Light from Her Mirror (Mirrors Don't Lie Book 3) (2 page)

Kenzie
tried pumping the petal, thinking it might be a new safety feature, but there
was nothing safe about the speed with which she approached the intersection.
She could only beep her horn and pray no one was coming as she sped past the
stop sign.

She
made it through the intersection with no complications, but there was another
car up ahead. At least it was in the other lane. The approaching knoll would
slow her speed somewhat, but Kenzie knew what was on the other side; the road
became a series of meager hills and steady dips, each declining more steeply
than the last, as the thoroughfare narrowed and flowed down into a low-lying
lakeside suburb.

Kenzie
shifted into low gear, vaguely wondering if it would damage her transmission.
Of course, if she crashed, it wouldn’t matter anyway. She belatedly recognized
the warning signs she had ignored earlier, but who would suspect brake failure
on a brand-new vehicle? More than likely, someone had tampered with them.
Someone in a blue Chevy, perhaps?

Kenzie
knew she was still going too fast to pull the emergency brake; doing so would
probably cause her to lose control and go into a skid. She steered over to the
curb, hoping she could rub her wheels along the cement to slow her speed. It
made a slight difference, but not enough to stop her momentum going up and over
the crest of the knoll. For a breath-stealing second, her car was airborne,
flying over the pavement before hitting with a vengeance. Kenzie hung on to the
steering wheel as her head hit the roof. She was practically standing on the
brake petal.

A
young mother and child were crossing the street up ahead. Kenzie began praying
frantically, something that came surprisingly easy for someone not accustomed
to doing such. She honked her horn and rolled down her window, yelling for the
mother to get out of her way. As the mother fled back across the street, Kenzie
tried to use another curb for deceleration. Another slight crest and she was
going downhill again, picking up speed rather than decelerating.

The
road curved to the right in front of her. Taking a calculated risk, Kenzie kept
her wheels straight, running over the sidewalk and across the manicured lawn of
a three storied home. She was in one of the city’s ritzier neighborhoods, so
few vehicles parked along the street, most of them tucked inside their
multi-car garages or still with their owners at the office. Kenzie plowed
through a beautiful rose garden, bumped her way across a cobble stone driveway
into the neighbor’s yard, knocked over a lawn statue, raided another colorful
flowerbed, bounced over the smooth grass carpet of a third yard, and entered
back into the street as the road curved back toward the left. She sailed right
in front of an oncoming car, narrowly missing its bumper. Her tires jumped the
curb on her right, plundered through a prolific bed of pansies and cosmos, and
headed for a landscaped yard that would make any gardener proud. As Kenzie
thumped her way over the tops of neatly trimmed boxwood and colorful
hydrangeas, she recognized the yard as one she had photographed for the city’s
Garden Club Magazine a few years ago. She glanced briefly in her rear-view
mirror at the destruction behind her. Oops.

Her
speed was finally beginning to decelerate, thanks to the dense lawns and copious
flowerbeds she furrowed through, but she was still traveling forward on
momentum. Shouting an apology through the opened window, Kenzie rammed into a
lovely white arbor. Wood splintered all around her and a riot of colorful
blooms took a free ride on the hood of her car as she careened into the neighboring
yard, as the road curved yet again. Rustic stone steps, edged with colorful
plants and low shrubs, climbed their way up to a magnificent house with a view,
but Kenzie could think of only one thing; a yard that steep had to be sitting
on the crest of another hill. And where there was a crest, there was a fall.

Determined
not to take the next fall, Kenzie aimed her car for the steps. Between the
shrubs and the stone, her momentum took a direct hit, but her car bounced away
and headed down the slope of the yard. This time, Kenzie targeted the sole tree
in the yard, a large live oak that would undoubtedly put an end to her horrific
journey.

She
crashed into the tree hard enough to deploy her airbags and jar every bone in
her body. Dazed, Kenzie slumped in her seat, staring blankly at her crumbled
hood as steam billowed out from beneath. She heard sirens in the distance, was
vaguely aware of people pouring out into their yards and surveying her path of
destruction, but she was too numb with shock to move. Relief washed over her,
making her limbs weak and her body tremble.

Someone
opened her door and spoke to her. Kenzie nodded that she was all right, groped
along the seat for her purse, and used what little energy she could summon to
crawl from her wrecked vehicle and collapse promptly on the bed of grass.

