Battle Tested. Janie Crouch

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СКАЧАТЬ probably don’t believe me, but you’re the only man I’ve been with for a long time.” The only man she’d allowed herself to trust in a long time.

      “Yeah, well, once the kid is born, there are paternity tests that are probably in our best interests to complete.”

      Rosalyn knew she shouldn’t be hurt given what had happened between them but she couldn’t help it. “Of course. I don’t expect you to just believe me.”

      Now that the Watcher had found her again, she needed Steve’s help whether he believed her or not. She had more than just herself to look out for. Steve didn’t know the entire situation but at least she knew she could trust him.

      Steve ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I’m not trying to be an ass. You’ve caught me off guard on multiple levels here. But I need some answers.”

      “Okay. I have a room at a hotel a few miles from here. Let’s go there.”

      * * *

      ROSALYN WAS ALIVE.

      Rosalyn was alive and pregnant. Steve could hardly get his head around the first part, much less the second.

      She was sitting right in front of him in a pretty scary run-down hotel room they’d driven to in her car, eating a packet of crackers. He was sitting in the desk chair that he’d pulled over and placed right in front of the bed just watching her. Like her eating crackers was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.

      Did she need more food than that? Was she taking care of herself? Had she been seeing a doctor throughout her pregnancy to make sure everything was okay?

      Was the baby honestly his? They had used protection. But he knew accidents still happened.

      He wanted to believe her when she’d said yes. She’d taken off her jacket and he could more clearly see the outline of her stomach under the T-shirt she wore. There was very definitely a baby bump. Not one that had her waddling or anything like that, but very definitely pregnant. Someone as petite as Rosalyn couldn’t hide it.

      He wanted to ask her all sorts of questions about her pregnancy but had so many other questions to ask that those got pushed to the back burner.

      Steve sorted through important information for a living, made decisions on where Omega’s Critical Response team would go and what they would do, based on his reading of a situation. Knowing what questions to ask to get the information he needed was his job. And lives depended on his ability to do it well.

      But damned if he knew where to start with Rosalyn.

      The dead body seemed the most reasonable place.

      “So the woman I identified in the morgue—”

      “Like I said, my identical twin, Lindsey Rose Mellinger. My mom—in a fit of soberness—thought it was quite clever.”

      Rosalyn and Lindsey Rose. “The reversal of each other. Well, almost.”

      She nodded. “Yeah. And it ended up being true in just about everything. We were twins, but we were complete opposites. Very different from each other except for how we looked.”

      “When was the last time you saw your sister alive?”

      Tears came to Rosalyn’s eyes, but she brushed them away. “At least a year and a half ago. We’ve never been close but grew even further apart as adults. Lindsey was in and out of drug rehab all the time. She still lived in Mobile.”

      “And that’s where you’re from?” Steve already knew the answer to that but wondered if she would lie.

      “Yes, but I haven’t lived there for nearly a year.”

      Steve wondered where she’d been for the past six months, but he’d get to that.

      “Do you know anything about your sister’s death?”

      She shook her head. “No, but she was murdered, wasn’t she?”

      “What makes you say that?”

      This time the tears overflowed before Rosalyn could wipe them away. “Lindsey was in Pensacola because I asked her to meet me. We were supposed to meet at a restaurant a few blocks from here two days ago, but she never showed up.”

      She gave him the name and address of a local café. Lindsey’s body had been found inside her car very close to that area.

      “Lindsey’s pretty flighty,” Rosalyn continued. “I thought she’d just gotten the day or time wrong. Or that she was high again. I didn’t know she was dead until a waiter showed me a tiny section of the local paper that stated the police were looking for information about a deceased Jane Doe who looked exactly like me.”

      Rosalyn stood up and grabbed a tissue from the box on the small desk. “I was coming by this afternoon to identify the body when I saw you.”

      “You said she did drugs a lot, so what makes you think she was murdered? Don’t you think it’s more likely something happened with her drug abuse?”

      “Normally, yes.” She sat back down. “But I suspect foul play because she was meeting me.”

      “I don’t understand.”

      Rosalyn’s blue eyes bore into him. “You saw her body, right?”

      Steve nodded.

      “I’ll answer your questions, I promise. But first please tell me, was she murdered?”

      Steve couldn’t see any good in lying to her. “Yes, I’m sorry. She was strangled in her car.”

      Rosalyn began to cry quietly, holding her face in her hands. Steve moved to sit next to her. No matter what had happened between the two of them, he would never deny comfort to someone who had lost a family member.

      “I had hoped you would tell me something different. That it was related to drugs,” she finally said.

      “I don’t understand why you don’t think it would’ve been.” In Steve’s experience, when regular people heard a family member had died, they did not assume it was murder. And if Lindsey had been involved in illegal drugs, Steve didn’t know why Rosalyn didn’t assume the murder wasn’t centered around that.

      Because Rosalyn knew something. Something she wasn’t telling him.

      “Rosalyn.” He tilted a finger under her chin so she was looking directly at him. “Tell me. Whatever is going on, I need you to tell me.”

      She tried to look away, but he wouldn’t let her.

      “I can’t.” Another tear slid silently down her cheek. “I can’t risk you too.”

      Steve stared at the tiny woman—tiny, pregnant woman—determined to protect him. Why would she care about him if he was just someone she had scammed and robbed? Either way, he was getting to the bottom of all this.

      “I can take care of myself, Rosalyn. Just tell me what’s going on.”

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