Relative Strangers (25 page)

An hour before, Ryan had made love to her. Reverently. With murmurs and sighs of love. She swallowed against the lump of emotion that formed in her throat. He loved her. And she was about to seriously piss him off.

Ryan wasn't sure what awakened him. Realizing that Meg was not beside him, he shifted so he could see the bathroom door. It was closed, a thin stream of light visible along its bottom edge. Relaxing, he made plans for her return to bed and drifted off again.

Chapter 25

Meg stood before the door to cabin eighteen. Not allowing a moment to second-guess herself, she delivered three light taps.

The door opened a crack. A woman with short black hair and green eyes peered through it. Meg took an involuntary step back as the door swung open.

She had already reasoned that a surge of affection would be unrealistic. She had also anticipated the loss for words. She hadn't expected, however, that Margot's face, so like her own, would be so void of expression that she may well have been looking at a piece of furniture she neither liked nor disliked. Meg saw no kindness in the eyes that were identical to her own, and their flat expression was as jarring as a slap. "I made a mistake," Meg said, and turned to go.

"Wait."

Meg thought about ignoring her and walking away anyway. She didn't need another reason to be disappointed in family ties. But she reminded herself that there were things she needed—wanted—to know, and only Margot had the an-swers. Pausing, Meg noticed that Margot's eyes were red and puffy. She'd been crying.

Margot leaned a shoulder against the door, casually so as not to give away the panic that had gripped her when her sister had started to go. When the knock had come at the door, her twin was the last person she had expected to be standing there. At least now she knew that Slater hadn't gotten to her. Maybe there was a reason to feel hope after all.

"Well," Margot said, taking a moment to check her sister out. She remembered having hair that long and disordered, and her twin's body was leaner and more muscled than her own. Her twin was also not all that happy to meet Margot. That was obvious in the way she met Margot's gaze. A direct hit, not a hint of mercy.

Meg refused to shift even though Margot's scrutiny was unnerving. It was eerie to gaze at a woman who looked different from her only because of the cut of her hair or a slight variation in their weight. She wondered whether her own forehead wrinkled in the spot just above the bridge of her nose when she scrutinized another person. She wondered whether lines etched by stress on either side of Margot's nose were as prominent on her own face.

Margot stepped back from the door. "Come in."

Meg moved past her, ever more certain she was making a mistake when she saw that the cabin had been trashed: lamps shattered, chairs upended, sofa cushions tossed about. Sev-eral red roses were strewn across the floor amid water stains and shards of glass. "What happened?"

"I'm having a bad day," Margot said, righting a rattan chair and patting a cushion into it. "Have a seat. You look like you could use a drink."

Instead of sitting, Meg watched her sister go into the kitchen nook. She moved gracefully as she dropped ice cubes into a glass then poured cranberry juice and vodka from the minibar. Her clothing—dark jeans and a sweatshirt—was in-consistent with an evening at a beach resort.

• .

Margot forced a smile as she brought the glass to her sister.

"I'm drinking alone?" Meg asked.

Margot gave a negligent shrug. "Not thirsty."

Meg sipped the drink, hoping for a quick, calming effect.

Unable to stand still, Margot said, "I could use a cigarette." She crossed to the desk in the corner and rummaged through a drawer until she came up with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Damn it, she was so unsettled by her sister's presence that her hands were shaking. "I managed to quit smoking last year," she said, cursing herself for being so rattled. "Some habits you just can't cut loose. Do you mind?"

Meg shook her head.

As she lit up, Margot squinted at her through the smoke. "Megan, right?"

"Meg."

Taking a long drag, Margot held the smoke in her lungs, then exhaled, telling herself that as soon as Slater was taken care of, she'd quit. For the baby. Feeling calmer now, she was able to look at her sister and not flinch at what she imagined Meg saw when looking back at her. "I've known about you since I was sixteen."

Meg couldn't fathom waiting twelve years for this mo-ment. "How did you find out?"

Margot blew out a thin stream of smoke. "Dad was mad at me for being a bad girl and said he was glad I wasn't his daughter. Even forked over the papers to prove it." Pausing, she stared down at the cigarette clenched between two fingers. The dragging sensation in her chest as she remembered was not new, but she hadn't felt it in years. Not even when she and Holly had talked about what had happened. "I ran away from home right afterward," Margot went on. "I was on a mission to find my real parents . . . and you."

Meg gripped the glass tighter. "You found them?"

Margot arched a brow. "You don't know?"

"Nothing."

"They're dead. Plane crash." Margot empathized with the disappointment that darkened Meg's eyes. "The way they died made it easy to find out more about them. Plane crashes are big news. Much bigger than car wrecks and stuff like that. Our parents were the only Fort Myers couple on a small plane out of Tampa to Milwaukee. The papers around here covered the hell out of it." She paused to take a deep pull on the ciga-rette and sent smoke swirling. "Dad was a computer analyst, Mom a programmer for the same company. They were relo-cating to Wisconsin. You and I—we were only a couple months old—were already there with friends of the family while Mom and Dad tied up loose ends in Florida. They had no siblings, and both sets of grandparents passed on a long time ago."

Meg's head started to pound.
Everybody is dead. There's no one. Only Margot, a jewel thief and accomplice to murder.

Snagging an ashtray from a table by the chair, Margot tapped ashes into it. She didn't like it that when Meg's fore-head creased as if in great emotional pain, her own throat constricted. "I was adopted first," Margot said. "In case you're wondering who split us up. Hell, it's possible your par-ents didn't even know about me."

