Or I could tell the truth about who I really was.
I like this guy better. I heard her words in the back of my mind.
The FBI told me not to tell her.
I didn’t like to be told what to do.
I laid the towel beside the sink. “I got it several years ago.”
“You got it years ago,” she repeated, trying to make sense of what I said.
I nodded.
Her eyes swept over my bare chest, my arms, and then finally up to my face. Her lips parted, and I heard her indrawn breath.
“Charlotte, we need to talk.”
She remained silent for long moments, then slowly she began to shake her head.
This was going to be harder than I thought. As I searched for the words, for the explanation I owed her, she turned and fled.
18
Charlotte
I knew.
All the odd little things he said, the leather jacket, the short hair. The guitar.
I knew.
How had I not figured it out before? How had I been so incredibly easy to trick?
My stomach clenched as I raced through the apartment, rushing into the bedroom, heading toward the nightstand beside the bed.
I heard him following, but I didn’t turn to look. I couldn’t look at him. Not yet.
I had to make sure what I knew was real and I wasn’t losing my ever-loving mind. I dropped to my knees, ignoring a sting of pain, in front of the nightstand and yanked open the bottom drawer. I reached far into the back and pulled out a white envelope and dumped the contents out onto the floor.
I shuffled through the images, flinging them every which way until the one I was seeking caught my eye. I sat back on my haunches and stared down at it, like it was cursed and if I touched it, I might turn to stone.
Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner?
Because it’s insane. Because this is the stuff that only happens in movies.
I could feel him standing behind me, silent, waiting…
My fingers closed around the cool finish of the four-by-six paper and I pushed off the floor and turned.
I looked down at it again, waves of hair falling over my shoulders and concealing my face from sight. Two little boys, about the age of seven, sat arm in arm on a brick wall. Both were grinning happily and clutching red, white, and blue popsicles in their hands.
They looked exactly the same.
Both had dark, thick hair that curled around their faces. Their eyes were dark and fringed with impossibly dark lashes. Their skin was tanned from the sun, their lips bright red from the popsicle, and they were both dressed in blue-jean shorts with red-and-white striped T-shirts.
They were brothers.
They were twins.
I flipped the photo over and looked at the writing on the back.
Tucker and Max, brothers forever.
I lifted my eyes to stare at the man who had been living in my home. Who I woke up wrapped around. He looked utterly different to me now.
The eye sees what it expects to see. How many times had I cautioned a jury about this? How many times did I tell them to look past what they thought was obvious, to look past what they expected to see?
His face seemed sharper, more chiseled, and it wasn’t because his hair was shorter. His eyes held some kind of hardness that a person only got from experience. His shoulders were broader, his chest slightly more muscular. And his abs… his abs were more defined.
Along with the tattoo that I knew decorated his back, he had a band around his left bicep. A black, solid stripe wrapped around the muscle and in the center were the words Semper Fi.
“Tucker,” I said, holding the image between us. Max didn’t talk about his twin very often, but he told me about him when we first starting dating. He said they looked exactly the same but couldn’t be more different. I always thought I might meet Tucker someday…
But never like this.
He glanced at it but made no move to take it from my hand. When he looked, I saw stark pain flash across his features and his chest expanded with indrawn breath.
“Where is Max?” I said, this horrible feeling making me feel heavy. “What the hell did you do with Max?”
Tucker lifted his eyes from the photo and looked at me.
I knew whatever he was going to say was not going to be good.
The photo fluttered to the ground, drifting over beside the bed, when I launched myself at him. I hit his warm, solid chest head on, barreling into him with all my weight.
He didn’t even move.
“Where is he!” I demanded, hitting his chest with the sides of my fists.
“Let’s go sit down,” he said, trying to lead me toward the living room.
“I’m not doing anything until you tell me about Max!” I yelled, yanking away from him and planting my feet into the floor.
Tucker spun around, pinning me with a hard and angry stare. “Max is dead.”
Shock hit me like a bucket of ice-cold water.