“Kenzie?”
Makenna Reagan called her sister’s name softly. 

“Hmm?”

“Are
you okay, honey? Can I get you anything?”

A
six-foot-four, blond-headed Texas Ranger
, Kenzie thought groggily. Nothing else
could soothe her. Instead, she gingerly shook her head and said, “No thanks.”

Makenna
sat down beside her on the couch, reaching for her sister’s hand. “You really
should have let the ambulance take you to the hospital and check you out,” she
admonished.

“I’m
fine. A little sore and a lot shook up, but the airbag did its job and kept me
safe.” She offered a rueful smile. “I’ve spent more time in the hospital over
the last few weeks than I have in my entire life.”

The
car wreck two months ago had earned her several days in the hospital, while she
recuperated from surgery on her leg and complications from cracked ribs and a
bruised spleen. Two weeks ago, she once again ended up in the emergency room
after the ordeal with Bernard Franks.

“You’re
being stubborn,” Makenna accused.

“Would
you have me any other way?” Kenzie grinned.

“Yes.
Healthy. Safe.”

The
jab about being safe sobered her. “Could Hardin tell if my brake lines had been
tampered with?”

“He
said it was a little hard to tell by just looking, something about too many
twigs and pieces of shrubs and fence caught up in the undercarriage, but
they’ve taken your car to the lab. Since this is a weekend, it will be Monday
before they know for sure.”

“Not
a fence. A beautiful little lattice arbor,” Kenzie said wistfully. A frown
drooped from her lips. “I totally obliterated it. Smashed it to smithereens.
And you should have seen what I did to Dr. Carmine Angola’s yard. It won’t be
on any magazine covers anytime soon.” She put both hands to her head and shook
it hard enough to make raven curls dance around her face. “Argh! I hope my
insurance pays for all the damage I wreaked. And for a new car. Again!”

“Aw,
come here,” Makenna said, gathering her sister into a warm embrace. “It’s going
to be okay. One way or another, it’s going to work out.”

“Will
it? I’m beginning to have my doubts. Even for me, these past two and a half
months have been crazy.”

“I
know you don’t do well with changes,” Makenna commiserated. “And there have
been quite a few these past few weeks, haven’t there?”

“Oh,
you might say that. Three months ago, my life was nice and stable: my career
was going great at the magazine, I had a good social life, I thought my past
was finally behind me, I was driving my old and faithful Myrtle, and I thought
I was finally going to visit New England. Life was good.”

“And
then you had your wreck.”

“It’s
funny, how one little thing can cause a chain reaction, setting off a whole
series of events. I conned you into pretending to be me for my dream assignment.
And sometime in between being chased off the road and nearly being kidnapped,
you figured out that you and I weren’t merely friends and roommates, we were
actually sisters.” Kenzie shook her head in exasperation. “How we missed such
an obvious thing, I will never know.”

“How
could we have known? My parents adopted an abandoned three year old. Your
parents let you think you were an only child. We may look a lot alike, sound a
lot alike, but we had no reason to suspect we were related.”

“Yeah,
well, finding out I had a sister was the only positive thing to come out of all
of this mess. I could have definitely done without finding out my father was a
criminal. Sure, I always suspected it, since we moved around all the time and
changed our names as often as most people change batteries in the TV remote.
But thinking it and knowing it are two different things. I still can’t believe
that a genius like my father was stupid enough to get involved with crooked politicians
and the Zaffino Mafia. He was the one to set up this entire thing, after all,
creating all those dummy corporations to collect grants and credits from the
government, taking advantage of the move toward green energy.”

“Depending
on how you look at it, he was either smart enough/stupid enough to document his
dirty deeds and everyone involved.”

“This
is so like him,” Kenzie complained. “He creates a big mess and just walks away
from it, leaving me to deal with it. Now that NorthWind is getting so much
attention, the worms are beginning to crawl out of the woodwork. Everyone’s
afraid that their involvement in the scam will be exposed. And for some reason
they think they can get to my father and his evidence through me. Little do
they know what a dysfunctional family I come from! I have no way to get in touch
with my father, no idea where he is or what name he’s using these days. A lot
of good it would do to kidnap me.”

