Never Die Alone

For the first time she noticed how many of the cops had left their desks, their expressions interested and wary, some with hands on their weapons as they collected around the tense group clogging the hallway. All staring at her.

“What . . . what about some kind of mole?” she asked in desperation. “On your . . . ?” She turned her gaze to the cop who had walked out of the office with the freak. “On his butt cheek.”

Selma took in a swift breath. “You saw him without clothes?”

“Except for a rubber apron. Yeah.” But if this wasn’t the guy, then, oh God, Chloe was still in the maniac’s clutches . . . or worse.

“You want me to drop trou? Would that convince you?” the guy demanded and before she could answer, without batting an eye, turned around and let his pants fall from his buttocks. The cop stared at them all as if they were all ceritifiable while more and more people gathered around.

“Hey! I don’t think that’s necessary, Bridges!” the cop said as some Hispanic dude with a goatee and diamond stud earring swaggered around the corner and stopped short.

“Whoa! What the hell kind of freak show is this?” he demanded, eyeing the gathering crowd. He acted like a cop, too—kinda—but he was wearing a black leather jacket and a bad-boy attitude that were at odds with him being a part of the force.

“This is Zoe De

“No,” she admitted, as the guy pulled up his pants and, his expression no longer of surprise, adjusted his shirt. “No, it can’t be. But—”

“But,” he said, his eyes darkening, “I look enough like him to be his twin.”

“You want to talk about Myra now?” Bria

“Here?” Milo asked, and looked at the apartment building. “Your appointment is here?” He eyed her suspiciously.

She checked her watch. She wasn’t scheduled to meet with Jase for another fifteen minutes, but she wasn’t certain she wanted to spend the time alone with Milo; there was just something about him that she didn’t trust.

“You followed me. And you came to my house and looked in my bathroom window.”

He didn’t answer, but actually blushed, as if embarrassed.

“While I was showering!”

“No . . . no . . . I’d rung the bell. Really. I wanted . . . I needed to talk to you and you didn’t answer. I saw lights on, so I walked around the house and . . .”

“Looked at me while I was showering? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“You were out of the shower. You had a towel around you.”

“Doesn’t matter! That’s voyeurism, Milo. I could have you arrested! I should have you arrested! You can’t go around peeping in windows.”

“You wouldn’t!” He was nervous now, his tongue darting around the corners of his mouth.

“I’m not sure about that.” She was furious and wanted to let him have it with both barrels. “You scared me to death!”

“I just . . . I just didn’t know how to talk to you.” He seemed sincere and confused and upset. “I’m sorry. Really. Please,” he said. “I just want to talk about Myra. I thought you cared about the whole twinless twin thing . . . I . . .”

A horn blasted as a minivan rolled down the street.

“Okay,” Bria

“You could just hop into the van.”

No way would she jump into a van with a guy who had admitted to peering through her windows, a man who, at some level, made her more than nervous. She clicked off her phone’s camera but put it in alarm mode, should she need to call for help. She considered moving her Honda, parked as it was in a tow-away zone, but decided this hastily convened meeting would only take a few minutes. Twinless twin or not, it was all the time she could give him.

It took Milo five minutes to park his vehicle and walk back to her spot near the tree, and she couldn’t help but second-guess her own sanity at having agreed to this. She glanced around the area, just to make certain she wasn’t alone.

A woman pushing a baby carriage while trying to walk some kind of big dog, a Lab mix, she thought, was on the far side of the street. She also spied a man leaning over the rail of the third-floor porch. Smoking a cigarette and staring at her. Hard. Or was it her imagination? Were her nerves jangled because of Milo and the fact that Donovan Caldwell had died today. It was all kind of weird. Outré. U

Was it even safe to deal with him?

What if he had a weapon?

What then?

She glanced up at the apartment building again and saw the gray-haired guy still watching her. Friend or foe?

Dear God, she was letting her imagination run wild with her. Now she was seeing evil in someone doing nothing threatening. But as Milo approached, she felt herself tense.

“Let’s go somewhere where we can sit down,” he suggested. “I think there’s a café two blocks down.”

Like this was a date or something? Two friends having coffee? No way!

“I’m sorry,” she said. She needed to keep her relationship with this man professional. She’d crossed the barriers before and blurred the lines several times. Max had been a mistake, and she probably was more involved with Tanisha and Selma than she should be. They’d become friends. But Milo? The Peeping Tom? No way. His excuse for peering through her window was flimsy at best. “I really don’t have a lot of time. So what’s going on? What’s happening that couldn’t wait until our next meeting?”

“I, um, I lied about that,” he admitted, and her gut clenched.

“You lied?”

“About needing to talk about Myra. Well kind of... and about watching you.” He scratched the back of his neck nervously. “I think you’re in danger.”

“Me?” What was he talking about? Where was this going?

“I’ve followed you,” he admitted as a car left the parking lot of Jase’s apartment building, nosing into the street where the traffic was picking up.

“I know.” She glanced up to the third floor of the building. The smoker was still there, observing the ground below and, she felt, keeping an eye on her. All the better considering.

“And I’ve seen you with him.”

“With who?”

“Jacob.”

“Jacob?” she repeated, confused. “I don’t know a Jacob.”

He stared at her as if she were nuts. “But I saw you together. You know, after the meeting. The other night?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Milo’s face grew hard. “It was later, you remember, after the meeting where Selma told us about her daughters going missing?” An earnest look crossed his face, but of course she still didn’t trust him. “You went to di

Now she got it. Milo was mixed up. That was it. Or he got Jase’s name wrong. “His name isn’t Jacob.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “He’s a reporter. Jason Bridges.”

But Milo’s face had changed. Any confusion in his expression had been chased away by anger. “What he is, Bria

He drove as if Lucifer himself was on his tail, taking corners too fast, putting Myra’s Ford through its paces, and all the while he was on his cell phone, listening to Myra berate him, reminding him over and over again that he’d failed. He’d left the city in a rush and now was flying toward the cabin, fields and farmland flashing by.