Twin Targets

“Is it over?”

Was there an honest answer to that? He wasn’t sure. Her likeness to Ruby shook him, and he tried to ignore the image of Ruby’s lifeless body.

“For the moment,” he said.

TWO

“Why don’t you just come home with me?” Ellen Trask asked the question for the fourth or fifth time since she’d sat down in the kitchen with Jade. “I’ll convince them it’s okay.”

Jade didn’t doubt that. Ellen might look like a elderly kewpie doll with her gray curls and cheeks as round and shiny as apples, but she didn’t take anything from anyone.

She’d already gone one round with a patrolman who’d tried to get her to leave. She had come out victorious. That seemed to have her geared up to take on anyone to protect the tenant she tended to mother.

“Thanks, but I’d better stay.” She tried to manage a smile, but was sure it failed. “I’d rather be here, in case they want to talk to me again.”

Ellen didn’t argue. She just got up, her boot crunching on a bit of broken plate on the floor, and poured hot water from the steaming kettle into their tea mugs.

“I still don’t see why they wouldn’t let me sweep this floor.” Ellen hadn’t liked it when the patrolman had taken the broom from her hand with a warning not to disturb a crime scene. “What’s a bit of shattered china going to tell them, I’d like to know?”

She didn’t know, either, so she just shook her head, wrapping her fingers around the mug. But even its warmth couldn’t penetrate the cold place inside her. Ruby, the twin sister who’d once felt like the other half of her, was dead. She didn’t think she’d really absorbed it yet.

It didn’t help that her cozy home no longer felt like her own. The living room, the upstairs, even the front yard thronged with various people in uniform, doing goodness knew what. Strangers had taken over her house, beginning the moment Micah McGraw came to her door, bringing with him that aura of menace and danger. If he’d never come near her…

Well, that was a stupid thought. They’d had to tell her that Ruby was dead. They’d had to admit they’d failed to protect her.

And now they’d brought Ruby’s killers to her door. Another shiver went through her.

Ellen, probably seeing the involuntary movement, patted her hand. “It’s an awful thing, those men breaking in, just awful. I never heard of the like in the whole time I’ve lived in this county. Things like that don’t happen here.”

That was what she’d thought, too. Apparently they’d both been wrong.

“What do you suppose they wanted?” Ellen fixed an inquiring gaze on Jade’s face.

She didn’t know what to say. Anything but the truth, she supposed. “I don’t know.”

She had to struggle to get the words out. Probably someone like Micah lied easily in his job, constantly dealing with people who weren’t who they said they were. Falsehood didn’t come so readily to her.

Ruby had lied all the time when they were younger. The unpleasant memory seemed disloyal, but it was true. Ruby had always said you might as well tell people what they wanted to hear. She hadn’t seemed to realize that people had eventually come to distrust her.

Maybe because of that, Jade had tried always to tell the exact truth, no matter how much it hurt. But she couldn’t tell Ellen, or anyone else, about Ruby.

Fortunately Ellen was off on a string of speculations of her own, coming up with one reason after another for the peculiar happenings. Jade could stop paying attention as long as she nodded once in a while. She could let her thoughts worry at the events of the past hour, trying to make sense of it all.

“Lucky for you that marshal happened to come along when he did.”

“Yes, it was.” Jerked back to attention, she tried to sound noncommittal. McGraw had saved her life. She couldn’t deny that. On the other hand, he might have been the one to lead those men right to her.

The back door rattled. She jumped, tea sloshing onto the tabletop. Herb came in, with Micah McGraw looming behind him.

“We better get along home, Ellen.” Herb always looked somewhat like an elderly bloodhound, and at the moment, the lines of his face had deepened. “The marshal here needs to talk to Jade.”

Ellen’s feathers ruffled instantly. “Not if Jade wants me to stay, marshal or no marshal.”

Ellen’s friendship warmed her. But she couldn’t tell Ellen the truth, and obviously neither she nor McGraw wanted to talk in front of her.

“That’s kind of you, but I’m fine. I can’t thank you enough for coming.” Her voice wobbled a little on the last word.

