Don't Say a Word - Barbara Freethy [116]
"They think I have this priceless object, is that right?"
"I suspect so."
"This is unbelievable." Her head felt heavy with the amount of information she'd received, and she pressed a hand to her temple, feeling the ache spread across her cheekbones and around her eyes. "I don't know what to think. How am I supposed to feel? I know who my parents are, but they're dead. I can't meet them. I can't talk to them." The finality of that made her feel terribly sad. "I almost wish I'd never seen that picture of myself. I could have gone on believing I was just Julia DeMarco and not the orphan girl at the gates."
"You're not the girl in the picture," Charles said abruptly.
Her gaze flew to his. Her stomach did a somersault. "What do you mean? Of course I am." She silently begged him not to spin her around in another direction.
"Of course she is," Alex echoed in surprise. "I saw her. I took her picture. I was there."
Charles looked from Julia to Alex, then back to Julia again. His silence drew her nerves into a tight, screaming knot.
"Just say it-whatever it is," she begged.
"All right. I've told you this much. I might as well tell you the rest. You aren't the girl in the photograph, Julia."
"Then who is?" she demanded.
Chapter 18
"You have a sister," Charles said, his voice slow and deliberate. "A twin sister. She was the one standing at the gate that day. You were inside the building."
Shocked silence met his words. Julia didn't know what to say. It was clear Alex couldn't find words, either. The surprises just kept coming, each one bigger than the last.
"That's impossible," she said, finally finding her voice. "Why wouldn't that have come out before, when the picture was published?"
"No one in the general public ever connected the girl at the gates with the twin girls of Natalia and Sergei Markov, who died in an explosion. In fact, it was printed in the Russian newspaper that everyone in the house was dead, including the servants. No one ever came forward when the picture was printed to state your true identity. So if anyone recognized you, they kept it to themselves."
She could barely comprehend his explanation. She was still thinking about the fact that she had a sister. "I would remember," she said, racking her brain for any hint of a memory, but her mind was blank. She didn't remember a sister or parents or Russia, or anything that happened before she was in the United States. Yet something teased at the back of her mind. Why couldn't she bring it forward, let it out?
"Where is she?" Alex asked. "Where is this sister? Why didn't Sarah keep her and Julia together? Did something happen to her?"
Julia caught her breath at his question, silently pleading that her sister wasn't dead, too.
"It was too dangerous to keep the girls together," Charles explained. "They were taken out of the country separately."
"Who took my sister?" She stumbled over the word sister, realizing it no longer applied just to Liz, but to another woman as well.
"Another agent. Before you ask, I didn't know his name or anything about him. I wasn't supposed to be involved in that aspect of the operation. Stan made it clear that my job was to make the cultural exchange look authentic. Divert suspicion and attention by creating media opportunities for the theater group. The Russians wanted positive press."
"Wait," Alex said, putting up a hand. "Stan? Did you say Stan made it clear? I thought he was just an editor."
Charles smiled at that. "Stan was never just an editor. He was a friend. A crazy, wild friend."
Julia didn't understand the gleam in Charles's eye. Nor had Stan Harding given her the impression of being crazy or wild. Alex appeared confused, too.
"Are you saying Stan was involved in the operation to get the Markovs out of Russia?"
"He was a ballet fanatic. He'd met Natalia a few times when she came to the States. She confided in him. He set up the defection."
"So he lied, too," Alex said bitterly. "Big surprise."
"Let's go back to my sister. I want to know where she