She offered nothing but the exact same icy, calculated stare she utilized during high-stakes military interrogations. It completely unnerved him. He vigorously shook his head, muttering a string of foul insults under his breath, and stormed out of the hallway. The heavy office door slammed shut in his wake, rattling the picture frames on the wall.
Erin exhaled a slow, metered breath. Her pulse was racing, not out of any genuine fear of the pathetic man, but out of the terrifying realization that her cover was deteriorating way too rapidly. Now was simply not the time to launch a full-scale offensive. Not yet.
When she headed back upstairs, fully intending to regroup and strategize before Grace inevitably descended upon the house, she stopped dead in her tracks. A man was loitering right outside the master bedroom door. He was tall, intensely familiar, and sporting the exact tactical jacket she recognized from their classified deployments overseas.
Daniel, her former military squadmate.
He looked entirely out of place standing in this opulent, overly decorated hallway. He was a gritty piece of her past dropped directly into the delicate nightmare she was currently navigating. His sharp, highly trained eyes scanned her from head to toe, his initial confusion rapidly hardening into something incredibly dangerous.
“Carter,” he murmured quietly.
Erin’s spine locked up entirely. “What are you doing inside this house?”
“I could ask you the exact same question,” he replied smoothly, “but I already figured out the answer.”
Her heart rate spiked into the red zone. Daniel took a cautious step forward, dropping his volume to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Impersonating a civilian spouse? What the hell is going through your head right now? Do you have any concept of how quickly they will strip your rank and throw you in a cell for this?”
Erin maintained her absolute silence.
“I have seen more than enough,” he stated flatly. “Your little disguise is falling apart at the seams. Your basic tactical posture is a dead giveaway to anyone trained to look. That poor maid downstairs is terrified of you. And Grace Sullivan is practically circling you like a shark smelling blood in the water.”
Erin’s hands curled into painfully tight fists. “So, did you come here to back me up?”
Daniel’s jaw flexed tight. “I came here because Grace reached out to me directly.”
Ice water flooded Erin’s veins. “What did you just say?”
“She hired me as a private security contractor to keep close tabs on you.” His voice was utterly devoid of human emotion. “She sensed something was horribly wrong in this house long before you even slipped up today.”
Erin took a staggering step backward, her chest painfully tight. “You are running surveillance on me for Grace Sullivan?”
“I had no idea what her actual endgame was,” he quickly defended himself. “She fed me a highly convincing story about you being in grave physical danger, claiming Emily was having a severe, violent mental breakdown. She conveniently left out the part where there were identical twins running a shell game.”
Erin glared at him, pure, unadulterated venom swimming in her eyes. “She played you like a fiddle. You are being used as a pawn by a monster.”
Daniel shook his head stubbornly. “That is entirely irrelevant now. You are actively committing a major felony.”
“A felony?” Erin hissed, the protective rage boiling over. “My twin sister was beaten black and blue, psychologically tortured, and repeatedly threatened with her life. They were mere days away from throwing her in a locked psychiatric ward just to steal her family inheritance. And you want to stand in this hallway and lecture me about military protocol?”
Daniel’s stony expression softened by a fraction of an inch. “I truly am sorry about what happened to your sister, I really am. But impersonation is still a massive crime. Our operational rules do not magically disappear in this zip code.”
“I do not give a damn about the rules right now.”
Daniel looked at her with a sickening mixture of deep regret and absolute pity. “I didn’t track you down to pick a physical fight. I came to give you a brief head start. Turn yourself over to the authorities before this entire situation goes nuclear.”
“Nuclear for who?” Erin challenged him, stepping closer.
Daniel refused to answer, but the ugly, pathetic truth was written all over his face. He wasn’t standing in this hallway to rescue her. He was desperately trying to save his own career from the fallout.
“If I call this into command,” Daniel explained coldly, “I get to keep my pension, my top-secret security clearance, and my freedom. Surely you can understand the basic math on that, right?”
Erin stared at him, completely blindsided by how quickly a trusted brother-in-arms could shatter into a coward. “Daniel,” she pleaded softly, a rare crack in her armor. “Please do not do this to me.”
