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When Bert unlocked the door to the holding room, she followed him inside. A soft snore greeted them.
The stranger was sound asleep on the sofa, his bucket of change balanced on his stomach, rising and falling with each breath.
“At least he isn’t climbing the walls,” Bert muttered under his breath, then called to the detained customer. “Sir? Sir? It’s time to go. Rise and shine.”
The stranger awoke at once, grabbed the bucket before it toppled and rose to a sitting position. “What’s up?”
“You can go,” Bert told him. “Do you remember where you’re staying?”
“Sure. Here. Room 2008.” He pulled the card key from his pocket as if to prove it.
“Good. The elevator is this way.”
The stranger spotted her hovering behind the security guard. His smile was quick and delighted. Dazzling. His eyes were a deep, true blue, his hair dark, a little long and enticingly tousled as it swept over his forehead in a deep wave. An odd tension filled her when he looked her way.
“Hi, cousin,” he said.
“Sorry, I’m not your cousin.”
Had she not learned to be skeptical of people’s motives, she might have believed he thought she really was his cousin. There was an engaging openness and confidence about the stranger, as if he knew where he belonged and was content in that knowledge. She could envy him that.
For the briefest moment, the despair and sense of vulnerability, of always being held hostage to the whims of a dark fate, loomed over her. She felt utterly alone in the world.
Poor little lonely one, she mocked the self-pity. She had an aunt and a cousin, not that they were close, but still, they existed. She had a brother, but she didn’t know where he was or even if he was dead or alive.
As an undercover agent with the FBI, Adam had important work to do, work that often put him in danger and out of immediate contact. She’d learned to be self-sufficient.
“You have the scar,” the stranger said.
The flesh on her thigh tingled. “I’ve had that since I was a child.”
“I know. Since you were three,” he said.
Honey’s mouth gaped. How had he known that?
“It’s time to go,” Bert interjected, checking the time, then moving toward the door. “Do you need help getting to your room?”
“No, thanks.” The stranger turned his probing gaze back to her. “Are you off work now?”
She nodded warily.
“Good. We need to talk.” He pulled on his boots and rose in one fluid motion, standing a good six inches over Bert. “How about something to eat? Your friend can join us.” He pointed to the security guard.
“I’m going home,” Bert said in no uncertain terms.
“Me, too.” She edged toward the door.
The stranger frowned, then reached into his back pocket and brought out his wallet. To her surprise, he showed them a badge. “Zackary Nicholas Dalton,” he introduced himself.
Bert studied the badge. “You’re a deputy sheriff? From Idaho?”
“Right. I had official business here, which is finished. I’d planned to start home in the morning, uh, this morning.” He spoke to her. “I really need to talk to you before I go. This is serious.”
Seeing Bert check the time again, Honey shook her head. “I’m beat. And I’m not your cousin.”
“You could be. Do you remember where you were born? Or who your parents were?”
His words gave her pause. She and Adam had been orphaned when she was three and her brother thirteen. Their father had been killed in a bar shoot-out through no fault of his own; he and a friend happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Two years later their mother had died of a rare antibiotic-resistant pneumonia.
“Well?” the lawman demanded.
“Of course I do,” she said firmly.
“Are they alive?”
She stopped, startled by the question, her eyes locking with the stranger’s.
“Ah,” he said, reading her correctly. “They’re not.”
“That…that doesn’t mean anything.”
“Do you remember them?” the deputy persisted.
“Not my father, but I remember my mother. I do,” she said when he raised straight dark eyebrows over skeptical eyes. “A few things.”
“How old were you when she died?”
Honey nearly answered, but stopped in time. Her past was none of this man’s business.
Bert gestured impatiently. “Let’s go.” He ushered them from the holding room, slammed the door, then gazed at her in uncertainty.
“Go home,” she told the guard. “I’ll be fine.”
“Where can we talk?” the visiting deputy asked, blocking her escape with the hand holding the bucket of quarters.
“We can’t.” She hurried after the guard. “Leave me alone, or I’ll call security again.”
“Listen, I know this sounds weird, but my cousin really does have a three-pointed scar on her leg. She fell on broken glass when she was three. A few months later she was taken from the scene of a car wreck. That was shortly before her fourth birthday.”
“Taken?”
“Kidnapped. Her mother died in the wreck on a lonely stretch of highway. Some pervert took the child.”
Honey was aghast. “How long ago was this?”
“Twenty-two years. Tink would be twenty-six her next birthday. How old are you?”
A wave of panic rushed over her, as if she might indeed be this long-lost cousin, as if her own past had been a lie. She shook off the idea. “Twenty-five, but I’m not the person you’re looking for.” She heard the note of desperation in her voice. Her life was complicated enough without having to deal with this man’s search for his cousin. “I’m not. Really. It’s impossible.”
“Uncle Nick had a heart attack,” the deputy told her, sorrow darkening his eyes. “He kept muttering about Tink while he was unconscious. The family—I have twin brothers and three cousins—decided to try to find her. Are you sure about your past?”
“Well…yes. I’m sorry about your uncle,” she said sincerely.
“Yeah, he’s the greatest,” he said, his eyes looking her over as if searching for some truth that should be evident. “He took in six orphans and raised us as his own. Even after losing his wife and child, his care for us never faltered, not once.”
His tale was similar to her own story, yet so different. As orphans, she and Adam had lived with their only relative, an aunt who had never wanted them and had never let them forget it. Honey sighed and blocked the thought.
“I’m really sorry. I have to go.” She hurried off, leaving the handsome stranger watching her with a thoughtful look in his gorgeous blue eyes.
