Chapter Four #3
Her pale hair fell around her face, wild from sleep she hadn’t gotten.
Her boots were unlaced. The charcoal overshirt hung open over her shoulders.
The floral tattoo curled around her left ankle exactly as my paperwork said it should, and the anchor-and-compass ink rode the back of her right shoulder where the tank left it bare.
The same identifiers.
The wrong woman.
My pulse slowed down instead of speeding up.
That was worse.
I stepped onto the porch.
The old boards creaked once under my boot.
Both women turned.
The woman in the cardigan went white.
The woman from the motel moved first.
She stepped in front of her sister so fast her bare shoulder almost clipped the table. Her hand went back, palm open, pushing the other woman behind her without taking her eyes off me.
“Dex,” she said.
My name in her mouth still landed exactly where it shouldn’t.
I opened the screen door slowly and kept both hands visible. “Nobody runs.”
Her eyes flashed. “You tracked the truck.”
“You left my keys on the tire.”
“I didn’t want someone else to steal it.”
“You stole my truck.”
“I borrowed it long enough to keep her alive.”
The woman behind her made a small sound. Fear, not humor.
That sound snapped my attention to her.
Up close, the difference was clearer and worse.
Same face, but not the same woman. Crystal Kemp’s hair had been pulled back in a loose clip, as if she’d done it with shaking hands.
Her blue eyes were wet and scared. The curve of her mouth matched the mugshot almost exactly, and the softness in her cheeks belonged to the photo I’d been carrying for days.
She faced me like I was the last official thing standing between her and whatever had hunted her into this cabin.
“Crystal Kemp,” I said.
Her throat moved. “Yes.”
The woman in front of her went rigid.
I turned back to her. “And you’re Jade.”
Her mouth parted.
The color left her cheeks before her chin lifted. “How did you find that?”
“Your file has a sister note.”
“It didn’t say twin.”
“No,” I said. “It didn’t.”
Crystal’s hand closed around Jade’s overshirt from behind. “He didn’t know?”
“He knows now,” Jade said.
The name fit her so hard I hated that it had been missing.
Jade.
Not the name in the warrant. Not the name I’d had in my mouth all night. Jade.
I faced Crystal again. “Turn your head.”
Jade stepped forward. “Don’t touch her.”
“I’m not touching anyone.”
“Then why do you need her to turn her head?”
“Because your ink drop isn’t in the file.”
Jade froze.
Crystal’s eyes flicked to her sister. Something passed between them, fast and scared.
Then Crystal slowly turned her head.
Her pale hair had already been tucked behind her right ear.
There was no tiny black mark there.
No ink drop. No hidden tattoo. No private dark speck under the hairline where my mouth had been hours ago.
Jade’s hand rose like she meant to cover her own ear, then stopped halfway.
She knew. She knew exactly where I’d seen it and what it meant now.
My chest tightened so hard I almost missed the next breath.
I’d caught the wrong woman.
I’d slept with the wrong woman.
That thought didn’t hold.
I’d slept with the woman who’d lied to me, stolen my truck, and put herself between me and the actual warrant target without a single promise that I’d choose what came next well.
Crystal stood three feet behind her, shaking.
Jade stood in front of her like she’d take the cuffs, the fall, and the whole damned world if it meant Crystal stayed standing.
Every clean professional answer on the job got harder to reach.
I stepped fully into the cabin and let the screen door close behind me. “You’re twins.”
Jade answered flatly. “Yes.”
“Identical.”
“That’s usually how this works.”
“Jade,” Crystal whispered.
Jade’s mouth tightened. “Yes. We’re identical twins.”
“You let me believe you were Crystal.”
“I let you chase me instead of her.”
“You let me take you into custody.”
“I didn’t enjoy that part.”
“You stole my truck.”
“I got it away from the motel and left it where you’d find it.”
Crystal stepped around Jade just enough to face me. “Please don’t arrest her for that.”
Jade turned her head. “Crystal.”
“I’m serious.” Crystal’s voice shook, but she kept going. “She did it for me. She did all of this for me.”
Jade’s jaw worked once.
I took them both in.
Same face. Same eyes. Same listed tattoos if the file had stopped at the easy places.
Crystal’s cardigan slipped farther off her shoulder, and the upper edge of an anchor-and-compass tattoo showed there too, softer under skin that hadn’t been pressed against motel sheets under my hands.
Near her ankle, below the hem of the gray shorts, flowers wrapped around her left lower leg like Jade’s did.
The file hadn’t been wrong.
It had been incomplete in exactly the way a man like me was supposed to catch before it mattered.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
Annette.