He let out a heavy, defeated sigh. “Carter, I have already pulled the trigger.”
Her heart flatlined. “Pulled the trigger on what?”
Daniel slowly reached into his pocket and raised his smartphone. A digital audio workspace glowed brightly on the screen, prominently displaying a captured sound waveform. It was a crystal-clear recording of her own voice. The exact audio clip of her stating, I am not Emily.
The floor seemed to tilt violently beneath Erin’s feet. “You actually wore a wire in here,” she whispered in absolute horror.
Daniel averted his eyes, completely unable to stomach her gaze. “I didn’t have a choice in the matter. That woman is paying me a larger retainer in cash than I make in six overseas deployments.”
Erin stared at him, refusing to blink. “You sold my life out for a paycheck?”
The muscles in his thick neck strained. “I sold you out because you are openly breaking federal law. And because if this massive scandal detonates and the brass catches me hiding it, I go straight to a military prison right alongside you.”
Erin swallowed the bitter, burning taste of betrayal coating the back of her throat. “You have absolutely no idea what kind of pure evil is operating inside this house.”
Daniel turned his body toward the stairs, signaling his swift exit. “Maybe I don’t. But the people signing my checks certainly will.”
He marched down the long corridor without looking back once. Erin stood completely paralyzed. She didn’t draw a breath. She didn’t blink. The carefully constructed disguise was actively burning to the ground right in front of her eyes. Her only tactical ally had defected to the enemy for a handful of cash. Her sister’s sanity was hanging by a severely frayed thread. The opulent estate was rapidly shrinking around them like a steel trap, and the true devastation hadn’t even commenced.
Erin remained rooted in the corridor long after Daniel’s footsteps faded away entirely. She pressed a trembling hand flat against the expensive floral wallpaper to keep the room from spinning out of control. Her heart hammered relentlessly against her ribs, a violent, physical reminder that she simply did not have the luxury of falling apart. She willed her heavy legs to move, taking agonizingly slow steps toward the master suite to formulate a new plan.
But when she pushed the heavy oak door open, the room was completely deserted.
The heavy duvet was discarded in a heap on the floorboards. The bedside lamp cast a warm, utterly useless glow over the empty mattress. Emily’s favorite walking shoes were completely missing from the open closet. Pure, unadulterated panic struck Erin like a physical blow to the stomach.
“Emily!” Erin hissed into the quiet room, desperately trying to keep her volume down while searching under the bed. There was absolutely no response.
She tore through the massive en-suite bathroom. Empty. She checked the walk-in closet, the adjoining balcony, and the guest quarters down the hall. Absolutely nothing. Then, the highly muffled sound of voices drifted up from the lower level. It was Grace’s distinct, venomous tone. Cold and brutally sharp.
“The girl is completely losing her fragile grip on reality. If she continues to parade around acting like a defiant lunatic, we won’t even need to bribe the doctor to convince the judge she is entirely unstable.”
Erin crept silently toward the intricate wooden banister, peering down into the grand foyer.
“She is an active liability to us now,” Grace continued ruthlessly. “I always knew she lacked the proper pedigree for this family, but this new level of severe unpredictability… it is far too dangerous. She is spiraling out of control.”
Spiraling. That was the exact, calculated code word Grace used when she was ready to completely destroy someone’s life on paper.
Erin eased her way down the carpeted stairs until she had a clear line of sight. Grace was holding court in the formal living room with Mark’s Aunt Claire, the wealthy relative who perpetually hovered around searching for fresh drama. They were huddled incredibly close, exchanging urgent, hushed whispers over teacups.
Claire leaned in, her eyes wide. “What exactly are you going to do about her?”
“Whatever is strictly necessary,” Grace replied without a single shred of hesitation. “She has heavily outlived her usefulness, and Mark is entirely out of patience. I will permanently dispose of her before she drags our family’s pristine reputation into the gutter.”
