Mistaken Identity

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“Pack enough to get you through the next few days.”

“Let’s try this again. You’ve got the wrong woman.”

“Is that so? Then where’s the right one?”

“She’s…she’s safe.”

He crossed the room in three swift strides. Lauren felt her heart thud against her ribs as a suddenly, startlingly dangerous man towered over her.

“Where is she? With Jannisek?”

“No!”

“How do you know?”

Lauren decided not to reveal the fact that she had a phone tucked in her purse. “I just do.”

“So you’ve been stringing me along here, is that it?”

He looked so fierce, she almost caved and told him she’d sent Becky to Aunt Jane’s. But Lauren wasn’t going to offer her sister up as anyone’s sacrificial goat. Her mouth clamped shut.

Another silence stretched between them. Henderson finally broke it, his eyes like chips of ice.

“Pack what you’ll need for a few days,” he ordered again.

“But…!”

“If you’re Becky Smith, you’re not safe here. If you’re not Becky Smith, you’re still not safe here. We have to assume the guys looking for your boyfriend are looking for her, too. They might make the same mistake in identities you say I did.”

Lauren was beginning to appreciate how Alice in Wonderland must have felt after tumbling down the rabbit hole. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore—except that the idea of spending the next few days in the protective custody of Special Agent Henderson sent a nervous ripple across her skin.

“I’ll get my car,” he informed her tersely. “Meet me out back in five minutes.”

He turned away, took two strides, swung back again.

“If you’re thinking about trying to run out the front door, don’t. I’d be on you like mud on a mustang before you got a half a block.”

Lauren’s back teeth ground together. “I’m going to say this one more time. You’re making a mistake.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Still fuming, she listened to his footsteps retreat down the hall. Only after her anger cooled did the awful reality of the situation sink in. The idea that some thugs might be searching for her sister left a sick feeling in Lauren’s stomach.

Poor Becky! She’d have to stay in hiding indefinitely. Unless…

Unless someone drew the dogs off her scent. Someone like her sister.

Lauren gulped. Marsh Henderson had mistaken her for Becky. Others often did, too. Maybe…maybe she could stand in for Becky. Take Henderson up on his offer of protection while his associates hunted down this mobster who was supposedly after her boyfriend.

Biting on a fingernail, she tried desperately to think of other options. There weren’t any that she could see. With a sigh of resignation, she dug in her purse for her cell phone again. Every beat of her heart sounded like thunder in her ears as she punched in her assistant’s home number. He answered on the third ring.

“Josh, this is Lauren.”

“Are you home?”

“No. I’m in Phoenix.”

“I take it Becky’s in a jam again.”

“Sort of. I need you to wire her two hundred dollars. Send it in care of Joe’s Joint, Gallup, New Mexico.”

“What’s she doing in Gallup? No, let me guess. She’s taken up with a trucker this time.”

Lauren let the caustic remark pass without comment. Josh still hadn’t recovered from the time Becky had seduced him into a brief affair during one of her intermittent stays with Lauren. Beck had breezed off again a week later with a smile and a wave. Josh hadn’t quite reached the smiling stage yet.

“Just wire the money, okay?”

“Okay, okay. Anything else?”

Lauren clenched the phone. “Yes. Cancel my appointments for the next few days.”

“What?” His squawk jumped across the air-waves. “You’ve got that meeting with the museum director tomorrow afternoon! You know how important that is. And we promised some prototype note cards to the Breckinridge Group by Friday, remember?”

“I know.”

She thought furiously. She’d spent hours on various sketches that incorporated world-famous art with the stag antlers that symbolized the equally world-famous Breckinridge Resort. Josh could start the process that would transform her sketches into polished products.

“I’ve worked up a dozen or so preliminary designs for the Breckinridge account. Scan them into the computer tomorrow and start working the color screens, will you? I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

“As soon as you can?” Disgust rippled through Josh’s voice. “What the heck kind of mess has your twit of a sister left for you to clean up this time?”

“I can’t explain now. I’ve got to go.”

He was still grumbling when Lauren flipped the phone shut and dropped it back in her tote.

Now what?

She toyed briefly with the idea of calling a lawyer. Unfortunately, she didn’t know an attorney other than the one who’d handled her divorce three years ago.

She was on her own with Henderson, who still didn’t know whether she was Becky or not. The next few days could prove prickly at best, downright uncomfortable at worst.

Reluctantly, she crossed the room and pulled some tops, an Arizona Suns T-shirt and another pair of jeans from a jumble of clean laundry. They wouldn’t fit in her tote, so she stuffed them in a canvas bag sporting the logo of the Hard Bodies Gym and Sports Facility she found in Becky’s closet. A foray into her sister’s underwear drawer resulted in a handful of thong panties and matching demi-bras. Grimacing, Lauren dumped them in with the jeans and tops. Luckily, she’d packed a toothbrush and a few toiletries in her tote before she’d left Denver. She was just adding a pair of sneakers to the gym bag when Henderson’s voice rang out.

“Ready?”

As ready as she’d ever be, she thought glumly. Hefting the bags, she left the bedroom. At the sight of Marsh Henderson striding toward her, she stopped short.

He’d pulled on a suede vest lined with curly sheep’s wool. A black Stetson shadowed his eyes and cheeks, already darkened with a day’s growth of beard. He looked big and tough—and a whole lot more like an outlaw than a sheriff.

“I’ve got someone coming to repair the front door,” he informed her. “We’ll go out the back.”

When he reached for the gym bag and took it out of Lauren’s hands, she had the uncomfortable feeling she’d just relinquished more than a change of clothes. Nerves prickling, she paced ahead of him into the yard. A million stars spangled the sky, but the black velvet night had a cool desert bite to it that made her shiver under her light linen jacket.

A mud-splashed sports utility vehicle rumbled like a nervous beast in the driveway separating the two houses. It was one of those big jobs, and obviously more than just a showy gas guzzler. This monster came equipped with a wrap-around bush guard, fog lamps and a high-powered spotlight bolted to the driver’s side.

Henderson opened the passenger door and tossed the gym bag over the high-backed front seat. Impatience radiated from him in almost palpable waves as he waited for her to climb in.

She approached the vehicle with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. “Where are we going?”

“Given your boyfriend’s connections…”

“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s Becky’s. Or he was, until he got her into this mess.”

“Given Jannisek’s connections,” Henderson amended without a blink, “I decided it was best to get you out of the area.”

“How far out of the area?”

“I’ve arranged a safe house on a ranch up around Flagstaff.”

As best Lauren remembered, the northern Arizona city was a hundred plus miles north of Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs. That meant two or more hours closed in this vehicle with Marsh Henderson, and who knew how many days with him on some ranch.

Praying she was doing the right thing, she pulled herself up onto the high step and dropped into the leather seat.

The passenger door closed with a thud.

Chapter 4

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.