The Third Twin (29 page)

Zane shakes his head but says nothing.

Ava turns into the parking lot. “Go past it and around the corner,” I say. “There’s another entrance on the other side, where she might not see us.” It seems to take hours to go around the block. “There,” I say, pointing to a clump of eucalyptus trees toward the back of the lot. “Pull in there.” Ava’s parked up at the front by the building. I see her head in the driver’s seat, but she doesn’t look like she’s making a move to get out.

Zane quickly backs the van into a space at the edge of the lot near the exit. There aren’t many cars in the lot, and I feel exposed. “What’s she doing?” I finally ask.

“Texting, I think,” Zane says. A few seconds later his phone chimes, and I jump.

“It can’t be,” I say, and pick it up to look at the screen. I exhale. “It’s only Maya,” I say, handing him the phone.

“Okay, this is weird,” he says, reading the email. “Maya says that Ava is on her way to meet you, that you’re going to turn yourself in.”

I glance over at Ava, still in the blue car. “Do you think she knows we’re here?”

He squints in that direction. “I don’t think so. She hasn’t looked up once.”

Zane unclips his seat belt. “I’m going to go talk to her. You stay here, where it’s safe.”

“No way. I’m the one—” I begin.

“What’s she going to do to me?”

“That’s the point! I have no idea what Ava might do.” I feel so unmoored. For seventeen years, I’ve known Ava as well as I’ve known myself—I could finish her sentences, anticipate her wants, and read her emotions, but none of that’s true anymore. She’s like a stranger to me.

“I’ll be fine,” Zane says. “But you need to stay out of sight. If somehow the cops follow her, take the van and get the hell out of here.”

“She’s moving,” I say, my attention drawn back to the blue car. We watch as Ava gets out of the Honda and walks toward some trees at the other end of the lot. For the first time since the club, I’m able to see her clearly. She’s got on jeans and low-heeled boots, but there’s something about the way she moves that’s off somehow. “Something’s wrong,” I say.

Zane glances at me. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” I say, watching her lean against one of the trees. Over her shoulder she’s got the white bag that I’ve never seen before, and she picked a spot where she can see the entire lot but is almost hidden from view. “I can’t say exactly. She just … she just doesn’t look normal.”

“I’m going,” he says, reaching for the door.

“No!” I say, suddenly afraid. “She’s already killed three people.”

“We don’t know that,” Zane says. “Besides, the only guys who are dead have been going out with one of you.”

I can see how determined he is, and honestly I just want the not-knowing to be over. “Give me your phone, then,” I say. I go to the home screen and press the video icon. “Put this in your pocket. We won’t have any video evidence, but we might at least get some audio that could help.”

“Street smarts too,” Zane says, slipping the phone into his pocket.

“Be careful,” I say.

“You be ready to tear out of here if you need to,” he says. “Don’t worry about me.”

I slide into the driver’s seat and watch Zane as he makes his way across the parking lot. He looks casual, as if he’s heading for the office building. As soon as he’s about to reach Ava, a guy dressed in a suit comes rushing down the steps and stops in front of him. I’m straining to see what they’re doing. Is the guy a plainclothes cop? After a few seconds, Zane turns toward the main street and starts gesturing right and left. The guy must just be asking for directions. I can see Zane
glancing worriedly at Ava, but even though she must see him, she hasn’t moved an inch.

Once the guy’s on his way, Zane heads straight for Ava. Before she can even say anything to him, my eyes are drawn to a familiar car that just entered the parking lot. The car parks next to the blue Honda, and the girl driving gets out, but I can’t believe what I’m seeing. This is crazy.

I open the door to the van, jump out, and head for Zane as fast as I can. I hear Ava call my name, but I don’t stop and don’t even look toward her silver car. My eyes are glued to the girl talking to Zane—the girl who looks just like us but isn’t Ava. In some part of my brain, all of the events of the past few weeks have started to make sense, but all I can do is stare in disbelief.