Ellen rose and swept her into a hug. “You call us anytime, day or night. Better yet, come stay with us tonight. Or at least come over for supper.”

“I’ll…I’ll let you know.”

She must be more shattered than she’d thought when such simple kindness brought her close to tears. She tried to stiffen her spine. Right now she needed time to collect herself, to mourn her sister, to restore order to her life. And to get rid of the authorities, in the form of the man who stood like a rock in her kitchen.

When the door closed behind Ellen and Herb, she slumped back into the chair. McGraw still stood, hands braced on the back of the chair opposite her, his gaze focused on her face.

“Are you okay?” He said the words as if he actually cared.

“I think so.” She took a breath, weighing what to say. “I guess I owe you thanks for saving my life.”

That didn’t sound very gracious, but it was the best she could do right now. She didn’t trust the man. How could she? He’d let her sister down. He’d brought danger to her home.

The chair scraped against the floor. He sat down across from her, planting his elbow on the table, making the pine surface instantly smaller. Obviously he wasn’t just going to go away. That would be too simple.

“I’m sorry.”

She looked up, startled, to meet his gaze. “Sorry?”

“For your sister’s death. For your trouble.” He made a small, seemingly involuntary gesture with his hands, and his brown eyes darkened with what looked like genuine sorrow.

Her throat tightened. She wouldn’t cry in front of him. She wouldn’t. But it took all her strength to hold the tears back. “Thank you.” Her voice was husky.

He let the silence stretch between them for a moment. Then…“You knew Ruby was in Montana.”

For a moment his persistence angered her. But what was the point in keeping it secret? She couldn’t protect Ruby now.

“I knew. She wasn’t supposed to tell me, but she did.”

“How? Did she call you? Write to you?” He leaned toward her, face intent.

She shook her head. “She let me know near the end of the trial. The FBI agents brought her to the library where I was working to say goodbye.”

“They’d have stayed with her the whole time.” His tone showed he doubted her.

“Ruby was an old hand at fooling people.” She almost smiled at the thought. “She fiddled with one of the reference books on my desk while we talked. I didn’t think anything of it. I’m sure the agents didn’t, either. But afterward I found the slip of paper she’d stuck in it. Montana, it said. That’s all.”

“She was in touch again.”

She looked at him, startled. “No. I told you. I never heard anything more from her.”

Level brows lifted above stony brown eyes. “You expect me to believe that you quit your job and moved across the country on the basis of that one word.” Flat with doubt, his voice challenged her.

Anger flared. “I don’t know what to expect of you, Deputy Marshal McGraw, but that happens to be the truth.”

He leaned back in the chair, putting a few more inches between them. Stared at her, his eyes dark and intense. Waited.

She waited, too. If he thought he was going to trick her into explaining an act she didn’t quite understand herself, he’d wait a long time.

Finally he lifted an eyebrow again. “So. That’s it? You just moved out here on a whim. You figured fate would bring you back in touch with your sister if you were in the same state?”

Pain twisted inside her. That was exactly what she’d thought. But it hadn’t.

“If I thought that, then I was wrong, wasn’t I? I didn’t get to see her, and now she’s dead.”

You were supposed to protect her. She didn’t say the words, but he was probably smart enough to know she was thinking them.

“Let’s go over it again,” he said. “Tell me exactly what happened when….”

The back door opened before he could finish. One of the uniformed men met McGraw’s eyes, jerked his head toward the backyard.

McGraw rose. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She made no move, watching as he left the room. Then reaction set in, and her hands trembled. She clasped them, pressing her palms together.

She couldn’t let the man get to her like this. She was not at fault in what had happened, and she wouldn’t let him make her feel like a criminal.

Shoving her chair back, she got to her feet, grasping the table for a moment as if she were an old woman. Then she moved toward the living room door. Surely they were finished by now. Maybe she could straighten up in there.

She pushed the door open, stepped through and stopped. Stared. And caught her breath on a sob.

“Get anything more from her?” Arthur Phillips, Micah’s immediate superior, blew out a breath on the frosty air, sending up a misty cloud.

