Oklahoma Moonshine (The McIntyre Men #1) (13 page)

Kiley tried to distract herself from a groundswell of emotion by taking a giant sip of the icy, chocolatey coffee flavored drink. She gave herself a
cold-headache, closed one eye and rubbed her temple.

Emotion avoided.

“So why are you running around Big Falls flashing a photo of my sister?” She asked. “What did she do to you?”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, shook his head.

Kiley realized he felt ashamed, stupid, because her sister had played him so thoroughly. It was just like Rob said he’d felt over a woman. Kiley was
seeing it firsthand, for the first time. “It’s what she does, Dax. She’s really good at it. One of the best.”

“Best at what?”

“At the con. The grift. The game. She took a bunch of money from you, didn’t she?”

“No,” he said. “I gave it to her.”

“Honey, they all give it to her. What did she do? Say she needed surgery?”

His eyes snapped to hers. “A kidney transplant.”

“The Slice & Dice with a Side of Beans.”

“The what now?”

“Slice & Dice,” she made a cutting motion with a butter knife from the table. “As in surgery. Side
of beans, as in kidney.” He blinked at her. “Kidney? Beans? Kidney beans?”

He shook his head. “You’re not pretending. You’re nothing like her. Last week when I saw her, she said—”

“Wait, what?”

“When I saw her–“

“Last week?” Kiley interrupted. “Did you say last week?”

“Yeah, last week. When I gave her the money and took her to the airport.”

The sound of her own heartbeat thrummed in Kiley’s ears. “That’s not possible, Dax. Look at the date on that newspaper clipping.”

He leaned over the table, then sat up again. “But I’ve seen her since then. Look, look at the date on this.” He took out his cell phone,
tapped, scrolled and handed it to her.

Kiley looked at the photo. Her beautiful sister smiled back at her. She was wearing her hair dead straight, and her freckles were covered with enough
makeup to choke a bear. Looked like a mortician had done her face, which was fitting, since she was supposed to be dead. “When…when was this
taken?”

“At the airport. Newark.”

“And where was she heading?”

“That’s the thing,” Dax said, leaning back in his chair. “She said she had to go to Chicago for her transplant. But she
didn’t go to that gate. I thought I saw her boarding a flight to Oklahoma City. I remembered her mentioning her hometown of Big Falls, once.
That’s why I came here.”

She tapped the
photos
icon on his phone and scrolled. He had plenty of other shots of her Kendra. And the dates went well past the date of her
death.

And suddenly, she got it.  It was a con. Kendra’s death was nothing but one more great big con.

“That bitch,” she whispered. But she had to force herself not to smile. Her sister was alive!

She was going to kill her.

Belatedly remembering the man across from her, she said, “Tell me about you and Kendra. Start at the beginning.”

He looked momentarily blissful. “She waited tables at the café where I had lunch every day. I um, work for my father’s company.”

“Doing what?” she asked.

He looked surprised that she was interested. She was frankly kind of surprised herself. “My father owns lots of businesses. I worked for one of the
racetracks.”

“Like NASCAR?”

“Horse racing. I manage his track in Saratoga Springs.”

She smiled. “You like it?”

“Love the horses. Hate the business. But I get to spend time with trainers and breeders and the horses themselves.” He said it all in a rush,
maybe before he’d thought it through. Then he said, “I have to spend a couple months a year in Jersey at corporate. Kendra waited on me every
day at lunch. I don’t know, we flirted a little I guess, and pretty soon I asked her out and we started…you know…being together. A
couple. She told me she was gonna die without a kidney transplant….”

“And you gave her money.”

“I gave her a lot of money.” He sighed. “And then she got a call. Said it was a miracle. They found a match. She had to fly to Chicago
right then, have a transplant. I drove her to the airport. And then….”

Kiley gave him a second to breathe. She said, “How do you know she didn’t go to the right gate? They wouldn’t have let you in
without—”

“I bought a ticket.”

“Oh, hell.” She closed her eyes, her heart breaking for the guy.

“I couldn’t let her go through the surgery alone. I left her at the security checkpoint, walked back to the concourse, and bought a ticket for
the same flight. But when I got to the gate, she wasn’t there. I waited till they boarded the plane. She didn’t get on. I stood there like an
idiot with a ticket in my hand, and the flight attendant trying to get me to board.”

