Kitabı oxu: «Double Play»

Dear Reader,

USA TODAY bestselling author B.J. Daniels is a master of the romantic suspense genre, with more than fifty books published and numerous awards to her credit. Daniels has lived in Montana since she was five, and her love for the state shines through in many of her most beloved books—including the two favorites showcased here, Ambushed! and High-Caliber Cowboy.

In Ambushed!, Sheriff Cash McCall has spent the past seven years looking for his fiancée, Jasmine Wolfe. When her car is found—with blood inside—not far from his office, the evidence seems to be mounting against him. Then Molly Kilpatrick appears, claiming to be Jasmine, and if Cash can prove that she’s who she says she is, he’ll be of the hook. But Cash has a growing suspicion that Molly isn’t Jasmine, and that whoever she is, she’s running scared from something. Now Cash is fighting on all sides to exonerate himself and protect Molly, both from the past she’s trying to leave behind and the dangerous situation she’s walked into.

The suspense doesn’t let up in High-Caliber Cowboy, featuring Cash’s brother, Brandon. Brandon invites trouble when he decides to work for his family’s archenemy, Mason VanHorn, whose ranch has been hit by a rash of vandalism. Brandon is out to nab the culprit…until he finds out who it is. Suddenly, Brandon is caught between family loyalties, old desires and even older secrets that someone is willing to kill to keep hidden….

Daniels hooks her readers from the very first page with edge-of-your-seat suspense that moves at a breakneck speed. Enjoy the ride!

The Editors,

Harlequin Books

B.J. DANIELS

wrote her first book after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and author of thirty-seven published short stories. That first book, Odd Man Out, received a four-and-a-half-star review from RT Book Reviews and went on to be nominated for Best Intrigue for that year. Since then, she has won numerous awards, including a career achievement award for romantic suspense and many nominations and awards for best book.

Daniels lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and two springer spaniels, Spot and Jem. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards, camps, boats and plays tennis. Daniels is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, Kiss of Death and Romance Writers of America.

To contact her, write to B.J. Daniels,

P.O. Box 1173, Malta, MT 59538 or email her

at bjdaniels@mtintouch.net. Check out her website

at www.bjdaniels.com.

Double Play

Ambushed!

High-Caliber Cowboy

B.J. Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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This book is dedicated to Teagan and Hayden.

Thank you, baby girls, for all the hugs and kisses.

I can’t tell you what the tea parties

with you two mean to me. I love you both dearly.

CONTENTS

AMBUSHED!

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

HIGH-CALIBER COWBOY

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ambushed!

B.J. Daniels

CHAPTER ONE

Tuesday

Outside Antelope Flats, Montana

THE ABANDONED BARN loomed out of the rain soaked landscape, the roof partially gone, a gaping black hole where the doors had once been.

Sheriff Cash McCall pulled his patrol car up next to Humphrey’s pickup. Through the blurred thumping of the wipers, Cash could see Humphrey Perkins behind the steering wheel, waiting.

Cash cut the engine and listened to the steady drum of the rain on the patrol car roof, not anxious to go inside that barn. Hadn’t he known? Hadn’t he always known?

Steeling himself, he pulled up the hood on his raincoat and stepped out of the patrol car. Humphrey didn’t move, just watched as Cash walked past his pickup toward the barn.

Five minutes ago, Humphrey had called him. “I found something, Cash.” The old farmer had sounded scared, as if wishing someone else was making this call, that someone else had found what had been hidden in the barn. “You know the old Trayton homestead on the north side of the lake?”

Everyone knew the place. The land had been tied up in a family estate for years, the dilapidated house boarded up, the barn falling down. There were No Trespassing signs posted all around the property, but Humphrey owned the land to the north and had always cut through the Trayton place to fish. Seemed that hadn’t changed.

“I noticed one of the barn doors had fallen off,” Humphrey had said on the phone, voice cracking. “I think you’d better come out here and take a look. It looks like there’s a car in there.”

Cash stepped from the rain into the cold darkness of the barn. The shape under the large faded canvas tarp was obviously a car. He could see one of the tires. It was flat.

He stood, listening to the rain falling through the hole in the roof patter on the tarp. Clearly the car had been there for a long time. Years.

Wind lifted one corner of the canvas and he saw the back bumper, the Montana State University parking sticker and part of the license plate, MT 6-431. The wind dropped the tattered edge of the tarp, but Cash had seen enough of the plate to know it was the one a statewide search hadn’t turned up seven years ago.

He’d been praying it wasn’t her car. Not the little red sports car she’d been anxiously waiting to be delivered.

“When I get my car, I’ll take you for a ride,” she’d said, flirting with him from the first time he’d met her.

How many times over the years since she’d disappeared had he heard those words echo in his head? “I’ll take you for a ride.”

He closed his eyes, taking in huge gulps of the rank-smelling barn air. Her car had been within five miles of Antelope Flats all these years? Right under their noses?

The search had centered around Bozeman, where she was last seen. Later, even when it had gone statewide, there wasn’t enough manpower to search every old barn or building. Especially in the remote southeastern part of the state.

He tried to breathe. She’d been almost within sight of town? So close all these years?

Cash opened his eyes, scrubbed at them with the heel of his hand, each breath a labor. He turned away and saw Humphrey’s huge bulk silhouetted in the barn door, the hood of his dark raincoat pulled up, his arms dangling loose at his sides.

“It’s her car, isn’t it?” Humphrey said from the doorway.

Cash didn’t answer, couldn’t. Swallowing back the bile that rose in his throat, he walked through the pouring rain to his patrol car for his camera.

He knew he should call for forensics and the state investigators to come down from Billings. He knew he should wait, do nothing, until they arrived. But he had to know if she was inside that car.

Rain pounded the barn roof and fell through the hole overhead, splattering loudly on top of the covered car as he stepped past Humphrey to aim the camera lens at the scene inside. He took photographs of the car from every angle and the inside of the barn before putting the camera back in the patrol car.

On the way to the barn again, he pulled the pair of latex gloves from his pocket and worked them on his shaking fingers. His nostrils filled with the mildewed odor of the barn as he stepped to one side of the car, picked up the edge of the tarp and pulled.