“What the hell?” Ava says as we reach them at the same time. Her voice has an angry edge to it that I feel but can’t really express.

There’s no mistaking it as we look at the girl standing next to Zane. She looks just like us. She has the same dark curly hair and green eyes that I’ve seen in my mirror for as long as I can remember. She’s even wearing the diamond pendant that I threw out the window of Zane’s van last night. It’s impossible, but only one word escapes my lips in these first few seconds.

“Alicia?”

“It’s Rubi,” the girl says calmly, as if she’s been expecting this confrontation all along. I recognize the name from Cecilia’s text. I knew that had nothing to do with Cecilia’s sister’s husband. This is who they were talking about. Worrying about. My stomach sinks—Cecilia has something to do with this. Out of all the ways I imagined this ending, no way I pictured what’s standing right in front of me.

“What?” demands Ava. Her disbelief is almost palpable. We can’t believe what we’re seeing. Is it the makeup or the clothes that make her look so much like the two of us? I’m not sure, but whatever it is, she’s doing a better job at being Alicia than I ever could.

“My name’s Rubi, not Alicia.” Even her voice sounds like Ava’s. The girl’s hand goes to the pendant around her neck. “I love that you think that.”

By the tone of her voice, I can tell Ava’s feeling threatened
when she says, “You have two seconds to tell us what the hell is going on here before—”

“Before what?” Rubi says. A small smile crosses her lips. “Before you call the cops?” She glances at me. “We all know you’re not going to do that. I’m guessing you were pretty careful to make sure that none of them followed you today.”

Suddenly it all makes sense—the strange Alicia sightings in the surveillance photo, at the food trucks, and at the club, not to mention the angry guy at the party who we’d never seen before. She turns her head, and I see two faint parallel pink lines running down her neck and into her jacket. The exact marks fingernails would make if Casey grabbed her. It wasn’t me or Ava behind all of this—it was this girl.

I notice her hand move toward the white bag. If she murdered Eli last night, she might still have the knife on her.

“There’s something in her hand!” I grab her arm roughly, and her wallet falls to the ground.

“Take it easy,” Rubi says, wrenching her arm away. “I’m not the killer, if that’s what you’re worried about. And neither is Ava.” She bends down and gathers up the wallet and some papers that fell out of it.

Ava whirls on me. “You thought
I
killed Eli? What the hell? What about you? What am I supposed to think when one second you vanish into thin air, and the next the club is full of cops and Eli’s dead?”

I’m suddenly not sure of anything anymore. “He was already dead when I found him,” I explain quickly, trying to blink back from my mind the image of his lifeless body.
“Someone had gotten to him first. I saw you on the way to the bathroom, and then I couldn’t find you, so I figured—”

“You figured I was the killer? I’ve spent the last twelve hours looking for
you.
Of all the ungrateful, insane ideas—”

Rubi holds out her hands to stop Ava just as she’s ramping up. “Neither of you killed Eli. Or Dylan or Casey. It’s all a mistake. There have been too many secrets for too long—I’m here to straighten stuff out.” She opens the wallet and pulls out a driver’s license. One with a picture that looks just like ours and with the name Alicia Rios on it.

“Where did you get that?” Ava asks.

Rubi turns it around so she can admire it. “Had it made. Took the test and everything.”

Ava’s cheeks are red, and I can see she’s frustrated. “What the hell? I have Alicia’s ID. And it’s fake.”

“Yeah, well … this one is more official.” I picture the cops at our door, Alicia’s license mysteriously on their computers.

“Which is why the police had a copy of it,” I say. “Why would you do that?” Does she want so desperately to be like us?

Rubi shrugs. “I needed it in order to be Alicia, and a real one was a lot cheaper than a fake ID. And my parents said that if I got a speeding ticket they’d take my car away. It wasn’t that hard.”

“That’s crazy.” I study her face, and I can’t deny that she looks the part—whoever did her makeup is amazing.

