“Where are you?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
The line crackled.
“Ethan, tell us what you can see.”
“Dark room. Pipes overhead. I can hear trains.”
His breathing sounded shallow.
“How do I know you’re really Ethan?”
Silence followed.
Then he said, “The night I proposed, I dropped the ring beneath the restaurant table. You thought I was sick because I stayed under there too long. I found someone else’s earring before I found the ring.”
That memory was not in the binder.
At least, I had not seen it.
“Tell me something Adrian couldn’t know.”
“I broke the blue vase your grandmother gave you.”
My hand flew to my mouth.
Ethan had told me it fell from the windowsill during a storm.
“I blamed the wind,” he continued. “There wasn’t a storm. I was practicing golf swings in the living room while you were visiting your mother.”
Despite everything, a sob almost became a laugh.
“That was you?”
“I’m sorry.”
Claire leaned toward the phone. “This is Detective Morgan. How did you get that number?”
“I hid the phone in my shoe before Adrian took me. I managed to reach it after he left.”
“When did he take you?”
“Last night. He came to the apartment around ten. He drugged Natalie’s milk before he arrived. We fought in the service hallway. He forced me downstairs wearing his cap. Another man was waiting in my SUV.”
“If you were taken, who was driving during the crash?”
“I don’t know. Adrian said someone had agreed to become me for one night. He needed a dead body with my belongings and physical profile.”
“A third man?” I whispered.
“Someone close enough in size to confuse the identification. Adrian planned everything.”
Metal scraped on the other end.
Ethan inhaled sharply.
“He’s coming.”
“Ethan—”
“If the man with you touches his left thumb to his ring finger when he lies, that’s Adrian. He has done it since childhood.”
The call disconnected.
Claire immediately requested a trace, but the prepaid device provided little useful information. The sound of trains and exposed pipes suggested dozens of industrial locations across the city.
My personal phone buzzed with a message.
Come home, Natalie. We need to talk.
I showed it to Claire.
“We can use him,” she said. “If Adrian believes you still doubt which man he is, he may try to convince you rather than run.”
“And if the caller was Adrian?”
“That possibility remains.”
Every answer created another question.
The dead man had Ethan’s belongings and physical characteristics, but he might have been an accomplice selected to resemble the twins. The man in our apartment could be Adrian. The voice on the phone could be Ethan—or another manipulation.
Claire arranged surveillance before allowing me to return.
When I entered the apartment, the man I had called my husband stood beside the windows, Manhattan spread behind him.
He had removed his jacket. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows. A glass of bourbon rested in his left hand.
“You lied to me,” he said.
“I was frightened.”
“You went to Queens.”
My heart lurched.
He knew.
“How?”
“My storage unit has a motion alert.”
I set down my purse. The police had hidden a transmitter inside it.
“You have a twin.”
His expression changed—not surprise, exactly, but resignation.
“I wanted to tell you.”
“For eight years?”
“It was complicated.”
“Which one are you?”
“Natalie.”
“Answer me.”
He crossed the room slowly.
“I’m Ethan.”
His left thumb touched his ring finger.
The gesture was small enough that I might never have noticed without the warning.
“You’re lying.”
His eyes hardened.
“About what?”
“You aren’t my husband.”
Something cold entered his smile.
“I have been more of a husband to you during the last eight months than Ethan has been in eight years.”
My entire body went still.
There it was.
The confession.
Not complete, but enough.
“Where is he?”
“Safe, for now.”
“And the man in the SUV?”
“A necessary sacrifice.”
My stomach turned. “You killed him.”
“I didn’t force him to drive drunk.”
“You gave him Ethan’s identity.”
“He owed people money. I offered his family a solution.”
“You arranged his death.”
Adrian shrugged. “That is a matter of interpretation.”
I fought the urge to look toward my purse. If I revealed the transmitter, I could destroy the police operation.
“Why?”
“Because Ethan wasted everything.”
“He built a life.”
