It was phrased as a statement and for just a moment Cait wondered whether Virginia had received a Flicker from her on the way over here. “Flicker” was Cait’s term for the bizarre genetic ability carried in the bloodline that allowed some family members the ability to “see” random events and occurrences from other people’s lives. Cait had experienced them since she was a little girl and the occasionally frightening mental images had been prime motivation in her desire to learn her family’s history in the first place.

  Then she thought about it and realized any mother would have made the same assumption Virginia was making right now.

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t think so,” Virginia said. “And unless I’m way off base, I already have a pretty good idea why we’re having this conversation. Above and beyond the delicious coffee they serve here, that is. But go ahead. Lay it out for me and I’ll let you know if we’re on the same wavelength.”

  Cait paused a moment, trying to decide how to proceed. Finally she sighed and dived headfirst into the pool. “There’s something…off…about what happened two nights ago.”

  “Of course there’s something off,” Virginia answered immediately. “Your boyfriend tried to kill you, or at least to injure you badly.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You’ve known Kevin for a few months now, do you honestly, in your heart, believe him capable of the kind of brutal violence he exhibited Friday night?”

  “It’s hard to know what people are capable of, honey. Sometimes impossible to know. I would never in a million years have imagined your father taking his own life. I knew he was depressed; hell, we both were, from the moment that man dressed all in black strapped you and your brother into the backseat of his car and drove away. It was a depression that never eased. I feel it to this day, and that event occurred three decades ago. So it wasn’t like I didn’t realize he was hurting. But to kill himself? Your father? I never saw it coming.”

  Virginia’s eyes were distant, haunted, and Cait knew she was reliving the awful moment she found out her husband was dead. She knew also that deep down inside her mother blamed herself for not somehow being able to prevent the loss of life that completed the tragic breakup of her family.

  Then Virginia Ayers proved her toughness, snapping out of her self-recrimination and turning a warm smile on Cait, though it was through eyes rimmed in red. “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to get off track. But the point is a valuable one—you can never truly know what’s inside people’s hearts.”

  “Maybe not entirely,” Cait agreed. “But I know Kevin better than I’ve known anyone in my entire life. I’ll admit there are surely facets of his personality he’s kept hidden; everyone has them, but to simply snap and try to carve me up? When we had been talking and joking like always, just seconds beforehand? I don’t buy it.

  “But more to the point,” she continued, “the thing that’s got me so shaken up is not just the fact that Kevin attacked me, although that’s bad enough. The thing that’s bothering me more than anything else is how he did it. The method he used. A carving knife. Targeting my arm. It was just like…”

  She couldn’t say it out loud.

  Virginia nodded. Her smile was still in place and it was obvious she was trying her best to keep Cait calm.

  Good luck with that, Cait thought.

  Virginia cleared her throat and nodded and said, “I told you we were on the same wavelength.”

  “You’ve considered the similarities?”

  Virginia laughed, not unkindly. “Honey, a blind man could see the similarities. I would have to be a blithering idiot not to see them after what happened last summer. But that’s not really what you called me here to talk about, either, is it? You really want to talk about what it means.”

  “Exactly. As hard as it is for me to accept that Kevin could have gone off the deep end and attacked me, at least that’s technically possible. But what are the odds he would have chosen exactly the method Milo did? It just seems so…unlikely. Impossible, even.”

  “Maybe seeing it happen made such an impression on him that when he snapped, that was where his mind naturally went.”

  Cait shook her head vigorously. “No,” she said firmly. “He was unconscious when Milo started cutting me, remember? He didn’t see a thing.”

  “But he’s heard the story a hundred times since then, has seen the damage to your arm and been by your side as you’ve gone through the recovery process. It couldn’t help but have been nearly as significant an event for him as it was for you.”

  “I can’t argue with any of that,” Cait said reluctantly. “But still, the whole thing seems…” She shook her head and felt as though she might break down and cry. Again.

  “I know,” Virginia said softly. “I feel it, too. It seems your brother has to be involved somehow.”

  “But I thought you said—”

  “I’ve been playing devil’s advocate because I want to make sure you’re thinking everything through. But you’re not the only one who’s been obsessing over this whole terrifying mess.”

  It occurred to Cait out of nowhere that of course her mother would have been deeply affected by the attack on her only daughter, especially given its circumstances. That should have been plain to her all along, but she had been so wrapped up in herself and how she had been affected that she hadn’t even considered Virginia might be hurting, too.

  “Oh, of course you have,” she said. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “No, honey, you misunderstand. I’m not criticizing you. My point is that after hours of reflection, I came to the same conclusion as you. Milo is involved.”

  “But how…” The thought hung in the air, unstated but clear to both women. How could a helpless, unconscious Milo Cain, lying in a prison hospital bed fifteen hundred miles away, have orchestrated the vicious attack on his twin, the person he hated more than anyone else in the world? And how could he have managed to do it through Kevin Dalton, a police officer, a young man who had never been anything but utterly devoted to Cait?

