Dead Ringers: Volumes 4-6

By Darlene Gardner

A paranormal mystery serial for young adults on up. All nine 25,000-word volumes now available in boxed sets and a complete collection!

Dead Ringers 4: SHELL GAME

If Max is playing a shell game, Jade needs to figure out what he’s hiding and why he’s in Midway Beach.

Dead Ringers 5: PITFALL

A serial killer is inhabiting the body of her best friend’s boyfriend, and Jade needs to figure out how to prevent him from killing again. Problem is, she may be the target.

Dead Ringers 6: TILT-A-WHIRL

Now that Jade has the facts about Max, she’s on her own until an unlikely ally offers to help her hunt the truth about who’s behind the body switching.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darlene Gardner
• Release date: Dec 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310617010

Darlene Gardner

While working as a newspaper sportswriter, Darlene Gardner realized she'd rather make up quotes than rely on an athlete to say something interesting. So she quit her job and concentrated on a fiction career that landed her at Harlequin/Silhouette, where she's written for Temptation, Duets and Intimate Moments as well as Superromance. Visit Darlene on the web at www.darlenegardner.com

Book preview

SHELL GAME

Volume Four of the Dead Ringers Serial

CHAPTER ONE

Five Months Ago

Pain splinters through his head. The tension builds, the pressure against his temples sending white-hot bursts of agony through his body.

How has it come to this?

He’s made mistakes before, but he’s a master of the free pass. Smile. Shift blame. And never admit to doing anything wrong. This time, though, the police have irrefutable proof of his crime. The punishment is inevitable. His crime is so awful he doesn’t deserve to get off. Still, he’d run when the cops came for him.

His legs buckle, and his knees slam against the hard-packed earth. He anchors his hands in the dirt and the grass. The only sounds he hears are his own whimpers.

It isn’t the police who have him now.

The mind-splitting agony blurs his thoughts. He doesn’t remember what led him to this field in the woods. The disjointed images of a clown’s white-painted face and blood-red lips feel like something out of a nightmare. The scratch of a burlap hood on his face is all too real.

Just when he’s sure he can’t survive another second, the torment stops. He sobs in relief, his body sagging.

Gradually it dawns on him that he’s no longer on his hands and knees. He’s sitting in a chair, although he has no idea how he got there. His hands and feet are restrained. His eyes are open, but the hood only allows stray flashes of the sun’s dying light. He bows his head and shakes until the rough fabric comes loose and falls to the ground.

Even the dusk hurts his eyes. He blinks and his surroundings come into focus. The loblolly pines. The thick brush at the edges of the clearing. The patchy grass under his feet.

Three other people are with him. He recognizes one. The second is a stocky man dressed as a clown. The third person is on his hands and knees, also wearing a burlap hood. He can tell the person is male by his clothes: designer jeans and a pricey button-down shirt exactly like the clothes he’s wearing himself.

Except he’s no longer dressed like that. He appears to have on a gray hoodie. Confused, he looks down at the cheap fabric of the jeans that cover legs too thin to be his. The hands tied to the chair are also unfamiliar. The fingers are long, thin and pale.

The guy on the ground struggles to rise, height and weight an echo of his own. Every one of the movements is familiar. The guy’s shaking hand rises to remove the hood.

The guy doesn’t only have his body. He has his face.

As he stares into familiar features that are contorted with shock and horror, his stomach cramps. Awareness of what has happened slams into him. The air leaves his lungs, and an acid taste rises in his throat. Before he can form words, the clown crosses to the guy with his face, folds his fingers around a small, dark object and lifts their joined hands to the guy’s temple.

A loud bang reverberates through the air at the same time it registers the object is a gun.

The guy in his body jerks backward, blood and pieces of brain matter spraying the air in a macabre arc. The guy crumples to the ground, the life snuffed out of him. Stolen from him.

This is much worse than any nightmare.

He always thought he’d have a chance to redeem himself. Now it’s too late. Now he’ll never be one of the good guys.

CHAPTER TWO

Present Day

The house where Max Harper grew up looks out of place, like a raven among doves. The rest of the homes in this modest suburban neighborhood of Greensboro, North Carolina, are cookie-cutter tidy down to their green lawns and colorful flower beds. The grass in Max’s yard is yellow and dying, and the tree in the front yard is a barren oak, dead branches drawing misshapen hands against the sky.

But what sets the house apart the most is the sign imprinted with a black palm print in the window.

I double-check the address on the scrap of paper in my hand. I’d pulled the information off the Internet after Fiona Harper’s cryptic comment over the phone that the Max who works at the Midway Beach carnival isn’t her son.

Yep. It’s the right house. The stories I’d read online about Max’s disappearance, it seems, left out a pertinent fact about his background.

His mother Fiona is a scam artist.

Either that, or she’s delusional.

