Chapter Two
“It’s nothing fancy,” West warned the curvy stranger who claimed to be Elaine McKendrick. Granted, the Elaine he remembered was perpetually five years old, but she had white-blonde hair that fell in tight ringlets all around her heart-shaped face.
Over the last twenty years, he’d memorized the little girl’s features. He was sure he’d know her the minute he saw her, just as sure as he recognized his own face in the mirror. At the airport, he’d watched the crowd around the terminal, desperate for a glance of a fair-eyed beauty.
James McKendrick made sure he’d purchased a seat next to Matilyn Smith, the soon-to-be-outed imposter. When West sat down next to the curvy woman, he’d been surprised.
She’d looked nothing like Emeline at first.
The more he watched her, though, the more he could pick out things that reminded him of Karen McKendrick. The way she scrunched up her nose when she was frustrated with the seatbelt. The shape of her hands and fingers. The astonished look that crossed her face when she listened to his song.
When he boarded the airplane he’d been certain he could tell if she was just another con artist. There’d been so many over the years. Idiots, really, since the first thing the family did was order DNA tests. Hair could be bleached, features surgically altered, histories created. DNA didn’t lie.
The woman who claimed to be Elaine raised an eyebrow at his beat-up thirty-year-old Ford truck. She wasn’t very tall—height was a trademark trait in the McKendrick family—and she had abundant curves that made him wonder what she’d feel like pressed tight against him. Those breasts, hips.... He banished the thought, seeking a mental image of his Emeline. Willowy, super-model beautiful, Emeline.
There were a few things about this Mattie that were vaguely familiar. The tilt of her wide blue-gray eyes, the way she crinkled her brow in her sleep. He’d spent most of the flight staring at her, trying to find any resemblance. There was something in her laugh that sounded vaguely like Emeline.
McKendrick had sent him to Atlanta to watch this newcomer. McKendrick had killer instincts. West had long ago learned not to doubt his judgment calls. If McKendrick thought something was up, then something was up.
He put his suitcase and her grungy duffel bag into the bed of the truck.
“It’ll fall out!” the woman exclaimed, pointing at the gaping hole.
“Nah.” He reached down and tugged the sheet of plywood back over the hole. He used a big chunk of concrete and a bag of potting soil as an anchor. “See?”
The woman laughed and made a helpless gesture with her hands. “If you say so.” She reached for the passenger door.
She pulled hard and glanced up. “Is it locked?”
“Nah, there’s a trick.” He gripped it, put his foot up on the side of the truck and leaned back hard.
The door opened with a loud, rusty clunk.
“You need a new truck,” she commented as she climbed upside, slightly disconcerted by the lack of a running board to use as a step.
West patted the faded, bubbling blue paint on the truck bed. “This one was my dad’s. He died a few years back. Can’t bring myself to get rid of it. You have to give that seatbelt a great big yank. It sticks.”
She did and the whole thing popped out of the metal wall and smacked into her temple. She yelped and clasped her hand to the side of her head, still hanging on to the seatbelt.
“Oh, crap, are you all right? Let me see?”
West leaned over and tried to pull her hand away from her head.
“I’m fine; it just startled me.” She moved her hand. “I’m all right, really.”
He bit back his chuckle, but he couldn’t hide his grin. “The A/C doesn’t work.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” she quipped, pulling her shoulder-length, dark blonde hair into a ponytail. Nothing like the Mckendrick’s, so far. Every single one of them were white-blonde.
Her eyes, though. They were hauntingly familiar. Emeline’s eyes were nearly the same color, beneath her baby-blue contact lenses. Maybe the shape of her lips echoed Karen’s as well.
He rolled his window down. “That one doesn’t work.”
She raised an eyebrow. “How’d I guess?”
He navigated the horrendous parking lots and pulled out on to a busy highway. To her left was a huge structure she recognized as the Daytona Speedway.
“Ever been to the races?” he asked, hoping to get her to start talking. He didn’t know much about her story, other than she didn’t remember much before her sixth birthday. She’d grown up in Atlanta.
“Me? No. Not my thing. But it’s big up in Atlanta. Everybody’s a NASCAR fan. I don’t care too much for it.” She reached up and fiddled with her necklace. It was a tiny silver baby pacifier with a sparkly pink crystal nipple.
“NASCAR too good for you?” he joked. She rolled her eyes. “All right then, what do you care for?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Music, books, reading, movies. Nothing real exciting.”
“Sports?”
“What’re those?” she said with a smile. West drove over the Seabreeze Bridge. Mattie craned her neck, trying to see out the window to see down at the river. “Wow. It’s beautiful.”
“The Halifax River. When we were kids, my dad would take us out on his boat.”
“We?” she asked, turning curious eyes on him. “You knew me?”
“Yeah. I’m a year older than you. We were inseparable, until—” He cut off abruptly, not wanting to remember, not wanting to dredge up the memories of those awful days after she vanished. He didn’t want to recall the nightmares that plagued his sleep until his teenage years. The night Elaine vanished, he swore he saw something out his bedroom window. Of course, it had just been a dream. Even now, though, as an adult, he had trouble convincing himself that he hadn’t seen a man carrying away a little girl in a white nightgown. For the longest time he’d been convinced it was Elaine. The older he got the more he doubted himself and his own instincts. Ruth Ellen asked him over and over again to look for Elaine, but it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Looking at this stranger out of the corner of his eye, he felt a faint flutter of hope, like the final spasms of a dying butterfly.
“Until?” Mattie prompted.
“Until it happened. You disappeared.” He shrugged. Hopefully she’d take the hint and let the subject drop. She fiddled with her necklace through her shirt but kept her mouth shut.
The McKendricks lived in one of the biggest, fanciest houses along the river. Two stories tall and designed like a Mediterranean villa, it graced the covers of countless local and architectural magazines. West did the landscaping and lawn maintenance himself, so he thought it was absolutely perfect. It was the greenest in the neighborhood.
West hated the hous. It was too perfect. Not even a blade of grass dared to wave in an opposite direction. Every flower seemed symmetrical. The pine needles and oak leaves from the ancient towering trees didn’t even dare fall on the lawn. Mr. McKendrick insisted on it, and paid extra to make sure not a single leaf stayed on the ground.
West pulled up to the gate and punched his code into the keypad. A second later the heavy black iron gate rolled open.
“Oh my gosh, wow,” Mattie breathed. She looked a little pale. Her fingers went back to the necklace.
“Home sweet home, Mattie,” West said, gauging her reaction carefully. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he would prove this woman wasn’t Elaine McKendrick.
He wasn’t going to lose Elaine all over again. They had only been children, but she had been his best friend. She haunted his dreams, still, and this woman wasn’t going to sully those memories.