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Right. Two killers and the need for a place to hide.
“Please,” he said again. “Sit down for a moment. What do you have to lose?”
She didn’t even want to think about that. She must have been out of her mind. Her father’s genes obviously coursed through her veins because she’d latched on to this idea without thinking it through. She hadn’t expected to feel like this.
He smiled reassuringly and stepped back, giving her space. “Won’t you sit down? Please.”
There was a kindness in his voice, a calmness in his movements, although she could see how badly he needed her to be his fiancée.
All she had to do was load the hat—slip in the rabbit that she would later pull out as if by magic. She had him right where she wanted him. So why did she feel so miserable about it?
And even more alarming, why did she feel like he had her?
Either way, she couldn’t walk away now. She was in too deep. She had no choice but to stay and play this through. She couldn’t admit that she’d known all along she wasn’t the missing woman, whereas if she stayed, he would realize eventually she wasn’t his lost love. He would be hurt. She would feign disappointment, sorry that she’d gotten his hopes up. No harm would have been done.
Right, you just keep telling yourself that.
She gave him a tentative smile and took the chair he offered her. He pulled up one next to her rather than go behind the desk. She could see that he didn’t know what to do with his hands. They were large, the fingers long and finely sculpted, tanned from the sun, callused from some type of manual labor and definitely strong.
She shifted her gaze to his eyes, the same pale blue as summer skies. There was something so appealing about Cash McCall….
“Why do you think you’re not Jasmine?” he asked quietly.
That one was easy. But she could hear Max saying, “Don’t be a fool. Have you forgotten Vince and Angel and what they’ll do to you if they catch you? Stall for time. You’re safe here. And there just might be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, kiddo.”
She felt sick and realized she was more like Max than she’d ever admitted. She had only thought of herself. And now she was in trouble. So like Max.
“I know I look like her, but I can’t see how…” She made a motion with her hand, swallowed and looked around the office. It was sparsely furnished. A gold-framed photograph on his desk caught her eye.
“Your family?” she asked, indicating the photo of a group of blond, blue-eyed people standing at a wide porch railing.
“Shelby insisted on a family portrait,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “She also insisted I put it on my desk. Shelby’s my mother. She’s a bit…bossy at the moment, probably always has been.” He shook his head before she could ask what that meant. “It’s a long story.” He leaned forward a little, obviously trying to relax. Or at least make her think he was relaxed. “Tell me about you.”
Going in, she knew she couldn’t lie about her name or her past—at least the past seven years of it because he was bound to check. There was no reason to anyway, since those years had been innocuous enough and her pattern of living would suggest that she’d been unsettled, lost, searching for something.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve traveled from one place to another,” she said honestly. “My name is Molly Kilpatrick. At least that’s what I’ve been going by.” She’d learned at an early age that it was always best to blend as much truth as you could with the lies. It made keeping the lies straight that much easier. You just had to be careful that you didn’t start believing your own lies.
Meanwhile, she needed to make it clear that as far as she knew, she was Molly Kilpatrick and any confusion on her part as far as her resemblance to Jasmine Wolfe was innocent. Even if he found out that she was the daughter of Maximilian Burke, she figured her father’s death could easily explain her alleged lapses of memory.
“I’ve always had the feeling that something happened in my past, something traumatic that I want to forget, and that’s why I can’t remember,” she continued. She described her life pretty accurately, at least the years since her father died.
When she finished, she saw that the sheriff was studying her intently. Magicians called it “the burn” when someone is watching you with an unblinking stare, looking behind your words and sleight of hand to see the “trick.”
Cash felt like pinching himself. Jasmine. He couldn’t have been more shocked or relieved. While she was saying she didn’t believe she was Jasmine, he was looking at her face, the color of her hair, the sound of her voice, her mannerisms. All Jasmine. Only just different enough to account for the fact that she’d been lost for seven years.
“This is amazing,” he said when she stopped talking. The cop in him told him he should be paying more attention to her story, but the man in him could only stare in wonder. Somehow Jasmine had survived—and found her way back.
To him, he realized with a start.
He would have expected her to contact her family. Or her old roommates. Except Sandra Perkins was married to Kerrington Landow now and who knew where Patty Franklin was.
He just found it hard to believe that she could come to him. Not after the last time he’d seen her. But maybe she really couldn’t remember what had happened between them any more than she could remember him.
He tried to concentrate on what she was saying as she told her story haltingly, stopping occasionally to lick her lips. He tried to remember that mouth. It had been so long. Would it be the same if he kissed it?
When he’d thought of Jasmine over the years, the memories had been sharp and painful. Now though, as he studied her, he realized he’d forgotten how he’d felt, that initial first attraction, or how she’d tasted when he’d kissed her.
She stopped talking, then added, “That’s why when I saw the article about Jasmine Wolfe…” Her eyes met his.
