Mistaken Twin

by Jodie Bailey

  Still, Logan’s past was enough to make Wyatt even more suspicious of the link between the panel truck on Overton Road and the attacks on Jenna. While Wyatt believed Jenna was telling the truth about her relationship with Logan, she was still hiding something. There had been too many gaps in her story. The best thing to do was to keep her close, to gain her trust and pray she eventually spilled something to let the authorities stop men like Logan Cutter from taking up a strategic position in Mountain Springs.

  He’d run a quick search on Jenna, too. Her name hadn’t raised any red flags on the databases he had access to. In order to search deeper, he’d have to go through the department’s system. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. While he knew she was holding back, he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out how much.

  Sitting back on the couch, he ran his tongue over his teeth. He felt every bit like he’d slept in his clothes last night. Too hot, grimy from head to toe. At some point, he’d have to hand Jenna over to another officer so he could run home and grab a shower, but he wouldn’t stay gone long. No way was he going off duty at nine as scheduled. Whether they paid him overtime or not, he was sticking close to Jenna Clark.

  Despite her hiding something, he’d developed a grudging admiration for her and a white-hot anger at any man who’d treat a woman the way she’d been treated. Domestic abuse was his hot button, ever since his first call as a rookie cop. His army deployments had shown him the worst of mankind, but he’d never expected to encounter the level of violence on the home front as he’d encountered on a fateful August day a few years earlier.

  Julia Pritchett had made a frantic phone call to 911 when her husband, Chad, flew at her in his latest drunken rage. By the time Wyatt and other officers on duty arrived, Chad was already firing out the window, determined to go down shooting.

  The bullet that grazed Wyatt’s shoulder had sent a burning shock through him. He’d made it through two deployments unscathed only to get hit at home. Mind racing, fear pumping, he’d watched the situation spiral out of control, had been powerless to do anything but take cover with the other officers, to wait for help to come from the county...

  To listen helplessly as Chad pulled the trigger two final times, ending Julia’s life and his own.

  Those deaths had nearly broken Wyatt, had sent his mind spiraling through a series of what-ifs. What if the bullet had been a few small inches to the left? What if Julia had pressed charges sooner? What if Wyatt had been brave enough to storm the house and neutralize the threat before it was too late?

  He’d given the guilt to God, forgiven himself and even Chad, but he carried one very important lesson from those events... Never, ever lose control of the situation.

  He prayed daily for God to protect his family and the people of Mountain Springs, and then Wyatt suited up and went out to be the hands and feet to do the work.

  Meanwhile, half a continent away, Jenna Clark had been facing her own nightmare.

  Respect dulled the edge of his wariness. While the lawman in him couldn’t necessarily approve of her methods, it had taken a special kind of courage for her to leave everything and start over where she knew no one and had nothing. From the outside, she’d built a decent living at The Color Café, though she was by no means rich.

  He glanced around the apartment. Shelley Nelson, who owned the historic building, had done some updates before Jenna came to town, but the sleek paint and the polished hardwood were all Jenna’s time and muscle. Well, Jenna’s and Erin’s. She’d even managed to make the hodgepodge of furniture Shelley had gathered look as though it was meant to be a collection. Slightly artsy and a little bit funky, the space was much like the woman who called it home.

  “Want some coffee?”

  Jumping to his feet, Wyatt turned and found Jenna standing at the end of the bar. He hadn’t even heard her approach.

  She’d towel dried her auburn hair and it hung in waves, barely skimming the shoulders of her loose purple sweater. Padding around in blue jeans and bare feet with her face scrubbed free of makeup, she almost looked like a lost teenager.

  A fierce protectiveness surged. He’d made her a promise last night, a promise to catch Logan Cutter and set her free. He was more determined than ever to keep it.

  The ferocity of the emotion caught Wyatt off guard. He cleared his throat. She was waiting for an answer to a question he’d nearly forgotten. Oh, wait... “Coffee? You don’t have a pot.” He’d spent the first few minutes after she went to bed picking glass out of her kitchen sink so she wouldn’t have to see the reminder.

  Jenna’s expression clouded, then she lifted a sheepish shrug. “Always have a spare coffee maker, Stephens. Makes life more livable.”

  When she turned and walked into the kitchen, Wyatt followed and took a seat on a bar stool across the counter from her. “What is it with you and coffee? It was your first instinct last night and again this morning.”

  She didn’t turn, simply reached beneath the counter, pulled out what looked to be an older inexpensive coffee maker and plugged it in next to the stove. “Coffee’s cheap.”

  “Okay...”

  “When I was a kid and my mother would take off, there wasn’t a lot of food in the house. She never got around to applying for any kind of aid. We lived on PB and J and white bread and milk. There was no money for splurging on treats, but coffee and sugar and milk go a long way. So if it was a rough night or I was more upset than usual, Amy would make coffee, load it full of milk and sugar, and we’d sit in the den and pretend we were all grown, in college, hanging at the coffee shop.” Jenna paused with the coffee bag in her hands and stared at the contents, then inhaled deeply. “She had a way of making the hard times more like a game. So now...” She shrugged again and started scooping coffee into the filter.

