Double Take. Leigh Riker

his jaw, experimenting, she supposed, to see if it was broken. “I went back to McKenzie for my last name. Might as well,” he added. “Preserve the family heritage, you know.”

      Cameron continued to study him. Did he know, somehow, that their father was dead? Whatever he had done, Kyle had a right to know. He deserved her loyalty—at least until they were alone.

      She spun around on Ransom. “You are out of your mind.”

      His jaw set. “Some guy pounces on you in the middle of the night, and I’m not supposed to react?” He shook his head, obviously disgusted. “You are an accident waiting to happen.”

      “If so, it’s my accident. I didn’t ask you to be my bloodhound.”

      “I’m a trained bloodhound. The habit’s hard to break.”

      Cameron turned back to her brother, who was blotting his mouth with a handkerchief. The simple motion touched her. James had always carried one and Kyle had learned the habit from him at an early age. Taking over the job, she tsked at the amount of blood she saw oozing from his cut lip. “He didn’t break anything, did he?”

      “Teeth all here. My jaw still works,” he muttered behind the linen, which smelled of James’s favored aftershave, too. She stooped down to retrieve his package and handed it back to him.

      “Come inside. I need to see you in the light.”

      She didn’t mean only to clean his wound. Before she opened the door to the lobby that was decorated for Christmas, Ransom reached out to do it for her then ushered them inside. Cameron balked.

      “Where do you think you’re going?”

      “Upstairs. With you.” Nodding to the doorman, who stepped back at the look in his eyes, he punched the elevator button. “I’m hoping he’ll listen to sense, since it’s clear you won’t.”

      “What’s this all about, Cam?”

      At Kyle’s shortened version of her name—older brother to kid sister—she felt her resistance to him weaken. Kyle was five years older than Cameron. No matter what he’d done long ago, he was still family, and for the first time since their father’s murder, she wanted to collapse in grief, surrender to it at last. Feel safe in Kyle’s arms. Or could she? Cameron glanced into her brother’s brown eyes.

      “Let’s go upstairs,” she agreed with Ransom.

      If Kyle didn’t know about their father, she wanted him to hear it now from her. But she also wanted his presence to protect her—from Ransom.

      IN HER LIVING ROOM, perched on the chair arm while Kyle told her about his life since she’d last seen him, Cameron helped him pat disinfectant over his bruised jaw. The skin was already beginning to turn a dark, mottled purple and she could almost see the imprint of Ransom’s knuckles. He packed a mean punch. All that training, she supposed. From the look of him, he spent time in a gym, too, and she’d felt all that hard muscle and powerful strength up close, against her, at her door only last night. Now Cameron refused to glance his way. Despite her snarled feelings about her estranged brother, Kyle was more welcome in her home than any government agent.

      She still couldn’t believe Kyle had just stepped out of the dark—out of her past—like this. After her unsuccessful search to find him, she’d given up. By then, James was gone and his ashes were in the copper urn on her mantel. What was the point? The crisis, she decided, had passed. If Kyle didn’t locate her one day, he would have to remain a shadowy part of her childhood.

      Cameron glanced at the mantel. If they did reconnect and she forgave him, she and Kyle would scatter their father’s remains—together—near their family’s original home. Near their mother’s final resting place, too.

      Now he had found her, but seeing him again continued to unsettle her. He hadn’t reacted much to the news of their father’s death. But then he and Kyle had been poles apart for so long, she admitted. One minute she wanted to lash out, to punish him for leaving years ago, for not being there when James died. In the next…should she climb onto his lap, as she had at the age of five, or hug him as she had at twelve, the night he left their family? Any comfort seemed better than none at all.

      Kyle winced then set the peroxide bottle on the crate Cameron used for an end table. “I’m sorry as hell, Cam. About Dad, too. But I only discovered where you were—where you are—a few days ago. When I got to New York, I looked in the phone book, then called Information.” He held her gaze, as if fearing she would send him away. “I do that everywhere I go. I check every name of yours that I remember from the program, plus your real name. I’m glad you returned to that when you left the program. Glad you didn’t invent an entirely new one.”

      “I’ve changed names too many times in my life. I don’t need another.” Her forceful tone was meant for Ransom.

      “Yeah,” Kyle said, “I know how that was.”

      Ransom shot her a look and Cameron stilled. There was another reason she’d taken back her own name, and after all this time she finally recognized it. “I…guess I wanted you to be able to find me. If I used another name—again—you never would.”

      Kyle agreed, then bypassed any further talk about James. Catching up, he told her about his career in the aerospace industry. He lived in Houston now—or had, until a recent job layoff caused by the loss of a government contract—but had traveled a great deal. In part on business but partly, he claimed, to be able to hunt for Cameron and, even now and then, for their father. “I wanted to make amends,” he finished.

      “If you were so determined to find Cameron,” Ransom murmured, “why not use the Internet? You can find anybody’s number there—except your father’s, of course.”

      Kyle didn’t answer, but Cameron noted he was careful not to make eye contact with Ransom. She didn’t bother to hide her own disapproval. Why was Ransom hanging around? Why didn’t he leave?

      Ransom was roaming the small apartment like a convict on death row. Every time he met her gaze, which Cameron, too, tried to avoid, his eyes seemed to darken another shade. His barely leashed intensity bounced off the walls. They were beginning to close in on Cameron, too. Like Ransom. She didn’t have to look at him to feel that slow heat inside, to sense his nearness.

      “I’m sorry about your job troubles,” she told Kyle, redirecting her own thoughts, “and just before Christmas, too.”

      He dismissed his business failure. “I’ll get another. In the meantime, I have interviews—some here—plus unemployment benefits.” He moved his package aside on the chair cushion. Even those small gestures were her father’s, too. Maybe the years apart no longer mattered. “Of course, I also have bills to pay.”

      Considering the circumstances, Cameron felt a strange sense of welcome peace wash through her. Even his total estrangement from James couldn’t override her relationship with him. With Kyle she wasn’t alone in this…whatever it was.

      She didn’t buy Ransom’s theories about Destina. But Kyle, it turned out, wasn’t as sure. While Ransom filled him in on his version of Destina, he listened intently.

      “So you think Venuto is responsible for our father’s death?” he asked Ransom. “And Cameron may be his target, too?”

      Cameron clenched her teeth. She wouldn’t say a word. Let Kyle sort this out, come to the same conclusion she had, send Ransom on his way. For that alone, she might forgive Kyle. When Ransom finished his rant about the still-open investigation, Cameron added, “But no one has tried to reach me.” She held both arms out. “See? I survived last night by myself. I’d have been fine all day without you staking out my employer’s apartment, watching everyone who came and went.”

      “The doorman and I found a lot to talk about.”

      “Revenge?” Kyle was still working through Ransom’s theory. “After all this time? That’s hard to believe—”

      “Destina