“You’re like the walking dead.”
“Until I came here. You breathed life into me and then…look what happened. She doesn’t want me to have a life.”
“What were you going to do? Run away?”
She looked at him coldly. “I was going to call her to come to me. No one in law enforcement would let it happen. It was the only way it could.”
“And you really think that’s going to work?”
“Nothing else has, right?” She noticed he didn’t argue. “It’s less about finding Mara and more about finding myself,” she explained. “I realize how selfish that sounds.”
“Selfish isn’t always a bad thing.”
“They won’t let me put myself out there for Mara, so I don’t know what else to do.”
“You can do what I asked—talk to me about Mara. About what you’re trying so hard to forget.”
“I thought you didn’t want to profile. I thought you wanted war.”
He stared into her eyes. “Honey, if you think this isn’t war…”
She pressed her lips together, a silent touché. “We’re mirror twins,” she explained. “Her organs are flipped. They’re on the wrong side of her body. Doctors say it doesn’t make a difference, but…”
She shrugged and he wondered how often she and Mara thought about the whole concept of the wrong side. It was too ironic, unsettling, almost nature’s way of pinpointing exactly what was to come.
“Tell me about the twin thing—how you know Mara’s going to hurt someone,” Teige urged. Because now that Kayla had started talking, he wasn’t about to let her stop. Not without a fight.
“It’s so hard to explain. One minute, I’m reading a book and the next, I know that someone’s going to die because of Mara.” She paused. “It’s just like that—nothing spectacular happens before a tragedy. Something should.”
She looked frustrated. He understood. Sometimes, under the harsh light of day, he’d replay every moment of his worst missions, step by step, trying to figure out what the hell he could’ve done different. It was crucial to mission planning—the debriefing helped to ensure the same mistakes weren’t made twice, but that didn’t always work.
He couldn’t have stopped a stray bullet from bouncing at a downward angle into Mac’s skull. He couldn’t make himself unlucky.
It was time to share a little more of his story to keep her from freezing up. “My CO died in front of me.”
“Was it your fault?”
“No, but that doesn’t stop the guilt.”
“But I feel I should be able to stop Mara. I should know her well enough to do that.”
Teige nodded. “I think about all the lives I could’ve saved.”
“All the lives you have saved,” Kayla corrected him. “Like you said about Abby, you know your limits.”
“I do. I did. But you’re pushing me past them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. This is my circle. Our circle.” He paused. “Hoss was Abby’s instructor. Her first boss. Her mentor. That’s the only reason she agreed to take you on, based on the amount of respect she had for him.”
“Full circle,” she echoed.
“She believes in that too.” It was the truth. Abby was good with people, good with victims. She was in the right place and it had nothing to do with the fact that she was scared to be in the field. She was working her strengths. Not everyone had to chase the monsters. Not everyone could.
He knew how to find the patterns, draw the monsters out—part of it was watching his father do it relentlessly, and part of it was his innate ability to read people, to know what they were going to do next, sometimes even before they did, and to react appropriately. What he didn’t know was how to chase the monsters without losing himself. He didn’t think anyone did.
Kayla murmured, “I just feel…lost.”
“We all get lost sometimes. Even you who can see well in the dark. Just because you can see doesn’t mean you know where you’re going.”
“I never knew where I was going. I never fit in. This is the first place people accept me, no questions asked.”
“They do have questions but they know better than to ask them,” he said. “Lots of former military here, with lots of questions we can’t answer.”
“Your jobs were all classified.”
“Pretty much.”
“And the current ones?”
“Not something I’d talk about. Not something you’d want to know about.”
“Because you know me so well.”
“Because no one should know what I do.”
“I want to know it all. I want to know everything about you, and that’s never happened before,” she told him honestly.
The lines around his eyes crinkled when he smiled, which wasn’t often and wasn’t happening now. Her gaze wandered down to his arms, his forearms roped with lean muscle, and his hands were big—the phrase “vise-like grip” was invented for those hands.
“I want to know all about you too.”
“I wish I remembered more,” she confessed. “I mean, I know what I was told. I know we were so poor,” she said, her voice breaking a little as she recited facts she’d been forced to memorize because she couldn’t remember any of it.
She figured the fact that it hurt so bad to talk about made it true.
Better you don’t remember…the mind has a way of protecting you from the bad things…don’t ask questions you aren’t ready to know answers to.
“She was young—maybe sixteen when we were born. He was at least ten years older.”
“He was your biological father.”
“He’s listed on the birth certificate.”
Teige had his phone out and he typed something in now. Notes, no doubt, on what she was telling him. He was on a mission. He was planning.
She understood. It was the same reason she took pictures. Doing something to keep her environment in check made her feel in control.
The only time in recent memory she relished being out of control was when Teige was fucking her. She blushed hotly with those memories and in typical Teige mind-reading fashion, his eyes got heavy lidded with lust.
