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“Then, what?” he asked, studying her face. “I’m not used to you looking like that. You look like—”
“Carole Rutledge.”
“That’s right. Tate Rutledge’s wife—late wife.” A light bulb went on behind his eyes. “She was on that flight, too.”
“Did you identify my body, Irish?”
“Yes. By your locket.”
Avery shook her head. “It was her body you identified. She had my locket.”
Tears formed in his eyes again. “You were burned, but it was your hair, your—”
“We looked enough alike to be mistaken for sisters just minutes before the attempted takeoff.”
“How—”
“Listen and I’ll tell you.” Avery folded her hands around his, a silent request that he stop interrupting. “When I regained consciousness in the hospital, several days after the crash, I was bandaged from head to foot. I couldn’t move. I could barely see out of one eye. I couldn’t speak.
“Everyone was calling me Mrs. Rutledge. At first I thought maybe I did have amnesia because I couldn’t remember being Mrs. Rutledge or Mrs. Anybody. I was confused, in pain, disoriented. Then, when I remembered who I was, I realized what had happened. We’d switched seats, you see.”
She talked him through the agonizing hours she had spent trying to convey to everyone else what only she knew. “The Rutledges retained Dr. Sawyer to redo my face—Carole’s face—using photographs of her. There was no way I could alert them that they were making a mistake.”
He pulled his hands from beneath hers and dragged them down his loose jowls. “I need a drink. Want one?”
He returned to the couch moments later with a tumbler three-quarters full of straight whiskey. Avery said nothing, though she eyed the glass meaningfully. Defiantly, he took a hefty draught.
“Okay, I follow you so far. A gross error was made while you were unable to communicate. Once you were able to communicate, why didn’t you? In other words, why are you still playing Carole Rutledge?”
Avery stood up and began roaming the untidy room, making ineffectual attempts to straighten it while she arranged her thoughts. Convincing Irish that her charade was viable and justified was going to be tricky. His contention had always been that reporters reported the news, they did not make it. Their role was to observe, not participate. That point had been a continual argument between him and Cliff Daniels.
“Somebody plans to kill Tate Rutledge before he becomes a senator.”
Irish hadn’t expected anything like that. His hand
was arrested midway between the coffee table and his mouth as he was raising the glass of whiskey. The liquor sloshed over the rim of the tumbler onto his hand. Absently, he wiped it dry on his trousers leg.
“What?”
“Somebody plans—”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, Irish,” she said, raising her voice defensively. “And I don’t know where or when, either, so save your breath and don’t ask. Just hear me out.”
He shook his finger at her. “I may give you that spanking yet for sassing me. Don’t test my patience. You’ve already put me through hell. Pure hell.”
“It hasn’t exactly been a picnic for me, either,” she snapped.
“Which is the only reason I’ve restrained myself this long,” he shouted. “But stop bullshitting me.”