I didn’t answer. Not yet.
Crystal saw the name on the screen and backed into the table.
Jade moved with her, blocking again.
“Don’t call them,” Jade said.
“That’s not your call.”
“It should be hers.”
Crystal swallowed. “I didn’t steal that money.”
I turned to her. “You skipped bond.”
“I ran because somebody set me up, and then somebody came looking for the records I copied.”
Jade’s head turned sharply. “Crystal, stop.”
“He needs to know enough not to drag me back,” Crystal said, and her voice cracked on the last word.
Her eyes came back to mine. “I’m not asking you to trust me.
I know what this looks like. I know there’s a warrant.
But I copied records from work because something was wrong, and after that, the missing money landed on me. ”
“What records?”
Crystal’s mouth opened.
Jade answered first. “Not here. Not with your phone buzzing and North Fork waiting for a location.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
Smart.
Too smart.
Jade had been smart from the first mile.
Annette’s call stopped. A second later, it started again.
The sound filled the small cabin with every choice I didn’t want to make.
I answered.
Annette didn’t waste hello. “Tell me you found the truck.”
“I found the truck.”
“And Kemp?”
I took in Crystal, then Jade.
Jade’s eyes stayed on mine. Her chin stayed level. Her shoulders stayed square, and she kept herself planted in front of her sister, the pulse beating at the side of her neck where I’d had my mouth.
“I’ve got an identification issue,” I said.
Annette went quiet.
Behind Jade, Crystal’s lips parted.
“What kind of identification issue?” Annette asked.
“The packet is incomplete. I need to verify before I request transport.”
“You have eyes on Kemp?”
“I have an issue that changes the recovery.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It’s the answer I’m giving you right now.”
Jade’s expression shifted.
Something in her shoulders dropped half an inch, like she’d been holding a weight so long she didn’t trust the first second without it.
Annette breathed out hard enough for the phone to catch it. “Dex, do not make me guess which rule you’re stepping around.”
“I’m not stepping around it. I’m keeping North Fork out of a mistake until I know how big the mistake is.”
“You need backup?”
“Not at this time.”
“Do you need county?”
“Not at this time.”
“Do you need me to pretend I enjoy this conversation?”
“You’ve never pretended that in your life.”
A beat passed.
Then Annette said, “You have one hour before I call you again. If you don’t answer, I make decisions you’ll hate.”
“Understood.”
“And Dex?”
“What?”
“Don’t get noble in a way that gets somebody dead.”
The call ended.
The cabin seemed too quiet after her voice left it.
Jade still had her eyes on me.
Crystal had one hand flat on the table, fingers trembling against scratched wood.
I reached for the crucifix before I meant to. The old silver edge pressed into my palm through my shirt.
Cade had held this same cross with fingers that shook while he told me everything was handled. I’d let the lie sit between us because I’d wanted one night without dragging truth into the light.
I didn’t get that night back.
I faced Crystal Kemp, the woman I’d been sent to recover.
The clean answer stood right there in frightened skin and soft clothes and an active warrant.
I could cuff her, call North Fork, and say the job had twisted but not broken.
Jade had stolen my truck and obstructed the recovery.
I could make her part of the report too.
Every form would have a line for it.
None of those lines would tell me why the file missed an identical twin.
None of them would tell me why a terrified bookkeeper copied records and ran.
None of them would tell me why Jade had offered herself up as a decoy, a fugitive, a weapon, and a mistake in my bed before she’d let me find her sister.
I let go of the cross.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said.
Jade’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds like the part where you say something bossy.”
“It is.”
“Of course it is.”
“You’re going to stay away from the door. Crystal is going to sit down before she falls down. Nobody touches a phone unless I see the screen first. Nobody runs.”
Jade took one step closer. “And the cuffs?”
I held her gaze.
“The cuffs stay on my belt,” I said.
Crystal’s breath broke.
Jade didn’t move. “Why?”
“Because I caught the wrong woman yesterday.”
“That didn’t bother you then.”
“I didn’t know then.”
“And now?”
I remembered the motel: her wrists free under my hands, the cuffs on the nightstand, and her mouth saying my name in the dark.
Then Jade stood in front of Crystal with her boots unlaced and her shoulders squared, still braced like I might reach around her.
Crystal gripped the table so hard her knuckles stayed white.
I unhooked the cuffs from my belt and set them on the table beside me.
Crystal flinched at the sound.
Jade didn’t.
Her gaze went to the metal, then my face. Her jaw stayed tight.
I stepped between the cuffs and the door.
“Now,” I said to Jade, “you tell me who made you desperate enough to become your sister.”