The heavy canvas slid from the car in a whoosh that echoed through the barn and sent a flock of pigeons flapping out of the rafters, startling him.

The expensive red sports car was discolored, the windows filmed over, too dirty to see inside except for about four inches where the driver’s side window had been lowered.

He stared at the car, his pulse thudding in his ears. It had been summer when she disappeared. She would have had the air-conditioning on. She wouldn’t have put the window down while she was driving. Not with her allergies.

The rain fell harder, drumming on the barn roof as several pigeons returned, wings fluttering overhead.

He walked around the car to the other side. The left front fender was dented and scraped, the headlight broken. He stepped closer, the cop in him determined to do this by the book. Kneeling, he took out the small plastic bag and, using his pocket knife, flaked off a piece of the blue paint that had stuck in the chrome of the headlight.

Straightening, he closed the plastic bag, put the knife and bag in his pocket and carefully tried the driver’s side door.

The door groaned open and he leaned down to look inside. The key was in the ignition, her sorority symbol key chain dangling from it along with the new house key—the key to the house she’d told everyone they would be living in after they were married.

The front seat was empty. He left the door open and tried the back. The rear seat was also empty. The car would have been brand new seven years ago. Which would explain why it was so clean inside.

He started to close the door when he saw something in the crack between the two front seats. He leaned in and picked up a beer cap from the brand she always drank. He started to straighten but noticed something else had fallen in the same space. A matchbook.

Cash held the matchbook up in the dim light. It was from the Dew Drop Inn, a bar in Bozeman, where she’d been attending Montana State University. Inside, three of the matches had been used. He closed the cover and put the matchbook into an evidence bag.

Shutting the back door, he stood for a moment knowing where he had to look next, the one place he’d been dreading.

He moved to the open driver’s side door and reached down beside the front seat for the lever that opened the trunk. He had to grip the top of the door for a moment, steadying himself as he saw the large dark stain on the light-colored carpet floor mat under the steering wheel.

The tarp had kept the inside of the car dry over the years, the inside fairly clean, so he knew the stain on the mat wasn’t from water. He knew dried blood when he saw it. The stain was large. Too large.

As he pulled the lever, the trunk popped open with a groan. He drew the small flashlight from his coat pocket and walked toward the rear of the car, the longest walk of his life.

The bodies were always in the trunk.

Taking deep breaths, he lifted the lid and pointed the flashlight beam inside. In that instant, he died a thousand deaths before he saw that what was curled inside wasn’t a body. Just a quilt rolled up between a suitcase and the spare.

Cash staggered back from the car, the temporary relief making him weak. Was it possible Jasmine had been on her way to Antelope Flats? All these years he hoped she’d run off to some foreign country to live.

Instead she’d been on her way to Antelope Flats seven years ago. But why? His heart began to pound. To see him?

Or at least that’s what someone wanted him to believe. Wanted the state police to believe.

He thought of the blood on the floor mat, the car hidden just miles from his office, from the old house he’d bought that Jasmine called her engagement present.

He rubbed a hand over his face, his throat raw. Jasmine wasn’t living the good life in Europe, hadn’t just changed her mind about everything and run off to start a new life.

He turned and walked back out into the rain, stopping next to Humphrey’s pickup. The older man was sitting in the cab. He rolled down the driver’s side window as Cash approached.

“I’m going to call the state investigators,” Cash said, rain echoing off the hood of his jacket. “They’re going to want to talk to you.”

Humphrey nodded and looked past him to the barn. “Did you find her?”

Cash shook his head and started toward his patrol car, turning to look back at the barn and the dark shadow of Jasmine’s car inside. All those years of trying to forget, trying to put that part of his life behind him.

He realized now that all he’d been doing was waiting. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

That shoe had finally dropped.

Las Vegas, Nevada

MOLLY KILPATRICK CHUCKED her clothing into her only suitcase. No time to fold anything.

Since the phone call, she’d been flying around the hotel room, grabbing up her belongings as quickly as possible. She had to skip town. It wouldn’t be the first time. Or the last.

She fought back tears, trying hard not to think about Lanny. Her father’s old friend was probably dead by now. He shouldn’t have taken the time to warn her. He should have saved his own skin. She tried not to think about the horrible sounds she’d heard in the background before the phone went dead.

Even if the police had responded to her anonymous call immediately, they would have gotten there too late. She knew she couldn’t have saved Lanny. All she could do was try to save herself.

Zipping the suitcase closed, she slid it off the bed and took one last glance around the room. She’d never owned more than she could fit into one suitcase, never stayed long in one place and made a point of never making friends. This, she knew, was why.

She’d been raised on the run, she thought, as she picked up the baseball cap from the bed and snugged it down on her short, curly blond hair.

As she passed the mirror, she checked herself, adjusting the peach-colored T-shirt over her small round breasts, tucking a pocket back into her worn jeans, glancing down at the old leather sandals before slipping on the sunglasses and picking up her purse.

She could become a chameleon when she needed to, blending into any environment. It was a talent, the one talent she’d learned from her father that she actually appreciated. Especially right now.

She didn’t bother to check out since she wasn’t registered anyway. For someone like her, getting past a hotel-room lock was a walk in the park.

From experience she knew that entire floors of suites were set aside for high rollers and those rooms got little use even when rented for the night. She was always gone shortly after sunrise and even the couple of times she’d been caught, she’d been able to bluff her way out of it.

She thought about picking up her last check at the café where she’d been working. It wouldn’t be enough money to make it worth the risk.

Vince and Angel would find out soon enough that she’d taken off. No reason to alert them yet. It was too much to hope that the police had gotten to Lanny’s quick enough to catch the two convicted felons in the act.

No, she could only assume that Vince and Angel had not only gotten away but were looking for her at this very moment. If anything, fifteen years in prison would have made them even more dangerous.

On the way through the hotel, she stopped at one of the slot machines. It was foolish. She should be getting out of there as fast as possible. But superstition was something else she’d gotten from her father. And right now she needed to test her luck to make sure it was still with her.

