Leigh Riker - Double Take

Cameron shuddered. “I don’t know where it is! I can’t believe this. I thought you’d be on my side.” She turned a beseeching look on him, probably the same look he’d seen the night he left WP, left her. “My job keeps me sane. I can’t sit around here worrying. Wondering. Feeling afraid again.”

He glanced around the spare room. “Then come with me tonight. To my hotel.”

She started to shake her head, but he took her hands and held them, searching her eyes with his. “My place isn’t fancy—” he glanced at her living room “—but it has furniture. The second bed’s already made up. You can stay with me.”

“Until when?” she said. “Until you find another position in Houston, in Detroit, or Seattle?” To her horror, her eyes filled. “I need my space here, Kyle.”

Kyle looked toward Ransom, who was still walking her carpet. If he wore a hole in it, she’d kill him. She sure as heck wouldn’t meet that heated gaze of his again. Or, at the moment, Kyle’s cooler one. Why were they joining forces against her?

Kyle gripped her hands tighter. He blocked out Ransom and lowered his voice. “I don’t care for the marshals any better than you do, but we need to end this thing. In the meantime, I’d feel much better with you beside me.”

“I know you would.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He’d heard the sarcasm in her tone. “I know, I’m being the older, overly protective brother. Let me be just that, Cam. I’ve missed you for too many years.”

True enough, on her part.

Yet, in that moment, she realized she wasn’t ready to simply trust him again. Trust didn’t come easily to Cameron, and Ransom had a point. Why had Kyle shown up now? she wondered. Because he was in trouble? She’d been in New York for almost three years.

“Too many years,” she agreed. “I’m grown up now.”

He smiled, his gaze running over her in approval. “No more scrawny kid with big eyes and scabs on her knees. You turned out good, Cam. Now, about tonight…”

“I’m staying right here. Alone,” she emphasized. “I don’t believe there’s any threat to fear. Besides,” she added, taking a breath before she admitted, “I’m not ready to forgive you yet.”

With a sigh Kyle folded her in his arms. “I was afraid of that.” She felt him look over her head at Ransom, felt the long-missed warmth of Kyle’s body.

“We heard the lady,” Kyle said.

Ransom crossed the room. “Then good night. I guess.”

“You’ll give us a heads-up on the investigation?” Kyle pressed.

Ransom didn’t answer immediately. He opened the door then turned to look back at Cameron. She had no doubt he’d stay nearby tonight, make friends with her doorman rather than Emerald’s, but she wondered whether because of his medical leave he even had any official part in the investigation. It didn’t seem so. Yet despite the irritation he always caused, she felt that stubborn, slow tingle of need run down her spine.

“You’re okay with this?” He nodded at Cameron then at Kyle.

“I’m…okay.”

He studied her for a long moment before glancing at her brother again. “Then do what he says.”

“Why don’t you stay awhile longer—and deputize him?”

Ransom’s mouth twitched. “Cute, Cameron. Very cute.”

When the door closed behind him, she leaned back in Kyle’s arms. But the lingering buzz Ransom caused in her veins, through her entire body, didn’t cool. “That man makes my blood steam.”

Kyle surprised her by saying, “I think you make his blood steam, too.”

She flushed. “I didn’t mean…attraction.”

He frowned. “Well, he does.”

She made her voice flippant. “Oh. Is that why he stalks me everywhere?”

“From now on, kid, I’m your stalker.”

She smiled up at him, but Kyle’s eyes stayed serious and Cameron’s niggling distrust of his surprise appearance tonight remained. “I’m not making light of Destina,” she tried to assure him. “Come into the kitchen. I’ll fix us both some cocoa before you go. Ransom tends to be a bit obsessed. I’d rather move on with my life. Our lives.”

“It’s a nice idea, Cam.”

As if he didn’t believe that was possible yet either.

With her confused emotions still running high, her awareness of Ransom and the anger he made her feel and her wariness of himself on his mind, Kyle started for the kitchen. But he paused to retrieve from the chair the small package he’d brought with him.

“Here. Open this. It’s for you.” He urged her fingers to the string that tied it closed. “Something from another time,” he added. “A peace offering.”

When she pulled off the paper, tangling with the string, an object fell out and thudded to the floor. Cameron picked it up and her heart melted.

“Oh, Kyle.” In a flash she recognized the soft-bodied doll from her childhood—the treasured doll she’d had to leave behind when her family entered Witness Protection. Along with everything else, her favorite toy had been abandoned. Nothing, absolutely nothing, had made that first move except her mother, her father, Kyle and Cameron.

Her throat tightened. Cameron cradled the doll, feeling a slight stiffness here and there. It must have been left in the rain at some point, then dried. The doll looked dirty and worn—apparently well loved—but its button eyes brightly stared up at her as they had done so often at night before she fell asleep. At three years old, on the verge of having her world destroyed, she’d clutched that doll for a final time like a talisman against the dark that would soon engulf her. Now she had a piece of her life back again.

“Where did you find this?”

“At Gram’s.” After leaving the program—before he’d vanished without a trace—Kyle had gone to live with their maternal grandmother until he finished school. Like their mother and James, Gram was dead now. But she’d saved this doll for Cameron. All those years.

Kyle had guessed at its significance to her. She didn’t know what to say now except, “Thank you,” which seemed so inadequate.

Kyle shrugged. “I knew you’d appreciate the memento from our childhood. All I remember is getting uprooted and living where I didn’t want to go, always lying about who I was.”

Like their names, she thought. She wasn’t ready to forgive Kyle. But at least now she had the chance to rebuild what they’d lost.

“WHY WOULD YOU choose not to?” Emerald said in a strident tone late the next afternoon. “How could you refuse?”

She didn’t mean Kyle, and Cameron felt her first reaction—a simple no—take flight. She surveyed the pile of evening gowns on Emerald’s wide bed and tried not to stare. Black velvet, bronze satin, red silk…they must be worth more money than Cameron’s entire wardrobe—mostly practical pants and shirts—several times over.

Emerald’s hands fluttered over the obviously expensive fabrics. And again, Cameron thought how nervous she seemed. Last night’s phone call must still be bothering her. Why else had she made such an outrageous suggestion?

She didn’t really have a choice, Cameron realized. If she wanted to keep her job here, if she wanted to talk her way into other clients through Emerald, she would have to do as Emerald asked. No, demanded.

“Stand in for you?” she said. “Me?” Determined to decide her own fate, she tried to back out. “I realize we’re the same height and build, more or less, but…”

Irritation edged Emerald’s tone. “It’s only for one night.” She ripped another dress from a hanger in her closet. Dark green watered silk flowed onto the bed and drank up the soft light from the bedside lamp. Once more she ran through the scenario. “You’ll come to the hotel just before the Zeus reception ends. We’ll trade clothes there in my dressing room. Then I disappear in your jeans while you take my place in the evening dress I wore to the reception. You climb into my limousine for the ride home and wave to the press through the tinted windows. No one will actually see you except getting in and getting out of the car. You’ll wear my coat, which has a hood to hide your face. Now, is that so hard?”