“What has he told them?”
“Nothing yet, and he won’t until he finds out just exactly who and what we’re up against.” Myra paused again. “It may be time to pull you out, Grace.”
Grace’s heart was thumping so hard against her chest she thought her ribcage might explode. But she had never been one to walk away from an assignment until it was finished. And this one was far from over.
She drew a long breath, trying to calm her racing pulse. “If we pull out now, the whole operation craters. We may never find Reardon. I don’t want to run that risk. Until we find out what’s going on, I think I should stay put.”
“This could get very sticky,” Myra warned.
“I’m aware of that.”
After a moment, Myra said, “Maybe you’re right. Whoever he is, he had us fooled. He may be able to fool Trevor Reardon as well.”
Grace’s mind was a whirlwind of chaotic thoughts. After hanging up the phone, she paced the room nervously. Never had she been so unsure of a situation before, so out of control of an operation as she was at that moment.
Who was he? her mind screamed. Who the hell was he?
Spinning toward the nightstand, Grace grabbed her gun and gripped it in one hand while crossing the floor to lock her bedroom door. And all the while she kept telling herself that what she was thinking, what Ethan had suggested was crazy. He couldn’t be Trevor Reardon. She would have known, for God’s sake. He couldn’t have fooled her again. Not so completely.
Her legs shaking with nerves, Grace sat down in a chair facing the bedroom door. She propped her feet on the edge of the bed and put the gun in her lap. There would be no sleep for her tonight, but just to be on the safe side, she wouldn’t lie down. She would remain in this chair, awake and vigilant, until morning came and with it, hopefully answers.
YOU’RE SO BEAUTIFUL. Do you have an idea how special you are to me, Grace?
Trevor Reardon’s voice awakened Grace with a start. She gasped and grabbed her gun, aiming at first one spot in the room and then the next.
It took her a long, terrified moment to realize she was alone in the room and she’d been dreaming.
Reardon’s voice, whispering in her ear, came back to her and a shiver of dread tore up Grace’s spine. The dream had seemed so real. She had heard his voice so clearly, that indefinable quality that had haunted her for years.
Grace thought she’d only dozed off for a few seconds, but when she glanced at the clock on the bedside table, she realized she’d been asleep for almost an hour. It was nearly three o’clock in the morning and the moon was up. The sterling light danced along the fringes of the room, deepening the shadows in the corners.
The moon glow was what alerted Grace first. Earlier, she’d turned on the lamp on the nightstand, but now it was off. And the faintest scent of men’s cologne lingered in the air.
Grace’s heart boomeranged against her chest. Ethan hadn’t been wearing cologne earlier. He’d come straight to her room from the shower, his hair still damp and smelling of shampoo, his skin scented only with soap.
But the smell of cologne on the air was unmistakable.
Slowly, Grace got up from the chair, her weapon drawn. The first thing she did was search the bathroom, then she crossed the bedroom to the door. It was still locked, and for a moment, she told herself she was imagining things.
But that whisper came back to her. You’re so beautiful. Do you have any idea how special you are to me, Grace?
And she knew without a doubt it had been no dream. Reardon—or someone—had been in this room with her. He’d managed to pick the lock on her bedroom door, but that was no surprise. The flimsy bolt wouldn’t keep out a determined ten-year-old, let alone a criminal mastermind.
No, the surprising part was how easily he’d been able to slip through the surveillance surrounding the house, and then disable the alarm without detection. Unless, of course, he’d been in the house all along.
Grace closed her eyes, terror stealing over her. She gripped the pistol, forcing herself to open the bedroom door and move out into the hallway. But with every step she took, she heard Ethan’s warning. I’m saying that I don’t know who I am, Grace. I don’t know how to explain everything that’s happened to me, the dreams I have, the shoes that don’t fit, the gun that was custom-made for me. Even the connection you and I seem to have.
Grace was on the stairs now, moving stealthily downward. The living room below was silent. Eerie. The shadows ghostly in the moonlight.
