Identical Stranger

She shook her head. “Neither one of us is in any kind of argument with anyone, legal or not. Buzz’s friends are all scientists more concerned with sea ice extent than money and none of them live locally. My friends are firefighters. They’re family to me. I’m an only child. My parents are deceased. I’m alone in the world, really, except for Buzz.”

“And Buzz wasn’t having trouble with anyone before he left?”

“No. None of this makes any sense and that makes me think it’s all in my head.”

“The origami fox isn’t in your head,” he reminded her.

She rubbed her eyes. “No, it’s not.”

“Nor was the falling rock.”

She looked unsure about that but he wasn’t a big fan of coincidences. The boulder could easily have killed her—probably would have if she wasn’t in tip-top shape.

And that meant someone wanted her dead.

“I have an idea,” he told her. “Why don’t I take photos of the men in this hotel while you get some rest. You can look at the pictures later and we’ll go from there.”

She started to argue with him, but he stood firm. Her eyes were bloodshot and she kept rolling her shoulders as though yesterday’s fall had hurt her neck or back. “Please, Sabrina. Get some sleep. In the long run, it will make everything go faster. Trust me.”

She finally agreed and he insisted on escorting her to her hotel next door and upstairs. They exited the elevator and turned toward the long, beige hall as a man in coveralls carrying a toolbox entered the freight elevator a few steps away. Jack heard the whirring of the motor as it descended.

“Where’s your luggage?” he asked after Sabrina had opened her door and he’d preceded her into her room.

“Still in my car.”

He checked the locked door to the balcony, the bathroom and the closet. “What are you driving?”

“Buzz’s old SUV. Why?”

“If you’ll give me your keys I’ll run down and get your things for you,” he told her.

“All I want to do is climb under those blankets and sleep. I’ll get everything later.”

“Okay, but don’t forget to slide the dead bolt after me,” he added and fervently hoped that when this was all said and done, Buzz would understand why Jack didn’t immediately get ahold of him no matter where he was.

Before he settled into a good chair in the lobby, he bought a cup of coffee at a kiosk he suspected had been created to service the dozens of human resource conference attendees milling around the hotel. As far as dropping everything to drive here, that hadn’t been all that hard. He was in the middle of two cases but he got a buddy to cover one and the other could simmer a couple of days. The only other thing he’d had to do was cancel a date he hadn’t been real interested in going on anyway.

Phone on camera mode, he clandestinely began taking pictures of every adult male he saw, customer or employee, bearded or clean shaven, tagged with a conference badge or not. Some of them seemed highly unlikely when compared with the brief description Sabrina had given—no facial hair, too heavy or tall or short—but all those things could be altered by a clever con man.

He’d just returned from his second run to the coffee kiosk when his roving gaze took in Sabrina moving away from the check-in desk. He set the coffee aside and walked over in time to catch her halfway to the door. “There you are. Ready to look at the pictures I took while you snoozed away the afternoon?” She had changed clothes, put on a coat and acquired a smattering of raindrops in her hair and on her shoulders. She’d been outside? She must have gone out to her car to retrieve her luggage. How had he missed her leaving the hotel, coming back inside to change and then apparently leaving again?

“I beg your pardon?” she said.

He finally looked past the raindrops. “I stand corrected,” he said. “You skipped the nap and went to a salon instead. I hear that can be just as fortifying.”

Her hand flew up to touch the lilac strands running through her glossy dark hair. “What I did with my afternoon is none of your business,” she said with a defiant tilt of her chin and then ruined the effect by shrinking back. “I’m sorry. That was rude.” She raised her hand as if to pat her hair and dropped it. “Does it look as bad as I think?”

He rushed to assure her. “It looks just like it did before, right, except for the purple streak?”

His words were met by another alarmed expression. “It’s two shades darker and ten inches shorter.” Her brow furled. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’ve been in such a fog today. I’m having the hardest time placing how we know each other. Who are you?”

“Who am I? Are you sleepwalking?” She didn’t smile at his attempt at humor. “Okay,” he said in a more serious tone. “How about letting me in on the joke.”

