Chapter 9

Olivia gripped her wineglass and stared at the crimson liquid before she drained it in one long sip. "A missing scar and an entirely new personality. Now I'm really invested."

"Anne is older than me," Bel said. "She's bound to be a different person now than in college."

"I'll give you that." Olivia sagged against her seat. "People can hide scars with makeup or prosthetics… although prosthetics in the heat sound unrealistic. But in a world where everyone pays for perfection, the wife of a well-respected surgeon wouldn't flaunt her flaws. Is it possible she was covering it up?"

"Maybe? It didn't look like it, though. She had the most amazing figure and the smoothest skin, but I guess she could've been wearing makeup." Bel shrugged as she brought her dirty dishes to the sink. "I think I'm inventing things that aren't there. Everything about Anne has a reasonable explanation. Thanks for humoring me, but we should let it go. It's getting ridiculous."

"It's not ridiculous," Olivia said. "You saw something weird that led to a successful FBI raid, so you're worried ignoring the gum wrapper means you'll miss something. It's a valid response after what you experienced on the island. Did the phone call with Kelsey put you at ease, or did I make it worse?"

Bel searched her emotions as she collapsed back into her chair. "No, I don't feel better. That stupid butterfly is driving me crazy. Every explanation for its presence and Anne's behavior are realistically plausible, but they feel wrong. They're too convenient. I can't explain it, but something's off."

"Do you mind if I ask why this is bothering you?"

"I don't know." Bel refilled their wine glasses, but Olivia reached across the table and stilled her hand.

"Yes, you do."

"It's stupid."

"No, it's not. So tell me why you can't let this go. You said it yourself. All these rational explanations, yet you don't believe a single one, so why is this bothering you?"

"It was the way Anne looked at me," Bel blurted, embarrassed to admit that the vacationers' judgment had bothered her. "I got a lot of looks during our trip, and I brushed most of them off because they weren't a reflection of me. Everyone on that island was wealthy, yet I live in a single room." She gestured to her cozy cabin. "Surgeons obsessed with perfection surrounded me, but I walked around with my scars always on display. You've never seen me in a bathing suit, but these aren't just on my neck. They run down to my belly, and while Dr. Victors did an amazing job, they're visible. People stared. It was sometimes uncomfortable, but it's hard to care what others think when the man you're falling for stares at you like you're the entire world." Bel blushed involuntarily at the memory of Eamon's gaze. He'd made more than one resort guest blush with his reactions to her, and she would gladly endure hundreds of judgmental glares if it meant he'd watch her every move with love dripping from his eyes.

"His opinion of me is what matters, and he has never once made me feel insignificant," she continued. "It's almost embarrassing how he speaks about me, but it makes me feel safe. Especially in the face of the island's single women and their death glares. Their behavior conveyed how much a wealthy, eligible bachelor dating a woman like me annoyed them. They fought over Eamon's attention, treating him like prey right in front of me, but the man acted blind. He sees no one but me, so I got over their stares quickly. But Anne? She wasn't jealous or judgmental like the others." Bel sipped her wine as the peace of Eamon's memory vanished. "You should've seen the hostility in her eyes. It was unsettling because I could rationalize everyone else's stares. I wasn't one of them. They were uncomfortable around me, but Anne's aggression was different. She was afraid of me, and she hated me for it. That's why this is bothering me.

"She knows I'm a detective, so the only reason she'd be afraid was if she had something to hide. She was nervous that I would learn her secrets, so when I saw the gum wrapper origami, I knew. That clinic was why Anne was afraid."

"So that butterfly didn't end up in that hallway by accident, did it?" Olivia asked. "You believe Anne was there?"

"I do," Bel said. "I just don't know if the reason is harmless and I should leave it alone, or if we need to worry about her."

"Is it possible you didn't see a butterfly? Maybe you saw blue, and your brain filled in the blanks." Gold asked as she migrated to the couch so she could sit next to the comfortable Cerberus.

"No. It was there. I'm certain of it."

"Okay." Olivia chewed her bottom lip as she thought, her fingers scratching the dog's cropped ears absentmindedly. "Do you mind if I play devil's advocate since this conversation will probably never leave your house?"

"Sure." Bel grabbed the wine and joined her friend on the couch.

"What if something happened after college that drove Anne to that clinic? And I don't mean a medical procedure that Hyde helped her hide from her husband. I mean something drastic enough for her to drop her friends and vanish from her old life."

"What if that's how she met her husband?" Bel said, her brain sifting through the theories racing through her mind. "Many of the criminals who filtered through that operation used the resort to recover. Anne would've been no different, and Charles, assuming she was another vacationer, fell for her charms."

"But in reality, she was hunting for a surgeon," Olivia finished for her. "Someone who could maintain whatever procedure she'd received in the jungle."

"The question is, what did Hyde's clinic do to her? Why did she need unlicensed doctors when her parent's death left her wealthy?" Bel paused as her questions formed. "Was she running from something? Did she have a tattoo or birthmark that tied her to a crime, and she wanted it removed?"

"You said Anne Blaubart seemed like a totally different woman than the Anne Chambers Kelsey described." Olivia tucked her feet below her and shifted to face Bel. "What if it's because she is?"

"What?" Bel's eyebrows contorted.

"Devil's advocate, remember? This conversation isn't meant to be rational, so conspiracy theories are fair game."

