Born To Die

Stunned to think he’d been married to someone so much like her, Kacey stared at the image on the screen. This was all too freaky, and a part of her said she was going out of her mind, letting paranoia get the better of her, but she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed her uncanny resemblance to the other women, including Trace’s ex-wife. “Do you miss her?” she asked.

“Leanna?” He made a huffing sound. “Not hardly. Not that I would deny my kid a mother, but just not Leanna. She walked out and made it very clear she didn’t want anything to do with either of us.” A muscle worked in his jaw. “I took her at her word.”

“You have to find her,” she said suddenly. Maybe Leanna O’Halleran was the missing link, the person who knew what was going on. She could be key.

“If she can be found. Trust me, I’ve been giving it my best shot.” He took a long swallow from his beer, and Kacey decided it was time to give him some more bad news.

“Leanna and Jocelyn, they’re not the only women missing, or possibly killed, who look like me.”

“We don’t know that Leanna’s dead,” he reminded. “She’s. . too mean to die.” Kacey tried to keep her expression neutral, but he must have seen something in her expression, because he asked, “There were others?”

Could she trust him? Confide in him her half-baked theory? He was right; he was involved with one missing woman and one who was murdered, but in her heart of hearts she couldn’t believe that he was dangerous. Not to her. Not when she’d seen how he cared for his son.

Decision time.

Trace was staring at her intently, and she decided to make a leap of faith. “Let me get my purse.” She hurried from the kitchen, located her bag, and dragged out the pictures she’d shown her mother only hours before. Carefully, she placed each image on the table where her grandmother had served so many meals.

“This is Shelly Bonaventure,” she said.

“That actress who died recently. I know she looks a little like Jocelyn, and you. Suicide, wasn’t it?”

“That’s the official version.”

“You think she’s part of this? Seriously?” he asked, obviously skeptical. “Other than her looks, what kind of connection is there to the others?”

“She was born in Helena, Montana, as were Jocelyn Wallis and myself.” Kacey pointed to the picture she’d printed off of Elle’s Facebook page. “This is Elle Alexander—”

“The woman in the one-car accident last night.”

“Yes, and this woman is still alive and works at a local gym.” She slid the brochure from Fit Forever. “A trainer named Gloria Sanders-O’Malley.”

“She from Helena, too?” He picked up the brochure, squinting as he studied her features.

“Don’t know,” Kacey admitted. “But I’m going to talk to her or check one of her social network sites. Lots of people list their hometown or where they’ve lived on Facebook or the like. If she’s not there, I’ll just talk to her.”

“And say what?”

“I haven’t completely figured that out yet,” Kacey admitted.

“Huh. Yeah. How do you tell someone you think she’s next on the list of some psychopath, especially when there’s no real link established yet?”

“I’m working on that, along with finding out if Elle gave me false information or really didn’t know where she was born.”

“I don’t know about this,” Trace said after a long, silent moment.

“You came here,” she reminded him. “With pictures of Jocelyn and Leanna. Don’t you think it’s damned odd that so many women who look so much alike, who are in their early thirties, are dying?”

“Yes. . I do. . but what are you really saying? You think a serial killer is searching for a type? And that the victims aren’t random targets? That he stalks them? That maybe he knew these people while they were in Helena?”

“That’s probably unlikely,” she admitted, as frustrated as ever. “Shelly left Helena when she was really young, and if Elle was there, she didn’t know it. Her birth certificate’s from Idaho.”

He slid the picture away from the others that were clustered together. “So she’s different.”

“In that respect. But she’s in the region. I don’t know.” Again she looked at the picture of the woman to whom Trace had once been married. “What about Leanna?”

He made a face. “She said she’d once lived around Helena, but she didn’t remember any of it, either. I think her parents split, but the truth is, I don’t know much about her. She liked it that way. Didn’t want to talk about her childhood.”

“You don’t know where she went to school? Or her friends?”

He shifted in the chair. “I met her in a bar, it went down hot and heavy, and she ended up pregnant. We got married a few weeks later. Then she lost the baby and split.”

“Leaving Eli?”

“That’s the kind of woman she is. Not that I want it any other way. If she tried to take Eli from me, I’d fight her till the end. The marriage was one of those six-week wonders.” Another swig from his bottle. Kacey watched his Adam’s apple move, then turned her attention to the images.

Another woman near her age, who looked like her, who’d lived around Montana’s state capital, possibly born there, and who was now missing.

“Here’s something else,” she added. “I just found out that the man who I thought was my father wasn’t. My mother had an affair with a doctor in Helena, and even when my dad found out, he kept raising me as his own.”

“So?”

“These women don’t just look alike. Some of us are dead ringers for the other. For a while the staff at St. Bart’s thought I was the woman in ICU when Jocelyn was brought in.”

“You think you’re related to these victims, these women? That this one guy fathered all of you, and now he’s. . what? Knocking you off?” He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.

“I know it sounds crazy, but there’s a connection there. I’m not making it up. Come into the den. . ” She scraped her chair back and led him to her computer, where she pulled up the information she’d gotten from Riza and printed it out.

He read the reports, looked through the pages, checked pictures on driver’s licenses, scanned obituaries, and scowled thoughtfully. “Where’d you get these?”

“A friend. It’s mostly public record.”

He examined the pages a second time. “If you’re right… and I don’t think you are. . but this is pretty sick. It could all still be coincidence. These deaths. .” He held up a stack of death certificates. “They were all ruled accidents.”

“A lot of ’em. A librarian in Detroit, a ski instructor in Vail, a single mother and stay-at-home mom in San Francisco. Two others in Seattle and three. . in Boise.”

“All women.”

“That we know of. But… I think we’ve just tapped the surface.”

“We don’t know anything yet. Some of these people died over ten years ago.” He shook his head, denying the evidence, even while his eyes kept coming back to the pages. “Let me get this straight. You think one person is behind these deaths and is just incredibly patient. Taking time, over a long period of years. And now a rash of murders?”

“He’s escalating,” she said. “It happens.”

“You don’t know that.”

“We don’t know a lot, like you said, but something’s really off here, and now the deaths, the ‘accidents,’ are happening closer together.”

When he didn’t seem convinced, she reminded him, “You came over here. You recognized that the women you were involved with are a type. I’m just taking it one step further. I think we might all be genetically linked. In fact, I’m running some DNA tests to prove it, but unfortunately, that takes time.”

“Seriously?” He appeared skeptical.

“Yes. Elle Alexander was a patient of mine.” She pointed to the picture of the woman. “I’m having tests run