No One Lives Twice (A Lexi Carmichael Mystery) Read online

  His mouth fell open as he stared at me. Then his mouth slowly curved into a grin.

  “I’m not here to rob you, little girl.”

  I took a shaky step back. Little girl? Oh God, I was being accosted by a pervert who probably intended to rape, maim and torture me. I saw the exact same scenarios week after week on the television show America’s Most Wanted, hosted by John Walsh. I tried to remember what I was supposed to do and wondered if I could outrun him in my pumps on these damn cobblestones.

  “Look, buster, you can’t assault me right here in the middle of Georgetown,” I said, my pulse jumping faster than a ping-pong game at the Olympics. “It’s still daylight. Besides I’ll scream bloody murder and someone will call the cops.”

  The grin remained plastered to his face. “I’m not going to hurt you.” I noticed he had a gold front tooth that sparkled. “As long as you cooperate.”

  “Cooperate? With what?” I asked, now pathetically clutching my purse to my chest as if it were some kind of protection. I glanced up the street again. My new plan was to scream the next time I saw a car and hope for the best.

  “You’ve got something I want. Your roommate sent you some papers,” he said. “I need them.”

  That threw me for a loop. “Roommate?” I hadn’t had a roommate since college, and that was four years ago. I laughed in relief. “Oh, thank God. I don’t have a roommate. Sorry, you’ve got the wrong person. I’ll just be on my way now.”

  Beefy didn’t look amused. “Your former roommate,” he corrected. “Does the name Basia Kowalski mean anything to you?”

  He’d mispronounced both Basia and Kowalski, but I knew whom he meant. She had indeed been my roommate at Georgetown University and also happened to be my best friend. My stomach knotted up again.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I lied. “I’ve never heard that name before. So, can I go already?”

  He frowned and a red flush crept from his neck up his chin, cheeks and forehead. “Don’t play me for a fool,” he growled.

  I heard a noise behind me and glanced over my shoulder. Someone was walking a dog in our direction. Before I could do anything, Beefy grabbed me by the arm, yanking me off the sidewalk and into a patch of grass beneath a nearby tree. He poked me beneath one of my ribs with something hard, then lifted his jacket and showed me it was a gun.

  “The papers,” he repeated ominously.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I protested. “Really.”

  He poked at me with the gun again and this time it really hurt.

  “Ouch! I mean it,” I said, trying to shift away from the gun. “Okay, I do know who Basia is, but I haven’t heard from her since last week. She didn’t give me any papers. Is she in some kind of trouble?” A rather dumb question, actually, given the fact that some guy was upset enough to poke a gun at me while asking questions about her. God, I really hoped she wasn’t considering him as boyfriend material. We’d have to have some serious girl talk.

  The guy walking the dog came closer and Beefy leaned his head down near mine. “Scream and I’ll pop you both,” he whispered. “Then I’ll finish off the dog for dessert.”

  I swallowed hard. I had a gut feeling that this guy was fully capable of popping us and eating the dog. And I always trust my gut feelings.

  The guy strolled up to us, carrying a plastic bag full of poop and tightening his hold on the leash. The dog, a cute cocker spaniel, lunged toward us, wagging his tail. You could see he was disappointed we were blocking his access to the tree.

  “Nice evening,” the guy said, dipping his head at us. The pooch woofed in agreement.

  “It’s too humid for me,” Beefy replied with a casual nod, putting an arm around my shoulder. The gun dug into my side and I had to swallow hard to keep from yelping. At the same time, I was morbidly fascinated by the fact that the Beefster actually had some sort of conversational skills.

  “Believe it or not, Miami is more humid,” the guy said with a smile. “I’m transplanted here.”

  Beefy grunted and I tried to draw the dog walker’s attention by pasting an “I’m-being-held-at-gunpoint-by-a-psychotic-maniac” look on my face. To my dismay, the guy didn’t seem to notice. Instead he smiled sheepishly as his dog did wee-wee near Beefy’s foot and then he sauntered away with the dog trailing, neither knowing just how close they had come to meeting their Maker.

