“Huh...” Cooper scratched his ear.
“What?” I asked.
He turned the phone toward me. “Supposedly you’re a dead woman.”
6
The words lingered in my ears, but didn’t seem to go past the barrier to my brain. I heard them, but they made little sense. Seeing the picture on the phone didn’t help things. A woman with my face looked back from the article. She held up a New Years glass, wore a silly top hat, and had a megawatt smile that I couldn’t fathom belonged to me. But it did.
“What?”
I took the phone from his hands, scrolling through the page, thinking it had to be some sort of prank. Some insane joke. Maybe the stress of everything played tricks on my mind. Maybe Cooper drugged the coffee. That made more sense. Anything made more sense than staring at a woman, proclaimed not just dead but murdered, who looked just like me.
None of the research I’d ever done on Erik’s phone yielded this result, or anything even close to it.
“How did you even find this so fast?” I asked.
“I’m good at cross-referencing. Typed in your features and probable age, along with missing.” He shrugged. “Alessandra Carter came right up.”
“Alessandra Carter.”
Sandra.
I’d been searching for months and nothing. He takes the phone and two seconds later has a photo of me. Or at least of my face.
To be fair, I wasn’t looking for a murdered or missing woman. I’d been looking for someone who’d had an accident. Totally different search terms.
My stomach clenched as I read through the article. Alessandra Carter, affectionately known as Sandra, was a twenty-eight-year-old social worker. They found her beaten to death in the alley behind her apartment building.
Police suspected the boyfriend. Jake Saunders.
His picture stared back at me with those stark green eyes.
I felt myself pale. The world shifted, and all that caramel that had tasted so wonderful a few moments ago threatened to come back up.
Cooper leaned forward, concern in his eyes. “Hey, it’s okay. Whatever this is, we will figure it out.”
Tears burned my eyes. Fear scorched in my throat as my mouth opened. Only a soft sob came out. Cooper wrapped his arms around me and I hid my face in the crook of his face. The smell of him, at any other moment, would intoxicate, but with the insane storm of thoughts rushing around in my brain, even that couldn’t break me out of it.
“Why would he lie to me?” My warm breath bounced off his skin and he shivered.
He cleared his throat. “We should call the police.”
I sat up. “What? No.”
“Lenore...”
“What are we going to say? I might be a murdered woman?”
“You might be Alessandra Carter. Don’t you want to know if you are?”
That name seemed foreign. It definitely belonged to someone else. Not me. There had to be more to this. Maybe it was just a coincidence.
“Erik said there’d been reconstructive surgery involved.” I stood up. “That must be it. We must look alike because of the surgery.”
“That’s one hell of a coincidence.” He stood up, but slower. As if he might scare me off if he moved too quickly.
Maybe he might. My instinct was to run. To go home and pretend none of this ever happened. Maybe confess to Erik that I’d been weak and tell him the truth about the man in the store. Erik would know how to protect me from all of this.
Cooper took my hand. “Lenore.”
I froze, uncertain what to do. He caused many reactions in me, but with so many revelations or mysteries or whatever they were, I couldn’t think straight.
“Let’s just go to the police,” he said. “They’ll be able to give us the answers.”
There were unspoken words beneath that. Silent words that conveyed in his stance, in the worried gaze of his eyes. Cooper wanted to get me away from Erik. But I couldn’t do that. Being away from him for only a few days left part of me hollow inside. If they took me away from him permanently, what would I do? I’d never survive.
“No,” I shook my head. “I can’t do that to him.”
“Lenore, you could have a family. People who care about you. And a possible attempted murderer after you.”
Too much. It was too much.
“Look, we’ll go back to my house. Check out the basement. See what’s in there.”
If I left without appeasing him, he might call the cops.
The idea of cops swarming my home, questioning me about Erik, it all made me sick. No way could I let them do that. I’d already betrayed Erik so much—and I was about to bring another man into our home.
All of this had been a mistake, but there was no turning back now. I had to give Cooper something to throw him off the scent.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Please.” I squeezed his hand. I poured every ounce of desperation into it. Every bit of need.
My heart ached with agonizing pain. If Cooper called the cops, Erik would find out, and I could lose him.
A soft breath escaped his lips, and he rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand. “All right. All right. I’ll go with you.”
“Thank you.” My throat tightened, holding back the multitude of emotions trying to get out.
“But.” He held up a finger, pausing until he was sure my attention was on him.
“But?”
“If we find something that’s dangerous, something that tells us Erik kidnapped you or something unsafe is going on, then we involve the police.”
That emotion threatened to push up. I swallowed, and it felt like swallowing a physical thing that scratched and clawed the entire way down. “Agreed.”
7
I stepped over the threshold. The house seemed so quiet without Erik. A shiver ran down my spine as Cooper walked in behind me. Nothing screamed dangerous about Cooper, and I
