Meredith Fletcher - Look-Alike

“Good.” Sam was already feeling antsy to be moving. She looked up at the big man. “Well, good luck finding another tourist to guard.”

He nodded.

Elle fixed him with the full force of her ice-blue eyes. “Do you have a name?”

“Joachim,” he said, then looked a little irritated.

Sam thought maybe it was because he’d answered before he could stop himself. Elle had that effect on men. Even though they were twins, Elle was able to do more with her looks and her personality than Sam was. She’s just more willing to take risks than I am, Sam thought for what must have been the thousandth time.

“I’m Elle.” She offered her hand.

Joachim took Elle’s hand and held it for a moment, then seemed reluctant to let go.

“Are you going to be in Amsterdam long?” Elle asked.

“A few days.”

“Maybe I’ll see you around.”

Sam didn’t think that was a good idea. Joachim was rousing her warning senses. Maybe it was the quiet way he moved, or the fact that he’d avoided the two suspicious-looking men who now seemed to have disappeared, or maybe even the fact that Elle was acting twitterpated over him, but Sam wanted him gone.

“Perhaps,” Joachim replied. He offered a small wave. “Have a safe trip.” Then he was in motion, walking away from them.

Elle watched him go.

Despite her misgivings, and feeling a little guilty because Riley was back home missing her, Sam also watched the big man walk away. The tight leather pants hugged his firm butt in ways that Sam could appreciate even though she was spoken for.

“Wow,” Elle said.

“Wow?” Sam grumbled.

“Definitely wow,” Elle replied. “He’s one of those guys.”

“What guys?”

“Those guys you hate to see go but you love to watch leave.”

Sam grimaced. During the last year of getting to know Elle, she’d found her sister was much more outspoken than she was. “Personally, I thought he was creepy. He appeared behind me, out of nowhere. He told me he thought I was a tourist and shouldn’t be alone.”

“Doesn’t sound creepy to me. Sounds like a nice guy.” Elle glanced at her meaningfully. “You’ve already got a nice guy. Maybe that’s why you’re invulnerable to Joachim’s mutant abilities.”

“Mutant abilities?”

“It’s from a children’s cartoon show,” Elle explained. “The X-Men.”

“In your country?”

“In yours.” Elle gave her a perplexed look. “You know, it surprises me sometimes how little you know about being a kid.”

I didn’t get to spend a lot of time being a kid, Sam thought.

“What mutant abilities does he have?” Sam asked.

“Irresistible charm and devastating looks. Definitely. Oh, and brooding menace.”

“I must be invulnerable.”

“You,” Elle countered, “have Riley.”

The crowd flowed steadily out of the building as the train powered up to depart again. Joachim and the two other men were nowhere in sight.

“What’s on the agenda?” Elle asked. “You said part of this little get-together was going to be a working vacation.”

“I’ve got to find someone.”

“We already found someone. You let him go.”

“Look,” Sam said, more shortly than she intended because she was tired and tense from meeting with Elle and dealing with Allison and Alex’s unexplained request, “if you hurry, you might be able to catch up to him.”

A calm look filled Elle’s face. She touched Sam’s arm. “Hey, just joking, Sam. I’ve been really looking forward to seeing you again. It’s been three months. I’m kind of jet-lagged from the trip. To make this happen, I’ve had to be up and running for the last thirty-seven hours. I’m not at my best.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said. My sisterly skills could definitely use some improvement, she thought. During their time together, Elle was always the more relaxed one, more able to accept everything that happened. As a foster child, Sam had always fought to maintain security and familiarity. She didn’t like it when things changed.

“No biggie,” Elle said. “Buy me a mocha latte along the way and you’ll find I can be all about forgiveness.”

Sam smiled and shook her head. “Do you realize that sometimes you sound more American than I do?”

“I,” Elle replied, “take that as a compliment. I’ve worked hard to sound that way.” Leaning in, she whispered conspiratorially in a thick Russian accent that she had once assured Sam came from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Sam had gotten on the Internet to learn who those cartoon characters were. “Eet vas all included een my secret spy training, comrade.”

“Terrific,” Sam said. “Are you ready?”

“Yes. Why haven’t you already found the guy that you were sent here to find?”

Sam led the way out of the terminal. “It’s possible that I’ve been looking in the wrong places.”

“Where did you look?”

“At his house.”

“Hmm. That’s a good place to start. He wasn’t home?”

“No.”

“What about his place of work?”

“He’s a criminal,” Sam said. “He doesn’t keep regular hours or an office. He lives on a houseboat, so even his residence moves around a lot.”

“Makes it more difficult, but not impossible.”

Sam nodded. “This guy has pissed off a lot of the wrong people from what I’ve been able to find out. Someone may have killed him.”

“So instead of a person,” Elle said, “you could be looking for a boat anchor or fish chum.”

“Exactly,” Sam said. “I have to tell you, this could be dangerous.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Elle replied with a smile. “I’m a secret agent. I figured it out all on my own. C’mon. If I’m going to have to stay on my toes, we need to find me that mocha latte.”

Standing in the shadows in front of Central Station, Joachim Reiter watched the two young women leave the building. They headed toward the red-light district and that didn’t please him. Although the sex shops and brothels were tourist attractions, they were also places were people got into trouble and sometimes got killed.

And those two women—or maybe only the one he’d first met at the train station—were in trouble. Otherwise Arnaud Beck’s men wouldn’t have led Joachim to them.

The last hour had been quite the circus, Joachim reflected. Tension and nervousness rattled through him. He didn’t want to be there, so far from home and his family. Being out of the country right now threatened everything. If any of his subterfuges were found out, he was dead. More important, so was his family.

He exhaled and avoided the fear clamoring inside his mind. One step at a time, Joachim. You won’t make any mistakes. Just get this done and get back home.

But things had already gotten more complicated than he’d guessed. He’d been sent to Amsterdam to find a man named Tuenis Meijer and had tripped across Beck’s men while gathering information about his target. Thinking that Beck’s men might lead him to Meijer, Joachim had followed them, staying out of sight. They’d never known he was there until he let them see him in the railway station.

Then they had locked on to the young blond woman at the station. Joachim still didn’t know who she was or what threat or possibility of gain she represented to a man like Arnaud Beck, but he’d known he couldn’t let them kidnap her or kill her.

Although he had, in the past, kidnapped and killed other men, Joachim couldn’t stand idly by while something happened to the woman. He wasn’t that kind of man. And he didn’t want to be the kind of man Günter Stahlmann paid him to be.

He was working on a way out. If trying to get there didn’t get him or his family killed in the process. Still, he played that deadly game by his rules and he’d made Günter respect them. Rule number one was that Joachim would never harm an innocent.