He remembered that pale green color. Only he’d remembered it as reminding him of cool jade, not warm tropical waters as it did now.
“You’re not sure how many years you’ve lost?” he asked, trying to pay more attention.
She shook her head, catching her lower lip in her teeth. It was something he couldn’t remember Jasmine ever doing.
“When I read that there was a search going on for her, I thought that if there was even a chance that I was…” She stopped, licked her lips again. “I didn’t want people to keep looking for her if… I didn’t want her family to…” She shook her head. “You must think I’m a fool to come here.”
Jasmine had never been a fool. Nor could he imagine her thinking herself one. “No, you’re no fool,” he said studying her. “Can you remember anything about the day you disappeared?”
She shook her head slowly and let out a small laugh. “I didn’t even know I’d…disappeared.”
He smiled realizing that, from her perspective, that was probably true. “Have you seen a doctor about your memory loss?”
She nodded. “He said sometimes a blow to the head can cause it. I would imagine that’s where I got this.” She lifted a lock of her blond hair away from the left side of her forehead.
The scar was shaped like a crescent moon, pale white and about an inch and a half long. He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. Head wounds bled a lot. That would explain all the blood in her car.
He felt a wave of relief. Not that she didn’t look and act like Jasmine, but the cop in him had questioned how she could be alive given the large amount of blood that had been found in her car. The blood loss, the head injury, couldn’t those both contribute to memory loss? And couldn’t that explain why she’d just disappeared for seven years?
“You don’t know how you got the scar?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It was just there one day when I looked in the mirror.”
He could see that the scar had scared her. He tried to imagine just looking in the mirror one day and seeing a scar and not knowing when or where you’d gotten it.
It should have scared her, he thought. It certainly did him, just trying to imagine how she’d gotten it.
She absently touched the scar with her fingers. “I think I came here hoping to find…myself.” Her voice broke a little and tears glistened in her eyes.
He’d never seen Jasmine vulnerable before. That he did remember. It took everything in him not to pull her into his arms. But he was a stranger to her. And she was clearly scared. The last thing he wanted her to do was bolt.
“I realized when I saw the photograph that I’ve put my life on hold for years waiting for something I didn’t understand.” She frowned. “Does that make any sense to you?”
He wished it didn’t. He’d done the same thing and hadn’t consciously realized he was doing it. With a start, he remembered that Bernard would be flying in. “Your brother—stepbrother—Bernard is on his way here. If he’s not already here.”
Her eyes widened in alarm. She shook her head. “But what if I’m not Jasmine? I don’t want to get his hopes up.”
Cash doubted Bernard’s hopes would be raised by the thought of Jasmine being alive. Bernard had inherited everything when Archie had died, as far as Cash knew. And knowing even as little as he did of Bernard, Cash couldn’t see Bernard wanting to share it with a stepsister back from the dead.
“It would be like him losing his sister all over again,” she was saying. “And I couldn’t bear to think I had a brother only to have him snatched away if I’m right and I’m not Jasmine.”
Losing Bernard wouldn’t break anyone’s heart, Cash thought. “You don’t have to see him if you’d rather not.”
Her relief was almost palpable. “It’s not that I don’t want to see him. Later. If I really am Jasmine. Isn’t there some way we can keep this quiet until we know for sure?”
He hated to tell her how impossible that would be in a town the size of Antelope Flats. He had to tell State Investigator John Mathews. But he had no way of reaching him at this hour. Cash couldn’t see what it would hurt to wait. Mathews would do everything he could to keep the story from blowing wide open, but he would want to question Jasmine—and in her state, Cash feared she would take off again.
Cash knew he was just making excuses.
What he needed was time. Before anyone else got involved, he had to be sure in his own mind that she really was the woman he’d spent seven years trying to forget.
“Maybe there is a way to keep it quiet,” he said, watching for her reaction. “I can take your fingerprints and send them to the FBI. They have Jasmine’s on file.”
“How long will it take to get the results?” she asked without even a blink.
He would send them to his friend in the FBI. With luck he would know by tonight, but he didn’t tell her that. “It usually takes a week. Maybe more.”
She seemed relieved rather than upset by that news. He got the feeling that things were happening too fast for her.
“I’ll just stay in a motel out of sight until then.”
“Your brother will be staying at the only motel in town.”
She looked surprised, then worried. “What can we do?”
We? A sliver of doubt embedded itself under his skin. He told himself he was just being a cop. She had come to him, she needed his help. Of course, she would say “we.” So why was he suddenly suspicious of her motives?
Because she’d involved him so slickly into a conspiracy to keep her existence a secret. It worked perfectly into his plan to have her to himself until he could decide if she was really Jasmine—and what she wanted.
But he had to wonder if it also worked perfectly into some plan she had.
