More Than a Mission - Caridad Pineiro [65]
He hesitated, clearly troubled, before slipping the badge back into his pocket. “Aidan Spaulding. I work for the Lazlo Group. We’ve been hired to track down Prince Reginald’s killer.”
“You lied to me,” she said and stepped close to him, wanting to see his eyes as he answered.
“I had to. I—”
She slapped him, hard enough to snap his head back. “You prick. You’ve been lying to me the whole time. You were lying to me when…”
She went for him again, but this time he snared her hand in midair. “Don’t,” he warned.
“Or what?” Anger drove her to taunt him.
“You have no twin. Nothing in the files supports that,” he advised and released her.
She let out a harsh laugh. “Your files are wrong, Aidan. Danielle Elizabeth Moore is my twin sister. My older sister by half an hour.”
Aidan examined her features carefully, but the lady was either an amazing liar, telling the truth, or totally demented. He didn’t know which of the three possibilities he preferred. But two of them could be easily eliminated.
“Prove it,” he said.
Lizzy immediately sprang into action. Striding to the bookcase at one side of the room, she knelt before it and rummaged through some of the books before saying, “It’s gone.”
He stood behind her and asked, “What’s gone?”
She was shaking her head and flipping through the books once more. “Our high-school yearbook. Weird. But it doesn’t matter. There’s pictures in here.”
She yanked a photo album from one of the shelves and flipped it open. As she balanced it on her thighs, she turned one page after another, her movements becoming more agitated as page after page failed to reveal anything other than pictures of her and her parents.
Her hands shook as she tossed that album aside and reached for another, repeated her search, her actions more frantic with each page of photos until finally she had gone through every album with no satisfaction. After she tossed aside the last one, she glanced up at him.
The look on her face had him leaning toward the demented possibility.
“I don’t understand,” she said, her tone uncertain, as if she was beginning to doubt her own sanity.
He bent down until he was face to face with her, reached out and cupped her cheek. “Lizzy—”
She batted away his hand. “Don’t you dare ever call me that again.”
He nodded, but pressed onward. “I can get help to cure this delusion.”
“I’m not crazy.” She enunciated each word carefully and with determination. It only worried him more.
A second later, she popped up and said, “I know where there’s proof.”
She hurried to the door and Aidan whispered into the wire, “Stay put, Red Rover. This isn’t going the way I envisioned.”
“I so totally copy that, Blender Boy,” Lucia advised as he followed Lizzy to the restaurant and then down into the cellar. She purposefully strode to the safe, spun the lock and popped open the door.
He stepped beside her, recollecting the view he’d had of the safe just days earlier. It appeared the same except…
“There was a foot locker down at the bottom.” He motioned to the glaring emptiness of the bottom shelf.
“Dani’s foot locker. She must have come by to get it,” Lizzy explained and grabbed a smaller box from another shelf. Working the lock on that box, she opened it and, as before, unsuccessfully rummaged through the papers there.
Every line of her body reflected her dejection. Her surprise. “I don’t get it.”
“Look, we have a doctor who can deal with this kind of thing,” he said and laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
She shook off his touch. Her words were clipped, laced with anger. “I am not crazy.”
With that she was in action again, heading back to the cottage and up the stairs to her bedroom, where she began tossing things out of the drawers at the desk in the corner of her room, clearly searching for something. Anything, apparently.
Aidan just stood watching until it became clear she would find nothing to justify her delusion. Turning his attention to the rest of the room, he examined it more carefully and something on the nightstand