Page 20

M orrison and Sadie stayed in the alleyway until his phone buzzed, and then he nudged her forward down the way they had come. “Gage should be here soon.”

“Yeah, says you,” she muttered, feeling jittery, her hand gripping his. “It’s not exactly an easy scenario right now.”

“You’re doing fine,” he noted encouragingly.

“Maybe, and yet what you mentioned resonated with me. It’s always been about family.

I’ve been so appreciative of my family—the one that I knew of, my adoptive family—that I’ve focused on them and done what I could for them.

Yet I never even knew about my twin brother, until I was told that I had one. ”

“What? So now you’ll blame yourself because you didn’t know?” He spoke with a half-joking tone, hoping to lighten her mood.

“But I have this gift.” She snorted at that. “And he’s my blood brother, my twin. Isn’t there supposed to be some special bond between us?”

Morrison nodded. “First, you need training with your gifts. Terk can help you with that. Celia too, I presume. Second, as for the innate twin bond, I do think there is something to that. But, again, if you didn’t know you were a twin, would you recognize any hints of that bond beforehand?”

Sadie frowned, then nodded, as if cutting herself some slack on these two points.

As they slowly came out from the shadows of the alleyway, Morrison saw Gage parked right at the end, and they quickly hopped into the back seat of his vehicle.

After pulling around the corner and taking off, Gage turned and looked back at her. “You guys okay?”

“We’re okay,” she said, “but somebody obviously found my place. I just don’t know how they knew it was me.”

“Chances are, they either saw you at the hospital, at Don’s apartment, or on the news.” He gave them an eye roll in the rearview mirror. “FYI, you guys hit the local TV and radio stations.”

“ Great ,” she muttered.

“Our two tails could have easily talked to the neighbors at Don’s apartment as well,” Morrison suggested. “So, it’s not as if there weren’t options for people to find us.”

“I just wish they hadn’t,” she stated. “I guess I was thinking that nobody would know.’

“In this world, just as we’re tracking everybody else, other people are often tracking us,” Gage pointed out. “Don’t ever assume that you are hidden just because you’re not looking to be found.”

*

To Sadie, Gage’s words seemed prophetic somehow, but she didn’t quite understand how to make good use of them in this circumstance.

She realized that Gage had seen and had done many things in the world, but he had obviously seen more than just the commonplace to have wise nuggets like that.

She should be paying greater attention to her surroundings, yet all she wanted right now was to be back home, safe and sound, not having gone down this pathway at all.

Morrison squeezed her hand gently. “Don’t allow regrets to enter your mind. You do what you can and leave the rest to others.”

She winced and nodded. “It keeps coming back to that, doesn’t it? I don’t really give a crap about the stolen jewelry, if they hadn’t started killing people—”

“Exactly,” he agreed. “Of course law enforcement can’t take the same viewpoint, but, once the killing starts, it’s a different deal, and that has to stop.”

“I wonder if Don even realized it would get violent.”

“Too often nobody realizes that, but the minute somebody brings a weapon to a robbery, there is a really good chance of it going sideways very quickly. Most people think, Well, I didn’t have anything to do with that part, so I won’t pay the price , but it does matter because of the involvement in a felony at the time.

So, everybody is involved, even the driver sitting outside in the car in most places around the world.

That’s how you end up with multiple people serving time for the same murder. ”

She nodded. “I get that. I really do. I just think the whole thing sucks that I’ve been brought into this.” When they pulled into an underground parking lot, she looked out the car window and asked, “Where are we?”

“It’s a hotel, so we should be fine here,” Gage replied.

She studied the back of his head. “How do you figure that?” she asked, rolling her eyes at him. “Don’t you think you were followed?”

“No, I wasn’t followed,” he declared. “And we should get inside without being noticed because we’re already registered and have a room.” He laughed as he ushered them both out of the vehicle.

Within minutes they were inside via a restricted entryway, and soon she was taking in their small hotel room, with a kitchenette and a small dining table and two chairs. “We’re here, but now what?” she asked. “I really hope this isn’t my life now.”

“I hope not too,” Gage agreed, “but would you rather meet up with these people in person?”

She shook her head. “No.” At that she looked at Morrison. “Do you have any updates?” He in turn, looked over at Gage, one eyebrow raised.

