Born To Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

It had to be.

Didn’t it?

She stared at one particularly good shot of Gerald and Noreen, husband and wife, standing side by side at a charity function several years back. Both were dressed to the nines, he in a tux and white tie, she wearing a shimmering silver gown. Both of them had silver hair and lots of it; he showed no sign of fat; his skin was tanned, crow’s-feet fanning from his eyes.

A golfer, maybe. Hours in the sun.

His wife was paler, her makeup subdued, her features sharp and defined. Tall and thin, Noreen Johnson was beautiful in her own right, though her genetic contribution to her children was more difficult to discern, perhaps the curly hair of her daughter Clarissa and one son, Thane, third in line.

Gerald Johnson had certainly fathered a flock of children.

Even more than he might know about, if her theory was right.

She saw the wash of Trace’s headlights, heard the rumble of his truck, and as Bonzi put up a loud, deep-throated ruckus, she stepped onto the front porch. “Hush!” she commanded the dog, and he gave off one final, quiet bark just as Trace cut the engine.

She felt a little uptick in her pulse, which was just plain ludicrous. Bonzi stood beside her, his wagging tail a whip of friendly excitement, once again dispelling any of her hopes that he might just be a guard dog.

Companion? Yes. Final line of defense? Very unlikely.

He was already lowering his head, ready to be petted, as Trace, bundled in a heavy jacket, crossed the snowy lawn in that athletic/ cowboy way she’d never found all that attractive.

Until now.

Swinging from one of Trace’s gloved hands was a laptop computer, which changed his image just a bit.

“Is that what you want to show me?” she asked as he climbed up the few steps and walked into the pool of light cast by the porch lamp.

“Something on it. Yeah.” He paused to pet the dog before they both followed her inside and down the short hall to the kitchen. Trace flipped open his computer. “You got a wireless setup here?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Security code?”

When she shook her head, he said, “Let’s put one on.” He offered her a bit of a smile as he kicked out one of the café chairs. “Just to be on the safe side.”

She wasn’t going to argue. Not with everything else that was happening. “You want something? I’ve got coffee and tea and”—she peered in her refrigerator as he connected to the Internet—“Diet Coke, oh, or a light beer?”

“Sure, the beer,” he said but didn’t even glance up. “Okay, so here we go. Take a look.”

She opened two bottles, twisting the tops off, and handed him one as she sat next to him. On the computer screen were several pictures, and at first she thought they were of the same woman, but as he clicked through them, she saw the differences. Her fingers tightened over her long-necked beer, and she felt her stomach knot. “What is this?” But she knew.

“Pictures of women I know who resemble each other. Here you are,” he said, and she recognized the photograph as one she had uploaded to the clinic’s Web site. Next up was the school class picture of Jocelyn Wallis.

The third was of a woman Kacey couldn’t name. It was a photograph taken at a distance and obviously scanned into the computer. “That’s Leanna,” he explained, his lips barely moving. “Eli’s mother.” He zoomed in so that her face, though blurry, was a little more visible.

Kacey’s blood ran cold as she stared at features so like her own. “You were married to her and involved with Jocelyn. . . .” She looked up at him, heart in her throat.

“You’re thinking just what the cops will, but I had nothing to do with any of this,” he said, shaking his head in confusion. “I’m apparently attracted to a certain type of woman, but that’s as far as it goes.”

“So where is she? Leanna?” Kacey asked carefully.

“I don’t know.”

Kacey heard something in his tone. “You think she might be dead,” she whispered and then was inordinately aware of the clock ticking off the seconds, of Bonzi snoring softly in the living room, of Trace’s rock-hard jaw, the tension evident on his features.

He raked stiff fingers through his already tousled hair. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know what to think, but I’m pretty certain that since I was the last guy Jocelyn dated, and I went to her house when the school called, I’m already on the police’s radar. If they see pictures of Leanna, who could be missing ... they might make a connection.” He leaned back in his chair. “Then again, they could find Leanna, see that she’s okay, which would be good. I can’t seem to reach her. Eli misses her.”

Stunned to think he’d been married to someone so much like her, Kacey stared at the image on the screen. This was all too freaky, and a part of her said she was going out of her mind, letting paranoia get the better of her, but she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed her uncanny resemblance to the other women, including Trace’s ex-wife. “Do you miss her?” she asked.