More Than a Mission (17 page)

“Blender Boy. The Sparrow's returned to her nest.”

He examined the street, unable to determine how she had eluded him. “Confirm, Red Rover. Cottage or restaurant?”

“Cottage.”

“I'm on it,” he said, and foregoing any further exploration of the dead end, he rushed back to the main road and then to the restaurant. Once he was within sight of the low stone wall for the building, he said, “Red Rover. What's your ETA?”

“Walker and I are already in position about ten yards behind the cottage along the shore. Just say the word.”

Mitch, he thought, a second before confirming Lucia's communication. Funny how after nearly two years of searching, his goal was within his grasp, but it gave him no satisfaction. No relief.

Entering through the gate to the restaurant, he cut across the front yard, straight to the back patio and the granite stepping stones that led to Lizzy's cottage. At the door, he hesitated and took a deep breath.

No matter the outcome of this confrontation, whatever was going on between him and Lizzy would never be the same.

T
he knock at the door surprised her. She hadn't been expecting anyone, only possibly hoping for…

She smiled as she opened the door and her hope was fulfilled. A fierce and all too serious look marred his face. One that warned trouble was ahead. “You okay?”

“May I come in?” he asked and motioned to her front parlor. The parlor where, the night before, they had done wonderful things both to and with each other. She suspected that wouldn't be the case this morning.

“Sure,” she said and extended her arm in invitation.

He walked in, but didn't sit. Just stood there, obviously awkward.

“You okay?” she asked again as she closed the door and went to stand before him.

He shrugged and the movement pulled the front of his jacket open slightly, revealing a quick glimpse of something at his side a moment before the black leather dropped down again, hiding it from sight.

“Saw you in town. Waved to you.” A puzzled look crossed his features. “You were dressed differently.”

Town? She'd been in and around the house and restaurant all morning. “I've been here,” she said, but then it occurred to her what might have happened.

“Dani. She must have come home as a surprise.” Joy swept over her at the prospect of seeing her sister.

“Dani? Who's Dani?” he asked, another quizzical look on his face.

“Dani's my twin sister. She must have—”

Aidan raised his hands and waved them while shaking his head vehemently. “You don't have a twin, Lizzy. Look, if you're having any kind of mental problems—”

Now it was her turn to silence him with a slash of her hand. “If anyone's gone mental, it's you. How the hell do you presume to know—”

She abruptly stopped when Aidan took out some official-looking badge from beneath his jacket and the movement also revealed the gun tucked into the holster. She realized then it was what she had spied before.

Barely glancing at the badge, her gaze snared by the weapon, she said in soft tones, “Who the hell are you?”

He hesitated, clearly troubled, before slipping the badge back into his pocket. “Aidan Spaulding. I work for the Lazlo Group. We've been hired to track down Prince Reginald's killer.”

“You lied to me,” she said and stepped close to him, wanting to see his eyes as he answered.

“I had to. I—”

She slapped him, hard enough to snap his head back. “You prick. You've been lying to me the whole time. You were lying to me when…”

She went for him again, but this time he snared her hand in midair. “Don't,” he warned.

“Or what?” Anger drove her to taunt him.

“You have no twin. Nothing in the files supports that,” he advised and released her.

She let out a harsh laugh. “Your files are wrong, Aidan. Danielle Elizabeth Moore is my twin sister. My older sister by half an hour.”

Aidan examined her features carefully, but the lady was either an amazing liar, telling the truth, or totally demented. He didn't know which of the three possibilities he preferred. But two of them could be easily eliminated.

“Prove it,” he said.

Lizzy immediately sprang into action. Striding to the bookcase at one side of the room, she knelt before it and rummaged through some of the books before saying, “It's gone.”

He stood behind her and asked, “What's gone?”

She was shaking her head and flipping through the books once more. “Our high-school yearbook. Weird. But it doesn't matter. There's pictures in here.”

She yanked a photo album from one of the shelves and flipped it open. As she balanced it on her thighs, she turned one page after another, her movements becoming more agitated as page after page failed to reveal anything other than pictures of her and her parents.

Her hands shook as she tossed that album aside and reached for another, repeated her search, her actions more frantic with each page of photos until finally she had gone through every album with no satisfaction. After she tossed aside the last one, she glanced up at him.

The look on her face had him leaning toward the demented possibility.

“I don't understand,” she said, her tone uncertain, as if she was beginning to doubt her own sanity.

He bent down until he was face to face with her, reached out and cupped her cheek. “Lizzy—”

She batted away his hand. “Don't you dare ever call me that again.”

He nodded, but pressed onward. “I can get help to cure this delusion.”

“I'm not crazy.” She enunciated each word carefully and with determination. It only worried him more.

A second later, she popped up and said, “I know where there's proof.”

She hurried to the door and Aidan whispered into the wire, “Stay put, Red Rover. This isn't going the way I envisioned.”

“I so totally copy that, Blender Boy,” Lucia advised as he followed Lizzy to the restaurant and then down into the cellar. She purposefully strode to the safe, spun the lock and popped open the door.

He stepped beside her, recollecting the view he'd had of the safe just days earlier. It appeared the same except…

“There was a foot locker down at the bottom.” He motioned to the glaring emptiness of the bottom shelf.

“Dani's foot locker. She must have come by to get it,” Lizzy explained and grabbed a smaller box from another shelf. Working the lock on that box, she opened it and, as before, unsuccessfully rummaged through the papers there.

Every line of her body reflected her dejection. Her surprise. “I don't get it.”

“Look, we have a doctor who can deal with this kind of thing,” he said and laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

She shook off his touch. Her words were clipped, laced with anger. “I am
not
crazy.”

