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assume it was her he’d been after all the time when he’d come straight toward her. He wouldn’t have simply abandoned an order to locate someone to flirt with her.
    Why had he been alone, though? If he’d been sent to find her, or anyone, wouldn’t there have been at least one other guard with him?

    Becoming weary from her pacing and her wrecked emotions, Lena finally paused near the window and glanced at her timepiece. “Shit! Brainless idiot!” she muttered as it abruptly dawned on her that she should have tried to head Nigel off. If there really was trouble and it wasn’t all in her mind, he would be heading into it right now when they should both be headed in the other direction.

    He would’ve left work by now, she realized. She should’ve just waited at the terminal. Deciding that was probably her best bet--just in case--she glanced around, wondering if she should worry about taking anything with her.

    She’d left the food out, she remembered abruptly. As tempted as she was to simply abandon it, she had a deep seated antipathy for wastefulness, especially with something so expensive and hard to get as real meat. Sighing, she rushed into the kitch, grabbed the tote, and tossed the entire bag inside the refrigeration unit without worrying about unpacking it and sorting it.

    As she closed the door again, she heard the distinctive sound of the front door lock being deactivated. Torn between alarm that it might be the home guard and hope that it was Morris returning, she dashed into the hallway and skidded to a halt.

    The woman who stepped through the door and closed it firmly behind her had a laser pistol leveled at her.

    When she finally managed to drag her gaze from the muzzle of the pistol, a shockwave washed over her.

    The woman staring back at her wasn’t just of the same general build, color,

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    weight, and age as she was. It was her.

     
    * * * *
     
    Shock sent Lena’s mind instantly spiraling beyond any ability to reason. Nothing but disjointed words flashed in her mind, impossible to connect into a coherent thought.
    Pure instinct spurred her to flee. Since the woman was blocking the only exit, Lena leapt backwards into the kitchen and beyond her view little more than a split second before an angry red beam seared a hole through the wall directly behind the position Lena had occupied an instant before.

    Racing around the kitch in a mindless panic, Lena grabbed up and discarded a half a dozen items in a primal need to find something, anything, to defend herself with.
    Turning up nothing even vaguely lethal, she whirled and hurled the bowl she held in her hand as she heard the scrape of a foot on the tile at the door of the kitch, diving toward her evil twin at almost the same moment.

    Luck was with her. The woman jerked a hand up instinctively to shield herself from the flying object. Lena’s dive clipped one leg as she sailed through the doorway, knocking the woman off balance. Even as the satisfying thud of meat smacking solidly into tile reached her ears, Lena crumpled against the opposite wall of the hallway.

    She barely registered the collision that would’ve been painful if adrenaline wasn’t pumping through her body like wildfire. Scrambling to her feet, she slapped her palm against the emergency button set into the wall. A hole appeared in the wall a fraction of an inch from her hand. Lena stared at it a split second and fled away from the fire, into her living room, once more cornering herself with no avenue of escape.

    Her nemesis, instead of chasing her, planted herself firmly in the doorway between the hall and the living area, leaving Lena with no option other than to race back and forth at one end of the room, trying to dodge the blasts and hoping against hope that the home guard she’d summoned would arrive before the woman managed to get in a clean shot.

    Almost on the thought a beam raked along her arm, turning the fabric of her sleeve and the outer layers of flesh