“We’re about to check in with Terk,” Gage shared. “Hopefully they’ve been able to get faces off those cameras.”

She sat down on the couch, watching Morrison put their bag of groceries on the counter in the kitchenette. “This doesn’t even have a proper kitchen that we can cook in,” she grumbled, mad at herself for even complaining.

Morrison suggested, “We can order in just fine right here. Or can we?” He turned to Gage again.

At that, Gage shook his head. “No, nobody is coming here, so I would rather go pick up something. I’m about to head over and check out your apartment to see if it’s safe to go back. Maybe these will tide you over,” he said, tossing them a package of cookies from their grocery bag. Then he was gone.

She stared at Morrison. “Somehow I feel as if I never quite know what’s happening next when Gage’s around.”

Morrison grinned. “Maybe so, but he’s a good person to have in our corner, that’s for sure.

Plus, he knows you’ll be more comfortable in your own place if we can make that happen, but don’t get your hopes up yet.

Let’s just get through this next bit and see what Terk’s team can come up with off the street cams, even off the jewelry store cams.” With that, he sat down beside her and brought out his laptop.

“At least you have a laptop,” she muttered.

“Don’t you have your phone?”

“Fine,” she muttered, pulling it out, “I guess I can check my emails.”

“When do you have to go back to work?”

She frowned at that. “Not yet, I have another day off.”

“You may want to ask for a couple more.”

“Not exactly what I want to do,” she muttered, “but whatever.”

“It’s what you need to do for now,” he stated, “because we don’t want anybody heading to your work, looking to cause you trouble there.”

“Oh, crap. No, that’s not what I want either.” So, she went through her phone, checking on everything. When Morrison sucked in his breath beside her, she looked over at him in dread. “That doesn’t sound like something I want to hear.”

He grimaced. “They’ve identified both men who went into your brother’s apartment, right before we got there.” He frowned at his laptop screen.

“It doesn’t seem you’re happy about it.”

He made a few more clicks on his laptop and brought up pictures of the two men.

She leaned over to study them and shrugged. “I don’t recognize either of them.”

“No? Maybe you better take a closer look at this one.”

She stared at it for the longest moment. “Something is definitely familiar about him, but I don’t know what.” She frowned, checking it out again, then turned to Morrison, catching the odd look in his gaze. “Okay, obviously you’re seeing something that I’m not, so what the hell is the deal?”

He took a slow deep breath, made a few more clicks, and brought up a photo of her twin brother, Don. After another few clicks, Morrison brought up the photo of the one man he’d been talking about, with both pics side by side on the screen.

Then her heart slammed against her chest. She muttered, “They definitely share similarities.”

He nodded. “What are the chances that you have more than just a twin brother and may have an older blood brother as well?”

With that, her heart almost exploded with pain as she whispered, “Are they both criminals?”

He slowly nodded. “I am afraid to say so, but that’s what it looks like.”

*

Morrison studied Sadie’s facial expression yet again.

He knew it had to have been a terrible shock, and he had been hesitant to bring up the similarity of the two faces, but, when she hadn’t seen it right away, he realized it had never occurred to her that she might have more family out there than just a twin brother.

But the thought that both brothers might be criminals was a bit more than she was able to handle at the moment.

She sat in the corner of the hotel room couch, a blanket tucked up around her, not sleeping and yet not really awake, certainly not willing to deal with the world.

Morrison got up, walked closer, and she gave him a small smile. “I’m okay.”

“Are you?” he asked. “You don’t seem to be.” She shrugged. “I know that finding out you potentially have yet another sibling must be hard.”

“I guess it’s possible, but he could be a cousin too, right?” she asked, looking at him with a hopeful expression.

“That’s possible, and we’ve certainly seen families come in all variations. I would say he’s at least family, possibly a half sibling. Yet, until we get more information,” he added, trying to keep his expression as unreadable as he could, “it’ll be hard to know for sure.”

“So, what about my brother in the hospital?”

“I haven’t checked in the last ten minutes,” he teased, “and that’s all it’s been since you asked me about Don the last time.” She winced, and he sat down beside her. “I’m sorry. This is not at all how we thought today would go.”