Elane Osborn - Which Twin?

“Because he works in the police forensics lab.” Again Logan glanced her way. “You are still willing to prove your identity, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I have the glass from Anna’s bathroom, one of her perfume bottles and her brush, which should hold her fingerprints. I also have a clean glass for you to leave your prints on. My friend Dennis agreed to do a quick comparison. That is, if you’re still so sure of yourself.”

Logan turned narrowed eyes to Rose as the car stopped for a red light. She stiffened beneath his suspicious glance. “I’m sure. And once I prove to you that I am Rose Delancey, I want you to promise—”

“One step at a time,” Logan broke in.

Rose had barely managed to nod before Logan’s attention was once more captured by traffic. As the car moved forward, he shifted into second gear, then into third to race down the street. As he swerved from one lane to another, passing the slower vehicles, Rose’s heart leaped, then began to race.

Was this due to fear, she wondered, or excitement? The last few years had become a blur of doctors’ offices, hospital rooms and the small chamber her mother retreated to after each chemo treatment. There had been ups and downs to deal with, hopes and fears, tears and laughter. So her life had hardly been uneventful. And although she and her mother had been dealing with death, together they had learned to live each day as fully as possible, to notice the way the clouds moved in, the taste and texture of each bite of food.

But since the funeral Rose had come to see how narrow her world had grown, and how empty she felt. She’d greeted this numbness with fury, seeing it as a poor way to remember the woman who had given her life, showed her how to live, encouraged her to dream and to follow those dreams, even as all of hers were fading.

Rose sighed and stared out the window at the tall buildings and the business-lunch crowds bustling along the sidewalk. Kathleen Delancey had undoubtedly been referring to life choices and career direction when she’d urged her daughter to “follow your dreams,” but the woman’s death had left Rose feeling too lost to address such imposing matters. So she’d followed the only dreams she could think of, those involving the Golden Gate Bridge and the laughing-eyed man who so resembled Logan Maguire.

This thought brought Rose’s attention back to the man sitting next to her. The sense that she somehow knew this man warred with the knowledge that he was really a complete stranger. A stranger who thought—no, wanted—her to be someone else, something quite ironic, considering that two years ago she’d walked away from what she knew had looked like a fairy-tale marriage for just that reason.

“Yesss!” Logan hissed as the car braked to a sudden stop. He glanced over to smile at her puzzled look and explained, “The parking gods have smiled upon us.”

Rose looked ahead to see a large silver car pull out of a parking space directly in front of them, then held her breath as Logan gunned his motor and angled into the spot practically on the heels of the departing vehicle.

After switching off the engine, he reached into the back seat for the black backpack that held the items he’d referred to earlier. He whipped a handkerchief out of the inside pocket of his leather jacket, then wrapped it around his hand as he retrieved a plain drinking glass.

“Grip this,” he said. “Make sure all five fingers leave a mark. All right, now. Give it back.”

Rose placed the glass in his handkerchief-wrapped hand, then watched him fold the white fabric around the item before returning it to the backpack.

“Okay.” He gave her a smile. “Now we feed the meter, then go confirm that you are who you say you are. Or rather, who you aren’t.”

Rose fought a strange sense of nervousness as she exited the elevator on the third floor of the building Logan led her into. This was silly, she told herself as she followed him down the hall and into a green-and-stainless-steel room, where Logan introduced her to a man wearing a white lab coat over a denim shirt and tan tie.

Dennis Langtrey stood a little over five-seven. He had light, caramel-colored eyes, a round, youthful face beneath short, wavy blond hair and a smile that could only be described as angelic, which instantly put Rose at ease. Once Logan explained what he wanted, the man placed the items taken from Anna’s room into one tray and the glass holding Rose’s prints in another. He then brushed gray powder over them and used tape to lift the resulting smudges. All the while, Dennis chatted with Logan about “old times” at Stanford University. Occasionally he glanced at Rose, as if expecting her to comment, leaving her to assume that this man must have met Anna on several of those occasions.

“Yes, that was some party Robert threw for our graduation,” Dennis said, then smiled as he straightened from his work. “Well, I have a pair of perfect thumbprints. Now for the fun part.”

He moved over to a desk, fiddled with the computer sitting there, and a moment later he was staring at a screen displaying two gray ovals formed of tight concentric lines.

A look of total concentration creased Dennis’s features as he repeatedly glanced from one print to the other. When Rose realized she was holding her breath, she slowly and determinedly released it. This was ridiculous, she told herself. Any second now, this man was going to announce that the prints did not match. She was, after all, not Anna Benedict.

“Wow. These are close,” Dennis said on the heels of her mental declaration. Lifting his head, he looked at Logan and went on, “But, as they say, close only counts in horseshoes.”

“Are you trying to say the prints don’t match?” Logan asked.

“That’s right.” Dennis stood and stretched before going on. “But, damn, they are close.”

“I got that. Are you sure they’re from two different people?”

Dennis glanced at his computer screen with a frown, then looked at Logan again. “Ye-es,” he said slowly.

“Is there some question?”

“No. Not about—”

“Because this is vitally important,” Logan said. “I need you to be 100 percent sure on this.”

“I am 100 percent certain,” Dennis replied. “However, I have a theory I want to check out. There are some hairs on this brush. Can you get me some from the person who donated the other set of prints so I can run a DNA test?”

Logan turned to An—Rose, he reminded himself. He raised one eyebrow inquiringly and after a moment’s hesitation she nodded. Opening her purse, she drew out a small brush and handed it to Dennis.

As the man removed the few strands of hair tangled in the bristles, Logan asked, “Just what are these suspicions of yours?”

“Suspicions?” Dennis’s full lips curved into a particularly cherubic smile as he returned the brush to Rose. “Let’s see…I agreed to look at these fingerprints, despite the fact that you said that you couldn’t tell me what all this was about. So, until I’ve run this test, I think it only fair that I keep my own counsel. Wouldn’t you say?”

Logan met his friend’s wide-eyed, innocent gaze with narrowed eyes. Games. He’d forgotten how much Dennis Langtrey loved to play guessing games. Most likely this characteristic was what enabled the brilliant mind behind that round, childlike face to focus on tiny bits of minutia day after day, trusting that eventually they would lead to the unraveling of a puzzle.

And this was definitely a puzzle worthy of Dennis’s mind. Two women who were almost identical—no, who were identical—yet came from completely different backgrounds. And to make things even more interesting, the day after one of them runs off, her look-alike shows up.