"Okay… so they're two different women?"

"Think about it," Olivia said. "The surgical operation's entire M.O. revolved around changing criminals' appearances. The simplest explanation is they offer facial alterations, and that's why whoever Anne really is sought them out."

"You think someone assumed Anne's life and used Hyde's clinic to transform into her?" Bel asked.

"The easiest way to become someone new is by assuming a dead person's identity," Olivia said. "Social security and digital histories are already populated, so you become someone real. What if the Anne Blaubart you met is running from something? She needed to disappear, and along came carefree and wild Anne Chambers. If Chambers was the type to get drunk and accept dares that left her scarred, her daredevil nature probably escalated as the years passed. Maybe she attempted something stupid on a dare, and instead of receiving an oddly shaped scar, she died. Perhaps the person who currently holds the title of Mrs. Blaubart witnessed Chambers die, and recognizing her escape from whatever horrors she was running from, she stole Anne's life."

"If they're two different women, the second Anne must have looked similar to Chambers," Bel said. "Enough to pull off the con, but not enough to fool Kelsey and their friends. That would explain why she went off the grid until after the surgeries. Chambers had no living family. It would've been easy to assume her life if the girl on the run had similar features."

"True, but someone somewhere would've eventually noticed the change," Olivia said. "That's why she traveled to the island, and with Dr. Blaubart as her husband now, she has access to free procedures. How much of his wife has he changed to hide her from the law without even realizing it?"

"It makes a pretty plot, I'll give you that," Bel said. "But it's kind of far-fetched. Sounds like the opening chapters of a thriller."

"Is it really that far-fetched, though? To be honest, it's more reasonable than a man murdering girls before kidnapping you all to make you love him. It's also more believable than a driver building death traps intended for children on the family's property without being noticed."

"Okay, okay, point taken." Bel rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "You're right. Stealing identities is far more ordinary than the cases we've seen. She had no file at the clinic, though. If there had been, Barry would've notified me, but perhaps the island only kept records of criminals dangerous enough to destroy the operation." She stood with a groan, her voice so aggravated that it echoed throughout the small cabin.

"What's wrong?"

"As ridiculous as this evidence-less theory is, it makes the most sense to me, and that pisses me off," she answered. "I don't want to see crime and conspiracies everywhere I go. I wanted that butterfly to be trash. It still might be, but there's something off about Anne. People rarely chew that brand of gum. It isn't popular. And I've never seen anyone fold that flavor's wrapper into that specific origami shape before, but on that island, I saw it twice in two weeks. What are the odds?"

"You said it yourself. We don't have proof," Olivia said. "Unless the FBI's raid uncovers evidence that supports our theory, this is merely us letting our imaginations run wild. It still might be a case of floating trash."

"Except we both know that it's not." Bel plopped back down on the couch. "Coincidences rarely happen by accident. Even if your theory isn't correct, Anne was there. She knew about that operation. She might not be evil like Gianni or Kinley, but she knew the island's secrets, and she kept silent."

"But you didn't." Olivia reached across Cerberus and grasped her partner's hand. "You never rest until you set things right. I realize we'll probably never resolve this Anne issue… if there's even an issue, but you should feel justified knowing you recognized something everyone else threw away?"

"I do feel less crazy for obsessing over a gum wrapper," Bel chuckled. "But it's bothering me for a new reason now. If Anne Chambers and Anne Blaubart are two different women, what happened to Chambers? And did Blaubart kill her to take over her life?"

The days leading up to Thanksgiving were slow and uneventful, giving Bel and Olivia too many hours to dig fruitlessly into Anne Blaubart's past. Every acquaintance they spoke to gave the detectives yet another version of Kelsey's tale. Anne had been vibrant and carefree, even after her parent's death, but she cut all ties with her former life when she graduated college and eventually married the surgeon. Nothing in her past warranted suspicion, and by the time Bel left the station Thanksgiving afternoon, she resolved to put the whole obsession behind her. The nagging in her gut would have to fester unsatisfied. Anne had been in that facility, but without evidence, this mystery was one Bel couldn't solve.

Olivia had flown south to visit her family for the holiday, so Bel worked the early shift, the newer officers drawing the short straws for the night. Eamon and Cerberus were already waiting in the parking lot for her as she strode out into the crisp air, and together, the trio drove through the traffic to her father's house. It was dark by the time they reached Reese's home, but her father promised that Thanksgiving wouldn't begin until all his daughters were under his roof.

"Looks like Wendy and the boys are already here," Eamon said as they parked on the car-studded street. Bel became friends with Wendy Darling after she and Eamon rescued her brothers from their kidnapper, and she'd invited the siblings to dinner since they had no living family.

"I hope they aren't overwhelmed without us," she said, helping Cerberus out of the backseat as Eamon grabbed their bags.

"Your dad will make them feel welcomed," he said.

"My sisters too," she added. "You, though? Not so much."

"How do you mean?" Eamon paused on the front walkway.

"You met my dad by accident before we started dating. He never got the chance to do the former chief-of-police father bit with you, but I have five older sisters. I'm the baby of the family, and you're the first serious date I've brought home. You're about to walk into an interrogation."

"I am not afraid of their questions," he chuckled.

"You should be," Bel said. "Where do you think I learned my interrogation skills? They're ruthless. They'll eat you alive." She grinned as she lifted her knuckles to the front door. "Are you ready?"