Dispose of her. The horrific phrasing landed like a brutal punch to the gut. Erin’s breath hitched in her throat, but before she could make a tactical move to interrupt them, another tiny sound shattered the quiet of the house. A floorboard groaned painfully near the archway of the formal dining room.
Erin melted backward into the heavy shadows, her heart lodged firmly in her throat. Emily stepped cautiously into the dim light. Her face was the exact color of chalk, her delicate hands were shaking violently at her sides, and her eyes were completely, terrifyingly hollowed out.
She had been standing there the entire time. She had heard every single word of her own death sentence.
Erin’s chest squeezed in absolute agony. Emily slapped a hand violently over her own mouth, desperately trying to cage the ragged sob tearing up her throat. But the emotional agony was simply too massive for her fragile frame to contain. A tiny, broken whimper slipped through her fingers. It was just loud enough for Grace to snap her perfectly coiffed head toward the doorway.
“Emily?” Grace called out sharply, her voice dripping with lethal curiosity.
Emily bolted. She didn’t run with any athletic grace or coordination; she just ran with blind, terrifying, animalistic desperation.
Erin instantly vaulted down the secondary servant staircase, moving with lethal speed before Grace even had a chance to stand up from her chair. She tracked the frantic sounds echoing through the house: the heavy front door ripping open, the bitter blast of winter air sweeping into the foyer, the chaotic slapping of footsteps sprinting wildly down the paved driveway.
By the time Erin sprinted out the front entrance, the street was entirely empty. Emily was completely gone.
Erin frantically scanned the manicured sidewalks, her tactical mind racing at a million miles an hour. Emily was not a survivalist—not physically, and certainly not mentally. She wouldn’t be able to cover much ground in her current state. She would likely collapse from sheer panic before she ever made it past the neighborhood security gates.
Erin snatched her car keys from the center console and threw the vehicle into gear. She cruised the immediate blocks at a desperate crawl, then aggressively accelerated when the expensive streets remained deserted. She drove the massive neighborhood loop twice, then three times. Absolutely no sign of her twin. The cell phone sitting on the passenger seat remained dead silent. Emily had left her device sitting on the nightstand upstairs.
Erin tore through the local community park, the dark residential side streets, and the glowing parking lot of the nearest grocery store. Nothing. As the sun finally dipped below the horizon, plunging the city into darkness, genuine terror clawed relentlessly at Erin’s throat. Emily was an incredibly soft target out here in the dark, especially in her completely shattered mental state.
Finally, Erin slammed the brakes in front of the local emergency room. If there was one place Emily might instinctively flee to when the world was ending, it was here. She was tragically, subconsciously drawn back to the exact location where her world had violently ended just a few nights prior.
Erin burst through the sliding glass doors, instantly assaulted by the harsh, sterile glare of the fluorescent lights. She marched directly up to the main triage desk.
“Excuse me,” she demanded urgently, her voice vibrating with authority. “Has a young woman named Emily Sullivan been admitted…”
“I am sorry, but we cannot disclose private patient information to the public,” the receptionist interrupted with practiced, bureaucratic apathy.
Erin planted her hands flat on the high counter, leaning over the edge with intense, terrifying gravity. “Please listen to me very carefully. She is my twin sister. She is in a severe mental crisis right now. She suffered a deeply traumatic miscarriage in this exact building just two nights ago.”
The receptionist’s rigid posture immediately melted into profound, overwhelming sympathy. “Oh, sweetheart. You mean that Emily.”
Erin’s stomach plunged into a terrifying freefall. “She is actually here?”
“She was here,” the woman corrected gently, glancing at her screen. “She walked out those doors about an hour ago. She didn’t mention where she was heading.”
The sheer panic spiked to dangerous new heights. “Did she speak to anyone at all? A specific nurse? An attending physician?”
“She had a very brief conversation with Dr. Howell.”
“Is he still in the building?”
“Office number three down the left corridor.”
Erin muttered a rushed thank you and sprinted down the slick linoleum hallway until she spotted the half-open wooden door. She rapped her knuckles hard against the frame.
“Come on in,” a deep, exhausted voice called out.