  “So you don’t think I’m crazy?”

  “No, honey, I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  “Then what’s the answer?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  The two women sat for a long time, neither speaking. Cait chewed her muffin and sipped her coffee and thought about the twin brother she had gone thirty years without ever realizing she had. She had learned of his existence and her bizarre family history of twins and murder on the very same weekend last year that he tried to kill her.

  And now this.

  Cait realized she had a decision to make. She could hang around Tampa and wonder about Milo and how he could engineer traumatic events in her life from all the way up the East Coast.

  Or she could travel to Boston and try to get some answers.

  And she desperately needed answers.

  15

  Milo focused hard, trying to clamp down on his rapidly growing sense of panic. It threatened to spiral out of control. The devil-woman suspected his involvement in the assault.

  And as much as he appreciated the beautiful irony of Kevin Dalton being reduced to a state so similar to his own—injured and in custody, manacled to a hospital bed—Milo had not expected this development. Why would Caitlyn Connelly’s suspicions have gone immediately to him? Why, when his paralysis and coma offered the perfect alibi? Who in their right mind would suspect such a person of assault with a deadly weapon? Who would suspect such a person of anything?

  The answer to those questions was now clear: Caitlyn Connelly would. Of course. And that was a problem.

  Last summer he would have relished the challenge of going head-to-head with The Evil Bitch. Hell, last summer he had relished it. The notion of both of them putting their cards on the table and fighting to the death, mano-a-chicko, may the best sibling win, filled him with joy.

  But last summer he had been mobile. Last summer he had been able to walk. To run. To drive. To peel skin from the bodies of his victims as if they were nothing more than apples or grapes.

  The situation since then had changed, to say the least. Although now in possession of perhaps two of the most significant weapons in human history: the ability to force his will upon unsuspecting others, and the ability literally to experience life through someone else’s eyes, Milo was sufficiently self-aware to recognize that those abilities were offset by a significant disadvantage.

  Namely, his utter physical helplessness.

  And that was nothing more than a minor inconvenience as long as he remained out of sight and out of mind of his nemesis. She could not cause him problems as long as she remained unaware of him.

  But the law of unintended consequences had struck, and at a most inopportune time. The result of his latest unsuccessful attempt to remove her from the planet had represented a change in the status quo, one that could be dangerous—perhaps even deadly—to him were it not managed properly.

  Milo took a deep, calming breath, wondering whether the action was all in his mind or whether the rising and falling of his chest was actually more pronounced. He pondered the question for a moment and moved on. It was time to start developing a plan to deal with these developments.

  First, the bad news: Milo had brought this problem on himself. The minute he discovered he could transport himself into Caitlyn Connelly’s consciousness and push suggestions from her mind into the minds of the people around her, he should have had someone kill her and been done with it.

  It could have been the law firm secretary. It should have been the law firm secretary. Instead of playing around and having the secretary spill coffee on the she-devil, burning her a little but accomplishing nothing in terms of getting her out of the way, he should have forced the woman to kill Connelly once and for all.

  The secretary could have strangled her. Or brought the coffeepot into The Evil Bitch’s office and brained her with it, then continued smashing her skull until there was nothing left but a ruined pulp and Connelly’s blood was leaking out all over the plush carpeting.

  There were a thousand ways he could have had the woman dispatch the little bitch, even if the secretary was older than dirt. It would have been simple, especially with Connelly being completely unprepared.

  But no, Milo had to toy with her. The second he discovered he could push suggestions into people interacting with The Evil Bitch and watch what happened through her eyes, he had immediately begun planning something special for her.

  Because what could have been more special than using her own lover to send her to the great beyond, and only then after torturing her in exactly the manner Milo had used last summer?

  The symmetry was perfect: he would use another man’s body to play with her, but would still be able to enjoy it, almost as much as if he were wielding the knife himself. And as an added bonus, the little bitch would know by the very method of her painful death that Milo was responsible.

  The opportunity had simply been too good to pass up, and now he was paying the price for his foolishness. Now she suspected him.

  But all was not lost.

  Caitlyn Connelly’s concern that Milo was somehow responsible for Dalton’s attack on her, as frightening as that was for Milo, still represented nothing more than unfounded suspicion on her part. Nothing in Connelly’s experience—or in anyone’s experience—would have prepared her to accept that a comatose and paralyzed Milo Cain could be capable of manipulating someone else’s actions from more than a thousand miles away.

  And this worked to Milo’s advantage.

  Suspicions were not the same as convictions, and as long as Milo developed a workable plan and then forced himself to stick to that plan, he should still be able to neutralize Connelly fairly easily. With his superior intelligence and the other advantages he possessed, it shouldn’t even be that difficult. She would never see it coming.

  The challenge would be to remain under control at all times, to avoid falling victim to the unreasoning fury that overwhelmed him every time he saw—or even thought about—his evil little bitch of a twin sister. Indeed, he could feel the hatred bubbling up in his gut even now, just picturing her, with her beauty and her self-confidence and her disgusting….goodness.

