Mirror Me Read online

  Kayla Peters hasn’t been Claire Cooper for six years…but the past is about to catch up with her, and nothing will ever be the same.

  Kayla’s in witness protection, being hidden from her twin sister by the U.S. Marshals Office. When Kayla moves in next to a former Special Forces operative, she discovers that he’s got a dark, dangerous past of his own…and that he might be the only person who could help her survive.

  Teige doesn’t want to like Kayla. Since the death of his CO and Teige’s retirement from Delta Force, he’d been taking on the most dangerous jobs, pressing the luck he feels had followed him his entire life. He’s convinced it’ll run out, because he knows no one can be that lucky all the time. And when he discovers who Kayla really is, and what kind of trouble’s following her, he realizes he’s up against the most dangerous—and personal—job of his career.

  Mirror Me

  A Mirror Novel

  Stephanie Tyler

  Mirror Me

  Copyright © 2015 Stephanie Tyler

  Editing by Julia Ganis, JuliaEdits.com

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Epilogue

  Coming Soon from Stephanie Tyler

  About the Author

  The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

  –“Under Western Eyes” by Joseph Conrad

  Whatever I see I swallow immediately.

  –“Mirror” by Sylvia Plath

  Prologue

  She can’t scream. She must be screaming inside her head, but her throat’s too tight for sound. Her body’s heavy, her limbs weighed down like she’s been drugged.

  Later, she’ll discover it had merely been fear rendering her unable to move or yell. They’ll find claw marks in the oak floor, where she’d been digging in with her fingernails, attempting to drag her frozen body across the floor—and toward the scene, not away from it.

  Anyone who knows her won’t be surprised.

  But right now, she’s trapped, watching the extreme happenings not more than ten feet from her. She blinks hard, tells herself she’s dreaming even though she’s painfully aware of how real all of it is.

  They’ve always known it would come to this, even after taking steps for years to prevent it. All of those preparations are proven useless tonight.

  His screams hurt her ears, but she wouldn’t cover them even if she could. She has to be strong any way she can.

  It’s a genuine horror show. No movie could ever get this right—the blood spatter, the unmistakable metallic scent, the anguished cries…they’re beyond human.

  Everyone becomes a beast when they die. Everyone begs. She knows that now. And she will never, ever forget what she’s borne witness to. It’s irrevocable, and it’s more than a memory.

  It’s a nightmare she might never wake from.

  But she’s not the one being hurt and she tries to yell, “Stop,” tries to say something, anything that might make it all end, but nothing comes out but a too-soft whimper. It’s followed by a dying man’s tortured screams.

  There’s a burst of fire that incites a new terror in her. It’s her turn. She scrabbles on the floor, exhausting herself with the effort. She hears soft laughter and sees that she’s in the same exact spot, that she hasn’t moved even an inch. The blood that began to seep toward her stops, the controlled fire burning away the flesh and bone and finally his screams have stopped.

  But it’s not over. Her head throbs, her tongue hangs uselessly and her throat burns from the smoke and her choking tears so that she can barely breathe.

  The sound of a siren’s burst breaking through her terror is the only thing that stops her from being the next victim, but she won’t know that until hours later when she’s conscious. She’ll wake in the hospital, screaming out loud this time, and she’ll see familiar faces.

  She’ll know it wasn’t a dream or a nightmare. She’ll remember that his limbs were sawed off and he lived through it. That he was still technically alive when the fire began to burn him.

  She’ll want to ask, “Did he feel it?” but won’t. Because she knows the answer and doesn’t want to hear them lie. They would do it out of kindness, but there’s no room for that here. She’s been taught that there’s a time and a place for everything, but the rules have changed.

  She realizes there was never any room for rules in the first place.

  Chapter One

  16 years later

  Colombia, South America

  Master Sergeant Teige Junos lay belly down in the thick grass, camouflaged from predators. As the hours passed, his breathing had slowed and he’d stopped sweating. How much longer he could remain unmoving in the blazing temperatures was a testament to his training.

  But this wasn’t training, and he wasn’t alone.

  Next to him, his CO, Sergeant Major Greg MacDonald, lay in the same position. They’d been there for over twenty-four hours, staring through the murky waves of heat, when the sudden roar of enemy gunfire slammed through the still air overhead. Without a word between them, both began a commando crawl that was more like a swim through the wet jungle floor’s humidity.

  They finally found shelter about half a mile away, a ditch that afforded them some respite from the unexpected blasts. They dug in, not returning fire in hopes that not drawing attention to themselves would make the conflict end sooner.