“You had it pretty bad for her, huh?”

He
sighed, nodded. “As I was walking back up the concourse, I saw her out of the corner of my eye, just stepping out of sight as another flight boarded.
I couldn’t get in without causing a scene, and you’d have to be suicidal to cause a scene at an airport these days.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I hear you.”

“It was a flight to Oklahoma City. And that’s when I realized there was no kidney. She’d conned me. I knew it right then. And I’ve
been looking for her ever since.”

The story made perfect sense. Her sister was alive.

But she’d faked her death. She’d done that on purpose, and while Kiley wanted to kick her ass for putting her through what she had, she also
wondered if maybe Kendra had a good reason for such drastic measures. What if she was looking at prison time, or if she’d conned the wrong mark?
Maybe someone dangerous who was out for revenge?

Her first priority was to protect her sister.

She lifted her head and looked Dax Russell in the eye. “I don’t know who scammed you. But this—” she set the leather pouch on the
table between them. “—is all that’s left of my sister. I’ve been carrying her ashes around with me for the past month and a half,
waiting to spread them where she’d want them.”

He didn’t believe her. “What are you doing, Kiley? Look at her,” he said, flashing the phone in her face. “She’s your
twin.”

“
Kendra
was my twin. That chick on your phone isn’t Kendra. If you were female, you’d realize that hair and
makeup can pretty much make you look like anybody you want. A con like the one who got you—she’d know that. She probably knew Kendra from back
in the day, and knew she’d died, so her name was safe to use.”

“Are you conning me, too, now? Is that what this is?”

“I know you don’t want to believe it, Dax, but Kendra’s dead. Hell, if your chick was the real Kendra, she’d have called herself
Shirley or something.” She  pushed his phone away from her face. “That isn’t my sister. And I’m really sorry about the
money.”

“I borrowed it from my father’s company,” he said.

“I’m really sorry, Dax.”

“I didn’t ask first.”

“Oh, hell,” she whispered.

“Kendra—or whoever she was—said the insurance would pay out within a week or two and she’d reimburse me. I figured I’d put it
back and no one would ever know. She said if they waited for all the bullshit red tape, she’d be dead.”

Kiley lowered her head.

“I believed her,” he said. “I loved her.”

“I’m really sorry, Dax.” She reached across the table, put a hand on his big forearm. “If it helps, try to realize that you fell in
love with the person you thought she was. She’s smart enough to figure out what your ideal woman would be, all those lunches she served you, all the
small talk you shared. She figured out exactly what you wanted, and then morphed into it, knowing she’d found herself a golden goose. She
wasn’t really who you thought she was.”

“She pretended really well.”

“That person, the one she was pretending to be—maybe there’s a real version of her out there somewhere. And someday, you’re gonna
find her.”

She got up, picked up her drink, and said, “Thanks for being so…honest. I’m real sorry for your losses, Dax.”

He nodded. “Guess this is one of those life lesson deals, right?”

“I guess so.” She waved, he nodded, and Kiley went to the register.

He called after her, “It’s on me, Kiley.”

“And me,” the owner said, handing her a bag. “I put a couple of my favorites in there. And if it’s okay with you, I’m gonna
give Sad-Sack over there his freebie, too.”

“Yeah,” Kiley said. “Turns out he’s a really sweet guy.” And she’d just lied to him, and probably broken his heart.

She’d find him and tell him the truth someday, when she knew it would be safe for Kendra.

Kendra.

Her heart swelled up in her chest. God, it was wonderful! Kendra was alive.

Rob finished putting in the stained glass window, glanced at his watch and got a little more worried about Kiley. And then he spotted her headlights. For
just a split second, they ignited the stained glass and painted the attic in jewels, ruby and emerald and sapphire.

He was unreasonably glad she was home. That was probably a warning sign. He needed to rein it in before he did something stupid, like falling for her.
Smiling, he picked up his tools and heard the front door open. He hurried downstairs to greet her, and was surprised by how dark it was. All the lights
were still off. He’d spent more time in the attic than he’d realized. He wondered if Kiley would tell him what she’d been up to today.
Probably not.

