.

  She saw first the barrel of another gun, with a big hand curled around the butt, followed by the rest of Wilde’s arm, as he came level with her. He’d put on a suede jacket since she saw him on the street. But the black hair still jutted over his forehead, making her want to push it back.

  He was staring at Seoc, not giving him a chance to look away. His gun barrel inched closer and closer to the man.

  Seoc was staring at it and Sahara knew how he felt. She had experienced that sense-robbing state only a few seconds before. Her legs were still shaking.

  When the gun was within a few inches of his chest, Seoc finally buckled. He dropped his gun, turned and bolted to the front door, cannoning off Sahara’s postcard stand and scattering cards across the floor.

  As his forearm slapped against the glass door, it was whipped open from the other side and Seoc slammed into the shoulders of a tall black man and a guy in jeans and a Red Hot Chili Peppers tee shirt, who looked barely into his twenties.

  Both of them grabbed one of Seoc’s arms each and held on to him. Seoc struggled but they held him on the spot with little visible effort.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Seoc?” the kid said.

  “I think you should come over here with us,” the black man added, in a deep voice. “We’ve got a van parked here, just for you.” He looked over at Wilde and nodded. “Clear it up and head back,” he said.

  Then both of them turned and marched the struggling Seoc away.

  “I think I’m going to….” Tiffany said, her voice shaking.

  Sahara whirled in time to see her friend sink to the floor in an inelegant jumble of legs, holding her hand to her stomach.

  Wilde pushed his gun inside his jacket and crouched down next to her. “Bring your knees up and put your head between them,” he said, not unkindly. “Deep breaths.”

  “I am not hysterical!” Tiffany declared, her shrill voice giving lie to her declaration.

  He smiled. “Fine. You want to puke all over the floor here where we can see you? Or do you want to wait until you get home and do it in private?”

  Tiffany moaned. She brought up her knees and hung her head between them.

  Wilde got to his feet and faced Sahara. His gaze traveled from her face to her toes. He was checking her over for injury, she realized.

  The clinical assessment bothered her. Inside two minutes, this man Wilde had destroyed all her afternoon’s fantasies about a man in pain, haunted by his past. This man was nothing of the sort. He was tough and competent at handling guns. He’d out bluffed Seoc merely by staring at him. He wasn’t who she thought he was at all. He was far stronger than that.

  “I’m fine,” Sahara said shortly. It was a lie. She was trembling, and anger was stirring in her chest. “Just who the h-h-ell was he?”

  He came closer to her. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”

  “Yes, it is!” She clutched her arms around herself, chilled.

  He shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it around her shoulders. Warmth enveloped her, along with good masculine smells and a touch of pine. She grabbed the lapels, holding it around her and found her fingers rubbing against the softest suede she’d ever touched. It was so soft she had to keep stroking it, marvelling.

  He moved to the front door and flipped the open sign to “closed” and threw the deadbolt on the door. As he came back to her he said, “I thought you’d like time to recover in private.”

  She wanted to protest that she didn’t need time to recover but the trembling was worse.

  “Sit,” he advised her. “Take your time.”

  She stepped over to the glass-top counter and let herself slide down the front of it until she was sitting on the cork mat, her knees bunched up in front of her. She wrapped her arms around them and clutched the coat around as much of herself as it would cover. All but her toes were cocooned in the soft warmth.

  “I-I’ve never seen a gun before,” she said and it emerged in a croaky whisper.

  Tiffany gave another groan and hunched over further. Wilde patted her shoulder then surprised Sahara by sitting down next to her. He sat like a man finally able to relax after a long day at the office, then rested his head back against the front wall of the counter.

  “I’m sorry you had to see one now,” he told them.

  “Your name is Wilde, right?” Sahara
asked, deliberately changing the subject.

  He twisted so he was looking at her properly and held out his hand. “Logan Wilde.”

  “Sahara Taylor-Hughes.” But then the question pushed its way out of her, surprising even her. “I really look so much like this Micky of yours, Logan?”

  The little smile he’d given her as they shook hands faded. He shrugged and leaned back against the counter again. “Not so much.”

  “You’re lying again.”

  He cocked a brow. “Again?” he said.

  Sahara could feel the blush building in her cheeks. “The first time we met, out on the road there. I was pretty sure you were lying about something then.” His shoulder was right next to hers. So was his hip. She could feel the warmth even through the jacket, radiating against her right flank, warming her even more.

  “Lying’s a part of my job,” he said and it sounded offhand but she wondered if he really was such a casual liar as that.

  “Mustn’t be much of a job, then,” she countered. “Lord, I’m so cold! Have you heard what the weather was supposed to be doing today? It feels like it’s dropped sharply in here.”

  “It’s shock,” he said. Then he turned to face her fully again. For a long moment he just studied her. “You’re changing the subject. You’re not going to ask what my job is, are you? Nor what all the fuss was with Seoc.”

  She pointed to his shoulder, where the ugly black gun harness pulled at his white shirt. “Your job uses tools that give most people minor hysterics, Mr. Wilde. And you work with people who don’t seem to mind using those tools whenever they get an answer they don’t like.” She grimaced. “I don’t want to know what your job is.”

  He simply looked at her and she realized that perhaps she had left him speechless. “I’m sorry,” she added.

  “Don’t be.” He looked around the store, at the casual beach clothing up on the mezzanine level, the cheap jewellery, surfing magazines, the gear and goods of a lifestyle that had to be totally different from his. “You come from a place a long way from where I walk, these days.”

  “Thank god,” Tiffany sniffed. Her voice was muffled against her leg.