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“Sorry, hon. Boyd hasn’t been here all afternoon. He got a call from his sister a little after one.” Doris lowered her voice to a half whisper. “I think maybe she’s having another one of her episodes. You know he doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“I guess I’ll just have to drop by tomorrow sometime. I’ll need to pick up my last paycheck anyway.” She gave Doris another hug and turned to look at Joe again.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
She felt Doris’s curious gaze on her, but she didn’t stop to explain. She could hardly tell her co-worker that she was basically under house arrest at the Buena Vista Hotel under the watchful eye of Cowboy Joe. Word about her situation would get around soon enough as it was.
“Episodes?” Joe asked as they headed away from the diner toward the Buena Vista.
“What?”
“Your boss’s sister has episodes?”
“Oh. She’s a paranoid schizophrenic. She does well when she stays on her medication, but she doesn’t always stay on it. Boyd’s all she has in the world, and as big a jerk as he can be, he works himself to the ground to help her have some sort of normal life. So when she calls—”
“He goes running,” Joe finished for her.
She glanced at his profile, outlined by the yellow glow of streetlamps lining Main Street. “Family, I guess.”
He cut his eyes her way. “Family,” he agreed.
The well-lit facade of the Buena Vista Hotel shimmered against the dark blue backdrop of the Sawtooth Mountains as Joe pulled the truck into the guest parking lot. He unbuckled his seat belt and turned to look at her. “I know I’ve made it pretty clear that I don’t think you’re telling me the truth. About your memory or about what happened a year ago or six hours ago.”
“No! Really?”
“But I don’t believe you were the one who killed Angela Carlyle. The evidence argues against it.”
She felt a ripple of relief. “So you believe me about the man?”
“I believe a man killed your roommate. Who or what he is to you is still a question.”
“For me, too.”
He shot her a sidelong look. “My point is, the man is still at large, and if you’re the only witness to his murder of your friend, he might want to shut you up.”
She tamped down a shudder. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you need a reminder. I know firsthand that you have a tendency to run.”
She opened her car door and stepped out, turning to look at him through the open door. “I’m not stupid. I know I’m not safe out there on my own. That’s why I agreed to this setup.”
“Good. Then we’re on the same page.”
She closed the door a little harder than necessary. “We’ll never be on the same page, cowboy,” she muttered.
She followed him into the hotel and waited impatiently while he picked up the key to her room from the desk clerk. “You’re in room 223. It’s an adjoining room to mine.”
“Adjoining?”
“You know, there’s a connecting door between our rooms?”
“I know what adjoining means.” She frowned at him as they entered the elevator. “I just wondered why.”
“Easy access,” he answered cryptically.
“I’m surprised you didn’t request that Chief Trent just put me in your room with you. Maybe supply you with a set of handcuffs to chain me to the bed or something.”
“I did. He nixed it. But I have my own set of cuffs if you’re interested.”
She looked up sharply, surprised at the hint of humor she heard in his deep, gravelly voice. “My God, that was a joke, wasn’t it? Cowboy Joe just told a joke.”
The half smile quirking his lips faded and his gray eyes darkened. “Don’t get used to it.”
She sighed as the elevator lurched and settled on the second floor. The door swished open and she started to step out, but Joe swung his arm out, stopping her.
“Let me check it out first.” Holding the doors open with one hand, he stuck his head out of the elevator and looked both ways. “Okay, let’s go.”
She followed him into the deserted hallway, remembering her earlier visit to his hotel room. What would Joe say if he knew she’d been here already, conned her way inside his room and gone through his things? Check that. She had a feeling she already knew what he’d say.
Joe stopped in front of room 223 and swiped the card key in the lock, opening the door. Jane took a step inside ahead of him and stopped dead in her tracks.
Behind her, Joe uttered a low profanity.
Spread across the bed, in the unmistakable shape of a body, lay hundreds of blood-red rose petals.
Chapter Four
Trinity Police Chief Hank Trent took one look at the rose-strewn hotel bed and uttered a scalding string of epithets.
“We can’t stay here,” Joe said when he was done.
“I’ll find you another hotel.”
“We can’t stay here in Trinity,” Joe said firmly.
“You expect me to just let you waltz out of town with my only eyewitness to a murder?”
Joe glanced at the Jane. She stood a few feet away, her gaze still fixed on the rose-petal effigy posed like a crimson corpse on the pale bedspread. She had said almost nothing since they’d opened the hotel room door, but her distress was evident in her pale face and wide, haunted eyes.
“The only people who knew we were coming here besides Jane and me were you and your department, Chief.” Joe turned his gaze to Trent. “She was in your custody the whole time.”
“You weren’t.”
“You want to check my credentials again?”
Trent frowned. “No. Just guarantee me you’re not pulling some fast one here to get her back to Wyoming.”
“I just want to keep her alive until we can figure out what the hell is going on here,” Joe assured him. “I’ll take her somewhere safe and get back in touch with you directly to let you know where we are.”
Though his face reflected his reluctance, Trent gave a grudging nod. “Stay in this state, Garrison. I mean it.”
