Dead Ringer

52

I pulled up to the garage in a spray of gravel, bringing Ciar to the door with a wrench in his hand. My fingers hesitated on the keys as last night passed between us, but then I glanced over at the passenger's seat. Monica and half of Amanda's face stared up at me, their two-dimensional prison all their families might ever see of them.

I cut the engine, grabbed the papers, and stepped out.

"Maisye," Ciar began, his eyes guarded.

I cut him off. "Why is Donovan—"

I stopped in my tracks as I finally noticed the car behind him, raised high on a lift.

"Why is Donovan what?" he prodded, eyebrows raised.

I ignored him and pointed at the white Fiat. "Is that Tilda's car?"

He threw half a glance over his shoulder. "It was."

"Well what's it doing here?" I didn't mean to come off so belligerent, but I'd been so close to finally solving something, and now that damn car was yanking it all away.

"Scheduled maintenance."

"He brings her car to you for maintenance?"

"Yeah, I know. Fucked up, right?" He turned back into the garage with a humorless chuckle. "I never bought her a car. He did. He had her. But he knows I'll take care of it."

Take care of her, I heard behind his words.

The way we'd left things last night ballooned in the silence, forcing invisible distance between us. I took a deep breath, sneaking another glance down at the blond-haired, gray-eyed women clutched in my fist.

"How far do you think he would go?" I asked.

"Donovan?"

I nodded.

He pressed a button, and the lift started to sink back down again. "How far would he go for what?"

I raised my shoulders, searching for the right words. "To make sure no one else had her," I tried. "Or...to replicate her."

"Well I think you are the answer to the second question." Ciar watched the tires settle onto the ground as if it was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. "And I think the answer to the first is why you haven't talked to him since the bonfire."

The reminder set everything above my shoulders aflame with a mixture of shame and indignance. I still didn't know how much of the tape Ciar had seen, but the fact that he had seen something curdled the air in my lungs.

I shoved it aside and soldiered on. "But do you think he'd go further than making a jerry-rigged sex tape?"

If he noticed the way I choked on the last two words, he didn't comment. Maybe he wasn't as big of an asshole as I thought.

"How far are we talking?" he asked.

I studied his face, trying to gauge his mood, but there was nothing. Was he just humoring me because I looked like her and he didn't have the heart to throw me out? Had working on her car put him in a sentimental mood? Or did he genuinely believe his brother was capable of something more?

"Someone's stalking me."

It wasn't what I'd intended to say at all, and Amanda, Monica, Crystal, and Valerie glared at me from the stack of papers in my hand. Ciar just raised his eyebrows, skepticism heavy in every line of his forehead.

I let out a short breath of half-laughter. "And you don't believe me because I told you I'm a nutcase."

"I didn't say that."