Rachel Lee - A Soldier's Redemption

“Maybe.”

“They wouldn’t realize that some people might really have something to fear.”

“Maybe.”

She looked at him in frustration. “Can you manage more than a few syllables?”

At that he almost smiled. She could see the crack in his stone facade. “Occasionally,” he said. “How many syllables do you want?”

“Just tell me why you keep saying maybe. ”

“I told you, I’m suspicious by nature. Tell me more about your friend Marsha.”

“Why? What? I told you her story, basically.”

He set his cup on the end table and leaned toward her, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands. “Try this. Have you both always lived here or did you move here? Are you about the same age? Any similarities in appearance?”

Just as she started to think he had gone over some kind of edge, something else struck her. For a few seconds she couldn’t find breath to speak, and when she did it was a mere whisper. “You think someone could be trying to find one of us?”

“I don’t know.” The words came out bluntly. “A sample of two hardly proves anything. But I’m still curious. Will you tell me?”

She hesitated, then finally nodded. “Marsha and I are sort of friends because we … share a few things. We both moved here within a couple of weeks of each other, almost a year ago. We work together at the grocery.”

“Your ages? And your appearance?”

“We don’t look like twins.”

“I didn’t think you did. But otherwise?”

“I think we’re as different as night and day.” Indeed they were. Marsha had short red hair, a square chin, green eyes and a bust a lot of women would have paid a fortune for. Cory, on the other hand, now had chin-length auburn hair—which she hated because she had to keep it colored herself to hide her natural dark blond—and brown eyes that had looked good when she was blonde but now seemed to vanish compared to her hair. The Marshals had given her a slight nose job, though, replacing her button nose with something a little longer and straighter. They hadn’t messed with her bust, though. That was still average.

“Are those differences that could be easily manipulated?”

She didn’t like where he was going with this, didn’t like it at all. “You are suspicious.” But then, so was she. All of a sudden Gage’s phone call seemed a lot less reassuring. “Marsha and I don’t look at all alike.” But how sure was she of that?

“Then I’m overly suspicious.” He leaned back, picking up his coffee again. “Way too much so.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve lived my life in the shadows. Suspicion is part of my creed. I never take anything at face value.” He shrugged. “Best to ignore me, I suppose.”

It might have been except for her past. Had she an ordinary life behind her, it would have been easy to dismiss him as a nut. But she couldn’t quite do that.

“Why,” she asked finally, “would he call so many? If someone was after either of us, a whole bunch of phone calls wouldn’t make sense, would it?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, just ignore me.”

Easier said than done, especially when he seemed to have been following some train of thought of his own. But he said nothing more, and she really couldn’t imagine any reason he should be suspicious.

But of one thing she was reasonably certain: the man who would want her dead wouldn’t need to call a bunch of women to scare them. In fact, it would be the last thing he would do. Because calling her would warn her, and if she got scared enough to call the Marshals, they’d move her.

Even though moving her would take time, it would certainly make killing her more difficult while she was under constant surveillance once again, as she had been in the three months between the shooting and her eventual relocation.

So it had to be a prank. Surely. She clung to that like a straw in a hurricane.

Because it was all she could do.

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