  So now it was her way of feeling closer to her sister, of comforting herself. “Kind of ironic God gave you a business where you can sell coffee and found you an apartment over a coffee shop, huh?”

  She chuckled and pressed the button on the coffee maker before she turned to him. “It always smells really good in here, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  He had. The scent of brewing coffee permeated the apartment, both from Jenna’s machine and the larger ones downstairs as well.

  “You mentioned God.” Jenna sighed and leaned against the counter, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ve trusted Him the past three years, ever since Erin walked in on day one and started helping me paint the shop. I didn’t even know her. She walked into the building and jumped right in, started talking about Jesus, and it made sense. Thing is...” Her green eyes, hazy and troubled, met his. “He didn’t answer my prayers, did He? He didn’t keep me safe.”

  Her doubt prickled along Wyatt’s spine. He couldn’t let her lose faith because of a man like Logan. “His not operating in exactly the way you expect Him to doesn’t mean He doesn’t care.”

  “Maybe.” Jenna turned and grabbed two blue pottery mugs from the cabinet, then set them onto the counter with a thunk that signaled some sort of finality. “But it does mean my trust might have been misplaced.”

  Wyatt opened his mouth to argue, but his phone buzzed on the coffee table. He hesitated, not wanting to leave her with her misconceptions, but being alert to the dangers of the real world took precedence.

  Reluctantly, he slipped from the stool and crossed the room to retrieve his phone.

  “How is Jenna this morning?” Chief Thompson’s voice was all business.

  Wyatt glanced over his shoulder to where Jenna was pouring creamer into a mug. He stepped toward the window, out of sight around the edge of the hallway, and lowered his voice. “Still a little shaken. I want to stay with her today.” He braced himself for the answer. Arch Thompson was all about protocol, and making sure Wyatt was rested was part of the protocol.

  “You know, I wasn’t kidding when I said I wanted somebody with her 24/7 until we
get to the bottom of what’s going on here. With the information you sent over this morning, I’m even more concerned than ever with finding out what she knows and with keeping her out of harm’s way until she can tell us, but you have to rest at some point.”

  “I slept after I sent the info to you this morning.”

  “It couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours.” Chief Thompson made a clicking sound with his tongue. “I’ll send Hayes over in a few minutes so you can go home and get cleaned up. Early took a couple of hours of leave this morning. Nina’s sick.”

  That made sense. Early would do anything for his sister. “I hope she’s okay.” Nina Early was a sophomore at Appalachian State. Their parents had been killed in a skiing accident a couple of years earlier, and she was all Brian had left. “I’ll check in with him later.”

  “Do it. And if you promise me you’ll find a way to rest, I’ll keep you with Jenna. Truth is, with your military experience, I’m a little more comfortable with you taking point on this one anyway.” A veteran himself, Arch Thompson knew the rigors of training and combat.

  “I’ll be safe.”

  “I know you will.” The line was muffled for a second, probably because the chief was shifting hands. He did that a lot—passed the radio or the phone from hand to hand, particularly when he was tense. “I contacted Agent Connor Nance, who headed the investigation last fall, and let him know what’s going on. They’re sending a small team to sniff around, see if this was an isolated incident or something to worry about. They want to stay low-key, so don’t expect a big presence. You may not even see them. Jenna is to go about her normal routine with them watching. They’ll steer clear of contacting her, let anybody watching think we’re the sole law-enforcement presence in the vicinity. Might make our bad guys get comfortable enough to make a mistake.”

  Wyatt wasn’t a fan of putting Jenna out in the open, but there wasn’t a choice. “Got it.”

  “There’s more.” The way Chief Thompson’s voice dropped caused Wyatt to stand taller. “I mentioned Logan Cutter to the Feds, asked them about the sealed court records, if they were tracking him.”

  “And?”

  “And the news isn’t good.”

  Wyatt tightened his grip on the phone. Whatever information the Feds had passed on, it was about to make everything much worse.

  FIVE

  Jenna slid a plate of toast on the counter in front of the stool Wyatt had vacated a few minutes earlier and set the dish of butter and a jar of Liza’s homemade fig preserves next to it. Feeding him was the least she could do after he’d slept on her lumpy couch the night before.

  Even though her own stomach was too squirrelly to handle more than dry toast, eating was necessary. She’d get all swimmy headed if she didn’t force herself to eat something soon, and losing her edge was the last thing she needed.

  She poured coffee over the creamer in her mug, wrapped her fingers around the ceramic and leaned against the counter, closing her eyes and letting the warmth take her to the past, to a time when life had been a bit less dramatic, though still complicated. It had been a few minutes since the low rise and fall of Wyatt’s voice had ceased, but he hadn’t returned to the kitchen yet.

  Maybe he’d fallen asleep on the couch, since there was no way he’d caught much rest the night before. He’d been going full tilt by the time she went to bed, and she could still hear his laptop keys clicking when she fell asleep close to four.

  The light shifted and she cracked open one eye slightly.

