Page 19 of How Much For a Life of Lies?

Seemed like we both had our secrets.

I let him bitch and grumble and get irritable about being stuck in the house as much as he wanted as he worked through what had happened with Clarke.

We laid low and only told Sanctuary where we were after a few days, although Simon laughed at that and said they’d known all along, and it was all good. Whatever. So they had tabs on us. Hell, at least that gave me some confirmation that the authorities wouldn’t be taking Kai in.

Still, I remained armed, and the perimeter security I had set up around the small house was enough to give us the illusion of being safe.

“We’ve eaten pizza, binged movies. It’s a vacation,” I replied, checking the security I’d hacked into. He mumbled and cursed under his breath, rolled to his belly on the bed he’d taken to sitting on—the bed in my bedroom where I had a desk with my computer—and clicked around on the e-reader I’d dumped in his lap this morning after he’d told me how bored he was one too many times.

“Okay, I give up. Who are you watching?” He sat cross-legged, the e-reader open next to him. I don’t know what books he’d ordered with the fake account, likely something to do with helicopters if I guessed. Or maybe he liked a bodice ripper. Who knew? Still, asking who I was waiting for was a new question, and I’d been waiting for it for a while.

“My brother,” I said, and turned back to the window, checking my watch, and knowing his routine on a Friday evening.

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Twin brother, separated at birth, foster system, blah blah,” I deadpanned. “Well, not quite at birth—Jaxon and I were toddlers. Anyway, long story short, our mom sold one of us, and the other one ended up in the system and got adopted.”

He spurted coffee on the bedcovers. “The fuck. Your mom sold your brother?” I stared at him and saw the moment he realized what I’d meant. “She sold you?”

“I don’t remember the family I got sold to much. I was seven when I ended up in the system, didn’t recall a twin at all, aged out, joined the Navy at eighteen, and found out I had a twin adopted by this cool family. I meant to contact him. But you know… when I found out he’d been adopted, it hit me like a ton of bricks. There I was, stuck in care, on my own, while without me knowing my twin got to live the American dream.” I cleared my throat. “I felt sorry for myself knowing that my twin had known something better, not that I had a bad life. I just didn’t have a family.”

He frowned at me. “So you resented this Jaxon for being handed a golden ticket.”

“Jax, and yeah. Stupid shit that wasn’t his fault at all. Then there was the SEALs thing, then black ops, and now the things we do.” I waved to include me and him and the house and all the messed-up crap we’d been involved in, apart and as a team. I shrugged. “It wasn’t all bad.”

“If that’s what you say…”

“It is.” I didn’t have any particularly bad memories of the system, just loneliness, and I hadn’t found out about my twin for a long time.

“Did it make sense?” he asked after a pause.

“What?”

“Like, did you have a twin thing and felt as if half of you were missing?”

“No.” I laughed, then sobered. “Yes? Maybe? I don’t know.” Sometimes I thought I felt things that were weird, but I never questioned it. I was forever connected to Jax by genetics, but until I was done with my covert life, I wouldn’t be getting into his space.

He paused for a moment and then gestured at me. “Keep talking, this is better than a book.” He tapped the e-reader and smirked so hard it made me roll my eyes.

“I aimed for the SEALs, got my place, found out I had a twin, kept tabs on him, end of story.” I glanced at the footage, stiffening when a familiar red-haired man took a seat. Before I could say anything, Kai was standing next to me, peering down.

“Wow, you two could be twins.” He threw me one of his smirks, and I elbowed him. “Now what? Where is he?”

“San Diego.”

“Do we go visit?”

“Shit, no.”

“Then, uhm, what exactly are we doing?”

“We are doing nothing. I am watching him, making sure he’s okay.”

I glanced at Kai and he was blinking at me as if he couldn’t understand why my stupid ass was doing this. How could I explain that I needed to see my twin every so often? Since the whole covert thing happened, and I was often away, I’d hacked the security at the bank opposite his favorite coffee place to get a look at him, because I couldn’t visit.

Silence, and then it was his turn to elbow me. “Shit, Zach, that’s fucked-up.”

“No one knows about him. He’s safe. He has this contracting business, building, y’know, he’s built it up from nothing, and he has friends. Also, two brothers, a sister, an amazing mom and dad. I won’t wreck that. So I watch him, make sure he’s okay, and we’re done. He’s been looking for me, and sometimes I’ll seed information to this made-up sibling network, so he visits places and I get to see him in real life, from a distance, though.”

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