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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.
