A chill settled over Mitch, because it occurred to him that this man was capable of anything. “Is that a threat?”
“A threat?” Gibbs leaned back in his desk chair. “I prefer to think of it as advice on how to keep someone you care about safe.”
Mitch whirled and walked out of the office, closing the door behind him with a resounding bang. Now it was himself, and not Cary, who was in a jam.
He wasn’t sure how to get out of it, but he was certain of one thing. For Peyton’s sake, he had to keep quiet about his true identity until Gibbs was safely behind bars.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The sun had barely begun its fiery descent into the horizon, but that didn’t matter to the throng that had converged on Mallory Square for the nightly sunset celebration.
The party was already in full swing.
Tourists rubbed elbows with souvenir vendors, street entertainers and locals out to make a buck selling conch fritters and cold beers from mobile carts.
Lizabeth kept her hand securely in Grant’s as they wove a path into the heart of the square. A sense of anticipation pulsed below the surface of the crowd, anticipation that Lizabeth could identify with.
But Lizabeth was looking forward to something far more exciting than a sunset, no matter how glorious. She was impatient to dive back in bed with Grant and make love again. And again. And again.
A shadow fell over them. Lizabeth looked up to see a gorgeous face made up so expertly she’d have guessed she was looking at a supermodel if the body that went with the face wasn’t about six feet three and two hundred forty pounds.
The drag queen didn’t make any secret of the fact he was eyeing Grant instead of Lizabeth. He took a pull from his cigarillo and blew out a plume of blue-gray smoke before finally turning his attention to Lizabeth.
“Some girls have all the luck,” he said with a petulant frown before thundering away on a giant pair of women’s platform shoes.
“Remind me not to come here alone,” Grant said with a raised eyebrow.
Lizabeth giggled. She knew giggling was undignified but she couldn’t help herself. Everything about the last few days seemed magnified. Comments struck her as funnier, the sun seemed brighter, the air sweeter.
And it was all because Grant Mitchell was her lover.
As little as two weeks ago, the prospect of any lover seemed a distant possibility. Let alone Grant Mitchell, the star of her youthful daydreams.
“What are you smiling about?” Grant asked.
“Nothing,” she fibbed.
Quick as a cheetah, he turned her into his arms and gave her a swift kiss. Her toes curled in her safari-print sandals.
“What was that for?” she asked when she had her breath back.
His blue eyes twinkled. “Just thought I’d give you something to smile about.”
She giggled again. He put an arm around her and steered her through the crowd. When she’d had her desperate crush on him in high school, she’d never have guessed he was the sort of man who’d kiss a woman in public.
Lizabeth had only known Grant from afar, but he’d seemed much too strait-laced for public displays of affection. He’d seemed like a man destined to become, well, a cop.
She’d been attracted to his air of seriousness when she was a teenager, but now that she was an adult his playful side most appealed to her. She only wished he’d show her more than glimpses of it.
They stopped beside a small crowd that had gathered to watch a short, stout, bearded man who resembled an undersized sumo wrestler. He wore a black T-shirt and shorts and loudly proclaimed in broken English, “I am the Balancing Bob. You give it to me, I balance it.”
A ponytailed young woman in a headband, tank top and long, tight shorts offered him her bicycle. Balancing Bob didn’t hesitate. He had two volunteers heave the bicycle overhead by its wheels, then proceeded to balance the bike from a contraption he held in his mouth. He extolled the crowd to cheer him by raising his hands.
“Is magnificent, eh?” asked Balancing Bob when the bicycle was no longer airborne. He was breathing hard, telling Lizabeth that balancing was as hard as it looked. “I balance a motorcycle, an oven, a kitchen table. Who has something else I balance?”
Grant laughed, put a few dollars in Balancing Bob’s tip can and slung his arm around Lizabeth again. By mutual consent, they moved away from the balancer and toward another small crowd gathered in front of yet another street performer.
This one wore something even more brash than Lizabeth’s safari-print mini dress: A billowing purple shirt paired with yellow-and-purple striped pantaloons that ended at his knees. He’d paired the whole shebang with yellow knee socks.