  As soon as they were safely out of earshot, Beefy returned his attention to me. “The papers,” he growled, the gun still pressed against me menacingly. “Where are they?”

  I shook my head, really confused now. I usually saw Basia every other week or so, depending on what was happening in our lives. Why in the world would she mail me anything when she could just drive them over and give them to me?

  “Scout’s honor,” I said, holding up three fingers. “I don’t have any papers from Basia.”

  He looked at me for a long moment as if trying to decide if I were telling the truth. I cringed as he put his hand into his pocket, reaching for God knows what kind of torture device. Instead he pulled out a business card and handed it to me. It was blank except for a phone number. No name, no logo, no address.

  “If you get those papers, you call this number before you do anything else,” he instructed, patting the gun beneath his blazer. “If you don’t and I find those papers have fallen into other hands, I’ll hold you personally responsible, Lexi.”

  Oh, God, he knew my name. In this day and age, it probably meant he knew my address, phone number, sexual preference and weight. I nodded and stepped back, rubbing my ribs where he had poked me with the gun. I was going to have a wicked bruise there for sure, but at least I was alive. For now.

  “So, what’s the big deal about these papers?” I asked, trying to keep myself steady.

  “Nothing,” he snapped. “And don’t get too nosy. I’m protecting them for a client. And I’m gonna see he gets them back safely or else…”

  I didn’t want to know how I figured in the rest of that sentence, so I backed away, holding up my hands in front of me. “Well, it’s been fun, but I’ve got to go now,” I said brightly.

  “You tell anybody we had this little meeting and I’ll be unhappy,” Beefy warned. Then he made a little pistol with his fingers and fired it at me. “Bang.”

  Jeez, he was a psycho and stand-up comic wannabe. “What meeting?” I said innocently, lifting my hands.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Want a useful piece of advice, little girl?”

  I didn’t, but I’d never say that to a man with a gun. “Okay.”

  “Lose the shirt. Purple isn’t your color.”

  With that, he walked across the street and down the sidewalk. I watched until he took a hard left and disappeared behind a row of townhouses. I needed desperately to sit down, but was afraid he might come back. Bending over, I removed my pumps and ran the rest of the way to my parents’ house in bare feet with the cobblestones cutting painfully into my soles.

  I was out of breath and nearly crying when I reached the front door. Frantically I twisted the knob, but it was locked. After all, this is Washington. Decent citizens lock themselves in their homes and put bars on their windows. I dropped my pumps and fumbled in my purse for the key when the door magically opened. My mom stood in the doorway, dressed in a stunning peach dress with glittering diamonds at her neck and ears. She took one look at me and nearly fainted.

  “Lexi, what happened to you? Where are your shoes?” she gasped.

  I scooped my shoes off the porch and darted inside barefoot, yanking the door from my mom’s hand and slamming it shut. My heart was pounding so loud, my ears hurt.

  “I’m sorry I’m late but there was this guy and he stopped me on the street, asking about some papers and…”

  My sentence trailed off as I realized she was no longer looking at me, but behind me. I got this horrible sinking feeling as I turned around and saw the entranceway to the dining room was filled with people staring at me curiously. My dad stood t
here looking cool and collected in a pressed suit and tie, and I recognized Senator and Mrs. Marshall. Beside them stood a young blond-haired man I didn’t know.

  My eyes swung back to my mom’s. “You didn’t tell me it was a dinner party,” I said under my breath. I had been set up, and I was angry.

  “You’re late,” she whispered. “Wherever did you get that horrid purple blouse? Have you been shopping at Wal-Mart again?”

  “Don’t change the subject,” I growled, but my mother shut me up by air-kissing both my cheeks. She put a hand on my shoulder, turning me around.

  “Tom, Diane,” she said, “I believe you’ve already met my daughter Lexi.” They smiled weakly at me, no doubt scandalized by my attire, the flushed condition of my face and wild hair.

  “What a delight to see you again, Lexi,” Diane said politely.

  My mom then turned to the young man, dazzling him with her thousand-watt smile. “Lexi, I don’t think you’ve yet had the pleasure of meeting their son Thomas Marshall III,” she said. “He’s a CPA at Price, Waterson and Morris over on Connecticut Avenue.”

