Patricia Rosemoor: Skin

“You got options,” Caresse was saying. “What about a family? You weren’t born in no cabbage patch.”

“There’s nothing for me there.”

“Not even a brother or sister?”

An image burned into her memory, haunted her for a moment. “A sister… who wouldn’t understand,” Hannah said quickly, thinking that if they ever caught up with each other, Lilith might wish that she’d stayed missing forever.

“Maybe not,” Caresse said, “but that don’t mean she can’t love you anyhow.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We’ll talk about your sister later,” Caresse threatened. After swiping a lip gloss across her full mouth, she rose and headed for the door. “Right now, I better get my butt out on the floor before Sal comes gunning for it.”

Hannah didn’t answer, merely stared at herself in the mirror and removed her makeup. After changing into a blazing red miniskirt and white T-shirt, she clamped a thick black leather belt around her waist. From her bag, she pulled out a fine chain, the clasp secured by a tiny gold safety pin, and put it on. A glance at the mirror reflected the transformation that amazed even her. The fantasy creature had been replaced by an almost plain-looking woman who appeared young. Innocent, even.

The eyes told the truth about her.

Hannah touched the heart-half that dangled against her T-shirt and thought about doing something daring, like calling Lilith. That’s why she’d moved to Chicago, right? Because she’d seen that article about all the good works Lilith had been doing for teenagers with her boss here in Chicago? That’s what Caresse would tell her to do.

But that, too, was just a fantasy.

DETECTIVE JOHN PUCINSKI drank his Pepto-Bismol cocktail straight from the bottle. Thick pink liquid oozing down his throat to coat his gut, he tore the bottle from his lips and capped it.

“Planning on eating raw onions for lunch?” A grinning Gabriel O’Malley stood in the doorway to Pucinski’s glass-enclosed office, file folders in hand.

“Nah, The Hunter Case is starting to get to me.”

“Gotta stop taking it personal,” O’Malley warned.

“I always take it personal when a repeater gives me the finger.” He motioned to the younger detective, one of those virile types with thick black hair and a trim waist that made a more seasoned cop feel plain old. “What you got for me?”

“The computer check on the hooker,” O’Malley said of the latest victim. “Seems she was a cash-only consumer.”

Imagine her filling out a credit application. What would she put under employment history — personal service? Yeah, probably.

“No credit,” Pucinski muttered. “Just like the waitress.”

Another thing the two victims had in common that would make it harder to nail the killer. No families, no real close friends, no credit.

And a connection to a gentlemen’s club.

“So, you have any leads other than Club Paradise?” O’Malley asked.

Pucinski shrugged. The waitress worked there. Seemed the hooker worked it, too, if on a less formal and regular basis.

“Hey, it’s something,” O’Malley said, leaving the glass-encased office and returning to his own desk.

“Yeah, something.”

Something he hadn’t been able to ignore. The connection, no matter how slight, told him the killer had been to the strip bar at least twice. Instinct told him the guy was a regular, the reason for placing a plant at the joint. An undercover cop could scope things out from the inside pretty fast, Pucinski figured, reviewing the victims’ folders. Both had been tall and well-built with long, dark hair.

He wondered how many other women working the club would fit that description.

“WANT TO CATCH A MOVIE?” Elena asked at break time the next day, the newspaper spread on the table in front of her. Short and compact, Elena was a powerhouse whether at the gym or working on some client’s case

“So what’s playing?”

Elena didn’t respond for a minute. Then she looked up from the paper and with a smirk curling her full lips, said, “Man, this chick could almost be you.”

“You mean I look like some movie star?”

“Not exactly.” Snorting, Elena immediately handed over the paper. “Give it a look.” She rose and grabbed her coffee cup before heading for the door. “Check out the movies and call me if there’s anything you want to see.”

Lilith obediently gazed down at the entertainment section. But rather than a movie, the photograph on the opposite page immediately caught her attention. The skimpily clad woman in the ad for Club Paradise did kind of look like her. Realizing that was the gentlemen’s club where those women who’d been killed had worked, she shivered.

Long dark hair, big dark eyes, distinctive features. The woman could be her twin.

Or her kid sister.

Staring at the photo made her stomach knot. Lilith fingered the heart-half she still faithfully wore and remembered the last time she’d seen Hannah…

“You’ll come back to see me, right?” Hannah sounds every bit the frightened little girl. “Swear to God?”

Lilith splits the gold heart Daddy bought into its two halves. Her real father was nothing like the horror in the holier-than-thou trappings her mother remarried. She places one half of the heart on a length of chain held together with a tiny gold safety pin.

“Turn around.”

Lilith hooks the chain around her sister’s neck, replaces her own, then nestles her bruised cheek against her sister’s. Lilith stares at their dark-haired images, so similar. But inside, Hannah is like Mama. Quiet and afraid and obedient.

“We’re like this heart,” Lilith says softly, stroking her little sister’s hair. “Two halves of a whole. No one and nothing will keep us apart for long.”

But of course something had.

Lilith took another look at the ad. No, it simply couldn’t be Hannah, not right here in Chicago, not practically under her nose. She chucked the newspaper into the recycle bin, and yet, she couldn’t rid herself of the notion.

What if it was?

Shaking the thought away, she left the break room.

By the time Lilith got back to her desk, the phone was ringing. And then her boss had a rush job for her. She forgot all about the possibility of going to a movie with Elena until the last minute. Back to the break room. The newspaper was still in the recycle bin.

Her pulse picking up a beat, she stared down at it. How ridiculous was she being? She grabbed up the paper, but rather than the movie section, her gaze went straight back to that photograph.

Hannah?

It couldn’t be. Just couldn’t.

After tossing the paper again, all thoughts of movies quashed, she rushed out of the building and raced to her bus stop like her life depended on it. A buzz went through her and her head went light. What if that was Hannah? A girl on the streets — how many work opportunities did someone like that have?

A HALF HOUR LATER, Lilith was glad to rush up the stairs to her third floor apartment in a greystone six-flat, even happier to be greeted at the door by a loud, “Me-e-ow!”

She picked up the cat and took comfort in the big ball of warmth. “You’ve been neglected, haven’t you?”

Claws hooked in the front of her sweatshirt, and Valkyrie purred contentedly. Lilith crossed the first floor living area filled with more plants than furniture and opened the door to the small balcony with its pots of flowers and herbs. Their light fresh scent welcomed her. The cat’s ears twitched, and she made funny little noises deep in her throat, but she was content to be held and cuddled. Animals never forgot a kindness, and no doubt this one still remembered being lost and Lilith rescuing her.