“Nice outfit,” Grant whispered. Before Lizabeth could giggle again, she put her hand against her mouth to stifle the sound. Enough giggling was enough.
With rare panache, the street performer juggled a trio of two-toned clubs that mimicked the colors of his outfit. Double flips, triple flips, between the legs, behind the back, four clubs instead of three. He could do it all.
“I’d regale you with passing tricks now,” the juggler said, tossing back his mane of long, blonde hair, “but my partner spent all afternoon at Sloppy Joe’s and passed out an hour ago. So I’ll get on with the show unless. . .” He cast a laughing glance around the audience, “anyone here can juggle like me.”
Lizabeth remembered a captivating performance at a long-ago school talent show. Her hand shot up. “My boyfriend can juggle,” she announced.
Grant’s shocked blue eyes swung to her face, probably because she’d called him her boyfriend. How unsophisticated was that?
“I would have called you my lover, but I wanted to keep it G-rated,” she whispered an aside to him. “There are kids around.”
Wearing a disbelieving look, the juggler pointed to Grant. His narrow nose pointed skyward. “You claim you can juggle like the master?”
“I’m not claiming anything.” Grant shook his head in an adorably modest way.
“I did not think so. Juggling takes great skill and coordination, not to mention a flair for entertaining.” The juggler puffed out his purple-draped chest. “Many pretenders brag of their so-called juggling expertise but few can deliver.”
Lizabeth stepped forward, her hackles raised. Who gave this arrogant juggle-it-all a monopoly on tossing things in the air and catching them?
“Grant can deliver,” she stated firmly.
“Leeza, what are you doing?” Grant tugged at her hand, trying unsuccessfully to draw her back to his side. “I can’t deliver.”
She didn’t miss the frantic note in his voice but that was probably because he was shy about showing off his talent. But she’d seen him juggle five balls at once and flip clubs with the best of them. He could teach this big-headed juggler a lesson.
She gave Grant an encouraging look over her shoulder. “Don’t be modest. I know you can do it.”
“How can you know that?” he asked, but Lizabeth didn’t have time to tell him how awed she’d been as she sat in the darkened auditorium watching his unexpected talent. The juggle-it-all was laughing at them.
“I do not believe this man is a juggler,” he stated.
Lizabeth raised her chin and jerked a thumb at Grant. “I’d put his juggling up against your juggling any day.”
“Okay,” the juggler said. “You’re on.”
Lizabeth turned to Grant, who looked a little sick. She felt a flash of guilt for pushing him into performing. It vanished when she heard the juggler’s lingering laughter.
“You heard him,” she said. “You’re on.”
“But I don’t want to be on,” Grant said.
“You have to be,” she whispered. “I told him how well you can juggle.”
“I’m still trying to figure out why.”
“I saw you at that talent show in high school. You were amazing.”
An emotion crossed Grant’s face which Lizabeth figured was resignation. But when he spoke, his
voice sounded pained.
“That’s right,” he said. “How could I have forgotten? Wouldn’t expect that good old Grant can juggle. Who would have believed it?”
She squeezed his hand. “I know you’re shy about doing it in front of this crowd, but would you please juggle? For me?”
He released a long, soft sigh. Finally, he nodded.
Lizabeth clapped, anticipating the look on the juggler’s face when he got a load of Grant’s talent. She lifted her lips and kissed his cheek. “You won’t regret this.”
“Oh, yes, I will,” Grant muttered before he joined the egotistical juggler in the center of the circle. “What do I do?”
“Catch these.” The juggler picked up three brightly colored clubs and tossed one of them to Grant, putting a spin on it that made it rotate three hundred sixty degrees in the air. Then he prepared to throw the second.
“Show him your stuff, Grant,” Lizabeth yelled when the first club was still hurtling toward him.
Grant started on a high note. He caught the first club in his left hand and transferred it to his right in time to catch the second club. But when the third came hurtling toward him, he dropped all three.