“Danny has something to do with this, doesn’t he?” she said as she glanced around the lobby. “He’s not here, is he? Please, tell me he’s not here.”

“How could he be here?” He shook his head to clear it. Was it even remotely possible that Buzz’s wife had a split personality? Had recent stress caused some kind of abnormal blip in her psyche? He touched her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay? Did you change your mind and call Buzz, I mean Danny, after all?”

She held up one hand. “Wait a second. Why would I call him when all I want is a little space to think? And for that matter, why did you call Danny Buzz?”

“He earned the nickname two decades ago when he knocked a beehive out of a tree and got stung thirteen times, which is why he always carries epinephrine with him—just a second, he never told you about the bees?”

“No. This happened when he was growing up outside Seattle?”

He felt like scratching his head. “Buzz grew up across the street from my house in Napa, California.”

“He told me he grew up in Seattle,” she said.

“Why would he do that?”

“How should I know? He said his stepfather piloted a ferry on Puget Sound and his mom was—is—a housekeeper. He and his younger half brother—wait a second, why did Danny send you here instead of coming himself?”

Something weird was going on. He lowered his voice as they’d begun to draw attention. “You called me, remember? You asked me to meet you here. You’ve been feeling threatened and you asked for help figuring things out. You went up to take a nap—”

“I can’t even get a room here.”

He studied her face for some sign she was messing with him, dissecting her delicate features, aware as he did so that she flinched under the scrutiny, obviously uncomfortable and ready to run. She tried to rake her hair over her face but it was too short.

What was happening? This was the same woman he’d watched walk down the aisle two years earlier to marry his best friend, the same woman who sat across from him two hours before desperate for his help. And yet, somehow, it wasn’t her either. She “felt” different, like a lost and impotent version of herself. Two hours ago she’d been Buzz’s wife and now she was a complete stranger.

“Did Danny cook this up?” she said in a whisper, and he could feel her anxiety leap to a new level. “Mother must have guessed I’d come here—but why send a stranger?” She looked toward the door before turning back to meet his gaze. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop pretending you know me and just be honest.”

“Wait a second,” he said, ignoring the fact that she’d mentioned her mother in the present tense when the woman had died years before, ignoring everything except her unmarred forehead. “Where are the scratches?”

“What scratches?”

“The ones you got when that boulder fell. Let me see your hands.” He caught her left hand before she could move away. “Nothing,” he murmured as he studied her palm. Her hand trembled in his grip and he released it. “Where’s your wedding band?”

“Do you mean that stupid engagement ring? Because that’s in my purse.”

“I’m talking about the wedding band Buzz gave you. It belonged to his grandmother.” He shook his head. “Sabrina, something is very wrong.”

“My name’s not Sabrina.”

He peered into her deep brown eyes and finally accepted she was as clueless as he was. With the realization came a giant wave of relief. Sabrina hadn’t morphed into a delusional head case and he hadn’t fantasized that her very essence had changed.

The relief was short-lived as the woman standing inches away narrowed her eyes. But when she spoke, her voice was soft. “Don’t you think it’s time you explained what’s going on?”

“I wish I could,” he said.

Chapter Two

Oblivious to the hustle and bustle of the lobby around her, Sophie perched on the edge of an off-white chair and studied the man who had accosted her.

There was no denying he was better-looking than about 98 percent of the men currently walking on planet Earth, but if there was one thing she’d learned the hard way it was this: looks mattered exactly zero. What good were broad shoulders, a lean, fit body and very blue eyes if the person sporting these attributes turned out to be a lunatic or a manipulator...or both?

“I can’t believe you’re not Sabrina,” he said. “The likeness is incredible.”

“First things first,” she said. “Just who are you?”

“My name is Jack Travers. I’m a private investigator from California.”

“For real?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Why does that surprise you?”

“I don’t know. I guess you don’t look like one.”

“What does one look like?” he asked.

“Humphrey Bogart,” she answered without hesitation.

“Isn’t he a little dated for you?”

“My mother watches a ton of cable TV. I grew up watching The Maltese Falcon.”

“That’s a hard act to follow. Now, who are you?”

“Sophia Sparrow. Sophie. When you say this woman and I look alike, you’re talking in general terms?”

