Amanda Stevens - Gallagher Justice

Which was very odd and troubling to Fiona. Where could an eighteen-year-old girl be at four o’clock on a Tuesday morning? Any number of places, of course, but with her sister lying dead in an alley—

She’s okay , Fiona told herself. Wherever Lexi was, she was fine. They couldn’t both be gone. Fate wouldn’t be that cruel to Lori, but Fiona knew all too well that it could be. She’d seen enough heartbreaking cases in her years as first a defense attorney and now as an ASA to know that fate had nothing to do with fairness.

“Fiona? Did you hear what I said?”

Milo’s voice drew her out of her deep reverie. She turned from the window. “Sorry. What?”

“I was asking you about the other twin. Is she—” He broke off, looking sheepish. “I don’t want to sound insensitive here.”

“But you want to know if Alicia’s twin is as beautiful as she was.” Fiona sighed. “Even more so, if you can believe it.”

Milo shot her an incredulous glance. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m not kidding. You should see her. Lexi is...” Fiona trailed off. “I don’t know how to explain it exactly. She has this quality about her. Men are...drawn to her.”

“Like she’s always in heat,” Milo said under his breath.

“What?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. I was just projecting, I guess.”

“But you nailed it perfectly,” Fiona said with a frown. “That’s exactly how men look at Lexi.”

Milo was silent for a moment. “Were they models or something? I’ll have to take your word about Lexi, but let’s face it. Alicia was drop-dead gorgeous.”

Fiona winced at the description. “They had offers to model, but their mother tried to shield them from all that.”

“Shield them how?”

By asking me to look out for them , Fiona thought. But for crying out loud, who was she to supervise teenagers? She’d fallen in love with a killer. Hardly a role model most mothers would welcome, but Fiona and Lori went way back.

She could still remember that day after school when Lori had confided in her that she was pregnant. Fiona had been stunned. She wasn’t even allowed to date, and her best friend was pregnant!

Tearfully Lori had explained how she’d met this guy at the mall. He was older, more experienced, and claimed he was in love with her. Fiona could believe that. Even so young, Lori was a blond, blue-eyed stunner, the kind of girl that men couldn’t take their eyes off.

The two of them had started meeting after school and on weekends. Not for real dates, of course. Lori wasn’t allowed to date, either. She’d tell her mother she was going to Fiona’s house, and then she’d meet up with this guy. They’d have a soda together. Go to the movies. All very innocent at first, then things got out of hand.

He dumped her when he found out she was pregnant. Lori was devastated.

“You have to tell your parents, Lori. What else can you do?” Although secretly Fiona thought that the last thing she would ever do was tell her parents something like that. She’d rather die first because her father would kill her anyway, and her brothers.... She shuddered. She didn’t even want to think about what her brothers would do.

But somehow Lori had managed to work up the courage to go home and tell her parents everything. She certainly wasn’t the first girl in their neighborhood to find herself in that predicament, and this was the enlightened eighties after all. But her father had still been so angry that he’d sent her to Detroit to live with his sister while arrangements were made to put both babies up for adoption.

When they were born, however, Lori couldn’t go through with it. She kept the babies and stayed with her aunt until her father finally relented and came for her.

The moment Wayne Mercer laid eyes on the twins, it was love at first sight. He and Lori’s mother doted on the girls, and did everything in their power to help Lori get her life back on track. She graduated with honors from both high school and college, and, like Fiona, was near the top of her class in law school. The two of them had even been associates at the same law firm in the Loop, but then Lori had met Paul Guest, a Houston attorney, and was swept off her feet. They were married two months later, and he took Lori and the twins back to Texas with him.

For a couple of years after the move, Lori and Fiona kept in touch with phone calls and letters, but the calls eventually stopped, and gradually, the correspondence dwindled to only Christmas cards.

Then last summer, Lori called Fiona out of the blue. “I need to ask a big favor of you,” she said, after the two had spent a few minutes catching up. “The twins will be starting college in the fall.”

“That’s impossible,” Fiona insisted. “They were in kindergarten just last week.”

“They were already out of kindergarten by the time we started law school, Fiona.”

She groaned. “Stop. You’re making me feel ancient.”

“Now you know how I feel every day.” Lori laughed, but there was some tension in her voice. “Oh, Fiona, you should see them. They’re all grown up and so smart. And so beautiful! I know every mother thinks that about her children, but Alicia and Lexi are special. You wouldn’t believe all the modeling offers they’ve had. But Paul and I have tried to shelter them from all the attention because we don’t want them to get caught up in something they can’t handle.”

Fiona wondered if Lori was thinking about her own trouble as a teenager.

“We always planned on the girls going to school here in Houston,” she continued. “Paul wanted them to go to Rice. It’s a wonderful school, and his father is one of the trustees. And, of course, the best part is that they would be close enough for us to keep an eye on them.”

“I take it the girls have other ideas,” Fiona murmured. She could sympathize with Alicia and Lexi. Growing up with a father and three brothers who were all cops, Fiona had felt pretty smothered herself at times.

Lori sighed. “Evidently they talked to a recruiter from Hillsboro University, and now that’s where they want to go. They’re bound and determined, especially Lexi. Alicia, I think, would still like to go to Rice, but she’d never let her sister go off to Chicago alone. They have that twin thing, Fiona. Where one goes, the other goes. When one is upset, the other is upset. If one gets hurt, well, you get the idea. They’re so attuned to one another, it’s almost scary.”

Fiona frowned, still uncertain where she fit into the equation. “Hillsboro is an excellent school, Lori. My sister-in-law is head of the forensics anthropology lab there.”

“I know it’s a great school, but it’s so far away. And now that my parents are dead, I don’t have any family left in Chicago. No one to look after the girls.” Lori paused and took a deep breath. “That’s why I’m calling you, Fiona. Would it be a terrible imposition if I gave them your phone number? It would make me feel so much better to know there’s someone in the city they could call if they needed to.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Fiona said impulsively. “In fact, I insist. Tell you what, when are you coming up to help them settle in?”

“Next week.”

“Let’s all have dinner together so the girls can meet me. Maybe then they’ll feel less awkward about calling.”

“I’d love that. Oh, Fiona. I can’t tell you what this means to me.” Lori sounded so relieved that Fiona felt a little guilty. She’d readily agreed to the arrangement because it was an easy thing to do. She didn’t think, for one second, that two gorgeous teenage girls, on their own for the first time, would really feel the need to call on a complete stranger.