Relief expanded in Meg's chest. She'd needed to know that, to believe it. It was
something.

"So how'd you find me?" Margot asked.

"Looked you up on the Internet."

Margot's smile was hard. "Ha ha."

"Some of your associates came after me."

Margot reached for Meg's empty glass. "Another drink?"

Meg withheld it. "Did you set up Beau Kama?"

Margot stared at her. Meg knew much more than she had expected. "No."

"His brother thinks you did. So do a number of law enforcement officials."

Well, that answered the question of whether the police were looking for her, Margot thought. "Do you think I set him up?"

"Tell me what to think."

Margot sank onto a chair, her mouth dry. She clenched her teeth against the grief that struggled to the surface. She told herself she wouldn't break down, not in front of a stranger. "A hit man killed him to punish me for believing in happy endings. I learned my lesson."

She was being flip about it. A man was dead. And Margot was flip. Anger shimmered through Meg. "You're taking it rather well."

The contempt in her twin's eyes surprised Margot. "You came here to judge me?"

"I came here to help you."

"I don't need anyone's help."

"Don't be stupid," Meg said.

Wincing, Margot looked away. It had always mattered to her what Meg would think of her, how Meg would perceive her. It was why she had not asked Slater to try to find her until last year. She'd always planned to be a different person, a better person, by the time she met her twin. But that hadn't happened, and now, in Meg's eyes, Margot was a fool who had to be saved from the consequences of her own actions. The truth hurt.

Retreating to the kitchen nook, Margot put the breakfast bar between them. The physical barrier made her feel less vulnerable. Taking a drag on her cigarette, she glared at her sibling through the smoke and let defensive anger take root.

"You may think you have all the answers to turn my life around, but it's not that easy."

"I suppose if it were that easy, you would have turned it around by now. Mags."

Margot started at the use of the nickname, and for a moment, her mind went blank. A stinging in her fingers snapped her out of it, and she put the cigarette out in the stainless steel sink. She said the only thing that came to mind. "Get out."

Meg looked surprised. "What?"

"You heard me. I don't want your help. I may need it, but I'll be damned if I'll take it."

"If this is a pride thing—"

Margot's eyes blazed. "It has nothing to do with pride."

"Then what? What could be so important that you would turn down an offer of help from someone who might actually care about you?"

"How could you care about me?" Margot asked. "You don't even know me."

"You know what? Maybe I don't want to know you. Maybe I didn't want to be involved in any of this. But I didn't get to make that choice. I was dragged into it by force. I've been punched, held against my will, nearly strangled to death, arrested and shot. My best friend is probably dead because of you. Even if I wanted to walk away and never look back, I can't because your friends are too stupid to see that I'm not you."

Margot braced a hand on the counter, shaken. "How did you get shot?"

Meg passed a hand over her eyes. This wasn't going the way she had hoped, and she was beginning to realize that she'd been naive to think that it could have gone any other way. "It doesn't matter. My best friend wasn't so lucky."

Margot edged around the counter, thinking of Holly. "What happened to her?"

"Two men tried to grab me and got her instead. The cops think she's dead." Her energy gone, Meg eased onto a stool, a jittery weakness in her knees.

"I'm sorry," Margot said.

"They thought I was you."

"That's what Slater told them. But he knew who he was really getting."

Meg watched her sister. "What does he want?"

Misery almost overtook Margot. "I betrayed him. I fell in love with another man, and he didn't like it."

"All of this has been about jealousy?"

"Revenge mostly. Slater would never admit that he was jealous."

Meg shook her head, disgusted. "Dayle was a good person." Her voice cracked. "She didn't deserve what happened to her."

"I'm sorry," Margot whispered. And she was, but she knew that would never be enough. "I don't know what else to say."

Meg didn't know what else she wanted to hear. Words weren't going to make it okay anyway. "Did you love Beau?"

Margot closed her eyes a moment, then opened them wide to hold off welling tears. "Yes. I loved him very much."

"What about the emeralds?"

The question surprised Margot. "What about them?"

"I know you stole them. I saw the tape."

"There's a tape?"

"Recorded by a camera made especially for thieves like you," Meg said.

"I'll be damned. I never even saw it."

"So where are they?"

"It hardly matters now, does it?" Margot said.

"It might."

"They're on Beau's yacht."

Meg almost smiled. "You returned them."

"Yeah, big deal," Margot said.

"So you have a guilty conscience that needs to be un-loaded."

Margot nodded with a short laugh. "And while I play witness for the prosecution, who's going to protect me from Slater?"

"There are ways to stop him."

"I could testify until I'm blue in the face, and it won't save me," Margot said. "He has people everywhere."

"There are witness protection programs. I'll help you."

"I told you I don't want your help. I'll handle this my way."

"Your way is to buy a gun," Meg said.

Margot narrowed her eyes, irritated. "Is there anything you don't know about me?"

"There's plenty."

But what she did know was too much, Margot realized. And the more she knew, the more dangerous it was for her. Being here now was too dangerous for her. Who knew if Slater's thugs were about to knock down the door? She doubted they were, but she'd already taken too many chances with the lives of the few people she cared about. She was determined that Meg not get caught in any more crossfire.

Resolute, Margot crossed to her sister, who stood only a few feet from the cabin's door. "You have no idea what I'm dealing with," Margot said. "Buying a gun is the only way I know how to handle this problem. It may not be the way you would handle it, but I'm not you. I'm not anything like you. We may look alike, but we're not alike. You've made the right choices in your life, and I haven't. It's as simple as that."