“Not much.” Micah shoved his hands in his pockets. “According to her, Ruby tipped her that she was being sent to Montana right under the noses of the agents who were guarding her. Says she moved out here but never heard from Ruby again.”

“You believe she actually came here just on the chance she’d run into her sister?”

Micah considered. He’d been skeptical, too, but…“We might want to push some more on that, but it sounded genuine.”

“Could be, I guess. They were identical twins, so I suppose the bond runs pretty deep.” Phillips’s cold blue eyes surveyed him. “Or she could be involved herself in the mess Ruby was in. That would account for the shooters coming after her.”

Micah nodded slowly. “It still doesn’t make much sense. Why did they need to kill both twins? And I told you what I heard the shooter say.”

“‘What if this isn’t the right one, either?’” Phillips repeated the words that had been echoing in Micah’s head for the past hour or so. “What did he mean? Why was Ruby not the right one? And if she wasn’t…”

“Like I said, it doesn’t make sense.”

Phillips’s scowl said he didn’t like things that didn’t make sense. “Whatever it means, the Summers woman needs both investigation and protection. You think you can talk her into moving somewhere safe?”

“I can try. She doesn’t seem to trust us too much.”

“Try hard. Convince her we’re the good guys. I want to be sure she’s safe and someplace where we can get our hands on her until we figure out what’s going on.”

Phillips’s tone dismissed him. Nodding, Micah turned back to the house.

He’d said Jade didn’t trust them, but as far as he could see, that mistrust was aimed straight at him personally. And he suspected Jade had a fierce stubborn streak behind her prim, soft exterior.

He pushed into the kitchen. She wasn’t there, but a sound came from the living room beyond. He went through the room in a few quick strides.

Jade knelt over the remains of a curio shelf the shooters had knocked off the wall. Her shoulders shook and tears rained down her face.

“Are you all right?” As he neared, he saw that the shelf had contained a collection of crystal bells, shattered now beyond any hope of repair. “Careful. Don’t cut yourself.”

“I won’t.” She stood, keeping her face averted, probably not wanting him to see her cry.

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid they’re a total loss. Were they a special memento?” The bells must mean something, to bring her to tears.

“No.” Her voice turned cool as she swung to face him. “It’s nothing. I’d just like to clean up in here, if you people are finished.”

She made it sound as if they’d done the damage. Jade Summers must have steel in her backbone, to react as calmly as she had to the events of the morning.

She had been shaken but dry-eyed at the news of her sister’s death. Now she wept over a few broken bells. He didn’t have a clue to what went on inside her. His chief was letting him play a lone hand with the woman, and he had to do it right.

“Cleaning up will have to wait. I have a few more questions.”

Her lips tightened. “I’ve already told you everything I know. Whoever led those men to my sister, it wasn’t me.”

“Then why did they come after you?” He shot the question at her.

She raked her fingers through deep red curls, clenching her hands for an instant as if pulling on her shoulder-length mop would clear her brain. “How would I know? You’re the professional. You tell me.”

“Maybe we should go to my office in Billings to have this discussion.” It was a pretty safe bet that she didn’t want to do that.

“I can’t do that.” Her voice went up. “I have to get to work.”

“The library will exist without you for as long as necessary. But if you answer my questions here, it’ll go faster.”

“I told you I don’t know anything that would help you.”

“We don’t know ourselves what will help at this point,” he countered. “Humor me.”

She shot him a look of active dislike, but then she shrugged, giving in. “What do you want to know? I’ve already told you that I haven’t seen Ruby since that day at the library.”

He wasn’t sure he believed that, but he set it aside for the moment. “Had you been seeing a lot of her before that? Even before her case came up, I mean.”

“No.” She hesitated for a moment. Sometimes people did that when they were trying to fabricate a lie, but he thought she just didn’t want to talk about it.

“I hadn’t seen much of Ruby in quite a while.” Her voice was slow, reluctant. “I don’t know how much you know about our backgrounds—”

She stopped, maybe waiting for him to fill in the blanks.

“I know enough.” It was all there in the records, and he’d been Ruby’s contact.

Her lips pressed together for an instant. “Our father was out of the picture. Our mother was an alcoholic and an addict. Our childhood was a nightmare. All I ever wanted was to get out—to make something of myself so I never had to live like that again. Ruby…well, Ruby didn’t agree.”