She came to the bottom of the stairs and moved into the living room.
What I’m saying is that for all I know. I could be the man you’re looking for.
Slowly, Grace crossed the living room toward the study. A thin line of light glowed at the bottom of the closed door. Someone was inside.
I could be Trevor Reardon.
Grace paused outside the door, catching her breath and steeling her nerves. Then she reached out and swung the door inward.
Ethan sat behind the desk, his face dimly illuminated by a lamp that had been angled away from him. He looked up when Grace entered, seemingly unconcerned by the gun she had pointed at him, and smiled. A smile that was as charming as it was inherently evil.
Chapter Thirteen
The man seated behind the desk was Ethan, and he wasn’t.
Grace couldn’t quite believe her eyes. She blinked once, then again, but the face before her didn’t change.
She saw almost immediately that the faces weren’t identical, but there was a very strong resemblance. This man, Dr. Hunter she presumed, was a little smoother around the edges. Polished to a high gloss of sophistication, while the Ethan she knew was tougher, more dangerous looking.
However, as Dr. Hunter rose and came around the desk to stand in front of her, Grace thought her initial assessment of him might have been wrong. The glint of greed and deadly determination in his eyes was unmistakable.
“Where’s Ethan?” She kept the gun leveled on him.
Dr. Hunter cocked a dark brow, very reminiscent of the man she knew as Ethan. “You mean my look-alike? Don’t worry, he’s safe. For the time being, at least.”
Grace wondered what that meant. Her hand trembled slightly on the gun, but she used all of her resolve to steady it “Where is he?” Her tone hardened with threat. “I want to see him.”
“You will,” Dr. Hunter said. “But I’ve a few things here I have to take care of first.”
“I don’t think you’re in any position to bargain,” Grace said coldly. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m the one with the gun here.”
“Oh, I couldn’t help but notice,” Hunter said smoothly. Then his voice hardened. “But in case you hadn’t noticed, we aren’t exactly alone.”
And with that, a man stepped through the door behind Grace and put a gun barrel to her head. “Drop the gun, por favor,” he said with a heavy Spanish accent.
When Grace hesitated, Dr. Hunter said, “Better do as he says. For all his gentle appearance, Javier can be quite vicious. Besides which, you can’t possibly take us both out.”
He was right about that. When Grace lowered her weapon, the man behind her reached down and took it from her hand. Then he tossed it to Dr. Hunter.
The man called Javier walked slowly around Grace, still keeping the weapon drawn on her. When he was in front of her, she stared at him, recognizing the dark hair, the coal eyes, the thin, black mustache. He was the man she’d seen in the corridor outside the ballroom of the Huntington Hotel, the man she had pursued into the laundry room, and possibly the man who had murdered Special Agent Huddleston.
“You already know who I am,” Dr. Hunter was saying. “This is a colleague of mine, Dr. Javier Salizar. He runs the clinic in Mexico when I’m not around. It’s been a mutually advantageous arrangement over the years, but now that I’m bowing out, he’ll be free to use the clinic to continue the small but very powerful drug cartel he’s building.”
Salizar made an abrupt movement w
ith his gun, one that had Grace’s heart pounding in alarm.
Dr. Hunter put up a hand, as if to restrain his colleague. He said something in rapid Spanish, then to Grace he said, “But I still don’t know your name.”
She saw no reason not to tell him. “Grace Donovan.”
“FBI, I presume?”
She shrugged.
“Well, at least you’re not denying it,” he said. “Not that it matters. Now that you’ve seen me, rm sure you realize I can’t let you go.”
“Is that why you killed Huddleston?” When Hunter glanced at her blankly, she said, “The agent at the Huntington Hotel.”
“Ah.” Hunter steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “He saw me at the hotel while he was shadowing Pilar and Bob. I couldn’t let him go after that.”
Grace glanced at the gun in Salizar’s hand, then at Dr. Hunter, assessing her situation. Unfortunately, she didn’t see a way out. Not yet at least. “How did you get in here?”