“He was given a life.” Adrian’s composure cracked. “Our parents chose him. They gave him the good schools, the safe house, the college education. They sent me to an uncle who used me to open fraudulent accounts before I was old enough to understand what a credit report was.”
His anger did not excuse what he had done, but I could hear the abandoned child beneath it.
“You could have built your own life.”
“I tried. Every door closed because of what Marcus put in my name. Meanwhile, Ethan became the respectable Parker twin. The expert on financial crime.” Adrian laughed bitterly. “Do you understand the joke?”
“What does any of that have to do with me?”
His gaze softened in a way that frightened me more than his anger.
“At first, nothing. Then I met you.”
“You watched me.”
“I learned you.”
“You entered my home while I was unconscious.”
“I never hurt you.”
“You stole my ability to know who was beside me.”
He flinched.
For the first time, genuine shame crossed his face.
“I wanted to understand why you loved him.”
“You could never understand love by stealing it.”
Adrian set down the glass.
“Ethan was going to expose me. He contacted federal investigators about accounts I created through his firm. Once he did that, I had two choices: disappear again or become the man whose life should have been mine.”
“Where is he?”
“Stop asking.”
“Is he alive?”
His jaw tightened.
“For now.”
Sirens wailed somewhere below. Adrian looked toward the windows, but they passed without stopping.
I needed to keep him talking.
“The call from police wasn’t part of your plan, was it?”
“No. The crash was supposed to destroy everything. The body should have been identified through the belongings, and I would have disappeared before anyone contacted you.”
“Then why were you in my bed?”
His eyes shifted.
Because he had enjoyed it.
Because he had wanted to wake as Ethan one final time.
“You wanted me to believe my husband had died while you held me,” I said. “You wanted to watch me choose which reality felt safer.”
“You would have chosen me eventually.”
“No.”
“You already did.”
The words struck like a slap.
I thought of the unnamed fingerprint opening our door forty-seven times. The altered pajamas. Nights when Ethan had seemed unusually attentive, unusually quiet, or unexpectedly left-handed.
“How many times?”
Adrian did not answer.
“How many nights did you pretend to be him?”
“Enough to know you were lonely.”
Rage overcame fear.
I slapped him.
His head turned with the impact.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then he smiled without warmth.
“That wasn’t wise.”
A loud knock sounded at the door.
“Police! Open the door!”
Adrian grabbed my arm and pulled me against him. Something sharp pressed beneath my ribs.
A knife.
“Tell them everything is fine,” he whispered.
The officers knocked again.
“Mrs. Parker?”
I raised my voice. “I’m fine. My husband and I are talking.”
Adrian’s thumb stroked the handle of the knife.
The door remained closed.
Then the building fire alarm erupted.
Flashing lights filled the hallway. A computerized voice ordered residents to evacuate.
Adrian cursed.
Smoke began seeping beneath the front door.
The police had created a reason to clear the building without forcing entry.
“We’re leaving through the service stairs,” he said.
He kept the knife against me beneath his jacket as we entered the corridor. Residents poured from neighboring apartments, confused and half-dressed. Officers guided people toward the main staircase.
Adrian pulled me the opposite direction.
At the service door, Detective Morgan stepped from behind the wall, weapon raised.
“Let her go.”
Adrian placed the knife against my throat.
“You don’t know who I am,” he said.
“I know exactly who you are.”
“No, Detective. You know the story Natalie told you.”
Claire’s gaze remained steady.
“You’re Adrian Vale.”
He smiled.
“Then whose body is in the morgue?”
A gunshot echoed.
For one horrifying instant, I thought Claire had fired.
Then Adrian staggered.
Blood spread across his shoulder.
A masked man stood at the far end of the corridor holding a pistol.
Adrian shoved me toward Claire and fled down the stairs.
The masked shooter ran after him.
Claire pulled me behind the wall while officers rushed into the stairwell.
Within seconds, both men had disappeared into the building’s maze of service passages.
On the floor where Adrian had stood lay a small silver key.
Attached to it was a plastic tag bearing a faded address in Brooklyn.