She dropped a quarter into the slot machine and pulled the handle. The cylinder spun, stopping on first one bar, then another and for a moment she thought she might hit the big jackpot, but the third bar blurred past.

A handful of quarters jangled into the metal tray anyway. She scooped them up. Not as lucky as she had hoped but still better than nothing, she thought as she shoved the quarters into her jeans pocket, picked up her suitcase and headed for the exit.

As she moved through the noisy casino, she looked straight ahead but noticed everything, the hectic movement of gamblers pulling one-armed bandits, change girls stopping to hand out rolls of coins, cocktail waitresses weaving through the crowds with trays of drinks.

Goodbye Vegas, she thought as she cleared the door-less opening and stepped from the air-conditioned casino into the hot desert night. She breathed in the scents, knowing she wouldn’t be back here, not even sure she would be alive tomorrow. She had no idea where she would go or what she would do but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t done this for as long as she could remember.

As she headed toward her car parked in the huge lot, a white-haired couple came out of their RV, a homeless man cut through the cars toward the busy street and a handful of teenagers rolled through the glittering Vegas night on skateboards.

There was no one else around. But still she studied her car under the parking lot lights as she neared it. She doubted she had to worry about a car bomb. Vince and Angel preferred the personal touch. Also, they would want her alive. At least temporarily.

She unlocked the trunk of the nondescript tan sedan, put the suitcase in and slammed the lid. As she opened the driver’s side door, she surreptitiously took one quick glance around and climbed in.

Not one car followed her as she wound her way through the lot and exited on a backstreet. She headed down the strip toward Interstate 15, took the first entrance ramp, and saw that she was headed north. It didn’t matter where she was headed, she had no idea where she was going to go anyway.

Keeping an eye on her rearview mirror, she left the desert behind. But she knew she wasn’t safe, not by any means. Vince and Angel would move heaven and earth to find her.

And they’d kill her when they did.

CHAPTER TWO

Wednesday

Outside Antelope Flats, Montana

SHERIFF CASH MCCALL stood next to his patrol car and watched as the last of the officers came out of the old barn. They’d been searching for hours and he knew without asking that they still hadn’t found her body.

He felt himself sag. He’d hoped that Jasmine’s body was in the barn, that this would finally be over. He hadn’t slept, couldn’t get the sight of her car with the old tarp, the dented fender, the blood stain on the driver’s side floor mat out of his mind.

He rubbed a hand over his face as the lead state’s investigator came toward him.

John Mathews shook his head. He was a large man with a bulldog face. “We’ll continue searching the farm in the morning.”

Cash knew it would take days, possibly weeks, and even using the latest equipment, there was a good chance her body would never be found, that her disappearance would never be solved, that he would have to live the rest of his life without ever knowing when or if she would turn up.

“I’m sorry,” Mathews said. “We didn’t find anything.”

Cash nodded.

Mathews had been furious when he’d realized that Cash hadn’t called him immediately upon finding the car. “That was a fool thing to do. What the hell were you thinking looking in the car before we arrived?” His tone had softened. “I know how hard this must be on you. But you were her fiancé for cryin’ out loud. That makes you a suspect. Especially now that her car has been found within sight of your office.”

“I had to know if she was in the car,” Cash said. “I took photos. I did everything by procedure.”

John had sighed. “If you’re smart you’ll stay as far away from this investigation as physically possible.”

Cash had said nothing. He knew Mathews was right but that didn’t make it any easier.

Now Cash watched Mathews look past him to the lake. “We’ll broaden our search to the area around the barn. When I hear something, I’ll let you know.”

Cash knew that was as good as it was going to get. He took off his western hat and raked a hand through his hair, unable to hide his frustration. “You know that was the year the lake was down because the new dam was being built.”

“Cash,” Mathews said, a clear warning in his voice. “I like you. That’s why I’m going to say this to you. Stay out of it. I realize this is your turf, you know the area, your expertise might be invaluable, but don’t go telling us to look in the lake, okay? If her body turns up in the lake… You know what I’m saying.”

He knew exactly what Mathews was saying. He was a suspect. He’d been a suspect from the moment Jasmine disappeared seven years ago. “I just want her found.”

“We all do. But you’re smart enough to know that the stain under the steering wheel was blood.” He nodded. “It’s her blood type. Given the dent in the right front fender, the fact that the car has been hidden in the barn all these years, the amount of blood on the floor mat and the steering wheel, we’re treating this as a homicide.”

Cash knew that Mathews thought Jasmine had been run off the road and then attacked, possibly hitting her head on the steering wheel, or had been struck while behind the wheel by the attacker, who had then gotten rid of her body somewhere and hidden her car in the barn. Cash knew that because given the evidence as it now stood, he would have thought the same thing.

What hit home was that Jasmine really might be dead. The hidden car, the blood, seven years without anyone seeing her. There was nothing else to surmise from the evidence. The weight of it pressed down on his chest making it almost impossible to breathe. Head wounds caused significant blood loss. He couldn’t keep kidding himself that she’d somehow walked away from a blow to her head.

The facts no longer gave credence to his fantasy that she’d taken off, had been living it up on some Mediterranean island all these years.

“Even if you weren’t a suspect, you’re too emotionally involved to work this case anyway,” Mathews said.

Cash fought to curb his anger and frustration, knowing it would only strengthen Mathews’s point. “Unless her disappearance is solved, I will always be a suspect. You have any idea what that is like?”

“You know how this works,” Mathews said quietly. “You still have your job as sheriff. You think you would if anyone believed for a minute that you had something to do with her disappearance?”

“Let me call the family.”

Mathews raised an eyebrow. “Not much family left as I hear it.”

“Just her stepbrother Bernard. But I’d just like to be the one to tell him,” Cash said.

Mathews nodded. “Maybe he’ll have some idea how her car ended up down here. But then if he knew his sister was coming down to see you, he would have mentioned it seven years ago, right?”

They’d been over this ground before. “She didn’t drive down here to see me. She had plans in Bozeman. But if someone wanted me to look guilty, hiding her car in a barn outside my town would certainly do it.”

Mathews nodded in agreement. “Awful lot of trouble to go to since she was living almost five hours away.”