“Like eye color and height?” he asked and shook his head. “No. I mean identical, like clones, like twins. In fact, that’s the only explanation for your startling similarities and why I was so sure you were her.”

“Except that I don’t even have a sister let alone a twin,” she said. “In fact, I’m an only child.”

“So is Sabrina.”

“You said she’s your friend’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“You also said she felt threatened. What’s wrong? Is she in trouble?”

“I think so, yes,” he said, “but she talked to me in confidence so I won’t go into details.”

“You also mentioned a falling boulder.”

“Did I?”

Sophie wished he would stop staring at her. She tilted her head but no hair fell forward. Why had she chosen today of all days to cut it? She studied her hands to escape his gaze but looked back up because she wanted to know what he was thinking and so far she wasn’t sure. She only knew it was important to figure it out. Something strange was going on in many ways at the same time, leaving her confused and worried.

She’d driven to the coast for one reason—to think. And yet in the back of her mind she admitted that thinking about this mix-up was easier than thinking about herself.

With what sounded like an aha, Jack took his phone out of his pocket and fooled around with it for a second, then turned it so she could see the screen. “This is a photo I took at Sabrina’s wedding. The groom is my friend Daniel Cromwell. He’s currently in Antarctica. Take a look at the bride’s face.”

Sophie glanced from Jack’s intense gaze to the picture, and in that instant, her world flipped on its axis—again. From the bride’s small cowlick near her hairline to her heavily lashed dark eyes, from the shape of her face to her eyebrows to the bump on her nose, everything Sophie could see looked familiar.

Was this a trick? Had an old picture of Sophie somehow been Photoshopped into this format? So many things were different—hairstyle, hair color, makeup, jewelry, dress and, oh yeah, what little she could see of a dark-haired guy whose face was smashed up against hers. This was not a photo of Sophie and yet it looked as though it was.

“She’s prettier than me,” Sophie said.

“She’s a duplicate of you,” Jack murmured, his glance darting from the telephone to Sophie. “And you’re a duplicate of her.”

“She doesn’t have a mole on her cheek like I do,” Sophie continued, unable to stop staring at the woman on the screen. “Does she color her hair?”

“I don’t know. Except that she doesn’t have a purple streak.”

“Neither did I until this morning. You said her name is Sabrina?”

“Yeah. Sabrina Cromwell. Her maiden name was Long. Sabrina Long. She grew up in Astoria, Oregon, about sixty minutes north of here. How about you?”

Sophie had been digging in her shoulder bag as he spoke and now produced her wallet. She handed him her driver’s license. “Born and raised in Portland, Oregon. How old is Sabrina?”

“Eight years younger than Buzz, so around twenty-six or so. Wait, I remember Buzz saying she’s a July baby.” He scanned her driver’s license. “Looks like you were born in July, too.”

“Lots of people are born in July,” she said as she continued staring at Sabrina’s face.

He dug in his pocket and produced his own wallet. “You don’t have to take me on face value either,” he said, handing her his driver’s and private investigator’s licenses. She looked them over before returning them. “Are you adopted?” he asked.

“No. Is she?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I want to meet her.”

“I think she’ll want to meet you, too, but I’m pretty sure she turned her phone off when she decided to take a nap. I’ll try calling her room.”

Sophie popped to her feet. “She’s here, in this hotel, right now?”

“Yes.”

She blinked several times. Was she up to more shocks and surprises? Did she have a choice? She followed Jack to the desk, where he placed the call but ended up leaving a message. “I’m going upstairs to check on her,” Jack said. “I’ll be right back.”

“May I come with you?” Sophie squeaked, then stiffened her resolve. “I need to see her with my own eyes. This is all so...weird.”

“I think she’ll need a few minutes to adjust to...things. She’s pretty stressed.”

“Yeah, well, so am I.”

He smiled and the transformation was stunning. Half-surreal before, he now turned into a genuine human being. “I can see how you’d feel that way,” he said, and together they rode up to the third floor and walked down the hall.

