Page 35 of Twin Jeopardy

“I want that too,” Tammy said. She rested her hand on his shoulder. “And I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

It was the kind of thing any person might say, but he could sense the sincerity behind her words. She cared. The idea touched him—and unsettled him too. He had spent years keeping his distance from people. If you didn’t get too close to people, you wouldn’t be too hurt when they left you. He understood that not everyone wanted to live that way, but it had worked for him so far. Why should he change now just because one curly-haired reporter was getting under his skin?

Fifteen years ago

“IT’SMYTURNto hide. You have to find me!” Before Vince could protest, Valerie slapped his shoulder and ran away.

Annoyed, he closed his eyes and began to count. “One, two, three...”

He hated when it was his turn to find Valerie. She never failed to choose the best hiding spots. Impossible spots, like the gap between the cushions and the underside of their hide-a-bed sofa in the den, or in the rafters of the garage. He could spend hours searching for her with no luck, except he often gave up long before then.

Not that it was better when it was his turn to hide. She always found him, usually within ten minutes. Then she would crow about how terrible he was at this game. Which was why he never wanted to play. But today he had made the mistake of promising to play whatever Valerie wanted, never thinking she would choose hide-and-seek on such a hot afternoon. It had to be near ninety degrees out, and the sun was beating down. Maybe that wasn’t hot to people like his aunt and uncle from Texas, but here in the mountains, with no air-conditioning in their house, ninety degrees was sweltering.

He reached fifty and decided that was enough. He was supposed to count to one hundred, but with Valerie, he needed any advantage he could grab. He opened his eyes and looked around, searching for any clue as to which direction she had run. He didn’t see any footprints in the rocks and grass that made up the empty lot behind their house where they were playing. No flash of the bright red T-shirt she was wearing. The shed door wasn’t ajar. Would she hide inside one of the parked cars?

He hurried to his mom’s Chevy and opened the rear door. A blast of heat pushed him back. Valerie had better not be in there. She’d roast. He forced himself to stick his head inside and look around, but no Valerie.

No Valerie in the shed either, or behind any of the trees or bigger boulders that ringed the lot. Their rule was that they had to stay within the lot, which was bordered on two sides by wooden fencing. The back side gave way to a steep drop-off. Vince approached this and looked over. It would be just like Valerie to slide down there, thinking it would be a stealthy hiding place, and not be able to get back up. But there was nothing in the gully below but more trees and rocks.

He turned around and faced the house. He hadn’t heard a door open or close, but Valerie might have managed to slip inside if she had been quiet. She was good at stealth. Better than he was. He was going through another growth spurt, and everything he did was clumsy. Squinting in the bright sunlight, he moved toward the house. He approached the back door, then looked under the steps. There was a shadowed hollow there where Vince had hidden once. It had taken Valerie over fifteen minutes to find him that time. She had even said it was a good hiding place.

But she hadn’t decided to use it this time. He moved along the house, looking behind the lilac bushes, their blooms spent brown twigs now.

Something scrabbled in the loose mulch behind him, and he whirled, heart pounding. He stared at the ground beneath the lilacs. What was down there? He didn’t see anything, but something had made that noise. “Valerie?” he asked, tentative.

Fingers gripped his ankle, hard, and yanked. Vince screamed and staggered back, arms flailing. Raucous laughter brought him up short.

Valerie, cobwebs draped across her hair like old lace and a smudge of dirt across one cheek, crawled out from beneath the porch. “Oh my gosh, that was great!” she shrieked, doubled over with laughter. “You screamed like a little girl!”

“You’re supposed to be hiding, not attacking me!” he yelled.

“You walked right past me!” she said. “I couldn’t resist. Your ankle was right there!”

He stared at the gap in the foundation she had squeezed into. “You have spiderwebs in your hair,” he said.

She swept her fingers through her wavy locks, and the sticky webbing clung to them. “There are spiders under there too,” she said.

He shuddered. “That’s disgusting.”

“No it’s not. I’m not afraid of a few bugs.” She lifted her chin. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

Vince envied his sister’s fearlessness. He was afraid of so many things—spiders and falling, not catching a fly ball in Little League, failing a math test and being stuck in fourth grade forever. “I bet you’re afraid of dying,” he said. “Everyone is afraid of that. Even adults.”

Valerie shrugged. “I’m not.”

“Liar.”

She leaned forward and slapped his shoulder. “Your turn to hide. And pick a good place.” Then she closed her eyes and started counting out loud. “One, two, three...”

Vince ran. He thought about leaving the yard and heading down the street to his friend Brett’s house. That would make Valerie mad, but she’d either tell their mom—in which case, Vince would end up grounded—or she wouldn’t tell anyone, but would exact her own revenge, like putting ants in his underwear drawer or putting dog poop in his bed. She had done both of those things before, and Vince had ended up punished when his mother found out. “Valerie wouldn’t do something like that,” she had said.

And Valerie had played the innocent like a pro, looking at him with wide, hurt eyes. Later, she had sidled up to Vince in the hallway, after his mother had sentenced him to spend an hour every day after school pulling weeds in the flower beds, and whispered, “That’ll teach you to try to get the better of me.”

Vince ran to the shed and hid behind the lawn mower and paint cans. It wasn’t the best hiding place, but it was a good enough spot to sit and think in the moments before Valerie came to find him. He would think about all the things he could do to get back at Valerie, but wouldn’t. If she hadn’t been his sister, he would have admired her daring instead of being jealous of it. And when it came down to it, he would rather have her on his side than angry with him.

Chapter Twelve

Thursday afternoon, Tammy sat at her desk in theExamineroffice and paged through the folder of information she had assembled about Valerie Shepherd’s disappearance. She had all the original newspaper articles and notes from search and rescue about their role in the hunt for the missing girl, as well as the copy of the sheriff’s department file that Travis had given her.

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