“Covering up a murder sometimes requires a lot of trouble, I would imagine,” Cash snapped back.

Mathews nodded slowly. “You ought to take a few days off. Didn’t I hear that you have a cabin on the other end of the lake?”

Cash said nothing.

“Fishing any good?”

“Smallmouth bass and crappie are biting, a few walleye and northern pike,” Cash said, seeing where this was going. “I have some vacation time coming. I think I’ll tie up the loose ends back at the office and do that. You have my cell-phone number if you hear anything.”

Mathews nodded. “I suppose it is a godsend that her father didn’t live to see this.” Archie had died five years ago of a heart attack. Jasmine’s stepmother Fran was killed just last year in a car accident. “Her stepbrother Bernard is kind of a jackass but I liked the old man and he seemed to like you. He really wanted you to marry his daughter.” The investigator sounded a little surprised by that.

No more surprised than Cash, but looking back, Cash knew that was probably why he’d been able to keep his job as sheriff when Jasmine disappeared. Archibald “Archie” Wolfe had never once thought that Cash had anything to do with Jasmine’s disappearance.

Cash had expected the prominent and powerful Georgia furniture magnate to hate him on sight the first time they met—just after Jasmine had disappeared. It had seemed impossible that Archibald Wolfe would have ever wanted his Southern belle socialite daughter to marry a small-town sheriff in Montana. Jasmine had already told Cash that her father never liked any of the men she dated.

But Archie had surprised him. “You’re the kind of man she needed,” the older man had said. “I know she’s spoiled and would try a saint’s patience, but I think all she needs is the right man to straighten her up.”

“Mr. Wolfe, I’m afraid you have it all wrong,” Cash had tried to tell him.

“Archie, dammit. You know I disinherited her recently. I would have burned every cent I had to keep her from marrying the likes of Kerrington Landow. But once Jasmine is found and the two of you are married, I’ll put her back in my will, you don’t need to worry about that.”

“I don’t want your money, Mr. Wol—Archie, and I don’t need it,” Cash had said. “Let’s just pray Jasmine is found soon.”

Archie’s eyes had narrowed. He had nodded slowly. “I think you actually mean that. How did my daughter find you?”

Cash had shaken his head, thinking that’s exactly what Jasmine had done, found him and not the other way around. He’d tried to think of something to say. It hadn’t seemed like the time to tell Archie the truth.

Archie had died a broken man, the loss of his daughter more than he could stand.

“Cash? Did you hear what I said?”

He mentally shook himself. “Sorry, John.”

Mathews was studying him, frowning. “If there is anything you want to tell me that might come out during this investigation…”

Cash shook his head. How long did he have before he was relieved of his position and his resources taken away so he wouldn’t be able to work the case in secret? Not long from Mathews’s expression.

“There’s nothing I haven’t already told you pertaining to the case,” Cash answered truthfully.

Mathews nodded slowly, clearly not believing that. “Let me know how the fishing is.”

As Cash drove back into town, he knew he’d have to work fast and do his best not to get caught. It was only a matter of time before Mathews learned the truth—and Cash found himself behind bars.

North of Las Vegas, Nevada

THE FEAR DIDN’T REALLY HIT her until Molly lost sight of Vegas in her rearview mirror. She was running for her life and she didn’t know where to go or what to do. She had little money and, unlike Vince and Angel who had criminal resources she didn’t even want to think about, she had no one to turn to.

She wiped her eyes and straightened, checking the rearview mirror. In this life there isn’t time for sentimentality, her father had told her often enough. That was why you didn’t get close to anyone. If you cared too much, that person could be used against you. Wasn’t that why the Great Maximilian Burke, famous magician and thief, had never let her call him Dad?

He’d insisted she go by Kilpatrick. He’d told her it was her mother’s maiden name. Since Max and her mother Lorilee hadn’t been married when Molly was born, her name on her birth certificate was Kilpatrick anyway, he’d said.

Molly had asked him once why he and Lorilee hadn’t married before her mother died.

“Your mother wouldn’t marry me until I got a real job,” Max had said with a shrug. “And since I never got a real job…”

Her mother had died when Molly was a baby. She didn’t remember her, didn’t even have a photograph. Max wasn’t the sentimental type. Also, he and Molly were always on the move, so even if there had been photos, they had long been lost.

All she had of her mother was a teddy bear, long worn, that Max had said her mother had given her. The teddy bear had been her most prized possession, but even it had been lost.

She wiped at her tears, tears she shed not for herself but for Lanny. She hadn’t let herself think about her father’s best friend. Lanny had always been kind to her and had remained Max’s friend until her father’s death. That was what had gotten Lanny killed, Molly was sure.

Her stomach growled and she realized she hadn’t eaten. She pulled off the interstate in one of the tiny, dying towns north of St. George, Utah, and parked in the empty lot of the twenty-four-hour Mom’s Home-cooking Café.

A bell jingled over the door as she stepped inside. It was early, but Molly doubted the place was ever hopping. She slid into a cracked vinyl booth and rested her elbows on the cool, worn Formica tabletop.

A skinny gray-haired waitress who looked more tired than even Molly felt, slid a menu and a sweating glass of ice water onto the table. She took a pad and a stubby pencil out of her pocket, leaning on one varicose-veined leg as she waited.

“I’ll take the meat-loaf special with iced tea, please,” Molly said, closing the menu and handing it to her, noticing that the waitress took it without looking at her, pocketed the pad and pencil without writing anything down and left without a word.

Molly watched her go, thinking her own life could be worse. It was a game she and Max used to play.

“You think your situation is bad, kiddo, look at that guy,” he would say.

He called her kiddo. She called him Max and had since she was able to talk.

“Better no one knows we’re related,” he’d always said. “It will be our little secret.” He told everyone that he’d picked her up off the street and kept her with him because she made a good assistant for his magic act.

There was a time she’d actually believed he was just trying to protect her by denying their relationship because Maximilian Burke had always been outside the law.