  Hunched down, covered in sweat, Teige watched the explosions erupting in the sky like blazes of glory. The scent of gunfire mingled with the unmistakable smell of blood and death, the air vibrating with the disturbance.

  The recon that began peacefully had caught him and Mac in the middle of two warring factions in the outskirts of Bogota. Definitely a wrong place, wrong time situation.

  “Maybe they’ll all just kill each other,” Mac murmured.

  Teige hoped they’d be that lucky, even as he kept his M16 at the ready. He and Mac could take on a big group alone, if necessary, but being Delta Force was about being smart. You risked when you were forced to risk. And this wasn’t their fight.

  Hours before, during the monotony of the recon, Mac broke their silence to tell Teige he was retiring. That his wife was tired after twenty years of secrets and lies.<
br />
  “Big step, Mac.”

  “It won’t be easy leaving all this,” he’d said with only the barest trace of sarcasm and a genuine smile. “But she hung around this long—I owe her.”

  Teige had smiled too, because that was pretty much why he never got too involved in relationships. At least that’s what he told himself.

  As of now, there was no one even remotely special at home. He’d ended things with Diane for the hundredth time because it was never going to work. They both knew it but were drawn to each other like magnets. Or bad pennies.

  “You’ll find her,” Mac had said in response to Teige’s silence.

  “I’m old enough not to worry about it,” Teige had told Mac honestly. He could stay in Delta Force in several different capacities for twenty more years, if he got lucky.

  If he remained lucky.

  “You don’t have to—it’ll happen. One day, she’s going to show up and you’re just gonna know. That’s how it happens for guys like us—it’s like lightning. None of this ‘she might be the one’ shit. You see her, and you’re going to want to go caveman and throw her over your shoulder and that’s the end of that shit.”

  Teige had tried to imagine Mac’s wife responding to that and he’d laughed.

  “Keep laughing, boy. You know I’m always right.” Mac was always right. It was why Teige listened when Mac urged, “Curl up,” as a long bout of gunfire rang out overhead.

  A few shells landed in the hole with them, one close enough to burn the hell out of his ear, and he kept his head down. It seemed like forever and then there was a sudden quiet, which was a more deadly sound than the shooting.

  His ears rang and he fought the urge to peer out. When he finally did, he’d expected to see a lot of dead men left to rot.

  He looked over at Mac, murmured, “Shit, that was close.”

  Mac didn’t answer. The bullet had gone clean through the front of his skull, a lucky shot that had nothing at all to do with skill.

  After two more hours of quiet, Teige was still stunned as he dragged himself up and hoisted Mac’s body over his shoulder. He walked over the bodies and out of the jungle toward the waiting helo five klicks away, even as daylight turned to dusk. And amazingly enough, he didn’t run across any soldiers.

  Lucky, the doc had told him.

  Teige had been lucky before, had watched someone he loved slowly kill himself for years before finally dying. Teige had been lucky not to have been there the night it happened, but his sister had been. It was pure luck that she’d survived.

  One of these days, all that luck was going to kill him.

  Chapter Two

  Three years later

  Kayla could live here forever, she decided, and she hadn’t said that about any of the last four places she’d lived, or the three before that, or the earliest ones, which were a blur of bad carpets and ugly bedspreads.

  But this, the old blue Victorian with a rambling porch and a wild yard…this seemed like heaven.

  “You look familiar,” Mrs. Mueller told her.

  Kayla had just cut bangs, wore glasses she didn’t need and still, she’d never escape that statement. “I have one of those faces,” she murmured.

  “Are you working in the area?” Mrs. Mueller asked.

  “I’m a freelance photographer. I can pay the first two months and security in cash,” Kayla assured her while sidestepping the question.

  Mrs. Mueller looked like she was going to press her on that but instead changed tactics, asking, “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you’re young yet.”

  “Twenty-five,” Kayla agreed.

  “Where’s your family, dear?”

  Normally, Kayla would’ve found the questions intrusive¸ but Mrs. Mueller had a disarming way about her. She also had kind eyes and a no-nonsense approach that suited her as well as her short dark hair and simple sweatsuit. “My parents are dead.”

  She heard Abby—her new marshal’s—voice in her head. Keep your story as close to the truth as possible. Make it consistent and simple.

  Mrs. Mueller patted her on the shoulder. “Now that my own kids are grown and moved away, I like to think of my renters as my kids.”

  Mrs. Muller owned the three houses in this small enclave, and they were the only houses on this very private block where two of the houses, including the one Kayla wanted to rent, backed up to the woods, which made her almost not take it. But when she toured the house, she couldn’t say no.