She walked into the living room, looked at him and froze, like she was surprised to see him there. And then she shifted instantly, ran to him, and said,
“Oh thank God, thank God, I’ve finally found someone who can help me.”

She pressed her hands to his chest and said, “I need a man. A big, strong man like you. I need a hero. I need—”

“You need to get your hands off him, Kendra, and you need to do it
now
.”

Kiley’s voice came from the kitchen door, and then she hit the light switch, and Rob stood there blinking at her. There were tears in her eyes, anger
in her frown, and a smile trying to tug her lips upward.

Then he looked at the woman front of him, so similar to Kiley, and yet so different. And he couldn’t even pinpoint how. She seemed older. There was a
meanness to her. And her eyes were brilliant emerald green.

Kendra
smiled a big innocent smile. It startled him so much he took a step backward. “You’re not Kiley,” he said. He couldn’t stop looking
back and forth between them.

“No, but I bet you’d like me better,” Kendra said, and then she turned, looked at her sister. “Hi, Kiley.”

Kiley glared, then melted into tears, ran across the room and wrapped her sister in her arms, sobbing, “You’re alive, oh my God you’re
really alive, ohmygod you’re
alive
.”

Kendra hugged back. They stood there, wrapped around each other like a pair of spider monkeys. Kiley lifted her head from her sister’s shoulder and
looked his way. Her eyes were very wet and she was kind of smiling in a wobbly way.

He smiled back, getting it. This was the sister she’d thought was dead. He was witnessing a miracle, and he knew he ought to go outside or upstairs
or something and let them have some privacy, and he was trying to, he really was. But his feet seemed to have melded with the floor.

And then it was like a switch flipped. Kiley’s face went stormy, she pushed Kendra back and slapped her right across the face.

Her head snapped, but she stood steady, taking it like a champ.

“You let me think you were dead!” Kiley shouted. “How could you do that to me? You let me think you were
dead
, Kendra. That you
burned in a freaking
fire
.”

Kendra rubbed her cheek. “Yeah, about that—”

“They sent me your
ashes
.” Kiley yanked a leather pouch from her purse and threw it. It hit Kendra in the chest, releasing a little
puff of dead person dust on impact, before plopping unceremoniously to the floor between them. “Who the hell have I been carrying around with me? Who
have I been talking to and crying over?”

Kendra was staring at the pouch at her feet. “Some homeless chick one of the other residents was banging. When I read about my own demise, I figured
it was a chance…” She glanced over her shoulder at him. He really had to leave, he thought. “A chance at a fresh start. And I took
it.” She turned her back to Kiley, making a circle, looking around the living room. “I like what you’ve done with the place. Cute
curtains. Nice TV, too. You have cable?”

Rob was stunned, even though he knew he shouldn’t be listening to any of this. Holy shit, she’d
deliberately
let the world think she
was dead?

“You had to know they’d notify me,” Kiley said.

“You and Dad, yeah.” She was inspecting the kitchen now, hands in the pockets of a brown leather jacket that was completely unnecessary
tonight.

“Dad thinks you’re dead, too?” Kiley asked.

She didn’t answer.

“You faked your own death?” The words came out before Rob could stop them. He lowered his head. “Sorry, sorry, I’m going.”

Kiley glanced his way briefly, and there was something pleading in her eyes. He held up a hand, nodded, and went into the kitchen, letting the two of them
have the living room to themselves.

“I can’t believe you did this, Kendra.”

“Better than the alternative,” she replied.

“You could’ve found me, told me.”

“That’s what I’m doing. Or didn’t you notice?” She looked around again. “How the hell did you manage to scam the money
to buy back the place?”

“Shut up, Kendra.”

Kendra shot Rob a look in the kitchen, then nodded once, like she got the message. He was still too close, he thought. He ought to go outside. He reached
into the fridge for a beer to take with him, and knew it was true. Kiley had tried to scam him out of half the money to pay for the place. Not for the
first time, he wondered how she’d managed to raise the other half.

“Look,” Kendra said, lowering her voice a whole lot. “I’m not gonna mess up whatever you’ve got going here. I just…I
need a place to crash. Just for a few days.”