He’d raised her, if a person could call that raising a child. He’d let her come along with him. He used to say, “You’re with me, kiddo, I’m not with you.” Which meant she didn’t get to complain, even when he didn’t feed her for several days because he had no money. He would hand her a couple of single-serving-size packets of peanuts and tell her they would be eating lobster before the week was out.

And they usually were. It had been feast or famine. A transient existence at best. Homeless and hungry at worst. Her father was a second-rate magician but turned out to be a first-class thief.

She glanced out the café window, remembering late nights in greasy-spoon cafés, lying with her head on her arms on the smooth, cool surface of the table, Max waking her when the food was served. Too tired to care, she ate by rote, knowing that tomorrow she might get nothing but peanuts.

“You have to learn to live off your wits,” Max used to say. “It’s the best thing I can teach you, kiddo. Some day it will save your life.” That day had arrived.

The waitress brought out a plate with a slice of gray-colored meat loaf, instant mashed potatoes with canned brown gravy over them, a large spoonful of canned peas and a stale roll with a pat of margarine.

Molly breathed in the smell first, closing her eyes. This was as close to a mother’s home-cooked meal as she’d ever come. What she loved was the familiarity of it. This was home for her, a greasy-spoon café in a forgotten town.

She opened her eyes, tears stinging, and picked up her fork, surprised that she still missed Max after all this time. Surprised that she missed him at all. But as much as he’d denied it, he was all the family she’d ever had.

She took a bite of the meat loaf. It was just as the meat loaf she’d known had always tasted, therefore wonderful.

After she’d finished, the waitress brought her a small metal dish with a scoop of ice cream drizzled with chocolate syrup as part of the meat-loaf special.

She got up to get the folded newspaper on the counter where the last patron had left it, opened it and read as she ate her ice cream, feeling better if not safer.

The article was on page eight. She wouldn’t have even seen it if the photograph of the woman hadn’t caught her eye. The spoon halfway to her mouth, the ice cream melting, she read the headline.

Missing Woman’s Car Found in Old Barn.

She put down the spoon as she stared at the woman’s photograph. The resemblance was uncanny. Looking at the photograph was like looking in a mirror. Or at a ghost. Molly could easily pass for the woman, they looked that much alike.

Heart pounding, Molly read the entire story twice, unable to believe it. Fate had just given her a way out. Her luck had definitely improved.

Las Vegas, Nevada

VINCE WINSLOW PULLED UP in front of the motel room and honked the horn of the large older-model car he’d bought when he’d gotten out of prison.

Vince thought of himself as a fair man. He’d been a mediator in his cell block at prison and everyone agreed he had a way with people. It was a gift. He would hear gripes and grievances, then he would settle them. One way or another. Sometimes he’d just bang a few heads together. Whatever it took.

The one thing he couldn’t stand was injustice. It made him violent and that was dangerous for a big, strong man who’d spent most of his fifteen-year stint in the weight room at the prison, planning what to do when he got out.

He honked again and Angel Edwards came out of the motel room scowling at him. Vince slid over to let Angel drive.

“What? Are your legs broken? You can’t get out of the car? You got to honk the damned horn?” Angel slid behind the wheel, cursing under his breath.

Compared to Angel, Vince was a saint. Angel was a hothead. Short, wiry, all energy with little brains.

“Haven’t you ever wondered why I put up with you?” Vince asked in his usual soft tone. Right now he was definitely wondering that very thing himself.

Angel snorted. “I’m the best getaway-car driver in the business and you know it.”

Vince couldn’t argue that. Angel had lightning-fast reflexes. But since that life was behind them, Vince didn’t need a getaway driver anymore.

“You also love me,” Angel said without looking at him.

Vince stared over at him, realizing that was the only reason he didn’t take Angel out into the desert and put a bullet through his brain. Angel was his half brother. Blood was everything, even if your mother had no taste when it came to men.

“Damn, it’s like a refrigerator in here,” Angel complained, reaching over to turn off the air-conditioning. “You tryin’ to kill me?”

All those years of being locked up in the same cell block had made Vince even more aware of his brother’s shortcomings. Not that it had ever taken much to set Angel off, but now, once angry, Angel was nearly impossible to control. That had proved to be a problem. On top of that, now that Angel was out of prison, he had unlimited access to sharp instruments and a fifteen-year fixation on getting what he had coming.

“We need to talk,” Vince said.

“What is there to talk about?” Angel demanded, glaring over at him. “We find the bitch. We get what’s coming to us. This ain’t brain surgery.”

“My fear is that when we find her, you will go berserk like you did with Lanny and kill her before she tells us what we want to know,” Vince pointed out calmly. “If I hadn’t gotten you out of there when I did last night, we would be on death row right now. We almost got caught because you can’t control your temper.”

“You were going too easy on Lanny. I had him talking. He was just about to tell us. If he had lived just another few seconds…”

Vince groaned. “When we find Molly, you have to refrain from that kind of…persuasion, or we will never get the diamonds.”

“If she hasn’t already fenced them,” Angel snapped.

“She hasn’t,” Vince said for at least the thousandth time. These particular diamonds couldn’t be easily fenced—they were too recognizable. And Vince had his sources on the outside watching for them. There was no way Molly could have tried to fence the uncut stones without him knowing about it.

Angel shifted in the seat, his left cheek twitching from a nervous tic. “Okay, okay. So why are we still sitting here? Let’s find the bitch.”

“I found her before I found Lanny. She’s working at a greasy spoon off the Strip,” Vince said.

“You’ve seen her?” Angel asked, his voice high with excitement and suspicion. “Why didn’t you take me with you?”

Vince raised a brow as if to say, “Isn’t it obvious?”

“You wouldn’t try to cut me out of my share, would you?” Angel asked, going mean on him. Angel didn’t trust anyone, but still Vince took it as an insult.

“You’re my brother.” As if that meant anything to Angel. Vince reached into the backseat and picked up the latest in laptop computers. Opening it, he booted it up.

“What? You going to check your email?” Angel snapped.

“Patience. She isn’t going to get away,” Vince told him calmly. “I put a global positioning device on her car.”

“What?” Angel swore. “You were close enough to her to put some damned gadget on her car but you didn’t grab her? Are you crazy?”

“Like a fox,” Vince said.