“Past your surveillance, you mean? It was pathetically easy. We were back here before you arrived from the Huntington.”
“But Ethan told me he changed the alarm code.”
“So he did, but I almost always have a backup plan. Once when I came back from Mexico, my loving wife had changed the code so that I couldn’t get into my own house. After that, I had the security company program in an override code that only I knew. Pilar never pulled that stunt again.”
The smile vanished from his face, leaving in its place a cruel sneer that made Grace shiver. If she had underestimated Dr. Hunter’s capabilities before, she would not do so now.
“Why did you give him your face?” she asked suddenly.
The charming smile was back in place. He shrugged nonchalantly. “Because I knew Reardon would come after me. And if not him, then some other criminal whose face I’ve changed. They’re all extremely grateful at first, but then they get to thinking. Paranoia sets in. Their plastic surgeon is the only one who can identify them. Sooner or later, one of them was bound to come after me.”
Grace frowned. “So you created yourself a double? How did you think you could pull that off? Eventually someone would catch on.”
“Not if the double was dead,” Dr. Hunter said with another shrug. “I had it all planned out very carefully. Or so I thought,” he added ironically. “I brought him back to Houston, dumped him in my clinic, and then one of Dr. Salizar’s American associates was to shoot him in the face before he came to and make the whole thing look like robbery. Only, your friend decided to wake up before he was supposed to, and he managed to save himself. Imagine my surprise when I found out what had happened, that my look-alike was still alive and poking around in my life, digging up secrets I didn’t want exposed.”
“An autopsy would have revealed he wasn’t you,” Grace said. “You couldn’t change blood types, fingerprints, DNA.”
“There was no reason to,” Dr. Hunter said almost impatiently. “With both Amy and him dead in the clinic, there would have been no reason to suspect he wasn’t me. Especially since I’d made sure my passport and ID were on him, along with my wedding ring. There would have been no need for anything other than the most rudimentary autopsy, and I’d taken care of the blood type by changing my medical records at the hospital before I went out of the country. I thought of everything.”
Not everything, Grace thought. She wondered if she should tell him about the fingerprints, about the fact that the FBI were on to him. But if cornered, he might become even more desperate, and Grace wasn’t willing to admit yet that she couldn’t somehow find a way out of this.
“Who is he?” she tried to ask without emotion. “Where did you find him?”
Dr. Hunter smiled. “That’s the beauty of it. He’s no one anybody would ever come looking for, except maybe for the police. He was affiliated with one of Dr. Salizar’s rival drug cartels, and the Mexican authorities shot him while he was trying to escape capture.”
Affiliated with a drug cartel? A sour taste rose to Grace’s mouth. He’s no one anybody would come looking for, except maybe the police.
Not Trevor Reardon, she thought weakly, but someone perhaps just as dark.
“Apparently, he fell off a cliff, and some of the locals found him and brought him to me,” Dr. Hunter said. “I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say, his face was badly damaged, and he had a severe head trauma which resulted in acute amnesia. When he woke up, he didn’t remember who he was or how he’d gotten to the clinic. He remained heavily sedated at the clinic while I came back here. He couldn’t remember his past before he arrived at the clinic, and the drugs ensured he wouldn’t remember his time there. We were spared a lot of questions that way. I even brought his gun back here with me so there would be no way to identify him. Once his wounds had healed sufficiently, I went back to Mexico and began the reconstruction on his face. He didn’t remember anything about his former life, so I gave him a new one.”
She lifted her chin, staring Hunter straight in the eyes. “I’m a federal agent,” she said. “This house in under surveillance. The minute you fire one of those guns, the place will be crawling with FBI.”
“You mean the three men watching the house? Javier’s American amigo has taken care of them for us.”
The sick feeling inside Grace deepened. Three more agents dead? God—
Dr. Hunter turned to Salizar and spoke rapidly in Spanish, something about the American Salizar had apparently hired for the job. As best Grace could tell, there’d been a last minute change in plans, and in spite of Hunter’s cool demeanor, he was worried about the new man.