He finally stopped and knocked on the door of room 302. It was the same room Sophie had stayed in the summer before, the one she’d hoped to get today because it had a great view of the beach. They waited a few seconds and then he knocked again, harder this time. He twisted the knob to no effect. “I’m going to try a credit card,” he said as he opened his wallet.

“Shouldn’t we just go downstairs and ask for help?”

“Probably, but it’s chancy they’ll open the door without provocation. I saw this in a movie. It might work, what the heck.”

As he ran a variety of cards through the magnetic lock, Sophie heard footsteps and glanced up to find a maid carrying an armload of towels walking toward them. She elbowed Jack, who glanced over his shoulder and quickly stuck the cards in his pockets. Sophie looked back at the maid in time to see a man turn the corner on his way to the elevator. He and Sophie made eye contact. He stopped dead in his tracks. His gaze shifted as he patted his pockets, then he turned on his heels and disappeared back around the corner.

It looked as though he’d forgotten something.

The housekeeper paused midstep. “I saw you earlier today,” she said, smiling at Sophie. “Did you leave your key in your room?”

“Yes,” Sophie said. The woman had mistaken her for Sabrina Cromwell. The last possibility that Jack might be in cahoots with Danny in some elaborate scheme to accomplish heaven knew what toppled off the edge of probability.

“I can open it for you,” the woman said. For a second, Sophie wondered how they would explain the sleeping woman already in the room, but the bed was empty and the maid went on her way.

They closed the door behind them.

Jack glanced at the open door of the bathroom as he strode to the balcony and tried the glass door. It was locked. Planting his hands on his waist, he stated the obvious. “She’s not here.”

“Where are her things?” Sophie asked because aside from a rumpled bed and a damp hand towel in the bathroom, the room looked untouched.

“In her car. I guess I should go make sure it’s still parked outside. Give me your cell number and I’ll call you when I get this cleared up.”

The impulse to wait in the lobby drew her like a magnet. She could find a corner where she could commence thinking about her life. Waiting felt comfortable. It felt natural.

She looked up into Jack’s blue eyes. The anxiety she found there made waiting seem an inconceivable option. “You think something happened to her,” she stated flatly.

“I don’t see how it could have, but yeah, I’m concerned.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“You don’t need to do that. I’ll let you know.”

“Listen,” Sophie said, reaching over to grasp his arm, then removing her hand at once. There must be something on his jacket sleeve, some invisible substance that made her palms tingle. “There aren’t any rooms available at the hotel, I’m not going home and I’m not going to risk losing track of you and Sabrina. It’s like fate is screaming my name, trying to tell me something. Normally I would ignore such unwanted callouts from things like destiny and all that, but today—I don’t know, I think I should listen. I can’t explain it, I just have to find out where Sabrina is, who she is. I have to see her.” She shrugged and slid him a glance to see if he was ready to bolt. He actually nodded and she took a deep breath. “I don’t understand how anyone can look so much like me and not actually be—” She stopped short.

“Related,” he finished for her and briefly touched her arm as though he understood. “Nor do I. All right, come with me. Let’s see if we can find her car.”

* * *

“SHE’S DRIVING BUZZ’S old Chevy,” he said as they walked out into the rainy afternoon. “Think rusty hulk.”

He pulled the hood up on his jacket. She hesitated while still under the protection of the portico, and he realized her coat didn’t have a hood and the rain had done nothing but go from bad to worse. “Why don’t you wait here while I check the outside lot, then if need be, we can look in the parking garage together.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

Ten minutes later he jogged back to the front of the hotel to find Sophie gone. Man, he was losing women left and right today, but in this case, he thought it likely Sophie Sparrow had rethought her involvement with this situation and cut her loses. He was disappointed and not only because he was curious about the connection between her and Sabrina. Maybe it was for the better. What good could possibly come from being attracted to a woman who lived hours away, looked just like his best friend’s wife and, more to the point, was in the middle of a relationship with a guy named Danny?

Was he attracted? Yeah, for whatever reason, he was. He wanted to know why she’d stuck purple in her hair. He wanted to know why she was timid one minute and brave the next.

Bypassing the valet’s offer of help, he entered the parking garage located under the hotel.

