Look-Alike. Rita Herron

why had he?

      Too much tequila and a weakness for a sexy woman? Dreams of a family, one to replace the one he’d lost as a kid?

      He’d lay off booze and women from now on.

      Scraping a hand over his beard stubble, he skimmed the paltry personal information he’d accumulated so far. They hadn’t talked about their families, their pasts; they’d been too busy making love. Whispering promises.

      When he’d checked her records after she’d disappeared, he’d learned she was an only child. Her parents had died years ago. And when he’d questioned the patrons at the Steel Toe he’d realized that he knew nothing about his wife. That she’d had no intention of settling down with him. She’d been cheating on him from the start, had played him for a fool.

      He just didn’t know the reason.

      Frustrated, he slammed the folder shut. He’d revisit that honky-tonk and question the locals again, especially the bartender. And he’d take Caitlin with him. If she really were suffering from amnesia, the place might trigger her memories.

      Knowing he had to call Agent Brown and fill him in, he punched in the man’s number. “It’s Monahue.”

      “Yeah?”

      “Listen, I want you to come to my place. We have to talk.”

      “You can’t tell me over the phone?”

      “No, it’s too important.” He wanted to see the agent’s reaction. See if he could tell the look-alikes apart.

      Brown agreed, and they disconnected, then he phoned the M.E.’s office. An image of his wife lying on the cold steel table amidst the medical examiner’s tools hit him, churning up more misery. Then he glanced at the imprint of the woman’s body in his bed, and his head spun with confusion.

      Was the dead woman his wife, or had his wife returned to him, frail and suffering from amnesia?

      

      “LOOK, SHERIFF MONAHUE, I’m backed up, but I’m going to work on her this afternoon.” Dr. Arthur Mullins gripped a scalpel in one hand, the phone tucked beneath one ear while he eyed the seventy-five-year-old man who’d lost his life the day before. “I’ve had bodies stacked up with that pileup on the interstate yesterday. You’ll have to be patient.”

      “You know time is of the essence in a murder case,” Miles barked. “Make this one a priority.”

      “Don’t worry, I’ll do my job, you do yours.”

      “Not a problem. But I need extensive DNA testing to verify the woman’s identity.”

      Mullins twisted his mouth in confusion. “I thought you identified her yourself.”

      “There’s been a complication.” Miles paused. “I think the woman has a twin. We have to be sure which one of them was murdered, so I’ll need dental records checked as well as any medical files we can locate.”

      Mullins agreed to run every test possible, chewing on the information as he hung up and walked over to the steel slab to study Caitlin Collier. He hadn’t been lying about the bodies stacked up; he had his hands full.

      The scent of formaldehyde, the drills and saws and instruments he used in his trade, offended some people, even turned their stomachs. But he had always been infatuated with the human body.

      Especially the dead ones.

      A smile curved his mouth as he lifted the woman’s pale, bloodstained, battered hand. He was an expert at his job. He would find out everything he could from this woman’s corpse. After all, he worked for the law.

      Any evidence he discovered would help them nail her killer.

      Chapter Four

      As hot water sluiced over Caitlin’s skin, she luxuriated in the sensation of being free from the probing eyes of the nurse at the mental institution, who had invaded virtually every aspect of her life, including her personal regimen of bathing. “For all we know, honey, you might try to drown yourself in the shower,” the nurse had said.

      And she had been tempted to…. Anything to escape the tormenting sessions in that room.

      Another, deeper kind of agony consumed her. Her hope for finding the truth, and her family, had been the thread that had kept her sane during her ordeal at the hospital.

      But now her only surviving family member was dead.

      Grief erupted inside her, tearing at her insides. Although she thought she’d cried all her tears the night before, once again sobs wracked her body. She didn’t fight the emotions. If Nora was really dead, then a part of her had died as well.

      How was it possible that her sister was gone? Fleeting memories of her childhood flashed before her eyes, spotty and confusing, yet she remembered cuddling in bed with her look-alike and whispering in their own secret language, a special way of talking that had allowed them to communicate without their parents, teachers or virtually anyone else understanding their exchanges. A language and closeness she could never share with anyone else.

      She struggled for more details of the past, her later years, but she felt as if her memories had been stolen and only tidbits of her life remained, all jumbled together as if they’d been dumped into a big cauldron and stirred, leaving her to piece together the rest. Where had she lived before she’d been admitted into the hospital? How had she wound up restrained in a psych ward? Had Nora even known she’d been missing, or had someone kidnapped her at the same time and kept her hostage?

      The fact that Nora had turned up dead the same day she had escaped the mental hospital was bizarre. Did her escape have something to do with her sister’s murder? Was it her fault Nora had been killed?

      God, no…

      She clutched her stomach as guilt assaulted her. She needed Nora, couldn’t accept the fact that her actions might have gotten her sister murdered. What if she knew who had killed her sister but she’d blocked out that memory as well?

      And how could she survive alone? She and her sister had been so close they were like two halves of the same person.

      Bits and pieces of her past sprang back to haunt her, like snippets from someone else’s life that she was watching through a camera. The phone calls to Nora that hadn’t been returned. The worry that her sister was in trouble.

      She soaped her hair, driving her fingers into her scalp, desperately trying to keep the images at bay, but other disturbing ones followed, images of a life that didn’t fit with her desire for a family. Images of nights when she’d performed at a smoky bar. Nights she’d drunk too much and partied into the wee hours of the morning. Nights she’d flirted and caroused with men, crawling into a stranger’s bed and waking up God knows where.

      Men…there had been lots of men.

      Was that how she’d met Miles Monahue?

      She closed her eyes, willing away the awful feeling that she had done more than that, that she had sold herself for a good time and hurt others in the process. But she’d never hurt Nora…would she?

      Panic squeezed the air from her lungs as she struggled to remember more, but a black emptiness swallowed the rest. Her tears finally exhausted, she rinsed her hair, stepped from the shower and wrapped a towel around her, shivering in the chilly air.

      She had to understand the reason she’d married Miles Monahue, or if he had married Nora instead. And she’d do whatever necessary to find out what had happened to Nora, and if she were to blame for her sister’s death.

      

      THE SHOWER WATER kicked off just as Miles started breakfast. Thank God. It was too damn tempting having Caitlin back in his house, in his bed, in his shower naked. He wanted to go to her, throw her on the bed and demand some answers.

      Hell, he wanted to strip his clothes, run his hands over her silky skin,