“Someone was breaking in?” Laura asked, trying to prompt her to move through the details faster.
“Yes,” the woman said. “I went over there—I could see him halfway in the room—he was climbing—and then he…”
“You confronted him?” Laura said.
The woman tried to sit up suddenly, her arms flailing, her head bobbing on her shoulders like she was drunk. “My sister…!” she burst out.
“Stay down,” Laura told her, pushing on her shoulders. “You’ve had a blow to the head. It’s not a good idea to move. Your sister was here?”
“Yes, and he—he must have hit me—where is she?”
Laura glanced around the empty apartment grimly. She didn’t want to have to answer that. She didn’t even know the full answer.
“Stay here,” she said. “Help is on the way. Don’t try to move—you might hurt yourself worse. I’m going to go and find your sister.”
Laura got up from the floor, watching Adams—whichever one she was—until she saw a flicker of agreement and understanding on her face. Then she grabbed her gun again and rushed out of the apartment, trusting the fact that Nate and the other cops were not far away. They would help her, get her the medical attention she needed. She seemed stable enough now. That would have to do.
Because wherever the other twin was, Clifton had gone after her. And Laura was sure now that that meant only one of them was going to die.
She looked both ways down the hall, seeing nothing. But the woman had been just coming round as she searched the apartment, and she’d woken up alone, showing no immediate signs of medical distress. That meant she couldn’t have been out for long. All this must have happened either during or right before Laura’s spring up the stairs.
They would have passed her, either in the stairwell or out there on the street. She’d have seen someone running in the beam of her headlights.
That had to mean they’d run the other way.
Laura set off in the opposite direction down the hall, coming to a pair of double doors. There was a smear of blood on the white paint—just a light smudge. The kind that might be on a hand, or more likely a glove, after knocking someone out with a blow to the head. He’d come this way. Laura was sure of it.
She raced along to another set of stairs. They went in both directions—up and down. Where would she go if she was scared for her life, hearing an intruder chase after her? Laura made a split-second decision. Down. She’d rather go down and try to get out of the building than get trapped up there on the roof.
She took the stairs two at a time downwards as well, feeling almost like she was flying. Like at any moment, she might lose her balance and soar down the rest of them, landing in a crumple at the bottom. She retained just enough control to prevent that, one hand clattering along the railing and grabbing it to keep herself upright, the other still holding her gun.
Laura reached the bottom of the stairs and burst out into a side-street, just as she had figured from outside. There was no sign of anyone around, the street running both ways into darkness. One way led to the road Laura had screeched up on. The other went past a second building and then out to another road that Laura could just glimpse now.
Which way?
In the far distance, Laura heard the sound of sirens. They were near, but not even close to near enough. For the time it would take them to get here and catch up on the situation, Laura was functionally alone. She had to act now. Waiting would be too late.
There was something lying on the ground a short distance away, just visible in the gleam of the streetlight that reached this far, next to the other building. Laura ran to it, checking her six and her twelve all the while, the sound of her heart beating loudly in her ears. He could be anywhere. They could be.
She reached the object she had spotted and crouched down. It was a woman’s shoe, a flat and businesslike black pump. She touched it, picking it up to look, and a headache shot through her brow like a bullet, making her fingers let go of the shoe—
Laura was standing in the hall, looking at her. He was standing there. She saw his hands in her peripheral vision—the knife raised. It was wicked sharp and glinting, but clean. No blood on it yet.
He looked down, and Laura could see what he was looking at. The woman on the ground. She was lying there still, unmoving, her eyes closed. Laura felt confusion welling up inside of her. No, this wasn’t right. She’d just left this twin. She was awake. She wasn’t unconscious anymore. What did this mean? Was the vision wrong? Was—
The girl on the ground moved, her hands groping along the floor as if in search of something. They connected with her cell phone and she let out an exhale, as if in relief.
He stalked forward toward her. At the noise of footsteps her eyes flew open. She saw him. She opened her eyes and her mouth both wide and screamed.
And he rushed forward to close the distance between them—
Laura came back to herself as the shoe hit the ground with a thud, landing right back where she had found it. She gasped in a breath of the cold night air, feeling it sting her lungs.
The killer—he’d tricked them. Tricked her. Maybe not on purpose, since he wouldn’t have known that he was so close to being caught. But he’d done it anyway, by going after the wrong target.
He’d knocked out the one he wanted to kill. Chased the other one away. And then when she was sufficiently far away, sufficiently terrified not
to come back, he could make his move. Double back around, get to the other twin, the one he really wanted.