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Rebekah: What? Archer? Call me!
Archer: Can’t, undercover. Be patient.
Rebekah: Call me now, you arrogant prick!
Archer: Your dirty talk gets me so hard.
Rebekah: I better have a head when you return!
Archer: You better “give” me head when I return.
“You’ve captured my personality well.” I raise an eyebrow at him. “You knew I’d go back in?”
“Samara knew you would as well. She’s just worried. That girl has been through hell.” Hunter returns to his seat at the table and brings the laptop toward him. I notice he flicks the screen to a grave. “You better go to her. I want this finished. I’ve got a life to live.”
Chapter 23
Samara
Fear.
It trickles through the bloodstream like venom. Inch by heated inch, my body burns with it. I don’t want him to go back into that house, but I know he has to. If he doesn’t, Rebekah will find him, somehow, and she’ll do something worse than she’s already done.
Pulling out my laptop, I open the lid, and the screen lights up. Something Archer said had my mind reeling, but with everything going on, I set it aside. Till now.
Clicking on the searching software, I type in her full name, Rebekah Ward. My eyes scan the numbers as they trickle in. Knowing Hunter and Archer will soon be in here, I want to do this and confirm my suspicion before they do. If what I think is true, they both need to know.
My mind drifts back to a moment of innocence when I had first seen Archer, when he’d stalked up to me to introduce himself. The new boy in the orphanage.
“Hey,” the strange boy smirks. He looks older, but not by much. Tattered jeans and a torn T-shirt are the only clues to why he’s here. Perhaps a runaway. Maybe even an addict. But when I meet his gaze, I don’t see any inkling of him being on drugs.
“Hi,” I respond finally.
His gaze tracks my hair, face, neck, and slowly, inch by inch, down my body to my shoes. When he lifts those dark eyes again, he pins me with a look that makes my stomach flutter.
“I’m Archer,” he tells me, holding out a hand, which I shyly accept. We shake, but the contact of his hot skin on mine makes me shiver.
“Samara,” I inform him of my name.
“Pretty,” he tells me. The corner of his mouth lifts, a small dimple forms in his cheek, and his eyes shimmer with mischief. “So, I figured I’d come and say hi.”
“Hi,” I stupidly mutter, cringing that I’m acting like an idiot in front of the cute boy.
“Would you give the new boy a tour of this place?” he asks, arching a dark brow at me in question.
“Uhm, yeah, sure.” I smile finally, attempting to calm my erratic heartbeat.
“Good.” He reaches for my hand once more, this time twining his fingers through mine and tugging me along as if he’s the one giving me the tour.
The computer dings loudly, dragging me from the memory of the moment I knew my life would never be the same with the boy I’d loved since that day to now. When my gaze focuses on the screen, my heart catapults wildly.
“Hunter!” I shout, racing into the living room to find both men staring at me. “I just figured out something. When Archer mentioned Rebekah, he told us her name, and something that Diana had told me a while ago struck me as strange.”
I set the computer down to show my partner for so long the truth of the woman we’d been working for.
“They were sisters?” Hunter asks, glancing at me, then at the screen.
When I turn to face Archer, he looks as confused as we feel.
“She’d never mentioned family,” Archer says, furrowing his brows. The photos of both women side by side are uncanny. It’s almost as if they’re twins. The only differences are hair color, and I’m certain Diane’s nose was broken and reconstructed. There’s a slight bend in it, which gives off the feel that she certainly was a fighter.
“It seems we’re not the only ones keeping secrets,” Hunter says, paging through a folder. When he sets it on the desk, I scan through the information that states there was indeed two girls born. The problem is, they were separated at the age of sixteen after a house fire. Both parents died tragically while the girls were left as orphans.
“I need to go,” Archer finally says. His voice is low, almost a whisper, but I hear the pain and fear that drips from every word. He shouldn’t have to go back in there, but I know we don’t have a choice.
“I’ll walk you out,” I tell him, offering Hunter a nod before following the man I love to the door. The sun is bright, scorching the arid ground as it beats down, making it stifling outside.
