I sprinted up the steps to the entrance and pounded on the door, thinking how she could have already been there and gone. Tossed off another murder like a cigarette butt and moved on to the next victim. Then I slowed down my thinking. No strange car. Because there was no other woman. My head trauma had made it all so real, I’d really convinced myself somebody was coming here to kill Lucas and squash the case against Calder and Rizzo. Whatever Freudian anxiety I had from turning down the same offer must have written the script for my hallucinations. I fully expected to spend a few weeks in a psych ward after this. Or at least in intensive care.
Lucas, my little goody-goody, was in bed by ten every night. He woke up two hours before me on any given day and more like four hours on the weekend. It’s when he did all the working out to perfect his abs so I wasn’t going to complain. Waiting for him to get out of bed and get to the door was something I would complain about.
The sound of screeching tires is something you don’t hear that much in real life. I thought he had the TV on for a second. Then the sounds got louder. An engine approaching. I turned away from the door and saw her. She was racing from the corner and aiming right at Lucas’s house. She was real.
I pounded with a renewed vigor until I saw a light come on through the frosted glass. With my luck he’d already called the police.
He peered out, trying to identify the shapeless blob outside—those window were fairly unforgiving on details.
“Yes?” he said tentatively.
“Lucas it’s me! Let me in.”
The deadbolt turned and he stood there knowing something was wrong. Showtime. How to explain and make him understand and do it quick enough before she showed up? I had no idea so I went ahead and started talking and hoped he’d listen.
“Lucas you’ve got to get out of here. You’re not safe.”
“Sammy, what the hell?” He smiled, probably thinking he’d stumbled into some sort of kinky role playing. Might have been fun on any other night.
“You’re not safe. Calder and Rizzo are going to kill you.” I had his attention. No frisky business tonight.
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said! Calder and Rizzo are going to kill you to keep you from moving forward with the case. You’ve got to go.” I thought about the other woman and how I could see through her eyes and wondered if she watched through mine right then. “But, don’t tell me where. Just go and I’ll find you later.”
“Did you get this info from work? I’ll call in to Cranner—”
“No. Move. Now.” Cranner was my supervisor at the DEA. He couldn’t help anyway, but I needed more time to try to figure out how I could explain all this and everything that came before. I put my hands up to Lucas’ face, held his cheeks. Touching him felt good. “Honey, please. You’re not safe here. You’ve got to go.”
Lucas was fully awake now and after the distraction of my ranting faded he began to notice my torn clothes, the dust on me, the bruise on my chin and the droplets of blood on my shirt.
“Sammy, what the hell is going on here? Are you okay?”
I grunted in frustration. “Lucas! Listen to me. I’ll explain later but right now you need to go. They’re going to kill you.”
I looked right into his eyes, trying to get him to grasp the seriousness. Sometimes, though, things are truly unbelievable I guess.
“Calder and Rizzo are coming here right now to kill me?”
“Well, not them. Someone else.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter.” My voice rose in volume and pitch. “You need to get out of here and go someplace that isn’t obvious. Someplace I wouldn’t know about. And you can’t tell me.”
The door still hung open and headlights swept across the entryway as the car squealed its brakes to a stop at the bottom of the driveway. She made good time. As she started stalking toward the house I got another good look at her, minus the fire and debris from before. She still looked like me. But how? My head felt clearer, but something was still seriously wrong. No one on the bus looked like me. The woman who lost her purse, the driver. Only this woman felt like looking into a mirror.
I punched the door closed before he could see her get out of the car. I spun the deadbolt and shoved Lucas deeper into the house.
“Move. Grab what you need. Your wallet, keys, phone. But you need to move fast.”
“Shit, Sammy, you’re serious.”
“Yes.” I pulled on his arm and brought him to the bedroom, slamming the door behind us.
“What the fuck, Sam?”
“I told you already. You haven’t got much time.”
Two blasts announced her entry into the house. Gustavo’s gun made a hell of a lock pick.
“Lucas!” My voice came down the hall. My voice, but I hadn’t said anything. In a moment of clarity I understood.
EXPLAINING THE UNEXPLAINABLE
There was something beyond the fact she looked like me. It was me. Okay, she wasn’t me, she was only half of me. We were the same person, split in two. A copy. A clone.
She came into the entryway and I felt her look at me and I could sense she felt the same unspoken truth of it. There was a connection, an understanding. Even her face had the same knicks and cuts that I had after the explosion. A short cut on her right cheek bone right where my cheek hurt, a knick on her chin where I could feel the little indent. And up close to her now I could see that our outfits did match. It hadn’t been an illusion.
It’s so hard to explain, but what I can tell you is I split. Two halves, good and evil. I was the good. She was the evil. I’ll call her Sam, trying to keep things straight in my head when absolutely nothing in my world was straight anymore. Crookeder than a dog’s hind leg. (Texas again, thanks Daddy.)
And I recognized it because it had previously been my evil, my hate. Now it went untempered by the usually decent side of me. Nothing to keep my dark side in check, to throw water on the flames when they flared too high (as I’d been known to do).
Everyone has two sides. The good side holds the door open for a person on crutches. The bad side realizes the cashier gave you back too much change and says nothing. Even Mother Theresa gave the finger every now and then.
Lucas got a confused look on his face but he continued to pull on a pair of jeans. I swiped his wallet off the dresser where he always set it in the same anal retentive place next to the laid out change from his pocket in stacks of small coins to larger ones.
Sam’s feet pounded down the hall to the bedroom. No searching the house. She knew where to find us. I lunged across the room and flicked the tiny lock on the door meant to keep kids from walking on their parents having sex, not to keep out killers.
She didn’t bother wasting another bullet on that one. We heard a kick at the door and the frame rattled.