It was odd, going from talking about her past to feeling this way. She supposed, in an odd way, it was a good thing. Usually, just thinking about it could put her in a funk for days.
She shifted and he put the phone down. “I’d like to avoid this too, but we need to get back to this. And then, when it’s said and done and she’s gone, I’m going to finally move on.”
“I want that for you.”
“You have no idea how badly I want to.” She buried her face in her hands for a few seconds, then looked up and met his gaze steadily. “Dammit, Teige, make me.”
“I’m not giving up.”
She knew he referred to a lot of things, including tracking down Mara. She didn’t want him to—he was already too close to danger. But telling him to stay away was as helpful as trying to get the sun to not rise.
Not going to happen.
“Give yourself some credit—look how strong you’ve been. You testified against her in open court.”
“Every suspect has the right to face their accuser,” she echoed hollowly. “It was a media circus—witness facing off against someone who looks exactly like her. She showed up looking exactly the same as I did—same dress, same hairstyle. It was like looking in a mirror. The jury was confused. Could’ve easily been me. In fact, I’m a little surprised she didn’t try to frame me with physical evidence. I’d be sitting in jail for her crimes. If only she could find a way to match our fingerprints. First, she killed a girl from our neighborhood—the attorneys called it practice.” She shuddered. “Two days later, she killed our adoptive parents. They put the crimes together after that,” she explained. “She was tried as a minor, sent for a psych eval. She escaped from the locked ward—they think she had help from an orderly who went missing that same day. Haven’t found any trace of her since. Mara, they’v
e been close several times.”
“But not close enough.”
Kayla nodded in agreement, tugged the sleeves of her sweater down, pulled them over her hands. She was trying to disappear.
“She found you six times?”
“Twelve,” she corrected. “The trial was a yearlong one. Sensationalized, because of the twin aspect.”
The public had a fascination with identical twins. One was a killer—who’s to say the other wasn’t her accomplice? The mastermind. That’s how the defense attorney tried to paint Kayla, put her on trial as the one who made Mara do her dirty work.
It was a she said, she said situation. And Kayla’s prints were, of course, everywhere.
“It was hard for the jury to pick apart. They felt sorry for her. They started looking at me like I was the monster. Hoss told me I was still getting hate mail. Death threats. He refused to let me read them though. Abby never mentions it but I can’t imagine they’ve suddenly stopped.” She paused. “People still think I’m guilty. A lot of them think I framed Mara.”
“And when she escaped, you were given a new identity and witness protection.”
“New identity. I’m not sure I ever had an old one.” She laughed, almost bitterly. “All I did was try to stay out of her way.”
She’d told this story countless times to countless law enforcement professionals, lawyers, psychologists…and even though Teige hadn’t asked her to start at the beginning, she did.
Her first memory was of white walls and a kind woman’s face above her. She screamed anyway, picking up from where she’d left off when she’d gone unconscious, according to the police reports she forced herself to read years later. She never wanted to see the pictures and Hoss had respected that.
She’d told them to never leave them with her, because one day her resolve wouldn’t be strong, and she knew she’d regret that forever.
Again, Hoss had complied. He’d protected her with his life.
She and Mara had ended up going home with the kind-faced woman and her husband, living with them for the next four years. Healing, or so Kayla had thought. Mara had nothing to heal from, but she’d fooled them all.
“Do you think your adoptive parents knew anything was wrong with Mara?’ Teige asked.
She figured she needed to talk about it now—if she was going to ever get the right kind of help, the combination of Teige and Abby were it. “She’s a psychopath, but people liked her better growing up. Our adoptive parents liked her better.”
“Psychopaths are good at that.”
“I know that now.” She crossed her arms. “At the time, it fucked me up. And I was already angry and fucked up. Fighting all the time. Making out with inappropriate boys. Stealing other girls’ boyfriends away. God, Diane’s right to hate me.”
With that, Teige let out a laugh like she’d never heard before, an honest to goodness belly laugh, and it made her smile too.
When he could speak, he wiped the tears from his eyes and said, “Maybe you and Diane can become best friends.”
She snorted. “Although I do like her car. Not the red, though. I’d want it in black. Or a sleek gray.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“The upshot is that the people who are suspicious of me have a right to be. I was a crazy kid. Mean to the other girls. They always liked Mara better. She always had the friends. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t matter unless you’re the killer. Mara committed the crimes. She’s a good actress, Kayla. Did you ever think she was faking it, playing against you, a twin version of good cop, bad cop?”
How could Mara have been that cunning? More often than not, it was Mara who comforted her, brushed her hair, told her stories to get her to sleep, especially after they moved in with the new family.
“If all that love was a lie, how can I ever believe anything else is true?” she demanded. “Maybe everyone’s just acting. Most of the time, so am I.”
“You can’t put yourself in the same category as her. You know that on some level—you know,” he told her. “Cut it the fuck out, okay?”
“I’m not allowed to have a pity party?”
“You had it. Guests are going home, candles are blown out.”
“I didn’t get any dessert.”
