Note to Readers
Kendra Parker reached the entrance to the lecture hall and listened to the voice reverberating through the door. She’d heard somewhere that a child would always recognize their mother’s voice, but what if she’d never heard it before? What if her birth mother had handed over Kendra and her twin to someone without a word? This professor’s voice rang strong, without much emotion, as she rattled off some historic study on behavior analysis. Kendra couldn’t detect anything in her voice alone.
Her phone felt heavy in her pocket as she itched to text Audrey, the newfound twin she’d discovered in the midst of an FBI operation gone wrong. In fact, the mission had gone so wrong, Kendra had been shot and her partner, Special Agent Lee Benson, felt it necessary for Audrey to take Kendra’s place in the deep-cover assignment. It’d been six weeks since Kendra had seen her sister return to normal life, with the odd exception of Lee’s plans to marry Audrey soon.
Kendra had used the last six weeks to track down leads in an effort to locate their mother, but now she hesitated. She left the phone untouched since it could turn out to be another dead end, and her twin was a lot more sensitive—despite being a genius PhD at Caltech—to disappointment. Instead, Kendra needed to treat this like any other FBI assignment and stifle her emotions to get the job done. No more stalling.
She hauled open the door to find the classroom set up like a theater. Only a few students gave her half glances before they returned to their laptops, typing away notes as Professor Beverly Walsh lectured without missing a beat. Kendra lowered herself into a chair five rows down, in the first open aisle seat to her left, but unlike the students, she had no interest in lifting the retractable desktop. Her interest was solely in the professor with straight blond hair—first strike, as both Kendra and Audrey had curly brown hair. The professor’s face, though, was turned away as she wrote on the blackboard:
Cluster of cues for deceit: hand touching, face touching, crossing arms, leaning away.
Kendra’s neck heated with the instinctive knowledge that someone was studying her. She turned around as if to examine her armrest, but surveyed the students in the seats around her. No one seemed to be paying her any attention.
“Together, as a cluster, these cues—” the professor tapped on the board with the chalk “—indicate deceit. Separately, they mean nothing, unless...” The professor turned. “Anyone?” Approximately in her fifties, the woman was short in stature—second strike—and shorter than Kendra, who stood a little over five foot seven. The brown pants, buttoned, burgundy cardigan and light blue scarf looked classy—third strike—and professional. Kendra didn’t recognize her own style on the professor at all.
Professor Walsh pointed at a man in the front row. The student casually lowered his hand and leaned forward. “Single cues of deceit can be accurate if a previously collected baseline indicates such.” His voice resonated with a deep and soothing timbre.
From Kendra’s diagonal viewpoint, he appeared to be in his early thirties and had thick dark hair, carefully styled, and a relaxed posture that didn’t match the crisp, blue-collared shirt peeking out from the black canvas jacket. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she should know who the man was, but she couldn’t quite place him. If he turned another fifteen degrees, she’d be able to get a better look at his face.
The professor nodded as she stepped back and regarded the rest of the class. Her green eyes passed over Kendra, and both her posture and face stiffened, as if the professor had just smelled something distasteful. She settled into a neutral face a heartbeat later.
Kendra’s stomach churned. She didn’t know how, and couldn’t claim to be a behavioral analyst, but every fiber of her being felt that Beverly Walsh had recognized her. If Kendra hadn’t been watching, she very well would’ve missed it. Her mouth turned dry. She’d found her mother.
“That’s probably enough for today, so I’ll end class a bit early,” the professor said. “Consider it extra study time for your exam on Friday.” She grabbed the books and papers resting on the top of a podium and stuffed them into a leather messenger bag, then slipped out of a side door next to the blackboard.
Students rushed toward the aisle, filling the stairway leading to the public exit at the top. Kendra dodged them, fighting the stream. To her left, the student who had prompted the professor’s smile stepped down from the first row.
Kendra held back a gasp as their eyes met. She recognized the olive skin, the eyes that matched a stormy sky and the soft smile that suddenly disappeared. His name escaped her, but she knew him. There was no time for a reunion to figure out where, though. She darted across the classroom floor and out the door.
A musty hallway lit by only three fluorescent