I’ve accepted that somebody in Midway Beach has figured out how to transfer the essence of one person into another’s body, but a girl’s gotta draw the line somewhere. Mine is psychics.

Leaving the secondhand Volkswagen Beetle I’d bought this morning at the curb, I walk up the sidewalk, crossing through the maze of shadows cast by the dead oak. The front door is black with a silver knocker in the shape of a bat. Appropriate for her business, but I wonder how Fiona Harper’s neighbors feel about her. She’s got to be ignoring zoning laws.

The knocker’s sleek and cold under my hand. My raps go unanswered for so long that I try again, pounding the bat harder against the thick wood.

The door finally sweeps open to reveal a woman dressed in a bright blue full-sleeved blouse, a long skirt and a colorful scarf tied around her waist. Oversized silver hoops hang from her earlobes and her necklaces and bracelets jangle. She’s barefoot.

Welcome. I am Madame Fiona. Her accent sounds strange, like Count Dracula’s when he says he vants to suck your blood. Are you here for a reading?

Fiona Harper had hung up on me and failed to return my follow-up calls after telling me Max wasn’t her son. During the two-hundred mile drive to Greensboro, I’d worried she’d slam the door in my face. She wouldn’t do that to a paying customer.

Yeah. Sure.

Come in and learn what fate has in store for you. She beckons me inside with an expansive gesture that causes her bracelets to clank against each other.

I enter not so much a room as a space, with ceiling-to-floor curtains partitioning it off from the rest of the house. The centerpiece is a small, round table covered with a black cloth and flanked by two upholstered chairs. Candles burn on a console table set against the wall, emitting a scent I think is citronella. Fiona—I can’t possibly keep thinking of her as Madame Fiona—sits downs and beckons me to do the same.

Now that I know she’s Max’s mom, I can see where Max got his pale skin, high cheekbones and blue eyes. Fiona’s a blonde, though. His father must have been the one with the dark hair.

After she names a price that will clean out what I have in my wallet, she extends her hand with the palm facing up. Her serious expression reminds me of a doctor about to perform a checkup. Give me your hand.

I think of the old joke about how that would leave me with only one. Keeping my mouth shut about that, I press my skin to hers. She gasps and breaks the contact, jerking back like she’s been scalded.

Something wrong? I expect her to tell me something creepy, like evil spirits surround me and she can get rid of them if I pay her more money.

She clasps her hands together. I do not need to see your palm.

You won’t give me a reading?

You misunderstand. Her words are clipped. The energy coming off you is strong. Powerful. I can read you loud and clear without looking at your palm.

O-kay.

So, what? We consult the crystal ball?

A crystal ball is a prop. She peers at me with eyes that are very much like Max’s. I do not need a prop to tell you are a very troubled young lady. Your life is in turmoil.

Not bad, but she can probably figure that out by looking at me. I’ve been sleeping poorly since discovering that my friend Maia is dead and Constance Hightower, aka the Black Widow, is the Ringer who crept into her body. The Ringer Maia is currently behind bars, but that doesn’t help much. Especially because other Ringers could have invaded my town.

At the root of this trouble is a young man. A stranger. She pauses, probably waiting for me to say something to give her a clue whether she’s on the right track. I school my expression to remain neutral. You’re fascinated by him, she continues. You might even be falling in love with him.

I want her to be wrong. Even though I’m working with Max to solve the many mysteries of Midway Beach, I’m trying to keep my guard up around him. From the moment we met, though, I’ve been oddly drawn to him. A fly to one of those bug zappers.

This young man, he insists you can trust him, she says. You want to trust him, but you know something about him is wrong.

A chill slithers through me.

She anchors her hands on the table and leans closer. Above the scent of candles, I can smell lilacs. He’s not who he says he is, Jade. You’re right not to trust him.

My gasp fills the space between us. How do you know my name?

She waggles the fingers of both hands. I’m an all-powerful psychic. Also, you told me when you phoned to ask about my son, she says, dropping the accent.

I grimace, partly from embarrassment. How could I have thought she pulled my name from the thin, psychic air? How long have you known who I am?

Almost immediately. She flips back her hair, hitting one of the hoop earrings in the process. The bigger question is, why did you pretend to want a reading?

Don’t you already know?

She points at me, a small smile curving her lips. You doubt my ability.

Don’t take it personally, but I think psychics are a load of crap.

Her eyes grow round. All psychics?

Every last one of them.

It’s interesting that you feel that way. She stares at me so hard, she seems to peer inside me. It’s true that powerful psychic ability is rare, but there are degrees of clairvoyance. I will tell you why you pretended to want a reading. You were afraid I wouldn’t talk to you otherwise.

The way you’ve been dodging my phone calls, that’s the logical assumption.

I do not assume. Her voice has a harsh edge. But you are not here to talk about my gift. You want to know why I said the Max working with you at the carnival isn’t my son.