“I’m a little out of practice,” Grant said.
Lizabeth frowned as Grant bent down to pick up the fallen clubs. What was going on? He was an excellent juggler. She’d seen it with her own besotted eyes.
The juggler with the silly pants took the clubs from him. “Perhaps we should try something simpler,” he said with a frosty air.
He threw a club that didn’t flip it all. Grant nabbed the first one and got it airborne but made the mistake of watching it while the second club was coming toward him. The second club struck him in the forehead.
“Ow,” Grant said.
“I was right,” the juggler yelled. “This man can’t juggle.”
“Yes, he can,” Lizabeth spoke up. “He’s just rusty.”
Grant rubbed his brow. “Yeah, I’m just rusty.”
The juggler strode over to his box of supplies, pulled out three juggling bags and tossed them to Grant. “Let’s see you juggle these.”
“How hard can it be,” Lizabeth heard Grant mutter before he flung the bags into the air. For a few precious moments, he kept all three of them rotating. Then, one by one, with Grant making unsuccessful lunges, they crashed to the pavement.
“Ha,” the juggler shouted. “He’s an impostor.”
Lizabeth stood stock still, gazing at the man with whom she was halfway to falling in love as the juggler’s words pierced her consciousness.
An impostor, he’d called Grant.
Grant gave her a wary smile, waved apologetically to the booing crowd and sauntered back to Lizabeth’s side. He flung his arm around her shoulders. “It’s like you said, I’m out of practice.”
But as they rejoined the milling crowd, Lizabeth was no longer reveling in the excitement of the night. She was thinking about why Grant couldn’t juggle. And why she kept seeing flashes of a different man under his surface. And how somebody who hadn’t played baseball since Little League could turn a team of losers into instant contenders.
The scenario that occurred to her seemed impossible, but she asked the question anyhow. “Grant, how old is your brother Cary?”
His smile appeared false around the edges. “What does age matter?”
“How old is he?” she persisted.
Just when she thought he wouldn’t answer, he said, “Twenty-eight.”
“Aren’t you twenty-eight?”
His Adam’s apple jumped before he gave her that charming, carefree smile of his. “We’re both twenty-eight. We’re twins.”
And then Lizabeth’s suspicion was no longer only a theory. Because in that moment she knew that the man she’d made love with, the man she’d been falling in love with, wasn’t Grant Mitchell.
It was his identical-twin brother Cary, the irresponsible former baseball star.
“WHY ARE YOU ASKING about my brother?” asked Grant, who wasn’t really Grant at all.
Lizabeth stared at him, the answer frozen on her lips. Why was Cary Mitchell pretending to be his brother Grant? It made about as much sense as his frequent trips to Miami. Maybe he was on an undercover mission where secrecy was all important. She frowned. That didn’t compute, either. Grant was the cop, not Cary.
“Leeza, did you hear me?” he asked. “Why did you ask about Cary?”
Tell him, Lizabeth thought. Tell him you know he’s an impostor, exactly as the juggler claimed.
But she couldn’t make herself say the words. Not when she didn’t know why he was making those suspicious trips to Miami. Not when she herself was pretending to be somebody she wasn’t.
“No reason but curiosity,” she said, resolving to satisfy hers by following him when he disappeared later that night on another one of his forays.
She recognized the relief on his face before he drew her to him, kissed her on top of the head and pointed to the setting sun.
“It’s dropping,” he said.
The sunset started exactly like the one they’d seen the other night from the cruise ship, with the glowing sun majestic against a red and orange sky. The night was spectacular, warm and clear with only a single cloud in the sky.
“No, no, no!” someone yelled. A sea of disappointed voices soon joined in. From somewhere nearby, a young girl burst into tears.
Because that single cloud drifted nearer and nearer the sun until it completely obscured the sunset.
“Oh, well,” the man who wasn’t Grant said amidst the groans of the crowd. “We’ll see lots of other sunsets together.”
Lizabeth didn’t believe him.
It was as if the cloud were hanging over them, casting an ominous shadow.
