“I think it’s marvelous! If you’d looked this gorgeous much earlier, you’d have been snapped up before I could have found you.”
“But what do you think about the surgery itself? Does it … bother you?”
“Of course not! Why would it bother me?”
“It bothers my parents. They were against my doing it.”
“Hell, it’s no different from a kid wearing braces on his teeth to correct a bite problem that would become troublesome in time. Or someone having his nose fixed to correct a deviated septum.”
Lauren blushed. “I had that done, too.”
“You did!” He grinned. “What did it look like before? The picture I saw was a head-on shot.”
“It was crooked,” she admitted sheepishly. “And lousy for breathing. I used to snore something awful.”
“You sure don’t now. I love your nose.” He ran a finger down its smooth slope. “It looks so-so natural. The whole thing looks so natural! I’d honestly decided that the picture was just a bad one. Either that, or you’d simply come into your own as you’d grown older.”
“Then Brad didn’t say anything specific?”
Matt’s voice mellowed. “No. It wasn’t often that Brad spoke of home, but when he mentioned you, there was always a certain tenderness in his voice. In spite of the rift, you had a special place in his heart. He worried about you. Wow, if he could only see you now!”
“Yeah,” Lauren drawled wryly. “I’ve got a new face that apparently looks so much like someone else’s that an enemy of that someone else is out for blood.”
“Hey, we don’t know that!”
“Well, maybe not blood, but something, that’s for sure.” She sent a pleading look to the ceiling. “I don’t believe this. I just don’t believe it. It’s like something only Beth could have dreamed up, but she didn’t.” She arched a brow at Matt. “You do agree that the mistaken-identity theory is the strongest one we’ve had?”
“Mmm. Not that I’m ruling out Hawkins. But, given the letters for Susan Miles, this theory is more plausible.”
“What could the newspaper clipping mean?”
“I don’t know. If the letters were real letters with writing and all, it wouldn’t be so bad. But three blank sheets of stationery—that’s odd.”
Lauren sighed. “So, we look for Susan Miles.”
“It’s the way to go. Seems to me that’d be right down our investigator’s alley.”
It should have been. Lauren and Matt met with the detective at a small coffee shop in Boston early the next morning. They told him everything, from a detailed account of each of Lauren’s mysterious incidents to their theories involving, alternately, Brad’s boss and Lauren’s new face.
Phillip Huber went off in search of Susan Miles. Unfortunately, after a full day of poring through State House and registry records, he could find no evidence of anyone by that name living in the area.
The next day he went through the records of the local and state police, and the day after that he made use of his considerable network of contacts to broaden the search to include the rest of New England and New York.
By Thursday night, Lauren and Matt were no closer to finding Susan Miles than they’d been at the start, and by Friday afternoon, the search was temporarily abandoned.
Lauren left the shop shortly before four, intent on getting to the bank and back before Matt came for her. He’d been her shadow for most of the week, and she’d loved it. But that day he’d had business to attend to, so she set out on the errand alone.
With the luxury of Jamie’s working full-time, Lauren was taking off early. It was a beautiful day. She and Matt planned to return to Lincoln to change, then drive one town over, rent a canoe and explore the Concord River.
She walked at a confident pace, buoyed by the anticipation of the outing, lulled into security by the peaceful week it had been. Since Monday, when the letter for Susan Miles had arrived at the farmhouse, there had been no incidents. Of course, Matt had been close at hand, a visible deterrent to mischief, and Phillip Huber had taken his turn when Matt had been busy.
Lauren had barely turned down the side street on which the bank was located when a car slid smoothly to the curb. Its door opened, and she was jostled inside by a burly hulk that had come from nowhere on her opposite side. Before she knew what had happened, she was seated in the back seat of a car that would have been roomy except for the two giants who crowded her between them.
She tried to squirm, but she was solidly pinned. “What—what is this?” she cried between attempts to free herself.
“Sit still, pretty lady,” the man on her left said. “You know what it is.”
“I—do—not.” She was trying to elbow herself out of the human vise, only to find that the vise had tightened. “Let me out of this car!” she gritted. She began to pound at the thighs flanking hers but succeeded only in having her wrists immobilized by a single beefy paw on either side. “You can’t do this!”