“So where is she, Mr. Smart Guy?”

Vince studied the screen and smiled. “She’s running for her life.”

CHAPTER THREE

Antelope Flats, Montana

WHEN CASH GOT back to his office, he found his sister Dusty sitting behind his desk. She leaped to her feet like the teenager she was and ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck.

“Did they find her?” she asked stepping back from the quick hug, a mixture of hope and fear in her expression.

He shook his head and stepped around behind his desk.

Dusty was dressed in her usual jeans, western shirt, boots and a straw cowboy hat pulled low. A single blond braid trailed down her slim back. She was a beauty, although she seemed to do everything possible to hide the fact that she was female. Cash wasn’t sure if it was because Dusty was raised pretty much in an all-male household or because she actually loved working on the ranch more than doing girl stuff.

“You’re going to keep looking though, aren’t you?” She sounded surprised he was here rather than out with the other officers searching the Trayton place.

“I’m off the case, Dusty,” he said dropping into his chair. His sister had been only eleven when Jasmine disappeared. He doubted she understood the implications of Jasmine’s car being found so close to town, but she would soon enough, once the Antelope Flats rumor mill kicked in. He wanted to be the one to tell her, but still the words came hard.

“I was her—” he paused, the word coming hard “—fiancé and with her car found near here, I’m a suspect in her homicide.” He waved a hand through the air, knowing there was more that would come out but no reason to open that can of worms until he had to.

“Homicide?”

“A sufficient amount of her blood type was found in the car to change her disappearance to a probable homicide,” he said.

“How could anyone think you would hurt her?” Dusty cried. “She was the love of your life—is the love of your life. She can’t be dead. She’s probably in Europe just like you thought. She’ll come back once she hears about her car being found and, when she sees you again, she’ll remember what you shared and she’ll be sorry she stayed away and she won’t ever leave again.”

He smiled up at her, surprised that his tomboy sister was such a romantic and touched that she cared so much. He didn’t have the heart to tell her how wrong she was. “What are you doing in town? I thought you were helping with branding?”

“Shelby sent me in to check on you and tell you that you’re expected at dinner tomorrow night.” Dusty rolled her eyes. “Who knows what big bombshell she’s planning to drop now.”

Shelby was their mother, but it was complicated as all hell. Just a few months ago, out of the blue, Shelby Ward McCall had shown up at the ranch. What made that unusual was that Cash thought his mother had died when he was just over a year old.

Shelby had not only announced that she was alive, but that she and their father Asa had cooked up her demise. It seemed they had thought it would be better for Cash and his three brothers to believe she had died rather than just left. Shelby and Asa couldn’t live with each other and didn’t want the children to have the stigma of divorce hanging over them.

At least that was their story and they were sticking to it. But to make matters worse, he and his brothers had always thought that their little sister Dusty was the result of an affair their father had nineteen years ago. Asa had brought Dusty home when she was a baby with some cock-and-bull story about her being orphaned. He’d legally adopted her and Cash guessed he thought his sons didn’t notice how much she looked like them.

Turned out that Dusty was the result of Asa and Shelby getting together years ago in secret to “discuss” things.

Well, now Shelby was back at the ranch and tongues were wagging in four counties. Cash was trying to keep both of his parents from going to prison for fraud and Dusty was hardly speaking to either parent.

His family had always been the talk of the town for one reason or another. Cash knew that was partly why he’d become sheriff. He was tired of being one of the wild McCall boys.

“Say you will come to dinner,” Dusty pleaded. Dusty had taken the betrayal the hardest. It didn’t help that she looked so much like her mother. She’d also been the closest to their father and felt betrayed by him. But she was especially angry with her mother. While Dusty could possibly understand how Shelby might walk away from four sons, she couldn’t forgive her mother for giving up a daughter.

Since Shelby’s astonishing reappearance, the family undercurrents were deadly. She never had explained why she’d returned to the living. But it was obvious a lot more was going on between her and Asa than either had let on. Cash had seen the looks that had passed between them, seen Shelby crying and Asa hadn’t been himself since she’d come back. Their father, a cantankerous, stubborn, almost seventy-year-old man who’d alienated all four of his sons on a regular basis, was actually trying to be nice.

It worried the hell out of Cash.

So it was no wonder that the last thing he wanted to do was attend one of the McCalls’ famous knock-down-drag-out family dinners—especially now.

But he knew that an invitation to a family dinner was really a summons to appear. If he sent word back that he wasn’t coming, Shelby herself would drive into town to try to change his mind. He didn’t need that.

“I’ll be there.” He hated to think what new surprises might be sprung at dinner tomorrow night.

Dusty sighed in relief at his acceptance. “I think the dinner is probably about Brandon. You know he’s been acting weird lately.”

Cash had noticed a change in his brother, but didn’t think it weird. Brandon, at thirty-three, seemed to have finally grown up. He’d taken on more responsibility out at the ranch, had really seemed to have settled down. He was talking about attending law school next fall and, according to their older brother J.T., had opened an account at the bank to save for it. “Isn’t it about time Brandon grew up?”

Dusty didn’t seem to be listening. “He comes in really late at night. I think he has a girlfriend, but he denies it.”

Cash laughed. “If you’re right, he’ll tell us when he’s ready.”

She made a face at the “if you’re right” part. It was a given that a McCall was always right, especially a female one. “Aren’t you even curious why he would try to keep a girlfriend secret?”

“No, we’re a family of secrets,” Cash said, realizing just how true that was. He thought of his own secret, pushed for years into some dark corner of his heart.

The problem with secrets was that they didn’t stay that way. It was only a matter of time, now that Jasmine’s car had been found, before his came out.

Somewhere outside St. George, Utah

AFTER LEAVING THE CAFÉ, Molly found a newspaper stand and bought a copy of the paper. She ripped out the article and sat behind the wheel of her car, studying the photograph of the missing woman.

On closer inspection, the woman didn’t look that much like her. The resemblance was in the shape of the face, the spacing and color of the eyes, the generous mouth. The hair was different, long, straight and white-blond compared to Molly’s curly, short, darker blond locks.