  Wyatt stood at the bar, staring at the plate she’d set there. “This for me?”

  “Thought you might be hungry. Sorry, but toast is all I have. I usually go downstairs and grab a breakfast sandwich from Shelley’s, but I figured with everything going on you’d want me to play today low-key, stay out of sight.”

  Wyatt’s jaw shifted as though he was trying to find a hidden message in the toast. Or, as usual, he didn’t trust her.

  “I promise I’m not trying to poison you. The butter’s straight from Starlight Farms, and Liza made the preserves. I added nothing.”

  “Good to know.” He raised his head to look at her, his eyes bearing an unreadable expression projecting something like sadness...or maybe confusion. It was hard to tell. She’d seen a whole lot more emotions out of him in the past nine or so hours than she had in the past three years, so she was still learning to sort them all out.

  “What’s wrong?” Jenna lowered her mug and held it against her stomach, dread twisting around the few bites of toast she’d managed to choke down. “Is Erin okay? Jason? Liza?”

  “Everybody’s fine.” He looked down at her across the counter and the difference in their height seemed to double. He cut an imposing figure, still in his uniform, still at the ready to defend her from whatever he wasn’t saying.

  Jenna set her cup onto the counter, wrapped her fingers around the edge of the cool granite counter and hung on tight. “What is it?”

  “For starters, the FBI and Homeland Security are involved.”

  The air left her lungs in a rush. “What?”

  “They need you to go in and open the shop today. Everything in your life needs to continue on exactly the same way as it did before last night. You have to act like you think the men we caught are the ones who were after you and you think you’re safe.”

  “Wyatt, are you serious?” She wasn’t safe. She’d told him as much the night before. From what the man in her apartment had said, there was money on the table. Anyone in Logan’s circle could come hunting for her, especially if the two who’d been after her last night had given out her location.

  “I know this is hard.” The lines around Wyatt’s eyes deepened, almost as though it pained him to say this as much as it pained her to hear it. “Chances are, for the moment, you’re out of the woods. If there really is a price out for you, the two men we have in custody would keep your location to themselves for as long as possible. They wouldn’t want to get scooped. Think about it. They lose money if word gets out you’re here, especially while they’re in custody and can’t make a move.”

  Jenna drew her upper lip between her teeth and ran her thumb along the smooth edge of the counter, almost daring to feel relieved. His theory made sense, sort of. “But how did they find me in the first place?”

  “I don’t know. We’re waiting for them to be questioned.”

  “Okay.” She nodded and stared at the badge on his chest. He’d promised to keep her safe. Surely he wouldn’t put her in danger on purpose. “So why do I have to open the shop?”

  His chest lifted as though he was preparing for battle, and Jenna braced herself. Going out into the open when she was a potential target wasn’t the worst thing he was going to say to her this morning. Dread swirled in her stomach. Her whole life had changed three years ago, had taken another twist last night and was about to hit a spiraling loop again, no doubt.

  She wanted off this roller coaster.

  “The Feds want you to see if you recognize anyone who comes in to the shop. They also want you to keep an eye out on the tourists who are in town as they pass by. You have those huge windows along the front of the shop.”

  “This isn’t about Logan, is it?” Something bigger was going on, something more than a man out to violently take back someone he believed belonged to him.

  “It’s not.”

  “That’s why the FBI is involved.”

  “Yes.”

  Jenna had lived her life facing her problems head-on, tackling them into submission, finding the solution. Now wasn’t the time to knuckle under and be passive. Now was the time to fight. She tried to stand taller, but straightening her spine didn’t put her anywhere near eye to eye with Wyatt Stephens, whose expression spoke of a troubled determination to bring justice to whatever situation was unfolding faster than she could process it.

  “You sa
id Logan was...” His jaw tightened and jutted forward slightly as though Logan’s crimes were too terrible to utter aloud.

  Jenna nodded once. They were too terrible to hear, too. She’d lived the horror once of finding out what kind of man she’d handed her life over to. She didn’t need to relive it ever again.

  “Logan Cutter wasn’t merely a buyer, Jen.” He wouldn’t look away from her but held her gaze as though he understood the news he was about to deliver was going to rock her world.

  He didn’t have to say it. Jenna’s fingers went to her mouth, pressing against her lips so tightly her teeth dug in. “No.” She was going to be sick. To pass out. Her body was going to rebel, to do anything other than absorb what Wyatt was about to tell her about the man she’d once thought loved her.

  Logan was a much more horrifying monster than even her worst nightmares had imagined. She swallowed hard and dropped her hands to the counter, seeking balance, something to hold her steady against an onslaught of vicious truth. “What was he doing?”

  “His company was a front. All of the ‘equipment’ he was moving around Texas was—”

  “Was people.” She backed away and her knees gave out, her back resting against the refrigerator as she slid to the floor and buried her head between her knees. She’d lived under his roof, eaten his food, shared his life. All of it bought with—with...

  Her eyebrows drew together so tightly her head ached. Her eyes and nose burned with tears that wouldn’t come. Her ears buzzed.