Читать книгу Mistaken Identity - Merline Lovelace, Merline Lovelace - Страница 9

Marsh kept a death grip on the leather-wrapped steering wheel as he tooled the Blazer through Scottsdale’s darkened streets. His mind whirled at even faster revolutions than the steel-belted tires.

Who the hell was sitting next to him? Becky Smith or her sister, Lauren? How long would it take his partner to run down her true identity? Twenty-four hours? Less? Did it matter?

Marsh’s jaw clenched at the cold-blooded proposition that he could use either sister in the next phase of his plan, but he forced himself to consider it.

If this was Lauren—and if she could be believed—she knew where her sister was. She’d sworn Becky wasn’t with Jannisek. Marsh had fired that question too fast and her denial had come out too spontaneously to be faked. So there was a chance, a slim chance, that Jannisek had no idea what was going down.

If, on the other hand, this woman was lying, and she really was Becky, Marsh could proceed exactly as planned.

So it boiled down to two choices. He could use this woman, whoever she was, in a desperate attempt to lure Jannisek out of hiding. Or he could accept the Phoenix PD’s decision to put the hunt for Ellen’s killers on the back burner.

Marsh didn’t even consider the second option. With a flick of a directional signal, he cut off Scottsdale Road onto Camelback. The Blazer whipped past posh condos constructed to look like abode dwellings and the sprawling resorts that made Phoenix the winter escape for millionaires and mobsters.

It was an area Marsh now knew well. Ellen’s best friend owned a condo in the shadow of the city’s legendary Camelback Mountain. Ellen had been on her way for a visit and a day of shopping with her friend when she’d been gunned down only a few blocks away.

“Where are we going?”

The question dragged Marsh’s thoughts from his sister-in-law’s bullet-riddled car and Jake’s frozen face as he watched Ellen’s casket being lowered into the Arizona earth. He speared a glance at the woman beside him.

“I told you, to a ranch up by Flagstaff.”

She took her lower lip between her teeth, and then twisted to catch a street sign. The movement brought her rear up hard against his thigh. With some effort, Marsh blanked his mind to the sudden, scorching pressure.

“We’re heading west, not north.”

Suspicion rang sharp in her voice. Obviously, she didn’t trust him. Wise woman.

“We have to make a short stop before we head north.”

“Where?”

“At the Valley of the Sun Inn.”

“That’s where my sister works! They’ll verify that you’ve got the wrong woman.”

“That’s where Becky Smith works,” he agreed. “Whether or not I have the wrong woman remains to be seen.”

She folded her arms and stared straight ahead, her mouth set. She had, Marsh conceded with a swift, sideways glance, one helluva mouth. The kind a man could feast on. For hours. The body that went with it wasn’t bad, either.

His fists tightened on the wheel. Who was he kidding? She’d rocked him onto his heels when she’d flung herself into his arms there at the house, and the impact had nothing to do with the hundred and twenty-three pounds her license said she carried on that perfectly proportioned frame.

Even now, with his mind spinning like a rat on a wheel, his senses insisted on working their own agenda. Much as Marsh wanted to deny it, Becky/Lauren Smith knocked the breath back in his chest every time he pulled in her scent, an elusive combination of shampoo, seductive perfume and nervous woman. Those long legs that were stretched out beside his didn’t exactly help his concentration, either. His fingers itched to hit the window button and drag some sharp night air into the Blazer to diffuse her impact on his senses. He needed all his wits to pull off the next, delicate step in his swiftly revised plan.

His passenger didn’t know it yet, but he didn’t intend to let anyone at the Valley of the Sun Inn get close enough to positively ID her.

Luckily, he didn’t have to resort to any extraordinary measures. When he turned into the curving drive that led to the front entrance of the exclusive hotel and golf resort, he found it clogged by a fleet of the hotel’s minibuses disgorging conventioners in golf shirts and shorts. From the chorus of the raucous male laughter, the businessmen had scored more booze than birdies that day.

That suited Marsh just fine. So did the harried expression the valet parking attendant wore as he wove through the throng to get to the Blazer. Marsh lowered the darkened driver’s window just enough for the attendant to see his face. The tint on the other windows kept the Blazer’s interior in shadows.