Identical Stranger. Alice Sharpe

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СКАЧАТЬ well, so am I.”

      He smiled and the transformation was stunning. Half-surreal before, he now turned into a genuine human being. “I can see how you’d feel that way,” he said, and together they rode up to the third floor and walked down the hall.

      He finally stopped and knocked on the door of room 302. It was the same room Sophie had stayed in the summer before, the one she’d hoped to get today because it had a great view of the beach. They waited a few seconds and then he knocked again, harder this time. He twisted the knob to no effect. “I’m going to try a credit card,” he said as he opened his wallet.

      “Shouldn’t we just go downstairs and ask for help?”

      “Probably, but it’s chancy they’ll open the door without provocation. I saw this in a movie. It might work, what the heck.”

      As he ran a variety of cards through the magnetic lock, Sophie heard footsteps and glanced up to find a maid carrying an armload of towels walking toward them. She elbowed Jack, who glanced over his shoulder and quickly stuck the cards in his pockets. Sophie looked back at the maid in time to see a man turn the corner on his way to the elevator. He and Sophie made eye contact. He stopped dead in his tracks. His gaze shifted as he patted his pockets, then he turned on his heels and disappeared back around the corner.

      It looked as though he’d forgotten something.

      The housekeeper paused midstep. “I saw you earlier today,” she said, smiling at Sophie. “Did you leave your key in your room?”

      “Yes,” Sophie said. The woman had mistaken her for Sabrina Cromwell. The last possibility that Jack might be in cahoots with Danny in some elaborate scheme to accomplish heaven knew what toppled off the edge of probability.

      “I can open it for you,” the woman said. For a second, Sophie wondered how they would explain the sleeping woman already in the room, but the bed was empty and the maid went on her way.

      They closed the door behind them.

      Jack glanced at the open door of the bathroom as he strode to the balcony and tried the glass door. It was locked. Planting his hands on his waist, he stated the obvious. “She’s not here.”

      “Where are her things?” Sophie asked because aside from a rumpled bed and a damp hand towel in the bathroom, the room looked untouched.

      “In her car. I guess I should go make sure it’s still parked outside. Give me your cell number and I’ll call you when I get this cleared up.”

      The impulse to wait in the lobby drew her like a magnet. She could find a corner where she could commence thinking about her life. Waiting felt comfortable. It felt natural.

      She looked up into Jack’s blue eyes. The anxiety she found there made waiting seem an inconceivable option. “You think something happened to her,” she stated flatly.

      “I don’t see how it could have, but yeah, I’m concerned.”

      “Then I’m coming with you.”

      “You don’t need to do that. I’ll let you know.”

      “Listen,” Sophie said, reaching over to grasp his arm, then removing her hand at once. There must be something on his jacket sleeve, some invisible substance that made her palms tingle. “There aren’t any rooms available at the hotel, I’m not going home and I’m not going to risk losing track of you and Sabrina. It’s like fate is screaming my name, trying to tell me something. Normally I would ignore such unwanted callouts from things like destiny and all that, but today—I don’t know, I think I should listen. I can’t explain it, I just have to find out where Sabrina is, who she is. I have to see her.” She shrugged and slid him a glance to see if he was ready to bolt. He actually nodded and she took a deep breath. “I don’t understand how anyone can look so much like me and not actually be—” She stopped short.

      “Related,” he finished for her and briefly touched her arm as though he understood. “Nor do I. All right, come with me. Let’s see if we can find her car.”

      * * *

      “SHE’S DRIVING BUZZ’S old Chevy,” he said as they walked out into the rainy afternoon. “Think rusty hulk.”

      He pulled the hood up on his jacket. She hesitated while still under the protection of the portico, and he realized her coat didn’t have a hood and the rain had done nothing but go from bad to worse. “Why don’t you wait here while I check the outside lot, then if need be, we can look in the parking garage together.”

      “Okay,” she agreed.

      Ten minutes later he jogged back to the front of the hotel to find Sophie gone. Man, he was losing women left and right today, but in this case, he thought it likely Sophie Sparrow had rethought her involvement with this situation and cut her loses. He was disappointed and not only because he was curious about the connection between her and Sabrina. Maybe it was for the better. What good could possibly come from being attracted to a woman who lived hours away, looked just like his best friend’s wife and, more to the point, was in the middle of a relationship with a guy named Danny?

      Was he attracted? Yeah, for whatever reason, he was. He wanted to know why she’d stuck purple in her hair. He wanted to know why she was timid one minute and brave the next.

      Bypassing the valet’s offer of help, he entered the parking garage located under the hotel.

      Sophie was waiting for him inside the entrance. He was able to stifle the smile that threatened to curve his lips, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about the spark of pleasure that flared in his chest.

      “It was cold standing out there,” she said as she joined him. “It’s not much warmer in here, though. I take it her car isn’t in the lot?”

      “No. Let’s work our way down.”

      But search as they might, they could not find a rusty white Chevy SUV with a red stripe down its side in among all the sleeker, newer models. By the time they reached the bottom tier, Jack was sure Buzz’s car wasn’t parked in either the lot or the garage. That meant Sabrina had driven it away from the hotel. Why? What caused her to leave without telling him? It seemed so out of character.

      He took out his cell to try Sabrina again but the reception was nonexistent down here.

      “Let’s go back up to the lobby and see if I can get some coverage. Obviously Sabrina left the hotel for some reason. I guess she couldn’t find me to explain why. I’ll call her again.”

      Sophie had to know as well as he that his words didn’t explain why she didn’t call or text or why she wasn’t responding to his repeated attempts to contact her. She nodded but made no comment.

      He started up the ramp, unaware until he was nearing the ground floor that Sophie wasn’t directly behind him. He turned to look for her right as revving engine noises bellowed up from below. A human scream came right before four thousand pounds of screeching metal shot past Jack and accelerated up the last ramp, leaving behind the acrid smell of burned rubber.

      Jack ran back down the ramp half-sick at what he might find. “Sophie?”

      She was plastered to one of the brick support pillars, eyes closed, shaking like a leaf. She was missing СКАЧАТЬ