Cowboy Alibi

Chapter Fifteen

Joe froze, pulling Jane to him, as he heard Clint Holbrook’s voice in the kitchen. “You haven’t even heard from your boss?”

“I told you about the call from Idaho,” Riley Patterson answered. “If I hear from them again, you’ll be the first person I contact.”

Their voices seemed closer. Joe glanced across the hall at the closet door. What did Riley keep in there? Coats? Cleaning supplies? He couldn’t remember, but he didn’t have time to think it through. He eased the door open, breathing a sigh of relief to find the tiny space mostly empty except for a couple of suede work coats and a small table piled high with extra blankets.

It was a tight fit, but it would do. He pushed Jane into the cramped closet and pulled the door almost closed.

A sliver of light from down the hallway was all the illumination they had, but it was enough for Joe to see the terror in Jane’s eyes. He stroked her hair, pressing his lips against her forehead to calm her, even though his own heart was galloping wildly. The scent of her filled the small space, spicy sweet and feminine. A shudder of pure masculine need ripped through him in response, but he tamped it down, his need to hear what Riley and Clint were saying taking precedence.

In the kitchen, Riley’s voice had taken on a note of frustration. “I’m sorry the trail went cold in Nevada, but I’m telling you, Joe hasn’t contacted me since he and the woman were in Boise a few days ago.”

“Would you tell me if he had?” Clint asked coolly.

“Are you suggesting I can’t be trusted?”

“Clint got to your friend,” Jane whispered, her voice little more than breath against his throat.

Joe shook his head, though the first glimmer of doubt was nagging at the back of his mind. Riley hadn’t been the same since Emily’s death, had he? He’d been working late, eating poorly, losing contact with all his old friends-

“It’s been a long day, Mr. Holbrook. I’d like to eat a little dinner and get some shut-eye. I’ll be in touch.” Riley’s boot falls rang on the tile floor. A moment later, the back door creaked open. “Good night.”

The door closed and for a moment there was only silence in the kitchen. Then Joe heard his friend mutter a string of curses he hadn’t heard since Riley broke his collarbone in a football game their senior year.

Now was the time he should open the closet and go tell his friend he was there. But he didn’t move, except to pull Jane’s body closer to his, tightening his arms around her to ease her wild trembling.

If he were the only person at risk, he’d take the chance that there was a good explanation for Riley’s involvement with Holbrook. But he wasn’t going to risk Jane’s life that way. They’d have to stay put, keep quiet and wait for Riley to settle down for the night. Then they could get out of here and figure out someone else who could help them work through the mess they were in.

He heard Riley’s footsteps on the kitchen tiles, restless and heavy. Then the sound of water running in the kitchen sink, followed by the clink of glass against metal. Riley was probably getting a glass of water-

The bowls, he realized with a start.

“We left the bowls in the dish rack,” Jane whispered.

Riley would notice. No matter how strangely he’d been acting over the past couple of years, he was still a good, observant cop. He’d know he hadn’t left a couple of extra bowls drying on the dish rack. Or the damp drying cloth on the sink counter.

Maybe he’d think they’d come and gone. Their bags were still outside Riley’s house, hidden behind a small clump of juniper bushes near the dilapidated storage shed behind the house.

He heard Riley’s boot steps moving down the hallway, getting closer. He held his breath until Riley passed, his footsteps fading as he entered the bedroom. The creak of bedsprings and twin thumps of his boots hitting the floor caught Joe by surprise. Maybe Riley hadn’t noticed the bowls in the dish rack after all.

Jane’s fingers curled into the fabric at the back of his shirt, pulling it tight. A soft twinge of pain in his side came and went quickly, eclipsed by the pounding pulse of adrenaline flooding his body. He listened carefully for further sounds, but beyond another soft creak of bedsprings, he heard nothing for several minutes.

Carefully, he pushed the closet door open a few inches, praying Riley had oiled the hinges recently. It moved noiselessly, to his relief. He stepped out first, Jane following. He closed the closet door again, stopping it just before it latched.

A faint light from the kitchen still glowed-not unusual, given the depth of darkness out here in the sticks so far from the lights of town. He usually left a light glowing somewhere in the house himself, to keep from banging a shin or stubbing a toe in the dark.

He kept one arm around Jane as he looked back toward the two bedrooms. The door to Riley’s room was open, but Joe couldn’t see the bed from his vantage point in the hallway, and he didn’t want to risk walking down the hall to check. He and Jane needed to get out of there now.

Walking on the balls of his feet to minimize the noise of his footsteps, he led Jane down the hall to the kitchen. They made it a few steps inside the warm room when the overhead light came on.

“Going somewhere?” Riley Patterson asked from behind them.

Joe whirled around, putting Jane safely behind him. Riley stood with his back flattened against the wall next to the refrigerator, his service weapon in his left hand and his right hand still on the light switch.

“I’m a careless housekeeper at best,” Riley drawled, “but even I know when there are extra dishes stacked up by my sink, Joe.” He looked behind Joe, his lips curving in a half smile. “Hey there, Sandy. Long time no see.”

