Читать книгу Double Play: Ambushed! / High-Caliber Cowboy - B.J. Daniels, B.J. Daniels - Страница 10

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.