Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.

Odds on a Dead Pigeon Part 3

Maybe it was the general lack of multiple feelings chasing one after another in quick succession across her expressive face.

Maybe it was the fact that she didn't shift her body when he sat on her hospital bed - such an intimate action, and something he had never done before.

Maybe it was the fact that she knew details about the Gordon Redding case - details he had never told her.

Maybe he missed the sparkle of her eyes. There was no magic when she looked at him.

Whatever it was, his doubts and fears and suspicions suddenly coalesced into a certainty that defied everything his eyes and ears were telling him.

This was not Amanda.

It was Amanda's face. It was Amanda's body. It was even Amanda's voice, just as it had been Amanda's voice on the phone. But Amanda's soul was missing, and it showed in her eyes.

This was not his Amanda. It explained the phone call, the ash trays, the drink on the table. It explained the shotgun, the coral snake, the gas.

It explained Credle and Treloggen.

"Something wrong?" she - whoever she was - asked.

His eyes fell to her hands. They were steady and still as a rock. If he had wondered, however briefly, if his theory were insane, or if he were insane for thinking it, this decided it.

Somehow Redding had made a duplicate Amanda.

Clearly she was here in order to bring Lee to him. He only had to keep up the charade a little longer. If he could convince her he still trusted her, and if he could make sure he never turned his back to her, he had a chance - just a tiny sliver of a chance - to find the real Amanda and bring her back home.

And Redding would pay dearly for what he had done.

All this flashed through his mind in a second or so, and he answered her question - "Something wrong?" - in a voice that trembled despite his best efforts. "I don't know. I was about to ask you the same thing."

"Oh, well... Yeah, I really hate hospitals. I'd really like to go home now." Definitely a stranger. Amanda would have known she was supposed to go to the hotel.

He smiled easily, the smile Scarecrow used when he needed to be charming and trusting. "Yeah, sure. But I'm afraid you can't go home. Not just yet. You're gonna have to stay at that hotel, until we find Gordon Redding. The agency'll pick up the tab."

She showed no curiosity, and - what was more - no fear for her family. She just got up and moved to the door.

He kept his back turned away from her, turning the doorknob and shoving the door open, then motioning for her to go ahead of him.

He stayed a half-pace behind her, as they began walking towards the Corvette. The success of the most daring mission he had ever been on depended on what he did, now.

He decided to force her hand. "I wish I could tell you how long we have to keep you out of circulation, but everything depends on Redding's next move, and when he makes it."

The woman at his side agreed, and didn't say anything else.

He tried again. "What are you going to tell your mother and the kids?"

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'll handle it." It was unnerving to hear Amanda's voice being so businesslike about the people she loved most in the world.

He glanced at her, deciding what to say to inflate her ego and get her to make a mistake. "You're getting good at this, you know that?"

"Well, I've always been pretty good at it."

I'm sure you have.

As they reached the car, he brought the conversation, if he could call it that, back to Redding.

"You know what's strange? I haven't even thought of Redding in years."

Was she Redding's partner, or just a hired mercenary? Her answer didn't tell him anything.

"Well, obviously, he's been thinking about you." She tried to inject some of Amanda's warmth into her words, and he heard something else, too - the tiniest hint of flirting.

He kept the conversation firmly on Redding, ignoring her pass at him. "Yeah, he's had the time for it. He's had time. Seven years. We don't even know where to begin looking for him."

"Oh, Lee, that's no problem. I can take you right to him."

He had finally said the right thing. He saw it in her eyes just before the muzzle of her handgun made contact with his stomach.

Her voice was hard, and cruel, and so, so wrong to have coming out of Amanda's mouth. "Don't try anything heroic, because we've got Mrs. King."

His voice was calmer than he had been expecting it to be. "What have you done with her?"

"Ah, you'll find out if you do exactly what I tell you to do."

That had always been the plan, but he had to play along. "How do we know she's still alive?"

"You don't," she said, and the sheer hatred in her voice chilled his blood. "Give me your gun.

He hesitated, and she said "Come on," with the air of someone who expects to be obeyed and took it personally that it didn't happen at once.

He reached into his coat and handed her the gun.