  I looked over my shoulder at my mother with a raised eyebrow. Her typical set-ups for me involved lawyers or politicians in the making. A CPA was a real departure for her and I suspected there was more here than met the eye. To my ever-annoyed chagrin, she was completely convinced I would never get married without her help and had made it her life’s mission to take charge of my love life. I should have smelled a set-up when she called. I just hadn’t expected it to happen on a Tuesday, which is undoubtedly why she’d planned it that way.

  I glanced back at Thomas and saw he was not quite able to hide the disappointment in his eyes. I was used to it by now. Guys took one look at my mother and thought they were in for a treat with her daughter. Instead they got me—brown-haired, flat-chested and geeky.

  Sighing, I bent down and slipped on my pumps, my appetite having long ago fled. I was angry at my mother and still shaken from my bizarre encounter with Beefy. This day was going to hell in a handbasket faster than I could blink.

  After a moment, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. Once inside, I splashed cold water on my face and combed my hair, hoping I looked reasonably presentable. My first instinct was to tell my parents what had just transpired on the street, but I wasn’t sure I even understood it myself. What I did know for certain is that my parents would freak out if they knew I’d been accosted by gunpoint, forcing me to stay at the house with them for protection. I was pretty sure I’d rather face down a gold-toothed homicidal maniac than be maneuvered into that.

  I returned to the table and sat down at a seat that had conveniently been left open beside Thomas. He was probably about twenty-five and was well-built, impeccably groomed and dressed in a navy blue coat and tie. He had good skin, good teeth and wavy brown hair that looked like it had been strategically highlighted. Handsome, if you liked the preppy, gleaming, I’m-the-son-of-an-important-politician kind of guy.

  I snatched a hot roll and put it on my plate, figuring him for having attended a private boy’s academy, Ivy League for an undergraduate degree and an MBA. You know, the typical rich-kid routine.

  Thomas, apparently trying to be polite and engage me in some kind of conversation, leaned toward me while our fathers argued politics. “Nice shirt,” he said in a low voice.

  Jeez, who knew one shirt could elicit so much conversation? “Nice tie,” I countered.

  He laughed. “Touché,” he said, taking a bite of his stew. “So, Lexi, where do you work?”

  “In Maryland,” I answered. “For the Department of Defense.” It was my standard song and dance, seeing as how I wasn’t allowed to mention the words “I work” and “NSA” in the same sentence—not even to my gynecologist, who knew more about me than I did.

  “DOD?” Thomas said. “Are you a secretary?” Then before I could reply, he added hastily, “I mean, administrative assistant. We can’t be too politically correct these days, can we?” He laughed, looking around the table, his gleaming white teeth nearly dazzling me.

  Disappointment swept through me because, for a nanosecond, I’d thought he might have potential. I tried to swallow my annoyance at his condescending tone, but it kind of stuck in my throat.

  “Actually, I’m into computers,” I said.

  He looked surprised. “Oh, really? Programming and stuff?”

  He was so totally not a tech-head. “Um, something like that.”

  “I see. Well it sounds…quite unusual.”

  I didn’t know what he found so unusual about me working with computers, unless my mom had led him to believe I was a lingerie model—something I wouldn’t put past her. She always chose guys like Thomas who put a heck of a lot of stock in appearance and big hair. Frankly, those just weren’t my strong suits.

  “Are you the lone woman in your office working on computer stuff?” Thomas asked.

  I gritted my teeth, wondering for what earthly purpose he had decided to drag out this conversation.

  “No,” I said, shoveling in a mouthful of stew and wondering how he would react if he discovered I actually worked at the NSA as an anti-hacker. I bet his next question would then be to ask how many women dabbled in that kind of profession. I considered offering him a statistical essay on the number of women involved in the technology field when my mother shot me one of her warning looks.

  “So what is it exactly that you do?” Thomas persisted. “I mean you don’t actually fix stuff, do you?”

  If he said “stuff” one more time, I was pretty sure I’d have to clock him with my water goblet. I held my breath and counted silently to ten before plastering a perky smile on my face.

