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“You look amazingly similar if it weren’t for your dark hair. Your eyes are green too; hers aren’t. And she’s a lot skinnier through the face. You sure she’s not your cousin or something?”
“We’d both be rich, wouldn’t we?” Olivia laughed. It sounded forced to her ears. She hoped they would drop the subject but she had a feeling Taylor would bring it up again and again. She loved to gossip and this was a new juicy mystery. Then others would start to scrutinize her. All it took was one name search or a Facebook comment and Ethan would have the tipoff he was waiting for. “Shall I ring up your purchase, ma’am?” She asked in the hopes of distracting them. They were now discussing Olivia’s illustrious ballet career. She took the box from the woman and strode purposefully to the register. Taylor and the customer eyed her skeptically but followed her anyway.
“I heard everyone has their own body double out there somewhere; what do they call it? It’s a weird word -”
“Doppelganger?” the customer supplied.
Taylor snapped her fingers. “Yeah, that’s it! She’s your doppelganger. Or is she? It seems a little too surreal, wouldn’t you say, Chelsey?” Taylor studied her closely as Olivia finished ringing up the order.
“The world’s full of weird things, isn’t it?” Olivia answered with a casual shrug she hoped was convincing since her heart was pounding and she was sure she looked panicky. It took great effort to keep herself from glancing over her shoulder every few seconds. She felt too exposed; the mall was too public. And knowing Taylor and how she liked to gossip, this look-alike occurrence would appear on social media as soon as she had her first break. Olivia decided right then this would be the last time she came to this job.
***
“You have to see this,” Janice announced as Paul let his sister into his condo. She slapped his chest with a magazine.
“Hello to you too,” he muttered as he took the magazine with a frown. An old Dance magazine?
“Is she here?” Janice asked as she peered at Paul’s family room and the empty kitchen. “No? Then we need to talk.” She pulled Paul toward his office then flopped in his large leather chair. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement as she gazed up at him. “I told you she looked familiar to me and I’d figure it out. Well, there’s the proof.” She pointed at the magazine he held.
It took a moment for Paul to rein in his thoughts and focus on what his sister was blabbing about. He’d just gotten off the phone with one of his FBI contacts. While he promised to respect Liv’s wishes for privacy – for now ?
?? he had no intention of letting a known criminal continue ambushing people without any investigation. Not that he was a cop anymore, but old habits died hard. “What are you talking about?”
“Page thirty-seven. I took Chloe to her hip-hop class and was sitting in the foyer with all the other moms, bored to tears. So I started flipping through the old magazines. Why wouldn’t they get new ones? These are four years old! But I was glad they were older, at least for my purposes –“
“The point, Janice?” Paul bit out. His sister could ramble around a subject and never get to the main reason she started talking in the first place.
“I told you, page thirty-seven,” she huffed.
Paul flipped through the pages, then stilled as he peered at the full color picture of Liv. He sucked in a sharp breath. Her hair was blonde, but her eyes were the same green – minus the haunted look she always had now. It was almost impossible for him to tear his gaze away but he slowly turned the page. There was another shot of her dancing. She wore a simple leotard and leg warmers, and those ridiculous ballet slippers with a flat toe. Now this looked familiar to him since he’d seen her dressed this way for her workouts. The picture caught her in some fancy leap and it looked like she was doing the splits in the air.
“Olivia Tellerman. I told you I recognized her,” Janice declared with triumph. “She was one of the best ballerinas. They called her ‘America’s Sweetheart’ or something like that. Anyway, she supposedly brought people to tears when she performed and everyone loved her. For a short time she was hot with advertisers. She posed for makeup and perfume, and sports clothes. Then a few years ago she had an accident and dropped off the map. Don’t you think it’s weird she disappeared so completely? I know an accident can do that but I mean there was nothing about her so I looked her up.”
Paul’s gaze snapped up. “You what?”
Janice shrugged. “I looked her up online. Apparently she had a really bad fall; her partner dropped her during one of the riskiest lifts of the performance. He broke his jaw. And she messed up her leg pretty bad. The weird thing is she just disappeared after that.”
“You looked her up? Just typed her name in a search?” he demanded harshly.
Janice nodded with a puzzled frown. “Sure. Like everyone else on the planet. I do it all the time.”
Paul felt his blood pressure rising thanks to his sister’s idiotic move. “Did it not enter your mind that she’s in hiding for a reason, that she’s using a false name and disguising her appearance? Why would you look her up? I told you to leave it alone, Janice! This is no different than any of my undercover investigations. You’ve put her at risk.”
“I-I didn’t mean to, I didn’t know,” Janice faltered with a helpless wave of her hand. “I was so excited to figure out who she is that I didn’t think-“
“That a maniac is trying to kill her.” Janice gasped in horror and Paul nodded. “Yeah, it’s that serious and we’ve really screwed this up for her. Apparently he’s some computer genius monitoring the cyber realm and your internet browsing probably tipped him off.”
“But I only did a random search on her name. Surely that wouldn’t be enough to –“
“Let’s hope not,” Paul interrupted grimly. He grabbed his truck keys and headed toward the door. “Lock up, will you? I’ve got to go get her.”
It was almost time for Olivia’s shift to end, thank goodness. She would have left earlier if she’d had her own transportation but she didn’t want to trouble Paul since he was working on a security project. He told her he would be busy until it was time to pick her up and she didn’t want him to drop everything on her account. Besides, she wanted to delay their final encounter. She didn’t want to tell him she had to leave. For the first time she felt reluctant to go yet it would be a mistake if she stayed and allowed Ethan to catch up with her. She felt a little bit of guilt over her feelings for Paul. She knew it wasn’t smart to allow him so close but she couldn’t help it. Ethan would say it was because of her faulty nature. He said she had carnal flaws that needed to be removed so they could experience perfection in their relationship. The memory made her shiver as she carefully she arranged the bottles on the display counter.
You want every man to adore you. You’re shameless in your greed for attention, Butterfly. You don’t even realize how they look at you. They see nothing beyond your outer beauty. I know you in the depths of your being. When you strip away bone and tendon, nerve and cell, that's how I know you. Your thoughts belong to me. Your body is mine. Everything about you is mine. You were created for me and we will never be apart. You may try to escape but there is no separation from me, Olivia. We will always be together and I'll never allow another man to touch you.
Olivia hugged herself in an effort to ward off the unwelcome thoughts but they came at her in a barrage. It felt like he was trying to reach out to her across the distance. I own you Olivia. I will destroy everything you know if you try to escape me. The same way your career collapsed, I will see your world collapse, one person at a time until I finally reach you. And then I will make you suffer. But you don't want to suffer, do you? You don't want to make me angry. We're one person, Olivia, inseparable, indivisible. It is our destiny to be together.
Olivia jumped and a scream froze in her throat when someone came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. Belatedly she realized it was Paul which made her stiffen for another reason. “What are you doing here?”
