Identical Stranger. Alice Sharpe

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СКАЧАТЬ the pictures later and we’ll go from there.”

      She started to argue with him, but he stood firm. Her eyes were bloodshot and she kept rolling her shoulders as though yesterday’s fall had hurt her neck or back. “Please, Sabrina. Get some sleep. In the long run, it will make everything go faster. Trust me.”

      She finally agreed and he insisted on escorting her to her hotel next door and upstairs. They exited the elevator and turned toward the long, beige hall as a man in coveralls carrying a toolbox entered the freight elevator a few steps away. Jack heard the whirring of the motor as it descended.

      “Where’s your luggage?” he asked after Sabrina had opened her door and he’d preceded her into her room.

      “Still in my car.”

      He checked the locked door to the balcony, the bathroom and the closet. “What are you driving?”

      “Buzz’s old SUV. Why?”

      “If you’ll give me your keys I’ll run down and get your things for you,” he told her.

      “All I want to do is climb under those blankets and sleep. I’ll get everything later.”

      “Okay, but don’t forget to slide the dead bolt after me,” he added and fervently hoped that when this was all said and done, Buzz would understand why Jack didn’t immediately get ahold of him no matter where he was.

      Before he settled into a good chair in the lobby, he bought a cup of coffee at a kiosk he suspected had been created to service the dozens of human resource conference attendees milling around the hotel. As far as dropping everything to drive here, that hadn’t been all that hard. He was in the middle of two cases but he got a buddy to cover one and the other could simmer a couple of days. The only other thing he’d had to do was cancel a date he hadn’t been real interested in going on anyway.

      Phone on camera mode, he clandestinely began taking pictures of every adult male he saw, customer or employee, bearded or clean shaven, tagged with a conference badge or not. Some of them seemed highly unlikely when compared with the brief description Sabrina had given—no facial hair, too heavy or tall or short—but all those things could be altered by a clever con man.

      He’d just returned from his second run to the coffee kiosk when his roving gaze took in Sabrina moving away from the check-in desk. He set the coffee aside and walked over in time to catch her halfway to the door. “There you are. Ready to look at the pictures I took while you snoozed away the afternoon?” She had changed clothes, put on a coat and acquired a smattering of raindrops in her hair and on her shoulders. She’d been outside? She must have gone out to her car to retrieve her luggage. How had he missed her leaving the hotel, coming back inside to change and then apparently leaving again?

      “I beg your pardon?” she said.

      He finally looked past the raindrops. “I stand corrected,” he said. “You skipped the nap and went to a salon instead. I hear that can be just as fortifying.”

      Her hand flew up to touch the lilac strands running through her glossy dark hair. “What I did with my afternoon is none of your business,” she said with a defiant tilt of her chin and then ruined the effect by shrinking back. “I’m sorry. That was rude.” She raised her hand as if to pat her hair and dropped it. “Does it look as bad as I think?”

      He rushed to assure her. “It looks just like it did before, right, except for the purple streak?”

      His words were met by another alarmed expression. “It’s two shades darker and ten inches shorter.” Her brow furled. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’ve been in such a fog today. I’m having the hardest time placing how we know each other. Who are you?”

      “Who am I? Are you sleepwalking?” She didn’t smile at his attempt at humor. “Okay,” he said in a more serious tone. “How about letting me in on the joke.”

      “Danny has something to do with this, doesn’t he?” she said as she glanced around the lobby. “He’s not here, is he? Please, tell me he’s not here.”

      “How could he be here?” He shook his head to clear it. Was it even remotely possible that Buzz’s wife had a split personality? Had recent stress caused some kind of abnormal blip in her psyche? He touched her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay? Did you change your mind and call Buzz, I mean Danny, after all?”

      She held up one hand. “Wait a second. Why would I call him when all I want is a little space to think? And for that matter, why did you call Danny Buzz?”

      “He earned the nickname two decades ago when he knocked a beehive out of a tree and got stung thirteen times, which is why he always carries epinephrine with him—just a second, he never told you about the bees?”

      “No. This happened when he was growing up outside Seattle?”

      He felt like scratching his head. “Buzz grew up across the street from my house in Napa, California.”

      “He told me he grew up in Seattle,” she said.

      “Why would he do that?”

      “How should I know? He said his stepfather piloted a ferry on Puget Sound and his mom was—is—a housekeeper. He and his younger half brother—wait a second, why did Danny send you here instead of coming himself?”

      Something weird was going on. He lowered his voice as they’d begun to draw attention. “You called me, remember? You asked me to meet you here. You’ve been feeling threatened and you asked for help figuring things out. You went up to take a nap—”

      “I can’t even get a room here.”

      He studied her face for some sign she was messing with him, dissecting her delicate features, aware as he did so that she flinched under the scrutiny, obviously uncomfortable and ready to run. She tried to rake her hair over her face but it was too short.

      What was happening? This was the same woman he’d watched walk down the aisle two years earlier to marry his best friend, the same woman who sat across from him two hours before desperate for his help. And yet, somehow, it wasn’t her either. She “felt” different, like a lost and impotent version of herself. Two hours ago she’d been Buzz’s wife and now she was a complete stranger.

      “Did Danny cook this up?” she said in a whisper, and he could feel her anxiety leap to a new level. “Mother must have guessed I’d come here—but why send a stranger?” She looked toward the door before turning back to meet his gaze. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop pretending you know me and just be honest.”

      “Wait a second,” he said, ignoring the fact that she’d mentioned her mother in the present tense when the woman had died years before, ignoring everything except her unmarred forehead. “Where are the scratches?”

      “What scratches?”

      “The ones you got when that boulder fell. Let me see your hands.” He caught her left hand before she could move away. “Nothing,” he murmured as he studied her palm. Her hand trembled in his grip and he released it. “Where’s your wedding band?”

      “Do you mean that stupid engagement ring? Because that’s in my purse.”

      “I’m talking СКАЧАТЬ