  “Actually, Thomas, I try not to do anything too technical since I’m a female and it’s a miracle I can even read.”

  Thomas looked taken aback for a minute, and then he laughed. “Hey, that’s a good one, Lexi. You’re funny.”

  My mother intensified her glare and I smiled back sweetly, dipping my spoon in Sasha’s delicious stew.

  “So, Thomas,” my mother said, apparently deciding she had better take control of the conversation. “Why did you decide to pursue a career as a CPA?”

  Thomas dabbed his mouth with his napkin. “Well, I majored in business at Yale and then went on to graduate school at Dartmouth to get an MBA,” he said. “I graduated top of my class with full honors, passed the CPA exam and pretty much had my pick of accounting firms at which to work here in Washington. My ultimate goal, however, is the Senate, just like Father.”

  I choked on my stew and gagged until Thomas thumped me hard on the back. I knew my mother had something up her sleeve. Thomas Marshall III was a politician in the making, and my mother hadn’t been able to resist trying to set me up. She knew I had a personal rule to never, ever, date anyone wanting to be in politics, which, of course, made Thomas irresistible to her.

  I mumbled something and excused myself from the table. If I didn’t get out of there now, I would certainly say something to ruin the evening. I slipped into the kitchen and saw Sasha, a slight, blond-haired man with a big, Slavic nose, working at the counter.

  “Lexi,” he said, holding out his arms and hugging me. “How’s the food? Is there a problem with dinner?”

  I liked the fact he greeted me with questions about dinner. He didn’t waste time asking me about my health or my fashion sense. He went straight to what mattered—food. I love a man with a one-track mind, especially one who can cook. Too bad Sasha was already happily married.

  “Dinner is perfect, as usual,” I said, patting his arm. To prove my point, I tore a piece off a loaf on the counter and took a bite before he could snatch it back.

  “You little thief,” he scolded, but in an affectionate way.

  “Look, Sasha, there’s something I want to ask you,” I said, my mouth half-full. “Have you seen Basia around lately?”

  “Basia?” Sasha said, puzzled. “I haven’t seen her in a month. She no like my bread anymore?”<
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  “Perish the thought,” I said, appalled by the very idea. “She loves your bread. I guess she’s just been busy.”

  “Finding you another job?” he quipped.

  I laughed it off, but actually he had a point. It was Basia who had got me hooked up with the NSA in the first place. She dragged me to the job fair when the agency was recruiting at Georgetown because she had always dreamed of working as a linguist for them.

  The problem was that after the Cold War ended, no one needed linguists with Slavic or Romance languages anymore. If you wanted to get hired by the NSA these days, you needed to speak Arabic, Farsi or Somali. Since those were like the only three languages in the entire world she didn’t speak, she hadn’t been hired. And in an ironic twist, I had.

  But that hadn’t dampened Basia’s spirit at all. She started her own freelance translation business and worked part-time at Berlitz—those guys who make those nifty little phrasebooks. It wasn’t a bad living and she got to be her own boss. It was good for me, too, since I get a new phrasebook every Christmas. I’d racked up Spanish, French, Russian, Italian and German so far. I was hoping to get Romanian this year—if I lived that long.

  “What’s wrong with my job?” I asked. “You used to think being a techie was a cool job.”

  “It is…but not for you. You need to start living life outside your comfort zone,” Sasha said, stirring something that smelled like hot fudge in a pot on the stove. “A girl like you doesn’t need to sit around in front of a computer all day. You need to experience real life. Find someone outside the internet, and have actual, sweaty sex.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but he was right. My life was boring, predictable and utterly lackluster. Unless you counted the time I won Redskins tickets for answering a trivia question on the radio. Other than that, nothing exciting ever happened to me, including the one and only time I’d ever had sex. It had definitely not been sweaty. In fact, it hadn’t even been interesting.

  “I think you’re made for adventure,” Sasha continued. “But you need to go for it in a big way. Basia will help you.”

  Maybe Sasha had a point. I wasn’t going to meet a guy by sitting in front of the computer all day. I needed to pay more attention to pesky little details like my wardrobe and grooming. If anyone could help in these areas of my life, it was Basia.