“I’ll give you dessert, if that’s what you want.” His voice was thick with lust; she pictured his cock and balls, full and heavy, swaying as he walked to her.
All of that she’d put on the table and he still wanted her. She didn’t understand it, but wasn’t in the right mind frame to question it either.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kayla felt a chill go down her spine unexpectedly. The superstition said when you got a chill, it meant someone walked across your grave. But when Kayla felt a chill, she knew it was Mara, walking across another victim’s grave.
Mara felt the same connection to her, she supposed. Probably got high off Kayla’s fear and frustration…enjoying the killing even more because it was being done right under Kayla’s nose. But Mara had been looking out for her—she’d been interrupted from setting the fire after killing Hoss, presumably, because she’d seen Kayla coming back into the house.
Hoss’s body sustained forty-five stab wounds. It hadn’t matched the amount Mara had given to any other victim. Kayla was always looking for patterns too but Mara often seemed to do the opposite of what anyone expected of her—the only constant was that each killing brought Kayla more suffering.
The implication appeared to be that, if Kayla hadn’t testified against her, Mara wouldn’t have committed these murders…because she wouldn’t have been convicted.
But serial killers didn’t simply stop. Mara would’ve found other reasons to kill. At least that’s what the research on serial killers had proven time and time again.
After Hoss’s murder, Kayla forced herself to look at those pictures, to see how much fury was behind her sister’s motives. The police hadn’t allowed her back inside the house to see him. And she’d only been gone ten minutes or less, as she’d been in the garage where Hoss had helped her set up a makeshift darkroom.
There was a monitor there, next to Hoss. Which meant that Mara had watched her while she’d killed Hoss.
God, she had to stop thinking about this.
Teige said you need to do the exact opposite. She had to respect the man, since he lived with nightmares of his own.
“Abby just called—a quiet night. She’s headed to the office. You’ll stay with me and I’ll keep an eye on the house,” Teige told her now. She was at the top of the stairs and he was at the door, talking to the mailman. “Hey¸ I’m taking in Kayla’s mail for the next couple of days.”
“Here you go, Teige.” The mailman was the same man, rain or shine, and since it was a small town, he didn’t need Teige to fill out a form or prove what he was saying was true. It was both rattling and comforting.
When he’d closed the door, she’d come down the stairs to find him looking through the mail—mostly catalogues and stuff that Abby had signed her up for in order to give the appearance that Kayla had existed before several months ago—and frowning at one of the envelopes before looking up at her.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He held it up. “It’s from Penny.”
She took the plain white envelope from him and turned it over in her hands. “Maybe it’s a check? I told her she didn’t have to pay me but…maybe she got the job.”
“Job?”
“She was flying to New York for a callback. Probably right after you took Hanny back from her.” She tore the envelope open and stared at the picture. It took what felt like minutes for her mind to adjust to what she was seeing in front of her. Teige was behind her, his hands on her shoulders, soft at first and then the grip got tighter when he realized what—who—he was looking at.
A picture of her and Penny. Except it wasn’t her with Penny. It was Mara, with Penny in New York City. The picture began to shake—she was holding
it tightly, unable to let it go, trembling with fear and rage and anger.
What did this mean?
She couldn’t put voice to those words, even though, inside her mind she was screaming it, over and over.
Penny was dead.
Finally, she heard herself screaming out loud, wanted desperately to let go of the picture but she couldn’t drop it from her fingers, no matter how hard she tried.
When she finally was able to let go, there was dried, flaking blood on her hands.
Penny’s blood.
She began screaming even louder.
*
Teige saw the blood, the picture and was dialing the phone even as he pulled her close. “Abby, get over here and bring a forensic team. And call a doctor.”
She was holding her hands up to him, trying to pull away, no doubt to wash the blood off. But she couldn’t, not until Abby or the police tested the blood.
The door swung open. Teige turned, relieved, but instead of Abby, it was Diane, with several police officers trailing behind her. What the… “What’s wrong, Diane?”
Hanny was barking, refusing to leave Abby’s side except for a brief lunge at Diane. Teige grabbed Hanny’s collar and ordered her back.
“I know what she is,” Diane said furiously, pointing at Kayla, moving toward them. Teige let go of Kayla to catch and drag Diane backward.
For a long second, no one said anything. As Diane struggled, Kayla took several steps toward Diane and even though Teige tried to block them from each other, Kayla got close enough to Diane to ask in a hoarse voice, “Tell me what you think I am.”
“You’re a killer,” Diane spat.
Kayla reached out to lunge for Diane’s neck, demanding, “Who told you that?”
“Your sister,” Diane screeched before Teige managed to stop Kayla’s hand from reaching its target. At that point, all hell broke loose. The cop tried to grab Kayla, who fought, just as Abby and Jacoby walked in. Teige managed to move Diane into the kitchen and away from everything, but somehow, Kayla wrangled loose and followed.
“You need to let the police arrest her,” Diane was telling him.
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