“So you parted company, did you?” Truth to tell, he didn’t see much of his half brother, either. Sometimes siblings just didn’t have much to say to each other.

“Not exactly. I mean, we didn’t have a fight or anything.” Her gaze slid away from his, as if there was more to it than that. “Ruby found my life boring, I guess. And I found hers…” she searched for a word “…dangerous.”

“You knew she was involved with a guy who was Mob-connected?”

“No, no.” She pushed that away with both hands. “Is that what this is about? Did they kill her because she testified?”

“We don’t know that yet.”

“But that’s what you think. What you were trying to protect her from by moving her here.”

“That could be. So you’re telling me you were living in the same city with your sister but you didn’t know who she was seeing?”

“I wasn’t living in the same city, not for most of that time. I went to work for the Baltimore County Library System after I got my degree. I only came back to Pittsburgh when that whole business about the trial came up. I thought Ruby might need me.”

She was looking down at the shattered glass on the floor again, and her hands worked as if it caused her pain not to be able to clean it up.

Baltimore. That was something to look into, at least. If Jade had been that far away, it seemed unlikely that she could have been involved in anything having to do with the Mob in Pittsburgh.

They’d check on it. Just like they’d check on hundreds of other details. And in the meantime, the shooters were out there on the loose, maybe waiting for another crack at killing Jade.

“Is that all?” She glanced up at him, looking like a kid longing to hear that an ordeal was over.

Unfortunately he couldn’t believe that hers was. “Not entirely. We’d like to move you to a safer location for a time. If you’ll pack what you need—”

“No. I’m not going anywhere.” That soft jaw managed to look amazingly stubborn. “This is my home.”

“You’re not safe here. Let us take care of you.”

Anger flared in her eyes. “The way you took care of my sister?”

His fists clenched. “Those men could come back. Do you want to face them on your own?”

Her face whitened, but she didn’t drop her gaze. They stared at each other, wary as strange cats, and he felt the force of her determination pushing against him.

Footsteps thudded on the front porch, and the county sheriff came in, knocking snow off his boots.

“There you are, McGraw. We’ve got some good news for you. Looks like you’re not going to have to worry about those two gunmen anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

And why was he talking in front of a witness? Overweight, overage and out of shape, the man was obviously too full of his news to be discreet.

“I don’t know where they were for the past couple hours, but a few minutes ago they tried to run a roadblock we’d set up out on the highway.”

“You’ve got them?” Maybe now they’d get some answers.

“Well, not exactly.” The man’s pudgy face expressed disappointment. “Thing is, they tried to bust their way through the barrier, lost control of the vehicle, ended up wrapped around a utility pole. One’s dead, the other’s on his way to the hospital in critical condition.”

And probably not able to talk, the way their luck was running. “You’ve got a guard on him?”

“Of course.” The sheriff looked offended.

“That means I’m safe,” Jade said, drawing his attention back to her. “There’s no reason why I have to go.”

All his instincts screamed at the thought of leaving her here alone, no matter what had happened to the shooters. “You’d still be safer in a hotel in Billings.”

Her jaw set. “I’m staying here.”

“Well, shoot, we’ll look after Ms. Summers, Marshal. We think highly of her around here.” The sheriff beamed. “You federal boys don’t need to think we can’t take care of our own.”

He’d argue, but he was on shaky ground. Jade could be right, and the threat to her could be over. The sheriff could be right, and he was capable of looking after her.

Could be. But he doubted it.

He looked at Jade and imagined her lying on a cold concrete floor with two bullet holes in her. His gut twisted.

He nodded. “I’ll be in touch,” he said. It was all he could do.

THREE

The briefing seemed to be stagnating, and Micah shifted restlessly in his chair. They’d gone over and over the little they knew about Ruby’s murder, and it seemed to him they were no further.

Phillips tapped a pen on the tabletop, the only sign of frustration he allowed himself. “Mac, what’s the scuttlebutt from Pittsburgh? Does the organized crime team there have anything?”

