Absently she picked up the mail and flipped through it. Gas bill. MasterCard bill. Advertisements. She lifted the next piece of mail, a disconcertingly familiar gray envelope, and stared at it.
Susan Miles. Addressed directly to the farmhouse.
Fingers trembling, she tore open the flap, pulled out the stationery and unfolded it. A separate piece of paper floated to the floor, but once again, the stationery itself was blank. Stooping, she lifted the paper that had been enclosed. Roughly cut at the edges, it was a picture of a gleaming fox fur coat, apparently taken from a magazine. The model had been unceremoniously decapitated.
“Matt?” she called faintly, then louder: “Matt!”
He appeared at the top of the stairs, his shirt unbuttoned, its tails loose. Lauren’s anxious expression brought him trotting down immediately.
She spoke quickly. “Last Friday and again on Saturday we received a letter at the shop addressed to a Susan Miles. Neither Beth nor I know anyone by that name. We assumed it was simply a mistake. Now there’s a letter addressed to Susan Mileshere.” She held out the piece of, stationery and watched him turn it from front to back.
“It’s blank.”
“So were the other two. The only difference is that this one came with a magazine clipping.” She offered it as well. “Just a picture of a fur coat. Nothing else.”
Matt studied the clipping, frowned back at the blank sheet of stationery, then took the envelope from her hand and examined the raggedly scrawled address. “There’s got to be a message here,” he said at last. “We may not be understanding it, but there’s got to be one. You say the other two letters were exactly like this one, but without the clipping?”
“That’s right. Same gray stationery.”
“Same handwriting on the envelope?”
“Yes. And the same Boston postmark. I didn’t think much of the first two. They were addressed to the shop. It could have been a simple mistake. Taken with this last one, though, there has to be something more personal in it. Whoever sent them knows my home address. He’s got the name wrong, but he knows where I workandwhere I live.”
Much as Lauren’s stomach was doing, Matt’s jaw clenched. “Right.” He rubbed his forehead with his finger. “Is it possible that you’ve been mistaken for someone else? For this Susan Miles, perhaps?”
Lauren didn’t say anything. Her heart was hammering, and the knots in her stomach had tightened painfully.
Matt’s focus remained on the pieces of paper he held. “Mistaken identity … that would make sense. All along you’ve had no idea who would have a reason to threaten you. We know there’s a chance it could be Hawkins, but if it’s not, this might be something to go on. If we could identify and locate this Susan Miles …” He looked up and caught Lauren’s stricken expression. “Sweetheart?” When she swayed, he held her arms to steady her. “What is it?’
“I don’t believe this is happening,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide, dry but filled with the horror of conviction. “I don’t believe it. I knew it was too good to be true.”
Matt ducked his head, bringing his face level with hers. Every one of his features broadcast love and tenderness, and his voice was filled with hope. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s good, in fact. At least it’s another lead to follow, and now that we’ve contacted an investigator—”
She covered her face with her hands. “My parents were right. I shouldn’t have done it. I played with what fate had decreed, and now I’m paying for it.”
“Lauren, what—”
“My face, Matt!” she cried. “It didn’t always look this way. When I was a very little girl, my bones developed improperly. I was ugly. You saw a picture! You know!”
“My God,” he whispered, finally putting the last piece of the puzzle into place. “I thought it was just a bad picture. I never dreamed …” Seizing her wrists, he drew her hands from her face and clutched them to his chest. His eyes slowly toured her features. “You had surgery,” he said in amazement.
She nodded. “My chin was practically nonexistent, and my jaw was so badly misaligned that I had trouble eating. That’s why I was so skinny.”
“And you’re so beautiful now. It’s incredible!” He took her chin and turned her face first to one side, then the other. “No scars,” he announced excitedly. “It must have been done from the inside. When, sweetheart?”
“This past spring, right before I came to Boston. I went to a clinic in the Bahamas. The recuperative period was ten weeks. Part of that time I stayed in a rented apartment and returned to the clinic on an outpatient basis.”
“Unbelievable.” Done with its journey, his gaze coupled with hers. “Just this past spring. So if I’d come six months before, I’d have found you in Bennington looking exactly as I’d expected. It all makes sense now—your inexperience with men, your talk of a new life, a new look …” His eyes lit with pleasure at a new thought. “Part of Brad’s money went toward this, didn’t it?”
“Some. Insurance paid for most of the surgery, since it had become a legitimate medical problem.”
“And you feel better?”
“Physicallyandemotionally.” She hesitated. “What about you, Matt? How do you feel?”
“How do I feel?” he echoed, puzzled.
“About what I did. Having plastic surgery and all.”