“Especially
since you’ve had the evidence all along, you just didn’t realize it.”

“Sometimes
I wish I’d never opened that envelope my mother gave me. I mean, I had had the
thing for eight years and forgotten all about it. What made me find it and look
at it after all this time? I still don’t know everything she meant in that
letter. I think there’s still something missing, still some other big change
just waiting to happen.” Kenzie grunted. “And just wait until we go public with
the evidence we found. These are Congressmen and judges and billionaires we’re
talking about that were part of the scam. We’re about to rock the entire
political foundation of this country. Who knows what kind of changes will
happen then?”

“Some
of the changes have been good,” Makenna reminded her. “Your career is stronger
than ever. After the NorthWind piece-”

“Which
technically you shot. I just edited it.”

“-
you caught the attention of Senator Lawrence. Having a U.S. Senator
specifically request you for his special project and personal interview is
pretty impressive.”

“I
thought it was, anyway. Now I realize it was probably all orchestrated by
Bernard Franks as a way to get close to me and to try and find my father.”

“There’s
been a positive change to our bank account. Technically, you and I are wealthy.
We own a house and everything.”

“True.
Even if it is in New Hampshire and we live in Texas. And now that we know our
real names are Tamara and Tressa Mandarino, we at least know our true
birthday.”

“And
you left out the best change. We both met the men of our dreams.”

“Yes,
and I couldn’t be happier for you and Hardin, honestly I couldn’t.” Kenzie’s
smile was warm and genuine. “Hardin is a wonderful man and you’re going to
marry him and live happily ever after.”

“What
about you? You met the man of your dreams, too.”

“You’re
right, I did. But I didn’t fall in love with him. I fell in love with Travis,
instead.”

A
frown wrinkled Makenna’s brow. “You’re talking about Craven Shaw?”

Kenzie
nodded. “He’s wonderful. Handsome, smart, and funny. We just clicked, you know?
We have so much in common. A part of me is already a little bit in love with
him. So I’ve decided the rest of me is going to fall in love with him, too.”

Makenna
laughed at her sister’s outlandish comment. “Silly woman, you can’t just decide
who you’re going to fall in love with. Your heart does it all by itself.”

“But
obviously my heart needs a little nudge in the right direction. Craven’s
personality is much more suited to mine than Travis’s is.”

“Here
you are whining that Travis moved four hours away, but did you forget Craven
lives in Washington, D.C.?”

“I
am not whining,” Kenzie denied indignantly. “And Craven already lived there,
before he met me. It’s not like he deliberately moved away from me.”

“And
neither did Travis. He got a promotion, Kenzie. A very well deserved and
prestigious promotion. You can’t seriously hold that against him.”

“I
don’t. And I’m not going to let it bother me, because I am no longer in love
with him. Or at least I won’t be, as soon as I fall in love with Craven.”

“Yeah,
good luck with that.”

“You
don’t even know Craven! You have no idea how easy it would be for me to fall
head over heels in love with him.”

Makenna
leveled her green eyes on her sister, making her squirm. “
If
you weren’t
already head over heels in love with my fiancé’s partner,” she said softly.

“Ex-partner.
He left, Makenna,” she said flatly. “No, I can’t fault him for taking the
promotion, but it still hurts, knowing he chose to follow his career instead of
his heart.” She held up her hand to halt her sister’s rebuttal. “I know what
you’re going to say, that we can still have a relationship. But that’s a little
hard to do, when he won’t even call me. He’s called me twice, Kenna, since he’s
been gone, texted me three times. Craven texts me that many times in a single
day, and he calls me every single day, sometimes more than once. I think it’s
pretty obvious which man cares about me more.” Her cell phone chirped with an
incoming message. Without bothering to look at the screen, Kenzie said, “Care
to bet which one just sent me a text? The loser buys dinner.”

“My
money will always be on Travis.”

Kenzie
grabbed the phone and read the message aloud. “And I quote, ‘
Hey, gorgeous.
Can’t wait to see you in a few days. Thinking of skipping the Convention and
spending all my time with you. Miss you like crazy. XOXO’
, unquote. Hmm. I
think Italian sounds good tonight, what about you?”

Makenna
ignored her twin’s cheeky grin. “I think you knocked something loose in your
head today when you hit that tree.”