Twenty-five grand was a lot of money to walk away from, yet the thought of not only helping Kathryn, but actually taking over her life, was just too much to contemplate all at once.
Jenna had spent every moment since she’d left home ten years ago trying to forget that she was not unique in the world, that she had an identical twin out there and that she wasn’t even the best liked of the two. Kathryn had always been their parents’ favorite, their teachers’ favorite and the one who had more friends and more boyfriends. Kathryn knew the art of getting along to get along, while Jenna had been born with a rebellious streak that angered authority figures and scared away the faint of heart.
An image of Travis Roth popped into her head. A perverse little part of her wondered if he was faint of heart, or if he’d be the kind of guy who could hang on when life with Jenna got unpredictable. Crazy thoughts, considering a guy like Travis and a girl like Jenna would never get together, not in a thousand years—unless, of course, some sort of paid services were involved.
Like being hired to impersonate her sister.
The thought gave Jenna a shudder. Impersonating Kathryn would be like taking a giant leap backward in time. She’d be admitting that all her rebellion in the past ten years had been for nothing—that with a bottle of dye, some scissors, a change of clothes and a bit of makeup, she was just a duplicate of her ever-so-proper sister.
The wild hairstyles, the sexy clothes, the wild men, the wild nights out…
All for nothing.
The choices she’d made to prove herself an individual could be wiped away in one fell swoop.
Jenna reached her floor of the apartment building, and the first thing she saw was her door standing ajar. She froze, and her stomach contracted into a rock.
Could Travis have gotten it open before he came outside and found her trying to escape? Possible, but how could he have so quickly gotten around the couch she’d jammed up against it earlier? That, along with getting past the locks, would have taken more time than he’d had to come back outside and catch her sneaking away.
She took a step closer and saw that the locks hadn’t been broken, and an image of the open fire-escape window flashed in her mind. In this neighborhood, no one left fire-escape windows open unless they wanted to find all their valuables and not-so-valuables for sale at a swap meet the next weekend.
Her heart raced. Should she go in or just leave and call the police from a neighbor’s place? Common sense told her to leave, but curiosity had her aching to peek inside, if only for a moment.
Her computer—she had to know that it was safe.
Jenna held her breath and stepped into the doorway, thinking of how she was going to pitch Guard-Dog-In-A-Box out the window at Travis Roth’s head if she saw him outside her building again. Slowly, she eased her head around the half-open door, until she could see the interior of the apartment.
It took her a moment to make sense of the changes since she’d last been there an hour ago. Couch overturned, cushions ripped open, papers and books strewn everywhere, bookshelves emptied and her laptop missing from her desk.
Jenna’s heart pounded in her ears as she realized the months—the years— of work saved on her hard drive that now might be missing, and she didn’t see her box of floppy disks anywhere among the mess.
She gripped the door frame and resisted the urge to rush in and search for her laptop and files before she knew for sure that the intruder was gone. She needed to think, make a plan…. First she’d go to Mrs. Lupinski’s and ask to use the phone.
She backed away from the door and crept up the stairs.
Damn it.
Was Travis Roth a diversion for someone to break into her apartment? No, that didn’t make sense. He hadn’t come expecting that she’d flee out the window, that they’d end up having lunch at a diner down the street…But he could have had some other plan to get her out of the apartment. Could that whole story about her sister have been an elaborate charade?
Her mind raced from thought to thought, and her hands began to shake as the reality of what she’d likely just lost sank in.
Jenna raised her fist to knock on Mrs. Lupinski’s door, but the door swung open at that moment and her neighbor, in mint-green curlers and a red satin robe, peered out.
“Shouldn’t have left your window open, huh! Saw some guy climbing up the fire escape, and twenty minutes later he walked right out the front carrying a black bag full of stuff.”
“Did you call the police?”
“How was I supposed to know if he was up to no-good? Could have been a friend of yours for all I knew.” Mrs. Lupinski’s robe slid open in the front to reveal a black lace nightgown. The sounds of a daytime soap opera could be heard in the background.
Jenna shuddered. She knew better than to argue with her cantankerous neighbor. “I need to use your phone. My apartment has been robbed and ransacked.” While you were up here minding your own business.
Damn it, damn it, damn it.
She wanted to throw up or kick something. Or both. Tears burned her eyes, but she blinked them away, determined not to let her neighbor see how upset she really was.
The elderly woman eyed her suspiciously but stepped aside and motioned her in. Jenna had never actually been inside the apartment before, and she half expected to see a heart-shaped bed in the living room, mirrors on the ceiling, maybe a few pieces of emergency resuscitation equipment in case any of her lovers went into cardiac arrest at an inopportune moment.
What she saw instead was a two-room flat almost identical to her own, except for the matter of décor. Mrs. Lupinski had stopped decorating sometime in the late sixties, when she’d apparently been enamored with orange-and-green flower prints.
She pointed to a telephone next to the couch, and Jenna was surprised to note that it actually had a rotary dial. The feel of catching her shaky fingers in the small holes as she dialed 911 took her back to childhood for a fleeting moment, until an operator came on the line and she found herself recounting the relevant details of the break-in.
The operator warned her not to enter her apartment again until the police had secured it, so Jenna was stuck waiting for them to arrive in the company of Mrs. Lupinski. Luckily, her neighbor didn’t see any need for small talk. Without saying a word, she simply planted herself in front of the TV and watched with undivided attention the plight of Rafe and Savannah, a couple who seemed to be very upset over the resurrection of someone named Lucius.
Jenna, left to her own thoughts, didn’t want to consider what might be missing from her meager belongings. Nor did she want to contemplate whether the break-in was connected to her research of the pageant industry. If it was, and if her files were missing—
A sense of violation rose up in her chest. How could they? How could someone have taken her things, violated her privacy, stolen her work—the thing that mattered most to her?
It was bad enough that she’d taken to cowering behind her apartment door, afraid to venture out in public like a normal person. Now her home had been invaded, and she had nowhere to cower.
No, she had to stop thinking this way. This was exactly the kind of fear they wanted her to succumb to.
She