Another educated guess. Now that we’ve gotten to the purpose of my visit, though, my pulse starts to trip. That’s correct.

She folds her arms across her chest. Before I tell you anything, I’d like to know why you think I could be right.

I didn’t say that. My reply is quick.

You wouldn’t have come if you completely discounted it.

"Fair enough. There have been some... odd happenings in Midway Beach. I’m not sure how much to tell her, but I won’t get into my abduction and missing memories. We started to suspect some people aren’t who they seem."

"By we, you mean you and the imposter?"

It takes me a moment to realize she’s referring to Max. Yes. Max and I teamed up to try to find out what’s going on.

"What is going on?"

If I don’t get more specific, I doubt I’ll get any information from her. Might as well spell it out in big, creepy letters. There are Ringers in town who are taking over the bodies of other people. I know that’s hard to believe, but—

Ringers, she interrupts, testing the word. Tell me more. How would one of these Ringers get inside another body?

We’re sketchy on the details, but somehow the essence of one person is transferred into another person’s body. I wince. It sounds even more ridiculous out loud.

Fiona’s face turns grim, her eyes intent. What happens to the original?

I’m not about to break it to her that if our mind-transfer theory is correct, her son is almost certainly dead. We’re not sure of that, either.

She leans back in her chair, her expression unreadable. Something about her posture, though, speaks of sadness. I can feel it rolling off her like an ocean wave. As gently as I can, I ask, Will you tell me now why you think the Max at the carnival is a Ringer?

She draws in a deep breath and lets it out on a long exhale. Do you know what happened to my son last January?

Max told me his version of the story, which pretty much mirrors the experience I had a month later. I know he disappeared while he was walking home.

She nods, and her robotic expression of a few moments ago slips. Unhappiness tugs at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Max had a volunteer job. He usually drove, but we only had the one car and I was using it that night. A friend talked me into going bowling, of all things. Can you believe that? I was rolling a seventy-one when someone took my son.

You couldn’t have known what would happen. It’s easy to see by the way her mouth quivers that she doesn’t buy into that. She claims to have psychic ability, after all. I heard you did everything you could think of to get him back. Missing person fliers, newspaper and television interviews, daily calls to the police.

It didn’t matter. Nothing worked.

But your son came home.

She slaps her palm on the table, the sadness turning to anger in an instant. Haven’t you been listening? That’s not my son.

How can you be sure? My tone rises to challenge hers, like I’ve already decided not to believe her. But I can’t let myself reach any conclusion until I’ve heard everything. I make an effort to soften my voice. Let me put it another way. Max was abducted. If he was different when he came back, wouldn’t you expect that? An experience like that changes a person, don’t you think?

You’re in a better position to answer that question than me. As quickly as her anger appeared, it’s gone. You were abducted, too.

How do you know that? With the exception of Max, almost nobody believes I was held against my will for forty-eight hours after someone clocked me from behind. Roxy Cooper, my boss at the Midway Beach carnival, claims I was with her on a skiing trip. Since I can’t dredge up memories from the two days I was gone, Roxy’s lie sounds like the truth. Did Max tell you?

She shakes her head sharply. A psychic knows things.

Yeah, right. But since she has no intention of giving me a serious answer, I might as well play along. Okay. Yeah, I’m different than before I went missing. It’s not only because of the abduction. My stepfather’s in prison for armed robbery, and my schizophrenic mom is hearing voices again. The world used to seem like a safe place. Not so much anymore.

The world has never been a safe place, she says. But wouldn’t you say that even if you’re more enlightened, you’re still fundamentally the same person? If you liked photography or sports or ballroom dancing, you still like them. Right?

I’ve always been a horror movie addict. Getting snatched off the street and losing two days worth of memories hasn’t changed that. Right.

Max took off the year after high school to figure out what he wanted to do. He discovered his passion was politics. She pauses, her face growing hard. The imposter doesn’t care about politics.

That’s your reason? It’s easy to imagine getting disenchanted with politics. That’s why you think someone else is in your son’s skin?

She shakes her head vigorously. It’s not only that. It’s everything. The way he moves. The way he speaks. The foods he likes. A mother knows her child. If you were a mother, you’d understand.

The evidence seems circumstantial at best. Did you confront him?

Not right away. At first, I couldn’t bring myself to believe he wasn’t my Max. For months, he kept to his room and wouldn’t talk about what happened. He’d been through so much, I convinced myself his reaction was normal. But as the days and the weeks and the months went on, I couldn’t keep fooling myself. So, finally, I kicked him out of the house.

If my mother had done the same thing to me, I’d be crushed. But what if you’re wrong?

I’m not wrong. She stands up and parts the curtains behind her, gesturing with a nod that I should precede her. There’s something you should see.