Her eyes were cold and alight with malicious glee. "Now, you can find out if you don't cause me any problems. You walk around this car and get in."

He did, knowing he was covered by a gun the whole time.

"How the hell did you do it?" he asked, the second she got into the car.

"What, this little get up?" She was mocking him now. "Oh, plastic surgery, a good ear, lot of rehearsal time."

"I suppose it wouldn't do me any good to ask who you are." He had to stay calm.

"Oh, I'm another American success story. No wants, no warrants."

"Yeah, I thought we had a line on all the top guns. I'm impressed." Better keep her cool.

"I'm very excited that I impress you." Her sardonic tone made his blood run even colder. "How do you feel about the Nordic type? I think that might be my next look. Or do you prefer this 'Amanda' look? Hm?"

"The real one. Yeah."

Her tone was coolly conversational. "You know, I was really disappointed to find that you and she are only business acquaintances. Could've been interesting. You're very attractive."

He turned to her, with a look that couldn't even begin to scratch the surface of the hatred and revulsion he felt.

He knew full well that if she had reached for him when he first entered that hospital room, he would not have stopped her. He would have gone to her, willingly.

If she had initiated a kiss, he would have responded, and his first real kiss with Amanda would have been with a stranger.

He felt sick. If she had made the substitution, if Amanda had not come home early, if she had tried to seduce him like she had obviously planned — if he had not grown to know and love Amanda's soul over the past two years — if he had not missed seeing it in her eyes —

The thought made his stomach clench.

"You find me attractive?" She was teasing him now.

His jaw clenched. "I don't know. I've never seen you."

She smiled, humorlessly, with the calculating look that a predator gives its prey. "That's right."

She motioned to the ignition with her gun.

"Oh, my gosh." It was the squeaky voice that did it - that pulled him out of his despair at seeing her and her doppelgänger hanging from the side of the building.

He bent down, grabbed her, and pulled her up to safety, just as the woman had lost her hold and fell with a scream.

He drew her to him, holding her tighter than he had ever imagined holding her. She was shaking badly.

There was a dull thud, and he looked over to see that the woman - whoever she really was - would not be troubling them again. She looked, too, and shuddered at the sight.

He couldn't let go of her. Not yet. He was still catching his breath, and she was his only lifeline to reality.

"How did you know it was me?" she asked, her voice hoarse with relief and slowly receding fear.

He shook her a little. "Look, who else do I know, whose last words would be 'Oh, my gosh'?"

She laughed a little, then melted back into his arms. He felt her smile against his shoulder.

Redding had been put away again.

Amanda was back in her house with her family.

The autopsy had determined that the woman who looked so unnervingly like Amanda had had extensive plastic surgery, so he didn't have to worry even a little that he'd made the wrong choice.

And he was back by the back door, skulking as usual. Everything was right with the world again.

He knocked softly, and stepped back to wait for her to join him. She slipped out to meet him.

"Hi," he said, and he didn't bother to keep the happiness and contentment hidden.

"Hi," she replied, her smile radiant.

"How ya feelin'?" he asked, feeling strangely shy.

"Oh, I feel all right now."

"Good. I just came by to tell you that, uh, it looks like Redding won't be getting out on parole this time."

"Oh, well, good. That makes me feel a whole lot better. You know, it was really awfully strange, looking at somebody that looked exactly like me. You know, I used to think that I wanted a twin when I was in school."

He had missed her rambles. This was what had been missing with Karen Brinkman.

"And like I would go to school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and she would go to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And, you know, we'd alternate off like that. But to really look at somebody who looks exactly like you, who could just walk right into your life and take your place..."

She trailed off, looking at him expectantly.

"Amanda, I don't think anyone could pull that off," he said softly.

Not even a perfect duplicate. After all, it was the soul that counted.

"Hey, Mom!" Phillip's shout came from the house, though whether it came from the door behind her or if it was such a deafening noise it came from the bathroom window, Lee couldn't tell. "Don't forget the marshmallows!"

She smiled. "You're right. And you know why?"

Tell me. "Why?"

"Because nobody knows where I hide the marshmallows."

Her nose scrunched up in her adorable little grin, and he found himself laughing with her, relief and joy and exhaustion all mingling together until he thought that he might cry.