But with some makeup, a few highlights in her hair and the right clothes… The clincher was that the woman was close to her age—just a year and a half older—and about her height—an inch taller and ten pounds heavier.

As Molly looked into the woman’s face, she felt a chill at just the thought of what she was thinking of doing. Talk about bad karma.

According to the article, Jasmine Wolfe was last seen at a gas station on the outskirts of Bozeman seven years ago. The clerk at the station had noticed a man approach the blond woman driving the new red sports car. The man was about average height wearing a dark jacket, jeans and cap. The clerk didn’t see his face or note his hair color.

When the clerk had looked up again, the man was holding the woman’s arm and the two were getting into the car. They appeared to be arguing. The clerk hadn’t thought much about it, just assumed they were together, until she’d read about the search for the missing woman and remembered Jasmine, the new red sports car and witnessing the incident.

It was speculated that Jasmine had been abducted by an unknown assailant who had forced her into her car at possibly knife-or gunpoint. That theory was heightened a month later when a man was arrested outside of Bozeman trying to abduct a woman at another gas station in the same area.

The man was sent to prison and, while he never admitted to abducting Jasmine Wolfe, he was believed to have been involved in several other missing persons’ cases in the area, including hers. The man had committed a murder in prison and was still serving time there with little chance of parole.

That was good news. But not as good news as who Jasmine Wolfe was—the daughter of Archibald Wolfe, a furniture magnate from Atlanta, Georgia. Archie, as he was known to his friends and employees, had offered a sizable reward for any information about his daughter. The reward had never been collected.

Molly let out a low whistle. “You’ve just hit the jackpot, kiddo,” Max would have said. “All you have to do is convince the sheriff that you’re the missing woman, then the family will be a snap. Seven years. People change a lot in seven years.”

Maybe, she thought. But Antelope Flats Sheriff Cash McCall would definitely be the one she’d have to fool. Jasmine had been engaged to him, according to the newspaper. A man would know his former fiancé. Except if she kept him at arm’s length, which shouldn’t be that hard to do. There was no photograph of the sheriff but Molly could just imagine some backwoods local yokel.

She reached into the backseat for her old road atlas. Antelope Flats, Montana, was on the southeastern corner of the state just miles from the Wyoming border. Bozeman, where Jasmine Wolfe had been a graduate student at Montana State University, looked to be a good five hours away.

Antelope Flats had to be tiny, really tiny, since it appeared to be no more than a dot on the map.

No one would ever look for Molly there. Especially if she were someone else altogether. She knew she’d go crazy within a week in a place like that. But a week might be long enough.

Molly’s original plan had been to run, just keep one step ahead of Vince and Angel. But as she stared at Jasmine Wolfe’s photograph, she knew this plan—bad karma and all—was her best bet.

She opened the container she’d brought from the café. Chocolate-cream pie. It was about as homemade as the rest of the meal had been, but just as familiar.

And, she thought taking a big bite of the pie, she would need to put on a few pounds if she was going to Antelope Flats, Montana. She could do a lot with makeup, a change in her hair color and style. She could become Jasmine Wolfe, she was sure of it.

But what if Jasmine Wolfe’s body turned up. State investigators were searching the abandoned farm. Or even Jasmine herself, alive and in the flesh after seeing the article? And even if neither happened, still Molly would have to pull off a major magic act with the sheriff.

But, no thanks to her father, Molly had been performing from the time she could walk. And like her father, she’d always believed in omens as well as in luck. Just when she had two killers after her and needed a place to disappear, she’d seen this article. If that wasn’t a sign, she didn’t know what was.

Also, she was a realist. She had only a little money saved. It wouldn’t last long. If she hoped to stay alive, what better way than becoming someone else for a short period of time?

She wasn’t worried about Vince and Angel seeing the article and putting two and two together. Even if they could add—or read—she doubted either had ever read a newspaper in their lives.

If by chance Vince and Angel saw the story in a newspaper, she didn’t think they would notice the resemblance between Jasmine Wolfe and her. Neither man had seen her since she was fourteen and she’d changed a lot. And while she thought her resemblance to the missing woman was uncanny—it was the little touches she would make in her appearance that would convince others she was Jasmine.

Going to a pay phone, she made another anonymous call to the Vegas Police Department. Vince and Angel hadn’t been picked up yet. But someone else had called in and given a description of a car leaving the scene of the murder.

She gave a description of each man as if she’d seen them leaving the murder scene as well. She told them that she’d heard the big one call the little one Angel, the one who looked like he had a prison tattoo on his neck.

It shouldn’t take long for the police to put it all together. The day Max, Vince and Angel had pulled off the big heist in Hollywood, they’d returned to Lanny’s house where Lanny and Molly had been waiting. It was there that the police had arrested Vince and Angel. It was there that Max had shown up in a separate vehicle and, seeing the police, had tried to make a run for it and was shot down in the street.

Molly tried not to think about that day, about her father dying in her arms in the middle of the street.

As she hung up the phone, she didn’t kid herself. It could take a while before the two recently paroled felons were caught. Once they were, she was sure the police would find something on the two to send them both back to prison—even if it couldn’t be proved that Vince and Angel had killed Lanny.

Still, her best bet was to stall for time.

Hiding was always preferable to running. With luck, she could pull this off. And if she played her cards right, there could even be some money in it. She cringed at how much she sounded like Max. But taking money from Jasmine’s family was no worse than pretending to be her, was it?

And if anyone could pass herself off as someone else, it was Molly Kilpatrick. She’d pretended to be someone else for so many years that she had no idea who the real Molly Kilpatrick was anymore.

The decision made, she folded up the clipping and put it in her purse. She would follow the story as she headed to Montana. There was always the chance that Jasmine Wolfe would turn up before she got there.

Meanwhile, she had a few tricks up her sleeve, thanks to her father the Great Maximilian Burke, magician and thief.

Antelope Flats, Montana

CASH PICKED UP THE PHONE the moment Dusty left and dialed Bernard Wolfe’s number. Bernard was about Cash’s age, thirty-five, four inches shorter, stocky like a weight lifter, with rust-colored hair, small dark brown eyes and a cocky arrogance that seemed to come with the Wolfe fortune. Cash had disliked Bernard from the get-go and vice versa.

