Chapter 2 - The Third Fingerprint
I moved before I had time to think.
The balcony door was behind me.
My phone was in my hand.
The bedroom door moved another inch.
“Penelope?”
My heart nearly stopped.
It was Christopher's voice.
I didn't answer.
“Pen?”
The door opened.
Christopher stepped inside.
He looked confused when he saw me standing near the balcony.
“You okay?”
“What are you doing here?”
He frowned.
“I forgot my laptop.”
His eyes moved to the open smart-lock application on my phone.
For the smallest fraction of a second, his expression changed.
Not enough that anyone else would have noticed.
But I had been married to him for seven years.
I noticed.
“You look terrified,” he said.
“The lock sent me an alert.”
“So?”
“You came back.”
“Yes.”
“But your fingerprint isn't the one that opened the door.”
His face went still.
I held up the screen.
“The unnamed one did.”
Christopher stared at it.
Then he laughed.
Not loudly.
Not naturally.
“That stupid system glitches all the time.”
“No, it doesn't.”
“Penelope.”
“Who owns the third fingerprint?”
“I have no idea.”
“You installed the lock.”
“And?”
“And only the administrator can add fingerprints.”
He walked closer.
“Give me the phone.”
I stepped backward.
His expression changed.
“Why are you backing away from me?”
“I don't know.”
The words hurt more than I expected.
He stopped.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then Christopher sighed.
“This is exactly what whoever stole my truck wants.”
“What does that mean?”
“To scare us.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
“Then why did someone enter our apartment forty-seven times?”
He looked toward the hallway.
“Maybe maintenance.”
“At midnight?”
“No.”
“At one in the morning?”
He rubbed his face.
“Pen, we've been awake all night.”
Then he said something I would remember later.
“Don't create a monster before we know whether one exists.”
He picked up his laptop and left.
I watched the elevator doors close.
Then I locked everything.
Ten minutes later, I called Officer Mercer.
I told him about the third fingerprint.
There was a pause.
“Don't delete anything,” he said.
“I won't.”
“Can you access security cameras?”
“Our building has hallway cameras.”
“What about inside?”
“No.”
At least, I thought we didn't.
Mercer asked me to email screenshots of the fingerprint history.
Then he told me something.
“Mrs. Bennett, the vehicle wasn't reported stolen.”
“What?”
“Your husband never reported his truck missing.”
“He didn't know.”
“According to the garage records, someone accessed it with the registered key fob.”
I sank onto the couch.
“So whoever took it had his key.”
“Yes.”
Christopher kept one key on his ring.
The spare was in a kitchen drawer.
I checked.
It was gone.
I spent the next hour searching the apartment.
I didn't know what I was looking for.
Evidence.
A hidden person.
A second life.
Anything.
I opened drawers.
Closets.
Boxes.
Nothing seemed wrong until I reached Christopher's home office.
He hated when I reorganized it, so I rarely touched anything.
There was a locked filing cabinet beneath his desk.
I tried the key on his desk drawer.
It opened.
Inside were financial documents.
Tax forms.
Insurance paperwork.
Then I found an envelope.
No return address.
Christopher's name handwritten across the front.
Inside was a photograph.
Two teenage boys stood near a lake.
Same dark hair.
Same jaw.
Same eyes.
They were identical.
I stared at the picture.
One boy wore a red shirt.
The other blue.
On the back, someone had written:
Chris & Caleb — Summer 2009
My stomach turned.
Christopher had told me he was an only child.
Not once.
Many times.
His parents were dead.
No siblings.
No cousins nearby.
No close family.
I photographed the picture.
Then I heard the elevator bell outside our apartment.
My pulse jumped.
Someone knocked.
Three times.
I checked the peephole.
Officer Mercer.
I opened the door.
He wasn't alone.
A woman in plain clothes stood beside him.
“Mrs. Bennett, this is Detective Lena Ortiz.”
I let them inside.
They looked at the photograph.
Ortiz's expression changed.
“You've never seen this man?”
“Never.”
“You're sure?”
“My husband said he had no siblings.”
She studied the two boys.
“Do you know where this was taken?”
“No.”
Then she asked an unexpected question.
“Does your husband have any scars other than the appendectomy?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“On his left shoulder.”
Christopher had fallen from a bike as a teenager.
A jagged white line crossed the back of his shoulder.
Ortiz looked at Mercer.
“The body?”
“No shoulder scar listed.”
My heartbeat accelerated.
Ortiz turned back to me.
“Mrs. Bennett, I need you to think carefully. When your husband showered this morning, did you see his shoulder?”
“No.”
“When was the last time you did?”
I couldn't remember.
Days?
Weeks?
We'd been exhausted lately.
Christopher often changed in the bathroom.
Suddenly every ordinary detail felt sinister.
I called him.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Detective Ortiz asked for permission to inspect the apartment.
I agreed.
Thirty minutes later, Mercer called us into the bedroom.
He stood beside the smoke detector.
Except it wasn't only a smoke detector.
Inside was a tiny camera.
My skin turned cold.
They found another inside a clock in the kitchen.
Another facing the couch.
Another in Christopher's office.
Someone had been recording us.
“Why?” I whispered.
Nobody answered.
The devices transmitted wirelessly.
Ortiz arranged for technicians to trace their storage system.
By afternoon, they had located an online server.
Hundreds of hours of footage.
Most clips were ordinary.
Me cooking.
Me reading.
Christopher sleeping.
Then one technician found something.
A recording from three months earlier.
2:14 a.m.
I was asleep in bed.
Christopher was beside me.
The bedroom door opened.
Another man walked inside.
He looked exactly like my husband.
Same height.
Same hair.
Same face.
The man in bed quietly sat up.
The two exchanged clothes.
No conversation.
No hesitation.
Then the man who had been sleeping beside me walked out.
The newcomer climbed beneath the blanket.
Beside me.
I covered my mouth.
Detective Ortiz paused the video.
There were two Christophers.
And for months, while I slept, they had been trading places.
Then Ortiz received a call.
She listened silently.
Her eyes found mine.
“The preliminary DNA results from the crash are back.”
I couldn't breathe.
She lowered the phone.
“The dead man is closely related to your husband.”
“How closely?”
Ortiz hesitated.
“Identical twin.”
I stared at the frozen image on the screen.
One Christopher leaving.
Another Christopher climbing into my bed.
And suddenly the question wasn't whether my husband had a brother.
May you like
It was which brother had kissed me goodbye that morning.
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