“If anyone finds out that I came to you before we know for certain if I’m Jasmine… Can you imagine what would happen if the newspapers got hold of this story?”
He could well imagine. His life had been blown wide open for months after she’d disappeared. But she didn’t need to sell him any further on hiding her. “There might be a way to keep you hidden until we have proof that you’re Jasmine.” He let the words hang in the air for a few moments, not wanting to act too eager. “You can stay with me.”
Her surprise almost seemed genuine. “Oh, I couldn’t.”
“I have a large house. There is plenty of room. It is the only way to stay hidden in a town this size. Unless you’d rather not, under the circumstances.”
She frowned. “Circumstances?”
“The general assumption was that you were abducted by a man at the gas station who is now in prison,” Cash said. “But for several reasons I don’t think that was the case.”
“What reasons?” she asked, sounding more curious than worried.
“First off, the man serving time in prison right now was offered a deal if he told them what he’d done with you. He didn’t take the deal. I don’t think he was the one the station clerk saw get into your car.” He was watching her, not exactly sure what he was looking for, just a feeling that he should be leery of her. Especially if she was Jasmine.
“Secondly,” he continued when her expression didn’t change. “You would never have gotten into your car with a stranger even if he was holding a gun on you. You’d been taught what to do because kidnapping was a real threat given your family’s wealth. The only reason you would leave with the man at the station was because you weren’t afraid of him.”
That last seemed to finally get a reaction out of her. “You think I knew the man who abducted me?”
He nodded slowly. “A man who left you for dead seven years ago.”
“You’re telling me that if I’m Jasmine Wolfe, I’m lucky to be alive.”
“Oh, I think you got very lucky. The problem is, if I’m right, your assailant won’t be happy to hear you’re alive and can identify him.”
“But I can’t! I don’t remember anything about that day.”
“My point exactly. You could be in the room with a killer and not even know it. Until it was too late.”
She bit her lower lip as if considering that she might be in danger. “I guess the safest place I could be now is with the town sheriff,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Right?”
He cleared his throat and met her eyes. “Right.” Unless, of course, she was going home with the prime suspect in Jasmine’s disappearance and attempted murder.
CHAPTER SIX
MOLLY COULDN’T BELIEVE how easy it had been as she watched Cash prepare to take her fingerprints.
She’d come away clean without getting caught with any cards up her sleeves. As Max used to say when he’d fooled someone in the front row of the audience with one of his magic tricks, “I could have gone south with an elephant in front of that guy!”
Not only did the sheriff buy her as Jasmine, he’d also agreed to keep the news quiet—and was taking her home to his house. She couldn’t have asked for a better place to hide out.
There had only been that one surprise. Cash seemed to think Jasmine had known her attacker, that the person was still at large, that her attacker had left her for dead. And now with Jasmine back, Molly’s life was in danger.
It was her karma and the risk that went with stealing a dead woman’s identity, she thought bitterly. Wasn’t it bad enough that she already had two killers after her?
She hoped that Cash was just being cautious. He seemed a cautious man. Of course he could also just be trying to scare her. If he knew she wasn’t Jasmine, what better way than to make her think she was in danger from a killer if she continued this charade.
No, she thought, studying him. He believed she was Jasmine because he wanted to. Maybe he really was worried about her safety. Maybe the man now in prison for abducting those other women really hadn’t picked up Jasmine at that filling station.
Good thing she wasn’t planning to stay in this gig long. And there was always the chance that Cash was wrong. The cases were too similar not to have been the same man—even if the man now in prison hadn’t confessed to Jasmine Wolfe’s abduction.
“Yes?” Cash said. He was looking at her, studying her again as if he saw her struggling with her thoughts.
She shook her head. “Nothing. This must come as a shock to you.” Her prints weren’t on file anywhere. That was one reason she hadn’t been able to get a job at a Vegas casino. Casinos took all employees’ fingerprints as a matter of course. But still, she felt a little anxious to think he was about to send them to the FBI. Did that mean they would be on file from now on? Good thing she was going straight again after this.
He reached for her hand. His fingers were warm and she felt a small thrill ripple over her as he began to take her fingerprints. She mentally kicked herself as he raised a brow at her reaction. Cash McCall didn’t miss much.
“Am I anything like her?” she asked grabbing hold of every magician’s best defense—misdirection and patter. Talk about anything. Just draw the audience away from what you’re really doing. “I mean other than the way I look?”
He took her fingerprints, carefully getting a perfect print from each finger. He didn’t look at her as he worked. “You sound like her and some of your mannerisms remind me of her,” he said after a few moments.
“Were we close?” she asked shyly.
His gaze came up to meet hers. There was heat in it and although it had been a while, she recognized the look for what it was: desire.
“We were engaged, weren’t we?” He looked back down.