Sophie was waiting for him inside the entrance. He was able to stifle the smile that threatened to curve his lips, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about the spark of pleasure that flared in his chest.

“It was cold standing out there,” she said as she joined him. “It’s not much warmer in here, though. I take it her car isn’t in the lot?”

“No. Let’s work our way down.”

But search as they might, they could not find a rusty white Chevy SUV with a red stripe down its side in among all the sleeker, newer models. By the time they reached the bottom tier, Jack was sure Buzz’s car wasn’t parked in either the lot or the garage. That meant Sabrina had driven it away from the hotel. Why? What caused her to leave without telling him? It seemed so out of character.

He took out his cell to try Sabrina again but the reception was nonexistent down here.

“Let’s go back up to the lobby and see if I can get some coverage. Obviously Sabrina left the hotel for some reason. I guess she couldn’t find me to explain why. I’ll call her again.”

Sophie had to know as well as he that his words didn’t explain why she didn’t call or text or why she wasn’t responding to his repeated attempts to contact her. She nodded but made no comment.

He started up the ramp, unaware until he was nearing the ground floor that Sophie wasn’t directly behind him. He turned to look for her right as revving engine noises bellowed up from below. A human scream came right before four thousand pounds of screeching metal shot past Jack and accelerated up the last ramp, leaving behind the acrid smell of burned rubber.

Jack ran back down the ramp half-sick at what he might find. “Sophie?”

She was plastered to one of the brick support pillars, eyes closed, shaking like a leaf. She was missing her right shoe, and her handbag had disappeared from her shoulder. He clutched her arms. Her eyes flew open, and for a second she stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. Then she burst into tears and fell against his chest.

A few seconds later, pounding footsteps heralded the arrival of the parking valet, who stopped short in his tracks and stared at them as he gasped for breath.

“Is everyone here okay?” he finally managed to sputter.

Jack titled Sophie’s chin up. Her brown eyes were huge but a resolute expression had begun to chase away the initial fright. “How about it? Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Shaken but recovering,” she muttered.

“What happened?”

With a glance at the valet, who seemed to be hanging on their every word, she shook her head again. “Later.”

The valet was not as reticent. “I heard a racket down here and then a car came flying out going ninety miles an hour!” he said, his eyes as round as hubcaps. “I thought for sure someone had been run over flatter than a pancake.”

“Did you get a license plate number?” Jack asked.

“Are you kidding?”

“How about a glimpse of the driver?”

“As I was ducking out of the way for my life? Nope.”

“Was it a car you’d parked?”

“Doubt it. We have valet spaces reserved on the first floor so we can deliver as fast as possible. If it came from down here, chances are good someone parked it themselves.”

“How long have you been on duty?” Jack asked.

“Since morning. I’m going home soon.”

“Then do you remember a woman who looked a lot like Ms. Sparrow here parking an older white SUV Chevy?”

“Or taking it out,” Sophie added, her voice shaky.

“No. I haven’t seen a car like that, not that I remember anyway. There’s a parking lot outside. Some people prefer to use that no matter what the weather. Some people really don’t like underground garages.”

“I may now be one of them,” Sophie mumbled, then took a deep breath and straightened up, pushing herself away from Jack’s grasp. “I’ve lost my shoulder bag and my phone,” she announced, nose and eyes dripping.

“I’ll find them,” the valet said, and went to work searching for the bag. With a triumphant whoop, the kid found her purse on top of a car parked a few spaces away and retrieved it. He handed it to Jack, who pressed it into Sophie’s hands.

Sophie opened the purse and withdrew a tissue to wipe at her face.

“I’ll look for your shoe,” the valet offered as he scanned the pavement and kept talking. “You know, we get some awful drivers here, we really do, but this guy took the cake.” He leaned way over to shine a penlight under a row of vehicles. He stood again and turned to search the other direction. “That dude peeled out of here like the cops were after him.” He knelt again to shine his light. “Found it!” he called as he all but crawled under a van. He stood up grasping the shoe and focused the narrow beam of light on the skid marks scorching the pavement. “I guess you’re just lucky he was a good enough driver to miss hitting you,” he said as he handed the shoe to Sophie.