LITMIR.BIZ

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after that. If I’d have been with her, she wouldn’t have been hurt.”

      What was the point of this story? He didn’t ask.

      “I felt that way on and off after we were split up, but I attributed it to my own situation. I felt that way again the day Kaelyn died.”

      Roman kept his expression carefully blank. She had a bad feeling the day Kaelyn killed herself? Is that why she thought her twin sister had been murdered? He didn’t do weird. Maybe he should have stuck with meeting for coffee in the morning, report ready and in hand.

      “Except this feeling was different. Instead of worry over Kaelyn being hurt, I felt an element of danger, as though Kaelyn might be in bad trouble. I can’t explain it. I only know what I felt, and there can be no coincidence because my twin sister died that day, maybe just shortly after. I felt that way for nearly an hour, and then the feeling sort of...faded. I tried calling and she didn’t answer. The next day, I finally reached her adoptive mother, who told me she’d killed herself.”

      Roman wouldn’t comment on what he thought of telepathic twins, or their ability to possess extrasensory perception. He didn’t believe in ghosts or the supernatural, but he also didn’t disbelieve. She stepped back from the table. “It’s your turn.”

      He chose his shot and aimed, missing by an inch. “Where are you from?”

      Instead of answering, she studied him awhile. “Why am I getting this feeling you’re trying to make a move on me instead of helping solve Kaelyn’s murder?”

      He grinned again and this time not to woo her. She’d made him grin with her wit. No man fooled this woman. He felt attraction mushroom to the realm of uncontrollable.

      “Your turn.”

      After a knowing, soft smile, she studied the table, and then went to bend for her shot and made it. “I was born in Chicago.”

      “Your family moved here after that?”

      “No.” Pausing for her next shot, she straightened and looked at him. “Our parents were killed in a mass shooting.”

      He didn’t hear that often. Not ever. “That’s terrible.” Now he knew why she and Kaelyn had been apart.

      “We were in a bank when some robbers came in with guns. Kaelyn and I got to the floor like Mother said. Our dad tried to stop the robbers and our mother tried to stop him from stopping the robbers. They were shot.”

      While he tried to imagine how awful that would be, she made another solid and walked around the table to choose her next move. Did nothing ruffle this woman or was she just calculating?

      “That was the beginning of the nightmare,” she said.

      She might be baiting him to get him to start asking questions, but what she revealed didn’t jibe with his first impression of her, the polished, successful entrepreneur who’d made a cushy life for herself.

      “What happened?” he indulged her by asking. He also wanted to know.

      “We became wards of the state. No one wanted to adopt two children, so we were split up. I didn’t know where Kaelyn was taken.” She made her shot and sank another solid and faced him, holding her cue stick upright. “When I was twelve, my adoptive father lost his job. A year went by and he still hadn’t found anything. My adoptive mother didn’t make enough to support us all and things went downhill from there.”

      That explanation he hadn’t expected. While she had struck him as one of those fortunate types who did with ease anything they set their mind to do, she hadn’t had an easy start.

      He waited for her to shoot again.

      “I went hungry a lot and wore the same clothes to school. By the time I was seventeen, our house had been foreclosed and we were living in a trailer. That’s all my adoptive mother could afford.” She bent with her stick and aimed. “The day my adoptive father forgot to pick me up after a school event and a strange man tried to get me to get into his car as I walked home was the day I decided I’d had enough. I ran away. I lived with my best friend’s older sister until I graduated from high school. My adoptive parents didn’t even report me missing.”

      She hit the ball hard and it crashed into the hole. “Now you know the background of me and my twin sister, how we got separated anyway.” She sank all the solids except the eight ball. Roman had all of his striped balls still on the table.

      Calling the corner hole, she shot the eight ball there. Then, smiling slightly, she held her cue stick upright. “What about you? Everybody has a story. What’s yours? Do you have any tragedies haunting you?”

      His childhood had been heaven compared to hers. Heaven compared to most he met. He supposed he should be happy she didn’t use her past to segue into her sister’s case.

      “The only tragedies I’ve experienced are the ones victims tell from their graves.” He inserted more coins. “I’ll break this time.”

      He racked the balls. As he leaned over and broke, he wondered how Kendra had gone from a runaway to a shop owner. She looked young for her age. Late twenties instead of forty-one, just a couple years younger than him.

      He sank two solids. Grinning at her, he moved to his next shot.

      She smiled back. “You haven’t told me about your childhood.”

      “Nothing to tell.” He made his next shot and sank another ball. “I was an only child of an apothecary and a crime novelist. I grew up in a fantasy world.”

      “Crime novelist.” She tapped her forefinger on her lower lip. “William Cooper... The William Cooper? The Australian?”

      “You’ve heard of him?” His father was a popular novelist but not the Stephen King variety.

      “Who hasn’t heard of him? Wow. You’re the son of a celebrity. And Australian. You have a very subtle accent.”

      “I was basically raised in the States.”

      “You do have a Rick Grimes kind of look to you,” she said.

      Great. She thought he looked like the star of The Walking Dead. “My dad’s not really a celebrity.” He made his next shot and missed. “That was your fault.”

      She laughed lightly. “And your mother is a what? What’s an apothecary?”

      “She bought an old pharmacy and turned it into an apothecary museum. She studied chemistry in college and developed an odd fascination with herbal medicine.”

      “That’s not so odd. What’s odd is they have a son who became a crime detective.” A band had begun to play and she started tapping her foot to the beat.

      “That’s odd?”

      “Well...maybe not since your dad is a crime novelist. But your profession isn’t as...fascinating as theirs.”

      “Are you always this blunt?” He didn’t dislike that about her.

      “Best way to be. I wish everyone treated me the same.” Still holding her stick upright, her enchanted expression smoothed and her foot stopped tapping as though something came to her. “Wait a minute. I know that museum. It’s here in Chesterville.” She sucked in a breath. “Are you from here?”

      She caught him. They now had a connection. She lived in his hometown. “It’s your turn.”

      “You are?”

      “Are you going to rob me of my chance to beat you?”

      Laughing, she went to make her move, missing the striped ball. “How is it that you’re from here and assigned to my sister’s case?”

      “There is no case yet. My boss made me come. He did that on purpose.”

      “So you could see your family? How sweet. A lot of bosses aren’t like that.”

      “I

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