Joe nodded. “I’ll be in touch as soon as we settle somewhere.” He crossed to Jane and touched her elbow.
She gave a little jerk and turned startled green eyes to him. “What’s happening now?”
“I’m taking you out of town.”
Her eyes darkened with suspicion. “To Wyoming?”
“No. We have to stay in Idaho.”
“But not here.”
He cupped her elbow in his palm, trying to ignore the way her warmth seeped into his bloodstream and settled in the center of his chest, the way it had always done, right from the start. He led her out into the hallway, away from the handful of police and technicians examining the hotel room for evidence. “You’re not safe here.”
She looked away. “I’m not safe anywhere.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked, tightening his grip on her elbow.
She pulled her arm from his grasp. “Just a feeling.”
“Not a memory?”
She met his gaze again. “Not a memory.”
“You don’t remember anything.”
She shook her head.
If she was faking, she was amazingly consistent about it. He’d watched her carefully over the past few hours as she dealt with the aftermath of her friend’s murder, and not once had she slipped.
He picked up the small suitcase filled with women’s clothes Hank Trent’s sister had brought for Jane, nodding for her to follow him to his room. He closed the door behind them and turned to look at her. She looked even more wary and pale. “Are you okay?”
She gave a brief nod.
He motioned toward the chair next to the bed. “Sit down before you fall down.”
She obeyed, tucking her feet up and wrapping her arms around her knees. She looked so much thinner than he remembered. Fragile, almost. A fist of tension formed in the center of his chest and he forced himself not to cross to her side and pull her into his arms.
Once, he’d have done so, without hesitation. But that time seemed like decades ago, not just a short, harrowing eight months. The woman he’d known in Canyon Creek had been an illusion.
He’d thought he could trust her, just like he’d thought he could trust his stepmother. Like he’d thought he could trust Rita. But they’d left him, just like the woman he’d known as Sandra.
Women couldn’t be trusted. He couldn’t let himself forget it.
“Where are you taking me?” Jane asked, her voice raspy.
“I don’t know. I thought we’d head to Boise and decide from there.”
“Why are you trying to protect me?” She turned her wide-eyed gaze on him again.
He swallowed a rush of pure, masculine desire and looked away. “It’s my job.”
“No, it’s Chief Trent’s job.”
“I need answers,” he admitted after a brief pause. “I need to know exactly what happened the day Tommy died.”
“I thought you already knew.”
A knock at the door kept him from having to say more. He found Hank Trent standing outside. “Just thought you’d want to know that the FBI resident agency in Idaho Falls has offered the services of a profiler on this case. I don’t have a good reason to say no.”
Probably not a bad idea to have a profiler on this, Joe had to admit, though he generally didn’t like the feds nosing around on a case he was working. But that would be Trent’s headache, not his. Joe turned to Jane. “You ready?”
She picked up the suitcase he’d set by the bed and squared her jaw. “Let’s do it.”
He shook Trent’s hand, promised to be in touch and led Jane down to the hotel parking lot.
CLINT SLOWLY approached the Chevy Silverado parked in the hotel lot, taking in the Wyoming plates. So Joe Garrison was in town.
“Guess you got the memo, too,” he murmured wryly. He should have figured. But the cowboy was out of luck this time. He could swagger around in his stupid hat and his Wrangler jeans, but it would make no difference. Clint was no steer to be wrangled into submission nor a horse to be broken. He wouldn’t let a two-bit hayseed hick keep him from getting what he came to Idaho to retrieve.
He stuck the device to the Silverado’s undercarriage, just behind the passenger door, and straightened, dusting off his hands and tugging at the folds of his dark trench coat. He slipped into the shadows as two people emerged from the hotel and headed for the parking lot.
From his hiding place behind a mud-splattered Dodge Durango, he watched Joe Garrison open the door for Jane and help her into the truck. What a gentleman. His lip curled in a sneer at the thought.
He let them drive away before he emerged from the shadows and crossed slowly to the Lexus he’d rented at the airport in Boise. He took his time, placing a call that would put the next phase of his plan into motion. Then he pulled out his palm-size computer and checked the status of the device he’d placed on Joe Garrison’s truck.
The signal was strong and clear.
He smiled.
“WHAT KIND of provisions can we find here?” Jane looked at the gas-station food mart, skeptical. They were about thirty minutes out of Trinity, still on the main highway to Boise.
“Food. Water. I thought we might find a couple of prepaid disposable cell phones to make it hard to trace any calls we have to make. I have a first-aid kit but it wouldn’t hurt to stock up on extra supplies—aspirin, antihistamine cream, antibiotic ointment—”
“Are we going to need those?”
“Be prepared.”
She couldn’t stop a soft giggle. “Should’ve known you were a Boy Scout.”
He looked up sharply. “You remember Boy Scouts?”
She frowned. “I guess I do. I mean, I know what they are. I think.”
She didn’t like the suspicion in his eyes as he studied her face. He made her feel like a chronic liar, the way he looked for subterfuge in everything she said or did. Was he that way with everyone? She supposed, being a cop, he had to be skeptical by nature, but she didn’t like being the focus of so much disbelief.
It made her wonder if she deserved it.