CARY HEAVED ANOTHER crate into the trunk of his brother’s SUV, trying to shut off his brain so he wouldn’t worry about what was inside the thick wood.
It was no use. After the sunset they hadn’t seen, Leeza had asked why he couldn’t spend the rest of the evening with her.
He’d longed to tell her the truth, especially because he was starting to feel rotten about passing himself off as Mitch, but he’d dodged the question. Just as he’d averted near disaster earlier that night when Leeza had almost guessed he wasn’t the man he claimed to be.
He doubted Leeza would forgive him for impersonating his twin, but he was positive she wouldn’t condone the way he was smuggling crates to Miami.
He gulped as it struck him that smuggling was the right word. The worst part of it was that he didn’t know what he was smuggling. Captain Turk lugged the last of the crates from the U.S.S. Surprise.
“You swear these crates don’t contain drugs?” Cary asked
“You insult me,” Turk said, his breath coming hard from exertion. “I told you before, man. Turk and his crew don’t do drugs.”
Turk settled the crate inside the nearly full trunk, and Cary heard something clatter. If not drugs, he wondered, what could be inside the boxes? Cuban cigars wouldn’t clatter. Bottles of Cuban liquor would most likely clink. He considered illegal arms, but rejected the idea. Turk would be smuggling arms into Cuba, not out of it.
“What’s inside the crates?” Cary asked the question he swore he’d never ask.
Turk drew himself to his full height, which was still six inches shy of Cary’s. The wind kicked up from the Gulf, but Turk’s hair — or was that a toupee? — didn’t so much as rustle. His chartreuse tunic had a ghostly blue gleam in the moonlight.
“Hey, man, you want the money, you keep quiet. The deal was no questions. The less you know, the better.”
Turk was right. If Cary didn’t know what he was helping to smuggle, it wasn’t really smuggling. Just as he hadn’t really stolen money from Flash Gordon because it wasn’t stealing if the money was dirty.
Ha!
Cary recognized the sound of his conscience, laughing at him.
“You understand about keeping your mouth shut?” Turk
asked.
Cary nodded, although he didn’t understand what was going on at all.
“Good,” Turk said, his demeanor instantly lightening. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. Don’t you think it would be cool if there really were Press-on warriors in the galaxy?”
“Don’t you mean Klingons?” Cary asked.
“Nah,” Turk said in an annoyed voice. “Klingons were in that other show.”
“Oh, right,” Cary said absently.
“I bet the Press-ons could keep the ozone layer from thinning,” Turk said and then droned on about a race of ozone-eating aliens.
Cary was no longer listening. His mind was still on the crates and their mysterious contents. And on what would happen if he got caught transporting them.
He cast a paranoid glance around the boat landing, and his attention snagged on something at the edge of the bushes. Something that had a weird green glow in the moonlight. He squinted, picking out a speck of red in the center of the greenish gleam.
Then, just like that, the glimmer of red was gone.
But Cary heard rustling, followed by the not-so-distant sound of a car engine, and he knew someone had been watching them.
Someone wearing an ugly broach of an octopus with a bright ruby-red eye.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Peyton massaged her temples as she waited for the red light leading from the City Marina to Lockwood Boulevard to change. The massaging wasn’t any more effective than the sea breeze that had blown over her parents’ luxury sailboat.
The headache had bloomed during an evening spent trying to ignore her mother pushing Gaston Gibbs at her.
Peyton’s throbbing head was partly her own fault. She should have been suspicious when her mother dabbed prettily at her eyes, claiming she didn’t understand why Peyton couldn’t spend all day Sunday with her parents rather than just part of it.
She should have figured out that Amelia McDowell would finagle it so that Gaston was on the sailboat with them while Mitch was on shore.
Peyton checked her watch to discover it was nearly midnight, which she’d claimed was too late to join Gaston for a drink but seemed like a fine time to come calling at her lover’s door. Time spent with Mitch should cure her headache. She smiled. Especially if they spent that time in bed.
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