At her one-room studio apartment, she prepared for bed, aware of the weariness that seemed to pulsate from every bone in her body. Clomping around in stiletto heels for several hours was extremely tiring. She hated the smoke and noise of the casino, too. In fact, there was very little she enjoyed about her life at the moment.
For some reason, the image of the handsome lawman came to her—the confidence of his smile, the humor in his eyes, the love he obviously had for his uncle. She sensed an innate integrity in him, the same as her brother had, and kindness…
Unexpected tears burned her eyes, startling her. Good heavens, she really was going off the deep end since encountering the deputy with the heavenly eyes.
Ah, well, this, too, would pass. Besides, she wasn’t normally a crybaby. Neither tears nor wishes had ever changed a thing in her life.
After brushing her teeth, she got out her laptop computer and checked her e-mails.
Her breath stopped momentarily when she saw the coded one from her brother. She quickly opened the mail, which appeared to be an advertisement of an upcoming sale. The date and hours of the sale were a reference to the time her brother would call. That he used this method of contact meant he was in deep, deep cover and in danger.
And so was she.
No matter what happened she wouldn’t return to a “safe” house. She’d lived there just before leaving L.A. Being “safe” had been the same as being in prison—no visitors, no calls, no going out.
No, thanks.
Her aunt’s favorite punishment had been to lock her and Adam in the bedroom and leave them for hours. As a child, Honey had often worried that they would be forgotten. Adam had told her they had to be brave, so she’d learned to conceal the fear. But it had been scary.
She closed her eyes as the memories swamped her with the old familiar anguish. After a moment she resolutely shook off the despair. Adam could take care of himself. She could do the same. No one would ever associate a bleached-blond waitress with the real Hannah Smith.
No! She couldn’t think of herself as Hannah Smith. She was using a fake name with a fake ID. For now and the foreseeable future, she was Honey Carrington.
The deputy was waiting at the service entrance when Honey arrived for work at six the next evening. She hesitated when she saw him, recalling a movie about a stalker she’d recently seen on TV.
“It’s okay,” he said, smiling and holding up his hands. “I’m harmless. I wondered if we could talk.”
“I thought you were on your way home.”
He gave her a smile. “Well, the best-laid plans and all that.” He fell into step beside her. “Do you have time for a cup of coffee?”
She clenched her hands as indecision ate at her. Her brother had called. He wanted her in a safe house on the East Coast. She’d refused. He’d been furious with her.
His cover had been blown a month ago. That was why she’d had to give up her position with the dance troupe that had brought her from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to perform at the casino theater and take on the disguise as a waitress.
In a scandal that appeared to be larger than the Rampart case, the FBI had been called in by the LAPD chief of Internal Affairs to infiltrate a police crime ring. Her brother had drawn the assignment.
Now the gang knew of her and wanted to use her to force Adam into the open, according to his contact within the rogue-cop group. He had warned her succinctly of what would happen if either of them was found.
Naturally she would do whatever it took to protect her brother. The stranger was a cop, but far removed from the L.A. crime scene. He offered the perfect escape. Did she dare take it?
Adam thought she should. He’d checked out the deputy and found him to be legit. Apparently the Daltons were a very respected ranching family that went back for generations, according to Adam’s research, which he’d reported to her an hour ago.
If she wouldn’t accept protection, then she should go where no one would easily find her. Who, Adam had argued, would think to look for her in Idaho? He’d made a good point. She’d thought of little else during her time off.
“Yes, I have a few minutes,” she said to the deputy, putting off the moment when she had to make the difficult decision.
“Can you find the coffee shop? I seem to go around in circles here.”
She had to smile. “The casino’s designed that way. You have to go past the slots and gaming tables to get anywhere else.” She led the way to the café. “Tell me about your cousin,” she said when they were seated.
“There isn’t much to tell. She disappeared when she was three and a half from a car wreck, which killed her mother. Tink was nowhere to be found when help arrived.”
“Maybe she wandered away and got lost,” Honey said. A vision of the child roaming dazed and confused through a dark forest, perhaps searching for her father, flashed on her mental screen. Sympathy stirred in her.
He shrugged. “All we know for sure is that someone else was at the site. The cops found tire tracks and boot prints, a child’s prints next to them. A man in a pickup had come through town that morning. He stopped for gas. The station owner recalled his license plate was from California. How did you get the scar on your leg?”
Honey blinked at the change in subject. “My aunt said my cousin pushed me and I fell on a broken bottle.”
“Your aunt?”
Honey nodded, her mind still on the little girl who had disappeared. She knew what it was like to feel lost and bewildered. Abandoned. It was a scary thing for a child.
“What happened to your parents?” he demanded, leaning forward over the table to stare at her intently.
“They died.”
“How? When?”
“My father was accidentally shot in a bar. My mother got sick a couple of years later. It was a long time ago,” she said to forestall the questions she could see coming. “I wasn’t quite four. I don’t remember anything except my mother left for the hospital and never came back.”
“The woman who said she was your aunt—”
“She is my aunt.”
“Does she have children?”
Honey tried to figure out what he was driving at. “A son. He’s six years older than I am. Aunt May couldn’t have more children.”
“Hmm,” the deputy said as if this was significant.
“What?”
“What if she wanted another child, a little girl to complete her family? What if she was willing to pay?” the deputy asked earnestly.
Honey kept a straight face. Her aunt had hated having her and her brother in the house. She’d hated spending any money on them, even though she got a check from welfare each month to support the two orphans.
“I don’t think that’s likely,” she told him wryly, wishing she had been the loved and wanted little girl his words described, wishing she could have had a family like this man apparently had. If wishes were wings…