The difference from the room where she does her readings and the main part of the house is startling. The walls are painted in warm peach tones that match the oak furniture and paisley upholstery. The effect is wholesome, the kind of homey atmosphere where a child would be lucky to grow up.

Follow me, she says. What I want to show you is on the second floor.

A premonition that I don’t want to see what’s up there is so strong that I can’t make myself move until she’s halfway up the flight of carpeted stairs. She waits until we’re both on the landing before opening the door at the top of the steps.

Take a look, she says.

It’s a large bathroom done in the same peachy colors as the downstairs of the house, with mirrored panels extending from the counters of the double sinks to the ceiling. All of the mirrors are broken, spider-like cracks bisecting the pieces of glass that aren’t missing. If the old wife’s tale about seven years of bad luck is true, Fiona Harper is in for a bad couple of decades.

I’ve been dragging my feet about getting these mirrors fixed, and now I know why, Fiona says. "It was so I could show them to you. To prove that some... thing came back in my son’s place."

I don’t understand. How do broken mirrors prove anything?

The imposter did this. She nearly hisses the words. The day I told him to get out of the house, he broke all these mirrors with the end of hairbrush. He was in a rage, like he couldn’t stand the sight of himself.

Maybe he was angry that you were throwing him out. My throat’s so dry, it’s hard to form words. I know I would be.

You didn’t hear what he said while the mirrors were shattering. He said... Fiona pauses and wets her lips. "...That’s not me."

CHAPTER THREE

Fiona Harper could be lying about Max and the mirrors.

That’s what I want to believe while we’re exchanging cell phone numbers and she’s walking me to my car. It’s a beautiful day. The air smells like flowers and mowed grass. Across the street, an elderly woman waves from the rocking chair on her porch. Two kids on bikes pedal past. A car engine starts down the block.

Out here in the sunshine, it would be easy to discount Fiona’s story if not for the hitch in her breath and sorrow on her face. She puts a hand on my arm to stop me before I can get inside the Volkswagen.

When I asked what happened to the original after the Ringer took over the body, you weren’t straight with me. She blinks repeatedly and not because of the sun. You have a theory, don’t you?

It’s impossible to evade the question in the face of her pain. Whether I accept her story about Max or not, it’s obvious she believes it.

We think the mind swap works two ways, I answer in a soft voice, and the original ends up in someone else’s body, too.

So Max could be out there somewhere? Her voice raises on a hopeful note.

I shake my head. Once the transfer is done and the original is in another body, we think a suicide is staged to get rid of the evidence. That way, everybody thinks the wrong person is dead.

A dog barks, a child laughs and a bird chirps while Fiona’s entire body seems to crumble. Her eyes fill with unshed tears. So my son dies, and the imposter—the Ringer—lives on.

If she’s right about Max being a Ringer, that is. Until I talk to him, I’m not ready to accept that he’s told lies of this magnitude.

I can tell you’re still not convinced your Max is a fake. Maybe you don’t want to be. Fiona puts her hand over her heart, and a few of the tears drip down her cheeks. "But I knew in my heart the moment that... thing walked into my house that my son was dead."

No matter what I believe, I can’t ignore her grief. I’m sorry.

She blinks, swiping at her dripping eyes. Her back seems to straighten vertebra by vertebra. I should tell you to stay away from him, but I won’t. She reaches into the deep pocket of her skirt, pulls out a bracelet set with a purple stone and folds it into my hand. This amethyst bracelet will enhance your intuition and psychic ability. It will help you find out what happened to my son.

The amethyst feels unusually warm. If her fingers weren’t still closed over mine, I’d drop the bracelet. You think some stone will help me figure out whether Max is lying?

I do. She squeezes my hand, and the stone digs into my palm. From everything you said, these Ringers are dangerous. You can’t let him know you talked to me or that you suspect he’s not who he says he is.

She’s right. If Max is part of the big, bad thing darkening Midway Beach, I can’t alert him that I’m suspicious. So why does that feel like a betrayal?

Your life could depend on how good a performance you give, she says, eyes glittering. She finally lets go of my hand. I’ll call you when I get there.

When you get where?

I’m coming to Midway Beach to help you, she says. Whoever did this to my son, I won’t let them get away with it.

My thoughts are jumbled on the drive back home, like pieces of a puzzle before they’re assembled. But I keep picturing those smashed mirrors and hearing Fiona’s voice:

Not my son.

Your life could depend on how good a performance you give.

I’m halfway back to Midway Beach before it registers the grumbling noise that’s been getting louder with each passing mile is a blown muffler.

Damnit! Two hundred miles was too far to ride a bicycle and I’m sick of borrowing cars, so I’d jumped when I heard Rachel Drayton was looking to sell her ten-year-old Volkswagen bug. Rachel handed me the keys as soon as I paid, even offered to let me keep the license plate until I went to the DMV. No wonder she gave me such a