Fuck. “It’s the thought of them. Now that I know they’re in there—”
“That happened to my granny,” Abby said. “She was on antibiotics and she lost her sense of smell. Never came back. You should talk to the doctor about that.”
“God, no,” said Rafe. “If we’ve found something that makes her stop bitching about onions, I vote we let nature take its course. Are you having the rest of that, or can I?”
“I don’t want to lose my sense of taste and eat onions,” I said. “I’d rather get an infection.”
“Good. Then pass it over here.”
Daniel had gone back to his food. I prodded dubiously at mine; Rafe rolled his eyes. My heart was going ninety. Sooner or later, I thought, I am going to make a mistake that I can’t talk my way out of.
“Nice save on the onions,” Frank said, that night. “And when it comes time to pull you out, you’ve got it all set up and ready to go: the antibiotics were messing with your sense of taste, you quit taking them, and hey presto, you got an infection. I wish I’d thought of it myself.”
I was up my tree, bundled in the communal jacket—it was a cloudy night, fine drizzle spattering the leaves, threatening to turn into full-on rain any minute—and keeping a very sharp ear out for John Naylor. “You heard that? Don’t you ever go home?”
“Not much, these days. Plenty of time to sleep once we’ve got our man. Speaking of which, my weekend with Holly’s coming up, so if we could start winding this up, I’d be a very happy camper.”
“Me too,” I said, “believe me.”
“Yeah? I got the feeling you were starting to settle in very nicely.”
I couldn’t read his voice; no one does neutral like Frank. “It could be a lot worse, sure,” I said carefully. “But tonight was a wake-up call. I can’t keep this up forever. Anything useful on your end?”
“No luck on what sent May-Ruth running. Chad and her buddies can’t remember anything unusual happening that week. But they might not anyway; it’s been four and a half years.”
This came as no surprise. “Oh, well,” I said. “Worth a shot.”
“Here’s something that came up, though,” Frank said. “Probably nothing to do with our case, but it’s odd, and anything odd is worth thinking about, at this stage. Just on the surface, what kind of person did Lexie come across as, to you?”
I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me. There was something squirmy about this, too intimate, like being asked to describe myself. “I don’t know. Bouncy, I guess. Cheerful. Confident. Lots of energy. A little childish, maybe.”
“Yeah. Same here. That’s what we got off the video clips, and that’s what we got off all her mates. But that’s not what my FBI boy’s getting from May-Ruth’s pals.”
Something cold rippled through my stomach. I tucked my feet up higher into the branches and started chewing my knuckle.
“They’re describing a shy kid, very quiet. Chad thought that had to do with her being from some nowhere town in the Appalachians; he said Raleigh was a huge adventure to her, she loved it but she was a little overwhelmed by it all. She was gentle, a daydreamer, loved animals, was thinking of maybe becoming a vet’s assistant. Now tell me this: does that sound anything like our Lexie to you?”
I ran my hand through my hair and wished I were on solid ground; I needed to move. “So you’re saying what? You think we’re dealing with two different girls who both happen to look like me? Because I have to tell you, Frank, I’ve pretty much hit my limit for coincidences on this case.” I had this insane vision of more and more doubles popping out of the woodwork, matching mes vanishing and reappearing all over the world like a huge Whack-a-Mole game, a me in every port. This is what I get for wanting a sister when I was little, I thought wildly, biting back a hysterical giggle, be careful what you wish for—
Frank laughed. “Nah. You know I love you, babe, but two of you are enough for me. Plus our girl’s prints matched May-Ruth’s. I’m just saying it’s odd. I know people who’ve dealt with identity-swappers—protected witnesses, adult runaways like our girl—and they all say the same thing: these people were the same afterwards as they were before. It’s one thing getting a new name and a new life; it’s a whole other thing getting a new personality. Even for a trained undercover, it’s a constant strain. You know what it was like, having to be Lexie Madison twenty-four seven—what it’s like now, sure. It’s not easy.”
“I’m doing OK,” I said. I had that wild urge to laugh again. This girl, whoever the hell she was, would have made a fantastic undercover. Maybe we should have swapped lives earlier.
“You are, of course,” Frank said smoothly. “But so was our girl, and that’s worth looking into. Maybe she was just naturally gifted, but maybe she had training, somewhere—as an undercover, or as an actor. I’m putting out feelers; you have a little think and see if you’ve noticed any indicators that point in one direction or another. That sound like a plan?”
“Yeah,” I said, slowly leaning back against the tree trunk. “Good thinking.”
I didn’t feel like laughing any more. That first afternoon in Frank’s office had just flashed across my mind, so vivid that for an instant I smelled dust and leather and whiskeyed coffee, and for the first time I wondered if I had completely missed what was happening in that little sunlit room; if I had bounced blithely, unconsciously, past the most crucial moment of all. Here I had always believed the test had come in the first few minutes, with that couple on the street or when Frank asked me if I was afraid. It had never occurred to me that those were only the outer gates and that the real challenge had come much later, when I thought I was already safe inside; that the secret handshake I had given, without even realizing it, might have been the ease with which I helped come up with Lexie Madison.
“Does Chad know?” I asked suddenly, when Frank was about to hang up. “About May-Ruth not being May-Ruth?”
“Yep,” Frank said cheerfully. “He does. I left him his illusions as long as I could, but this week I had my boy tell him. I needed to know if he was holding something back, out of loyalty or whatever. Apparently he wasn’t.”
The poor bastard. “How’d he take it?”
“He’ll survive,” Frank said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” And he hung up. I sat in my tree, making patterns in the bark with my fingernail, for a long time.
I was starting to wonder if I’d been underestimating, not the killer, but the victim. I didn’t want to think this, I’d been flinching off it, but I knew: there had been something wrong with Lexie, way deep down. The flint of her, the way she had left Chad behind without a word and laughed while she got ready to leave Whitethorn House, like an animal biting off its own trapped paw with one snap and no whimper; that could have been just desperation. I understood that, all the way. But this, the seamlessness of that switch from sweet shy May-Ruth to bubbly clown Lexie: that had been something else, something wrong. No kind of fear or desperation could have demanded that. She had done it because she wanted to. A girl with that much hidden and that much dark could have sparked a very high caliber of anger in someone.
It’s not easy, Frank had said. But that was the thing: for me, it always had been. Both times, being Lexie Madison had come as natural to me as breathing. I had slid into her like sliding into comfy old jeans, and this was what had scared me, all along.
It wasn’t until I was getting into bed, that night, that I remembered: that day on the grass, when something had clicked into place and I had seen the five of them as a family, Lexie as the cheeky late-baby sister. Lexie’s mind had gone along the same track as mine had, only a million times faster. She had taken one look and seen what they were and what they were missing, and fast as a blink she had made herself into that.