With that she was in action again, heading back to the cottage and up the stairs to her bedroom, where she began tossing things out of the drawers at the desk in the corner of her room, clearly searching for something. Anything, apparently.

Aidan just stood watching until it became clear she would find nothing to justify her delusion. Turning his attention to the rest of the room, he examined it more carefully and something on the nightstand beside her bed caught his eye.

He walked over slowly, disbelievingly, until he got closer and closer and there was no denying what he was seeing.

Picking up the frame, he ran his fingers over the photo of the two women standing before the Spanish Steps in Rome. Two identical women. No delusion could have fabricated this, he realized.

“Red Rover. Come in, Red Rover,” he said and turned to face Lizzy.

She must have realized what he was holding, for her earlier anger and confusion fled from her face. She smiled, crossed her arms over her chest and said, “I told you I wasn't crazy.”

He acknowledged it, but then Lucia finally responded.

“Come in. Walker wants to know if you have proof of the Sparrow's allegations?”

“I'm holding it, Lucia. I think you two need to get here so we can all discuss this.”

As he spoke he looked at Elizabeth, who immediately said, “You're damn right that we'd better discuss this. My sister—”

“Is the Sparrow. She's a world-renowned assassin. We think she murdered the prince.”

“And I should believe that because your information has been reliable so far?”

She didn't wait for his answer but turned on her heel and headed downstairs.

He watched her go and confessed to admiration at her spunk. He only hoped it would last past the interview with Walker and Lucia.

 

Elizabeth waited patiently for Aidan's colleagues to arrive. Or at least, she hoped she looked patient, since she was anything but. Her emotions were a jumble from the revelations that Aidan suspected her sister was a cold-blooded killer and that Aidan himself had been deceiving her. He had lied his way into her bed. Into her heart.

The former concerned her more since she knew he was wrong about Dani. Her sister could never do what he claimed. The latter…she couldn't begin to deal with the latter. With her poor judgment.

It took just five minutes or so after his call for a knock to come at the door. During those minutes, she and Aidan stared at one another awkwardly.

He looked guilty and upset. Good, the bastard deserved major angst after what he had done.

She picked up her chin and glared at him, conveying her rage as he walked to the door to allow his colleagues to enter.

Another man, one very similar in size and looks to Aidan, and an attractive coffee-color-skinned woman walked through the door. Aidan motioned them in the direction of the couch where she was sitting. “Elizabeth Moore,” he offered in explanation.

Elizabeth rose slowly.

The tall sandy-haired man held out his hand. “Dr. Walker Shaw.”

The woman was next. “Lucia Cordez.”

She noticed that the woman had a laptop in her other hand and Elizabeth motioned to it. “Is that where you have your proof?”

“No sense delaying, is there?” Shaw said and held out his hand, inviting her to sit once more.

She did, and the woman and Shaw bracketed either side of her. Aidan took a seat across the way, obviously having no need to see the proof.

Lucia powered up the laptop and, once it was running, assisted Shaw as he detailed their evidence that Dani was the Sparrow.

Elizabeth listened. Looked. The dates and facts for certain times she could personally confirm. Dates like the one that fell during the week that she and Dani had met in Rome.

Thinking back on it now, Dani had been so happy for the first few days and had even hinted at a new man in her life. One with whom she could get serious. But then, something had happened. Dani wouldn't say what, but her sister had been a changed woman by the end of the week.

And then there was the weekend for the cooking expo in the town near Prince Reginald's estate.

Dani had been home that weekend. A surprise trip, she had said. She had even gone by the expo to see Elizabeth, although she hadn't come home until very late that night.

The night the prince had been murdered.

As each fact seemed to point to the possibility that her sister was what they said, Elizabeth scrambled to find an explanation for why she wasn't. Why they were wrong.

The explanations were hard to find.

“She couldn't have done all these things that you say,” she countered weakly.

“These things were murders, Ms. Moore. Cold-blooded, for-hire assassinations,” Shaw said.

The woman was a little more sympathetic. She laid a well-manicured hand over hers and squeezed reassuringly. “Look, my sister…She got into trouble, too. But I was able to help her.”

“Help her? Like maybe we can do an intervention? Or maybe there's an anti-assassin patch that'll curb her need to kill?” Anger laced her words, mostly because despite the proof before her, she couldn't believe her sister was what they said.

“Maybe there's a reason why she did this,” Aidan offered from across the way.

She picked up her head and shot him a glare. “A reason? How about that maybe you're wrong?”

“Maybe what happened to your parents pushed her over the edge,” Shaw piped in.

Out of the corner of her eye, she examined the man beside her. Attractive, if you liked the Nordic type, which she obviously did since she'd given it up to Aidan. But his eyes weren't as clear a blue and his hair not as blond. And she could sense the tension between him and Aidan.

Although right now he was trying to be sympathetic. Caring. Possibly open to her pleas about Dani. “When Ma and Da were killed, Dani lost it. She felt guilty that she hadn't gone with them that morning. We had both slept in after a school dance.”

“Did you feel the guilt?” Shaw asked.

“Wouldn't you?” she shot back quickly.

“If you'd gone, maybe you'd both be dead right now,” Aidan said.

She met his gaze. “Maybe. It didn't make it any easier then. Not even now. You always wonder about the what if.”

“What if that's what made Dani do this?” Lucia said and once again, squeezed her hand.

She considered it for only a moment. “Afterward…Dani wasn't quite the same. She had always been a protector and after, it was even more extreme. She became everyone's champion. Always there to right a wrong.”

“Maybe that's how she justified all these kills. Except for Mitch, every one of these men were involved in nasty things. Seemingly above the law—”

“But not beyond the Sparrow's own brand of justice,” Aidan finished for Shaw.

Even with that explanation, Elizabeth still couldn't believe it and shook her head. “You're wrong,” she reiterated.