“She’s just playing you to drive our father crazy,” Bernard had said to him when they’d met for the first time. “It’s what she does. Plays with people. Our father cut off her money so now she’s going to make him pay by threatening to marry you. You are one of many in a long line. She’ll tire of you and this game—if she hasn’t already.”

It had taken all of Cash’s control not to slug him.

After Jasmine’s disappearance and Archie’s death, Bernard had taken over the furniture conglomerate, a business that had put him in the top five hundred of the nation’s wealthiest men.

“Wolfe residence,” a man with a distinct English accent answered.

Cash made a face and told himself he shouldn’t have been surprised that Bernard would have an English butler.

“I’m calling for Mr. Wolfe. My name is Sheriff Cash McCall of Antelope Flats, Montana. Would you please tell him it’s important. It has to do with his sister—stepsister,” he corrected. “Jasmine.”

As sheriff of the county, he’d had to make a lot of calls like this, some worse than others. They were never easy. He wondered how Bernard would take the news. Did Bernard even give a thought to his missing stepsister?

“Yes?” Bernard said when he came on the line a moment later. “What is this about?” He had only a touch of cultured Southern drawl, unlike his father. Bernard was Oxford educated, that probably explained it.

Cash had not talked to him in almost seven years. He cleared his throat. “This is Sheriff Cash McCall. I wanted to let you know that Jasmine’s car’s been found.”

Silence, then what sounded like Bernard pulling up a chair and sitting down. “Where?”

“Just a few miles from Antelope Flats. The car was discovered in an old abandoned barn on a deserted farm north of the lake. It had been covered with a tarp.”

“Was Jasmine…?”

“No.” Cash waited to hear relief in Bernard’s voice but heard nothing. “The investigators are searching the farm. They found blood and are treating the case as a homicide.”

“They aren’t letting you near the case I hope.”

Cash clamped down his jaw, then took a breath and let it out. “I wanted to be the one to call you.”

“Why is that?”

“Personal and professional courtesy. It’s often hard on family members to get this kind of news.”

Bernard made a rude sound. “I’ll fly out as soon as I can.” He hung up.

Cash stared at the phone in his hand. What had he expected? He wasn’t sure. There was no doubt that he’d hoped to rattle Bernard, shake him up a little, maybe even get him to make a mistake when it came to his story from seven years before.

Bernard had said he’d been hiking up in the Bridger Mountains the day Jasmine disappeared. His alibi was his friend and Jasmine’s former fiancé, Kerrington Landow. Supposedly the two had been together, which provided them both with alibis.

Cash had always suspected that the man the clerk had seen with Jasmine at the gas station was Bernard. He fit the description—just like the man who’d been arrested for an attempted abduction in the same area. A man who had refused to confess to Jasmine’s abduction even when offered a deal.

As Cash hung up the phone, he knew Bernard would call Kerrington and tell him about Jasmine’s car being found. Cash had heard that Kerrington had married Jasmine’s best friend and former roommate, Sandra Perkins.

After seven years and marriage to another woman, what would Kerrington do? Come to Antelope Flats? Cash wouldn’t be surprised. Kerrington and Bernard were both so deep in Jasmine’s disappearance that neither would be able to stay away.

Somewhere south of Montana

MOLLY STOPPED at a computer store and used the internet service to access everything she could find about Jasmine Wolfe and her disappearance. Because of her prominent old Southern family, the story had been in all the major newspapers.

Molly read every article she could find, becoming more excited as she did. This could definitely be the answer to her problems.

The sheriff was the drawback though. That and the fact that Molly hadn’t pulled any kind of “magic trick” since her father had died fifteen years before. She’d given up that way of life and had promised herself that she would never go back to it.

For years she’d never stayed in one place long, knowing that Vince and Angel could get out on parole at any time. At least that’s what she told herself. In truth, the one thing she hadn’t been able to cast off was the transient lifestyle of her childhood or the fear that Max had been right—that fraud was in her blood.

No matter how hard she tried, she found she got restless within weeks and would quit her job, move somewhere else and get another mediocre job. Fortunately she had an assortment of skills that lent themselves to quick employment and she’d never been looking for a “good” job since she’d be moving on soon anyway.

But Vince and Angel were out of prison now and after her. She hadn’t seen anything in the papers about Lanny Giliano. She could only assume he was dead and she was next. She had to do a disappearing act, and maybe Max was right. Maybe fraud was in her blood and just waiting to come out.

On a hunch, she found an online video of Jasmine giving a speech at some charity benefit. The father had put the video online at the time of Jasmine’s disappearance, saying he thought his daughter might be suffering from amnesia and hoped someone would recognize her and call.

Molly watched the video a half dozen times online until she could mimic Jasmine’s gestures, her way of speaking, her facial expressions. Mimicking was something Molly had learned at an early age, a gimmick she and her father used during his act when he pretended to read minds in the audience.

Molly would secretly pick someone from the audience while her father had his back turned. Then he would read her mind and point to the person she’d picked. It amazed the audience. But the trick had been quite simple. She would just mimic the expression and body language of the person and her father would spot it and match it with the right person. Magic!

It amazed her how quickly all that training came back. Her mind was already working out the details. Not that she wasn’t aware of the danger. Identity fraud. Fortunately, there was little record of her life the past fifteen years since her father’s death or, for that matter, the fourteen years before that.

All of her “jobs” with her father hadn’t involved paperwork, and few of her jobs had since. She preferred work where she was paid “off the books” in cash. Jobs where she didn’t have to provide a social security number or an address. Much safer.

And there were enough employers who wanted to avoid paying taxes that it hadn’t been hard to find menial work. She had pretty much remained invisible over those years, but she knew that wouldn’t protect her from Vince and Angel. They would turn over every rock to find her. And they wouldn’t stop until they did.

The way Molly saw it, only one person—the person who put Jasmine’s car in that barn—would know that she really wasn’t Jasmine. And that person was in prison serving time for his other crimes.

Which was good, since Molly already had two killers looking for her. That was sufficient.