Cowboy Alibi

She opened the desk drawer. A manila folder lay inside, thick with papers. Taking a deep breath, she pulled out the folder, careful to keep the contents from spilling, and laid it on the laptop.

She pulled up a chair and started scanning the papers. Many were faxes from police departments—Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas—with responses to a request for information about someone named Sandra Dorsey. Caucasian female, midtwenties, five-seven, green eyes, brown hair.

Jane looked up at the mirror over the dresser by the desk. Frightened green eyes stared back at her.

She scanned the faxes for more information. After a few seconds, the rest of the truth became clear. All of the faxes were addressed to Chief Garrison of the Canyon Creek, Wyoming, Police Department.

Chief Joe Garrison.

The cowboy was a cop.

JOE CHECKED his watch. One-fifteen, just as the message had specified. He hadn’t figured she’d choose a rendezvous point so close to where she lived, but Trinity, Idaho, wasn’t Boise. Everything was close to everything else in a place with only five hundred residents.

Besides, the woman he’d been chasing for months was savvy enough to stick to familiar territory, where she knew all the shortcuts and secret hiding places. She was nothing if not resourceful, or she’d never have evaded him this long.

The Trinity Police Department had cooperated once Joe flashed his badge and briefed them on the case he was working. He’d left out a few details, such as his relationship to the deceased—and to the suspect, short-lived as it had been. But what he’d provided had been enough to ensure that the Trinity police gave him the information he needed to find Sandra’s apartment.

Not Sandra, he reminded himself, his mouth tightening into a scowl. Sandra Dorsey was a mirage. Might as well stop thinking of her as a real person.

She was no more real than Jane Doe.

Jane lived in a one-bedroom unit above a hardware store on one of four cross streets intersecting Main. Alliance Park sat directly across the street.

She liked places like that, Joe remembered. She liked bare grass beneath her toes. Fresh air, warm sunshine—

He ruthlessly cut off the images racing through his mind and focused on the job he’d come here to do. He wasn’t here to relive a past that he now knew had never been anything more than another of her lies.

He stood inside the hardware store, faking interest in the boxes of nails on the shelf in front of him. Just behind the shelves, the wide picture window gave him an unencumbered view of the park, while the mirror effect of the bright sunshine outside and the relatively darkened interior of the story would hide him from view.

He didn’t trust “Jane” to play fairly, especially if she was faking her amnesia. He wasn’t about to walk into one of her traps.

He moved slowly up and down the aisle, pretending to read the box descriptions, while the minutes ticked further from their agreed-upon meeting time. By one-thirty, he was beginning to draw the attention of the store employees, but still Jane Doe hadn’t shown.

Where the hell was she?

JANE APPROACHED her apartment building from the rear, trying to keep her pace unhurried despite the panic rising like bile in her throat. Angela had shown her how to get inside using the fire escape one day a few weeks ago, when she’d accidentally locked herself out of the apartment. The fire escape landing on the second floor was right outside Angela’s bedroom window, which she almost never locked. Not in a place like Trinity.

Jane had thought her roommate was crazy to take such a chance, though she couldn’t articulate why. Maybe in her former life, she’d lived in some high-crime district.

Right now, she was glad for a way to get into the apartment without going through the front entrance. The last thing she wanted was to run into Joe Garrison, and there was no way she’d be able to sneak past him. The whole park had a wide-open view of the hardware store.

She took the back steps two at a time and hit the fire-escape ladder running, wincing at the clang of metal against metal as the ladder took her weight. She scrambled up quickly to the landing and pushed open the window, once again grimacing as the aged wood screeched in protest. Slipping as she crawled through the window, she landed gracelessly at the foot of the bed. She looked up, expecting the noise to have brought Angela running.

But her friend didn’t appear in the open doorway.

She headed to the living room, stopping short as she caught sight of the spilled bag of groceries lying on the floor in front of the door. “Angie?”

Only silence answered.

She remained still, listening. An odd smell caught her attention. Metallic.

She forced herself to move, edging toward the tiny alcove kitchen. As she stepped into the darkened room, the metallic smell hit her anew. Fear gripped her, cold and darkly familiar, but her mind rebelled against whatever vestige of memory was trying to fight its way to the front of her mind. She turned to run away but her foot slipped from under her and she went down, hitting hard on her side.

She felt something wet beneath her hands. Shaking her hair from her eyes, she saw her roommate’s still, bloody body lying tucked up next to the breakfast bar.

She opened her mouth to scream but couldn’t find the air for it. A sharp pain lanced through her side.

Then, over the roar of blood pounding in her head, a soft creak behind her made her go still with terror.

“Welcome home, baby.”

Chapter Two

Black flecks danced in front of her eyes as she tried to take a breath. The flecks grew and joined others in a frightening rush, and Jane struggled to sit up, fighting off the darkness.

She drew a deep breath and her vision cleared.

She wished it hadn’t.

There was blood everywhere. It covered the faded tile of the kitchenette like spilled milk, pooling in the uneven places and crisscrossing the grout. In contrast, Angela’s face was a waxy white, her eyes half-closed, unseeing.

A low noise rumbled from Jane’s chest into her throat.

“I didn’t want to do it. She wasn’t supposed to be here.” The voice behind her was low. Male. Smooth and modulated, with a neutral accent she couldn’t place.

Jane tried to make herself turn and look at the speaker, but she couldn’t move.

“It’s time to go, sweetheart.” The voice was right behind her. Something soft and smothering whipped down over her head, and her vision went dark again. Strong arms wrapped around her, dragging her to her feet.

The urge to survive overcame the lethargy of grief and she kicked back hard against her captor’s solid form, but he held on tight. She kicked again, making solid contact with his shin. With satisfaction, she heard his grunt of pain and redoubled her efforts.

She managed to free herself and ripped at the cloth covering her face. A pillowcase, she realized, tossing it aside as she raced for the door.

He caught her as she grabbed for the door handle. “No, baby. Shh. Shh.” His arms tightened around her, pulling her back against his body. She felt his pulse racing against her shoulder blades. He was breathing hard from the exertion, and she forced down the panic flooding her system. Panic would only weaken her. She had to stay alert. Stay focused. Find his weakness.

She made herself relax in his arms, listening to his breathing, alert to the softening of his grip as she stopped resisting.

His hand smoothed her hair back from where it had fallen in her face. “That’s better, baby. See? It’s time to go home, sweetheart. You know that. You have something I need.”

His voice sounded familiar and foreign at the same time. Confidence tinged every word he spoke. He was a man used to getting his way, unaccustomed to opposition.

She made herself turn slowly in his arms to face him. Hard blue eyes stared down at her from a handsome, even-featured face. A sandy brown mustache and beard covered the lower half of his face. From a distance, it might look real, but as close as she was, she could see that it was a disguise. What she could see of his hair beneath a navy-blue Boise State baseball cap looked to be sandy as well, lighter than the beard.

He wore a black long-sleeved T-shirt and black jeans. Close up, she could see darker spots that were almost certainly Angela’s blood. Her stomach convulsed, and she swallowed hard to keep the bile from rising in her throat.

She forced herself to meet his eyes again. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“Home,” he said.