“This is bullshit,” Ava says, echoing my thoughts. I can see from her face how much she doesn’t like to be out of her
element like this. “I don’t care what the license says. Who the hell are
you
?”

Rubi straightens up, and I can’t tell if she really is this calm or if it’s all an act. “I thought you’d figured it out by now. I’m your sister.”

Ava takes a step closer to me, solidarity apparently overcoming anger. “We don’t have a sister. We’re twins.”

“Actually,
we
are triplets.”

She says that like it won’t change everything. Triplets. I feel like I can’t breathe, like all of this must be some kind of sick joke. But I look at her and can’t deny what I’m seeing.

Rubi looks from me to Ava. “I somehow thought you’d be happy when you guys finally found out the truth. I’ve been keeping the secret for months, and it’s been killing me.”

“Months?” Ava demands. “You’ve known about this for months?”

She shrugs, and it seems like Rubi is trying to look casual, like finding out you have another sister is something that happens every day. “I followed Cecilia to your house one day. They’ve always been so secretive about where she goes, and why I can never go along. You weren’t home, but I saw your rooms and the pictures on the wall and started to put it all together. I promised them I wouldn’t tell,” she says. For the first time she looks a little bit guilty. “But it was harder than I thought it would be.”

My heart drops. Cecilia knows about this girl. She’s been lying to us our whole lives. “What does Cecilia have to do with all of this?”

Rubi raises her eyebrows at me. “Cecilia is our aunt. Our mother’s sister.”

Ava’s face is bright red. “Dad would never lie to us like that!”

“He doesn’t know there were three of us.” Rubi shakes her head. “And he doesn’t know that Cecilia had anything to do with it. As far as your dad knows, she’s just an employee who volunteered to become his housekeeper when his wife up and bailed on him.”

Ava steps toward her. “So your … mother … just got rid of two of us, like puppies in a litter that was too big? Dumped us on the restaurant steps like a bag of garbage?”

For a second I see the first cracks of doubt in Rubi’s face. She doesn’t like us talking bad about her mother. Our mother? It’s so hard to believe, but the proof is standing here staring me in the face—telling me the story that I’ve always wanted to hear—at the totally wrong time and place.

Rubi’s jaw clenches. “It wasn’t like that. Mama was only eighteen and couldn’t raise us all, so she did what she thought was best. You two were the chosen ones, with the big house and the new cars. How do you think I felt, seeing all the things you got growing up?”

“You got our mother.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Isn’t that enough?”

Zane hasn’t said a word this entire time, has just been looking from one of us to the next. He catches my glance. “What?” he says. “You have to admit this is pretty freaky.”

I look around at the empty parking lot, suddenly feeling
very exposed. “We need to get out of here before someone recognizes me.” I look at the two of them. “Us.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Rubi says. “This has gone on too long. I need to turn in evidence that will help clear your name.” She nods at me. “All of our names. Thanks to you, I can’t show my face around town at the moment.”

“What evidence?”

“I got a look at someone who pulled into the Cheesecake Factory parking lot that night. And part of a license plate. Find him and you’ll find the guy who’s behind the murders. I’m sure of it.”

“What were you doing there in the first place?” I ask.

A look of guilt crosses her face. “I was being Alicia.” She glances at me. “I’d gone out with Casey a couple of times. As Alicia. I didn’t know what had happened with you the night before. I thought it would be fun to surprise Casey after he got off work.” Rubi puts one hand up to her neck. “He thought it was a little less fun.” She holds out a scrap of paper for us all to see. “When I took off, I saw another car pull into the lot. I should have turned this information in a long time ago.”

I look at the paper.
7ETR.
“That’s it? Four figures?”

“That’s enough,” Rubi says defensively. “It was a black pickup truck, and a guy in a dark hoodie was driving. It pulled up right beside Casey’s car after I got out of there. I remembered the license plate when I found out what happened. I have kind of a photographic memory.”

“Did you see him?” I ask. “Did you see this mysterious guy in a black truck kill Casey?”