  The man who lived next door was a retired soldier, a very nice man, Mrs. Mueller explained. She’d been renting to him for fifteen years and he was always helpful. When he’s around. Mrs. Mueller herself spent summers in New York with her daughter and grandkids, winters here, so she was gone for months at a time.

  That meant Kayla would be completely alone. But all she had to do was make sure she had a working truck and cell service. She had both, so her decision was made. “I’d like to move in as soon as possible.”

  “Give me a check and you can move in tonight.” Mrs. Mueller’s eyes sparkled. “I think you’re going to find the peace you’re looking for here.”

  Kayla must’ve looked startled, because Mrs. Mueller patted her arm reassuringly. “I knew you were coming, because the tarot cards I read every morning told me.”

  Tarot cards.

  “I’ll do a reading for you when you’re all settled in,” Mrs. Mueller continued. “Go on now, looks like rain.”

  Kayla watched her new landlady walk across the lawn with her cane held in the air, and smiled a little.

  Tarot cards. She supposed there were odder things in life. Certainly it seemed like a harmless hobby, although Kayla didn’t like anyone looking into her life, no matter if it was a detective or a crystal ball.

  But the marshals had checked out Mrs. Mueller and the neighborhood and they’d given Kayla the okay to stay here. She hoped it would be for a nice long while, since she’d spent months bumping around the country in bad motel rooms in order to throw off anyone tracking her.

  Her new handler assured Kayla that she’d succeeded. Kayla wasn’t as sure, but she couldn’t live out of any more suitcases. She needed a home and 12 Wildwood Drive was it.

  As she started to pull her things out of the truck she’d purchased in Georgia four months earlier, she heard Mrs. Mueller call, “The diner up the road has good food. Better company.”

  Kayla turned toward Mrs. Mueller, but she’d already gone inside her own house. Kayla nodded as if Mrs. Mueller could see her anyway. And then she got to work.

  She’d just finished hauling the last of her belongings from the truck to the porch—admittedly, not all that much—when the rain started. It pattered the ground with fat drops that sounded like marbles falling on stone, and steam rose from the hot pavement.

  The front door was unlocked and she had the two sets of keys in her pocket. A waft of warm air hit her when she opened the door. There were A/Cs for most rooms and she turned all of them on, plus the ceiling fans, before dragging her things inside the front hallway. When she finished, she gave a final glance outside, locked the door and slid the deadbolt into place with a reassuring click. And then she began to walk around the house, checking things out again.

  It was clean and freshly painted, waiting for its new occupant.

  “I’m it,” she said out loud on the third floor and got a creak in response.

  She wheeled around and saw nothing. Wanted to laugh at herself for being so jumpy but she couldn’t. She checked everywhere but found nothing that would’ve made the creak.

  Just the house settling, she told herself firmly.

  And then she heard the creaking again, just before she felt the chill, like something cold touched her arm. She smelled a sharp, spicy cologne and then nothing.

  Tarot cards and ghosts. Mrs. Mueller hadn’t mentioned anything about the house being haunted, but Kayla liked that better than the alternative.

  It wouldn’t have mattered
, not after Kayla had seen the back bedroom on the third floor that was actually inside the turret of the house. It wasn’t the biggest room, but it had the best view of the woods behind the house.

  She would always be scared of the darkness surrounding her, but something about this place made her feel like she could face the night for the first time in years.

  *

  Her new renter was running from something, Willa Mueller mused as she spread the tarot cards on the old mahogany table in front of her, and Sommersville, North Carolina was as good place to end up as any. She and Walt had lived here from the time they’d gotten married, with Walt commuting to the Post, because she’d wanted to be an independent Army wife. She’d always been different, held her ground. And Walt liked coming home to a place that wasn’t in the middle of a military town.

  Now this town had become something of a haven for retired military folks and their families. It was familiar. Quaint.

  Kayla was too thin, Willa decided. The young woman needed plenty of good meals, good sleep and good friends. Those three things could heal you like nothing else.

  Despite the dark circles, Kayla was pretty, with the dark ponytail contrasting the blue of her eyes and those cute freckles sprinkled across her nose. Her daughter Joanie had those same freckles. Kayla would always look younger than she was.

  She was also haunted. And Willa Mueller knew haunted.

  Chapter Three

  The third floor was a good choice for her bedroom, Kayla decided, bypassing the larger master bedroom on the second floor. She’d rigged both sets of stairs and had the portable escape ladder that she could use to lower herself to the back porch, just in case.

  There was plenty of time to run for safety if there was a break-in. There was also a .38 Special she carried with her at all times.

  Weapon in hand, she walked around, lighting every room in the house. There were already plain white cotton sheets hung over the old curtain rods on all the windows, care of Mrs. Mueller.