Jane stepped out from behind Joe, keeping her fingers tightly twined in his. “I go by Jane now.”

Riley’s half smile widened. “So I hear. Still with the amnesia?”

“Some things are coming back,” she answered with a deliberate composure that almost hid the tremors Joe could still feel rippling through her body.

He tightened his grip on her hand. “We’re going now, Riley. Nobody has to know we were here.”

Riley’s eyes narrowed. “Are you afraid of me?”

“Well, I might feel better if you put the gun down.”

Riley looked down at the Glock still held at the ready in his left hand. He lowered it, tucking it into the back of his jeans. “Better?”

“Much,” Jane answered before Joe could say anything. “I’ve had enough guns pointed at me for a lifetime.”

Riley’s expression softened a bit. “I reckon you have at that.” He looked back at Joe. “I hear you got winged.”

“It’s nothing,” he answered. “I heard you talking to a killer.”

Riley’s eyebrows notched upward. “A killer?”

“The man you were talking to here earlier. Clint Holbrook.”

Riley frowned. “Agent Holbrook? You know him?”

“Agent Holbrook?” Joe asked.

“With the FBI,” Riley said.

“He’s lying to you,” Joe said. “That man killed a woman in Trinity, Idaho. I saw him kill two Idaho deputies with my own eyes. He shot at Jane and me. He followed us to Reno, Nevada, and sent two bullies to beat up Jane’s father. He’s no more an FBI agent than-”

“Riley’s right,” Jane interrupted.

Joe turned to look at her. “What?”

She looked up at him, her expression troubled. “Clint really is an FBI agent,” she said.

THE MEMORIES had come in a rush. The flash of the badge. The confident air. The knowing look he’d given her as he waited for her to acknowledge his presence.

It had been five days after her eighteenth birthday, and she had been waiting in line at the bus station in Reno, waiting to see how far the $372.00 in her pocket would get her.

He’d quietly come to stand by her, outside the line. She’d felt his interested gaze and finally turned to look at him, and that’s when he’d showed her the badge.

“He said he’d had his eye on me for a while,” she told Joe and Riley, her shaking hands tearing strips out of a paper napkin on the table in front of her.

“Why?” Riley asked, returning to the table with a couple cups of coffee. He set one in front of Joe and slid the other across the table to Jane.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “It’s just a piece of a memory. I don’t know what happened next.”

“Maybe he lied to you, too,” Joe suggested.

“Joe, I checked him out as soon as he showed up a few days ago,” Riley said. “He’s who he says he is. The Denver field office confirmed he’s a profiler who usually works out of headquarters in D.C. Denver claims Holbrook happened to be in Idaho on vacation when he heard about the murder in Trinity, and he called the Denver office to set things into motion to offer his services as a profiler.”

“He played his own people, in other words,” Joe said.

“That would be my guess,” Riley agreed.

“Why did you hang up on me when I called from Boise?” Joe asked, his expression still a little wary as he looked at his old friend. Tension radiated from him, contagious. It made Jane’s stomach hurt.

“Holbrook sent an agent from the Jackson Hole resident agency to babysit me until he could get here. The guy was walking in just as you called.” Riley gave Joe a pointed look. “I was hoping you’d call me at home.”

“I couldn’t risk it.” Joe glanced at Jane. She met his gaze, remembering their whirlwind tour of Boise as they tried to shake Clint and the Idaho authorities off their trail and make it to Reno unscathed.

“Why’d you come back, then?”

Joe turned his gaze back to Riley. “Because I needed help from people I trust. That’s you, isn’t it?”

Riley looked hurt. “God, Joe, how can you even ask that after all these years?”

“We’ve been shot at, framed and chased all over Reno,” Joe responded, his voice tight. “Trust is a bit of a problem for me at the moment.”

“You can trust me. I swear that on Emily’s memory.”

Joe’s eyes grew bright with emotion. He reached out and clasped his friend’s arm. “I know. I just needed to hear you say it.”

“Whatever help you want, you’ve got it,” Riley promised. “What do you have in mind?”

“Right now, I need a new base of operations. Somewhere nobody would think to find me.” He glanced at Jane. “I think I might know the place.”

Riley’s eyes shifted from Joe’s face to Jane’s and back. A hint of a smile touched his mouth. “Old Curt’s place up in the hills?”

Joe nodded. “Nobody would connect me to your great-grandfather’s old hunting cabin. And you can’t get there except by foot or horseback.”

“Horseback?” Jane asked.

Both men looked at her.

“Do I know how to ride?” she asked.

BY NINE o’clock, Joe and Jane were heading into an icy rain as they wound their way up Sawyer’s Rise. Riley had supplied them with oilskin ponchos for the ride, but the brisk wind drove rain into every available opening, leaving them both soaked before they were halfway up the mountain.

The borrowed Glock 9mm lay heavily in the holster tucked into the back of Joe’s jeans. It was a strangely comforting feeling, having it there, even though Joe hadn’t used his own service weapon more than once or twice in his career as a cop.

Livestock thieves he could usually handle without resorting to gunplay. Clint Holbrook was a different animal altogether.

