Blaine Ayers and Lloyd Thomas are identical twins -- separated at birth, reunited by accident, and serial killers by choice. Two men, posing as one.
Steve Cooke is a private investigator married to Gary Drake-Cooke, an interior decorator.
The four men's paths cross when Blaine and Lloyd move into a house across the street from Steve and Gary. What happens next has the potential to change their lives forever -- for better or for worse.
Warning: This story contains scenes of graphic violence.
"That woman," Blaine said, pointing to a middle-aged female, anger in his words. They were in downtown Chicago, heading back to the apartment.
"What about her?" Lloyd said. The woman in question looked like half the ones on the street. Well dressed in business attire, chatting with another woman as they walked.
"She's just like the ones Dad used to bring home. Snotty females whose only objective was to add to their ... their bucket list, by finding themselves a husband."
Lloyd glanced at him, seeing rage in his expression, which passed almost as soon as it had come. Murderous rage, if he didn't miss his guess. It gave him pause, not because it bothered him, but because he felt the same thing when he saw a man who resembled the photos Blaine had shown him of their father. A man he would gladly have killed, as a proxy for the now dead bastard who had dropped him off at the Safe Haven fire department as if he were a piece of trash.
He didn't say anything at the moment, but when they were home, and had eaten dinner, he broached the subject.
"You hate women like the one you pointed out this afternoon, don't you?" Lloyd said.
"You better believe I do," Blaine snarled in reply. "The predators looking for someone to keep them in the style they want. Someone to prove they can catch a husband, even at their age. The ones Dad would hook-up with, for a month or a year, who treated me like I didn't exist while taking all of his attention for themselves."
"You know," Lloyd replied softly, "you should do something about them."
"I wish I could."
"Why can't you?" Lloyd looked slyly at his twin. "How hard would it be to eliminate them? You know you want to. The same way I'd love to kill our father, except that isn't possible anymore."
"What are you suggesting?" Blaine replied. "That I attack a strange woman in some ... some dark alley that they'd never go into in the first place?"
"Would it make you feel better if you could?"
"I ..." Blaine frowned for a long moment then nodded slowly. "Bitches like them deserve whatever I could do to them. Slice their sagging bodies. Destroy their Botoxed faces. Turn them into what they really are. Worthless pieces of shit." With each word, Blaine's expression grew more ecstatic. "I can almost feel the rush I'd get when I've finished and look down at what I've done. Created dead meat only fit for dog food."
Lloyd tapped his fingers together, his smile turning wicked. "Do it."
"You're serious, aren't you?"
"As serious as a heart attack."
Leaning back, Blaine gazed at him. "Only if you find a man, or men, who remind you of our bastard father and take them out."
"They might only look like him. They might not be like him."
"Does it matter? It's not them you'd be killing. Well, it would be them, but it would be Dad, too, each time you did. Just like I'd be killing his bitches."
Lloyd took a deep breath. "Can we do this?"
"We can damned well try. If we fail, we haven't lost anything."
"We need to plan every step, especially our alibis."
"Lloyd, we are our alibis. While I'm busy doing it, you're off somewhere very public, being me, and vice versa. 'But, detective, it couldn't have been me the witness thinks they saw. I was at the club with a dozen other people. They'll all swear to it.'"
"They'll all swear you have a twin brother, you mean."
Blaine puffed out a breath. "Good point. So we do it somewhere other than here in the city, to see if we have the guts to go through with it. We, well one of us, can rent a motel room. Whichever one of us it is, we find our target and get rid of them, while the other one is very visible somewhere else." He looked dead at his twin. "Are you game?"
"It was my idea to begin with."
They'd done as Blaine suggested. Blaine admitted, later, that he'd almost frozen when it came down to torturing and killing the woman -- until he pictured her as one of their father's live-in girlfriends. "That's all it took. The feeling? Damn, Lloyd. Why haven't I done this long before now? It was better than the best sex."
Lloyd had found out what his twin meant when they went to another town so he could practice, as he thought of it at the time.
Then Blaine had gotten the job offer from an insurance firm in Denver. After a great deal of thought, and planning how they would set up there, he'd accepted it.
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