Mac Sellers straightened at being appealed to. Years behind a desk had softened his belly and soured his disposition, but he’d learned how to work the complicated threads that bound law enforcement agencies together, and that could be invaluable.

“Nothing that moves us forward. No indication that the Pittsburgh Mob was interested in sending any messages by tracking her down. Why would they? The guy she put away was a low-level soldier, easily replaced.”

“What about him?” Phillips snapped. “He might be carrying a grudge.”

“That’s more promising.” Mac seemed to like drawing out his moment of attention. “Joey Buffano, his name was. Seems Joey got himself a fancy lawyer, got his sentence reduced on some technicality or other.”

A low murmur went around the table. Nobody liked the idea of a perp getting out early because somebody had slipped up.

“Anyway, they’re looking into Joey for us, but the immediate word was that he’s been doing an impression of a model citizen, working at his parents’ meat market and reporting to his parole officer on schedule.”

Phillips made a complicated sound that expressed doubt at Joey’s turnaround and skepticism at his apparent alibi.

“Keep after them. The two we’ve got on ice were low-level muscle. Maybe they were doing Joey a favor.” He looked around the table. “Anything else need following up on?”

Micah didn’t particularly want to bring up this subject, but better it come from him than from someone else. “Yes. How did the shooters locate Jade Summers? And why did they bother coming after her?”

“I don’t know why, but I can guess how.” Mac sounded pleased that he had something to contribute. “I was going over the report from Ruby Maxwell’s apartment. Inside her Bible they found a newspaper photo and article, announcing the appointment of Jade Summers as head of the White Rock Library.”

“So they saw that when they tossed the apartment,” Phillips said. “Maybe weren’t sure they had the right twin, and went after the other one.”

That meant he hadn’t led them to her door, at least. “That must be it,” he said. “There’s still the matter of how they found Ruby.”

Mac shook his head. “We could look ’til we’re old and gray and never know that for sure, but I’m betting she was in touch with one of her old friends. We all know that’s usually what happens.”

“We’ll keep following up on it, in any event.” Phillips sounded ready to be finished. “What are you working on right now, McGraw?”

“I’m still checking out Jade Summers’s background.”

Phillips closed the folder in front of him. “Have Mac help you with that. I want you to call your brother.”

That jolted him to attention. “Why my brother?”

“He’s the big expert on organized crime, isn’t he? That memo he sent about the Martino family—well, on the surface it seems unlikely there’s any connection, but he should be consulted. You call him.” Phillips smiled thinly. “Do you good to stay in touch with your kin. All right, people, let’s get moving on this.”

Chairs scraped, fragments of conversation floated past his attention. He didn’t heed them. Call your brother.

Okay, no reason not to give Jackson a call. It had been a while. Usually his information about his half brother was funneled through his mother. Jackson always maintained a good relationship with his stepmother.

Back at his desk he checked through the information that had come through in the past hour, looked again at the file on Ruby, and finally faced the fact that he was putting off the inevitable. And that he was probably being unfair to his brother. Just because Jackson’s status with the Bureau was nearly legendary, it didn’t follow that he looked down on his little brother’s efforts.

It just felt that way. Between his father’s reputation and his big brother’s, there was way too much to live up to in the McGraw family.

He reached for the phone and called the Bureau’s Chicago field office.

Special Agent McGraw was in. “Micah.” Jackson’s deep voice was crisp, as always when he was on duty, which was most of the time. “What’s with a Mob hit in the wilds of Montana?”

“You know about that already.” He wasn’t surprised. Jackson kept himself informed about anything having to do with organized crime.

“I know about Ruby Maxwell. I didn’t know you were involved, though.”

“I’d settled her in Witness Protection. I was her contact.” He didn’t need to say more. Jackson would fill in the blanks.

“Rough. I hear you caught the shooters already.”

Not me, he wanted to say. A county sheriff and a handy utility pole caught them.

“One’s dead, the other one’s not talking. The strange thing is that they immediately went after Ruby’s twin sister, Jade Summers, who has no Mob connection in what seems a blameless life.”

Jackson grunted. “Nobody’s life is blameless. Does she know why they came after her?”