Over the soft moan of the wind, Joe heard a rattling sound. He turned his flashlight toward Jane and saw her teeth chattering in the cold. She clung to the reins with white-knuckled fists, her thighs clamped tightly to Bella’s sides as the chestnut mare picked her way up the rocky incline. Realizing the light was on her instead of the path ahead, she turned her head and squinted at him.

“Almost there,” Joe called.

“Damned good thing,” she said flatly.

He grinned and turned the flashlight back to the path, urging his own horse, Jazz, up the narrow trail with a murmured command and a squeeze of his knees against the gelding’s sides.

Within a half hour, they reached the top of the rise, where Riley’s great-grandfather Curtis Patterson had cut a small clearing to build his hunting cabin. It was a good bit more primitive than the cabin he and Jane had shared in Idaho, but it was shelter, with an electric generator, a water pump, a large fireplace and a wood-burning stove. A small horse shed behind the cabin would shelter the horses for the night in relative warmth.

“I’ll settle the horses,” he told Jane as they dismounted in front of the cabin’s wooden porch. “The place is unlocked-nobody comes up here but Riley and me.” He took the reins from her icy hands and nodded toward the cabin door. “Go on in and see if you can get a fire started. I’ll be inside in a second.”

He led the horses to the shelter and tied them in two of the shed’s four stalls. Riley had been up there recently, he noticed with relief. There was fresh hay in the stalls and a large plastic barrel full of fresh horse feed. He gave each of the animals a rub down and made sure their beds were warm and dry before he gave them a little feed and some water, forcing himself not to skimp on attention to the horses just because he wanted to get back to the cabin where Jane was waiting.

Would she remember this place? Pieces of her lost memory were coming back to her, more and more every day. And the cabin was special to them.

Would Jane remember why?

JANE STRIPPED to her underwear and hung her clothes on the back of a chair in front of the cold fireplace. For the second time tonight she was soaking wet, but the quick shower at Riley’s house had been a tropical vacation compared to the drenching she’d received on the ride up the mountain.

She was relieved to see someone had already left the makings of the next fire, with two fat logs and several kindling twigs already piled up, ready to use. Now she just had to find the matches.

Shivering, she wrapped a blanket around herself then searched the cabin until she spotted a small alcove that appeared to serve as a kitchenette. Scrabbling through the drawers, she found a box of matches and carried them back to the fireplace.

A strange sensation prickled the skin on the back of her neck as she opened the box of matches and withdrew one. This place seemed…familiar. In some ways, it was not so very different from the nicer cabin belonging to Angela Carlyle’s family in Idaho. Rough plank floors, sturdy pine window frames, a stone fireplace instead of brick.

But the Carlyle place was just that. A place.

This cabin was a memory. Elusive, just out of reach.

She tried not to force it. That never worked. Instead, she struck the match she’d removed from the box and turned toward the fireplace.

The outside door opened, letting in a blast of cold, damp air along with Joe. He stopped in the doorway, staring at her for a moment. Then he shut the door behind him and walked toward her, his pace unhurried. His gaze moved over her body, as tangible as a touch.

Her heart rate tripled in the time it took for him to reach her. He took the match from her hand just as its heat began to reach her fingertips and tossed it into the fireplace. The kindling caught fire, shooting off sparks and light.

He moved away from her, stripping off his wet jacket. Jane forced her gaze away from him, reaching for the hurricane lamp sitting on the mantel over the growing fire.

She found a wick trimmer sitting beside it on the mantel and set about lighting the lamp, wondering how and when she learned such a skill. Had it been here, in this cabin? Had Joe taught her?

She thought maybe he had.

She turned to look at him. Her breath caught. He stood closer than she thought, close enough to touch. Stripped to his damp jeans, his rain-slick body glistening in the warm glow of the fire, he seemed like a creature formed from the fabric of her deepest fantasies. Elemental, masculine and hers for the taking.

“I’ll get the sheets for the beds,” Joe said, his voice ragged.

“No, let me,” she said, forcing her reluctant body toward the tall pine armoire standing at the foot of the closest bed. She had already opened it and taken out a set of sheets before she realized that she’d known exactly where to find the linens.

She turned back to the bed, afraid to let herself look at Joe, not yet ready for the trickle of memories to become an inundating flood that would wash her away. Clinging to her control like a shield, she returned to the bed slowly, stripping back the thin dustcover protecting the mattress, and started to make the bed.

She heard Joe’s approach, slow steady footfalls across the plank floor. The heat of his body warmed the chilly air, the sensation bringing with it a steady stream of images racing through her mind. A crackling fire spreading light and warmth. Soft sheets beneath her back. Joe’s body, hard and beautiful and relentless over her, driving her to the edge of madness and beyond. Her soft growls of release, echoed by his as they fought for every last ounce of pleasure.

Were those really memories? Or were they fantasies, her secret longings come to life in her imagination?

She finished making the bed and turned to face Joe, trembling. His eyes were wide and dark with an emotion that answered her questions.

“You’re remembering,” he said softly.