When Hunter turned back to Grace, she said, “What are you going to do with me?”
He shrugged. “Oh, I have plans for you. Lofty plans, you might say.”
Dr. Salizar had moved behind her, and now Grace saw Dr. Hunter nod to him over her shoulder. She whirled, automatically putting up a hand to defend herself, but she was too late. The butt of the gun caught her square in the back of the head.
With a blinding flash of pain, Grace pitched face forward to the floor.
WHEN SHE AWAKENED, the pain was a dull roar in her head. She lay facedown in what she first thought must be a van or a truck, but the rumble of engines below her and the sway and dip as they hit air pockets told her they were airborne.
She struggled to rise, but her head swam sickeningly, and when she tried to move, she realized her hands were bound behind her. With an effort, she rolled to her side, then managed to sit up, gazing around.
Ethan was directly in front of her, leaning against the wall of the plane, his hands behind him and his eyes closed. One side of his face was covered in blood, and Grace’s heart lurched in terror. For one heart-stopping moment, she was positive he was dead. He was so still and his face was deathly pale.
But then very slowly he opened his eyes and focused on her. A look of intense relief flooded over his features, and Grace realized he must have been conscious for some time now, and wondering the same thing about her.
“Are you all right?” he whispered, throwing a glance toward the front of the plane.
Grace nodded, unsure of her voice. “Are you?”
“I will be, as soon as I get these ropes loose.”
His brow wrinkled in concentration as he strained at the bindings. Grace glanced around, assessing their situation. They were in the rear of the plane. Luggage and crates of supplies were stacked near the back, and directly opposite, a door opened to the front Grace could see two or three rows of seat backs, and beyond that, a curtain that closed off the cockpit.
The cargo door was on the wall nearest her, but without parachutes, the exit wouldn’t do them much good.
She glanced back at Ethan. “What happened?” she whispered.
“They were waiting for me when I came back downstairs. They were in the house when we got back from the hotel.”
“Yes, I know. The agents watching the house are dead.”
Ethan’s eyes flickered brief
ly as he struggled with the ropes.
“Where are they taking us?” Grace asked, working at her own bindings. Her wrists grew raw from the effort.
“I heard them mention Mexico. Hunter still thinks he can pull this off.”
Grace glanced up. “You’ve seen him then?”
Ethan’s gaze met hers, and something dark flashed in his eyes. “I’ve seen him.”
Grace wondered what he was thinking, what it must have felt like to come face to face with his reflection. She tried to temper the rush of emotion she felt for him by reminding herself of what Hunter had told her—that the man she knew as Ethan had been involved with a drug cartel in Mexico.
But looking at him now, Grace couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Didn’t want to believe it. If he never got his memory back, would that side of him disappear forever?
Could he live with that? And could she?
Maybe it was all a moot point anyway if they couldn’t find a way out of their current predicament.
As if reading her mind, Ethan said, “He still thinks he can get rid of me and have everyone believe he’s dead.”
“It’s been him all along,” Grace said. “Not Reardon. Hunter hired someone to kill both you and Amy so that everyone would think he was dead.”
“Not a bad plan,” Ethan said dryly.
“Except for the fact that the FBI knows you and he are not one and the same man.”
Ethan’s movements ceased. He looked up at her. “What?”
“We lifted some prints from the water glass in your hospital room and ran them through the national database. My superior knows that you’re not Dr. Hunter.”
“Who am I?” A look Grace couldn’t identify crossed over his features. Fear. Dread. Hope. Uncertainty.
What could she tell him that would alleviate his worry? “You aren’t Trevor Reardon,” she said.
“Then who am I?”
“I... don’t know yet.”
His gaze on her hardened. “How long have you known this? From the first?”
Grace shook her head. “No. No. I just found out tonight. I didn’t have a chance to tell you—”
Lover, Stranger Page 19