  It made him want to puke.

  He took another deep breath and tried to clear his mind of the clutter. He was smarter than Caitlyn Connelly. He was cleverer than Connelly, more cunning, more resourceful and certainly more relentless. She had bested him once and had escaped his wrath a second time thanks to sheer, dumb luck. She suspected him now but as long as Milo was careful, that suspicion would never translate into anything that could cause him harm.

  After a few minutes, Milo could feel himself beginning to relax. The anger and the tension began to clear away and he was able to think. To prepare.

  Milo had plenty of faults; he knew that with painful certitude. The very fact that he was lying here trapped inside a useless lump of flesh that was itself imprisoned in a centuries-old stone fortress was proof positive of his failings.

  But one thing he was not, and never had been, was stupid. Milo had learned very early in life to take his lumps when necessary and move on. To lose the fight but win the war. Underestimating Caitlyn Connelly had been his worst mistake ever, and then not finishing her off inside her precious law office when he had the chance had been almost as bad.

  Fair enough. But the game wasn’t over, and he would come back stronger than ever. This time, he would not toy with her.

  He would not try to carve her up just to bring himself a moment’s fleeting satisfaction.

  He would not give her any reason to suspect he was behind her fate, because it wouldn’t matter. Who cared whether she realized as she took her last gasping breath that Milo had been behind her death? What difference would that make anyway?

  The point was to render her dead so Milo could move on to bigger and better things. And the way to do that would be to make it happen fast, make it look like just another random act of violence, so she wouldn’t have even the slightest opportunity to react.

  She would never see it coming.

  And then he would be rid of her.

  Not until that goal had been accomplished would he be able to begin moving forward with everything else he had in mind for the future.

  And he had plenty in mind.

  16

  Cait gripped the armrest tightly as the Boeing 757 floated over the runway at Boston’s Logan International Airport. It felt as though the big plane might stay suspended a few feet above the ground forever, or at least until smashing into the triple-decker houses of East Boston that she knew were lurking just outside of airport property.

  Then the airliner lurched abruptly downward, striking the pavement and bouncing once before rolling out and beginning to slow. Cait realized she had been holding her breath and released it in an explosive sigh. She had never enjoyed flying but hated it even more now, given the circumstances of the trip and the nagging suspicion that she was abandoning Kevin just when he needed her most.

  But she had to be realistic. There was little if anything she could do for him in Florida, especially given his insistence she stay away until he knew for certain that he was no longer a threat to her. What damage he thought he could do while handcuffed to a hospital bed Cait didn’t know, but to Kevin the concern was very real. And it seemed obvious to Cait that the key to alleviating his fears would be found here in the frigid February chill of Boston.

  Her original plan had been to sneak out of Tampa without telling anyone. She would spend a couple of days in the Northeast and return before either her birth mother or adoptive mother even realized she was gone.

  Finagling a couple of days off work had been no problem. Cait had been working like a maniac since last summer, barely taking enough time off to deal with the medical issues resulting from her attack at the hands of Milo Cain. Throwing herself back into her work had been one of the two things that saved Caitlyn—the other being Kevin Dalton, whose quiet strength inspired her even as he dealt with his own recovery—but senior partners at the firm had grown concerned she might be in danger of burning herself out. They had recently gone as far as to strongly suggest she take a little vacation.

  The result was that despite its short notice, her trip had been easily arranged.

  But that was where her plan of a quick, quiet flight to New England and back had fallen apart. She should have known keeping the trip a secret from Virginia Ayers would be impossible. Roughly two hours after getting her time off approved, the phone had rung, her birth mother bluntly informing her they would be traveling together.

  Cait asked, “What makes you think I’m going anywhere?” and Virginia just laughed.

  “You’re not quite as hard to read as you think you are,” Virginia said before extracting a promise from Cait that she would buy two round-trip tickets to Boston instead of one.

  Now, as the plane turned off the runway and began trundling along the taxiway to the terminal, Virginia said, “I thought you were going to blow a gasket back there when we were about to touch down. I never knew you hated flying so much. What don’t you like about it?”

  Cait shrugged. “Good question. I’ve never really enjoyed flying—I certainly wouldn’t do it for fun—but this trip was worse than usual. There was some turbulence up there, but even more than the bumpy air, I guess I’m still working through what happened Friday night. And the whole reason for this trip has me a little tense, too. I don’t know what to expect, and I hate feeling like I have no control.”

  “Typical lawyer,” Virginia said with a smile. “Always need to be in control.”

  Cait laughed. “Yeah, I suppose so. But how can you stay so calm and collected considering we have no idea what we’re walking into? Or even what we’re doing here, really?”

  Virginia shrugged. “I don’t know. A lifetime of rolling with the punches, maybe. But my feeling is that there’s no point worrying about things I can’t control.”

 

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