Cowboy Alibi

Jane Doe looked at Chief Trent. “Who is this man?”

She didn’t say it like someone who wanted an answer, Joe realized. She knew who he was already.

So she did remember.

Anger burned in his gut, mingling with the black coffee he’d drunk at the River Lodge Diner. He was beginning to regret skipping breakfast and lunch.

“Chief Garrison is here in Trinity because of you, Ms. Doe. Says you’re his prime suspect in a murder in Canyon Creek. Ever been to Canyon Creek?”

When she turned her eyes to meet Joe’s gaze, a zing of energy caught him by surprise. Even pale and wary, as she was now, she still possessed the vibrancy he’d noticed the first time he set eyes on her a year ago.

He hated himself for still feeling it.

“Where’s Canyon Creek?” she asked.

“Wyoming,” Joe answered.

“I hear Wyoming’s pretty.”

Hank Trent shot a glare at Joe. “I hate to interrupt the travelogue—”

“You spent almost a year in Canyon Creek, Wyoming,” Joe continued, ignoring Trent. “You worked for a rancher there. Thomas Blake.”

He watched closely for her reaction. Her gaze didn’t drop, but he could see her mind working behind those soft green eyes. Was she remembering Tommy’s laughter-lined face? The way he could make people feel like family the second he met them?

Was she remembering his body, slumped and still on the stable floor, drenched in the river of crimson flowing from the three bullet holes in his chest?

“We’re getting off track here,” Hank Trent said firmly. “Chief, unless you’d rather wait outside—”

Joe sat back, knowing he’d crossed a line. This was Trent’s territory, and Joe had just trampled all over it. That was no way to make allies of the locals.

And like it or not, he needed allies on this one. He had only the spottiest of evidence against Sandra Dorsey or Jane Doe or whatever the hell her name really was.

But he knew, gut-deep, she was involved with Tommy’s murder right down to her pretty little toes.

JANE TUCKED her knees up to her chest, trying to stop crying. Beneath her, the cot was wobbly and hard, but they’d finally let her shower and change into clean clothes. The jail-issued T-shirt and jeans were too large, but at least they weren’t covered with Angela’s blood.

She closed her eyes tight against the fresh flood of despair. Angie. Why had he killed her? Just because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time?

My fault, she thought, rocking back and forth. The mustached man had been there looking for her, not Angie.

It’s time to go home, sweetheart. That’s what he’d said. Home. Was he her husband? Her brother?

No. Not a brother. His gaze had made her feel naked. Exposed. As if he knew everything there was to know about her, inside and out.

What kind of monster had she brought into this sleepy little town?

Footsteps approached her cramped holding cell and came to a stop. Jane forced herself to open her burning eyes, dashing away her tears with her knuckles. Joe Garrison stood just outside her cell, gazing through the bars at her with an expression as intense and knowing as that of the mustached man who’d been waiting in her apartment.

When it became clear he had no intention of speaking first, she asked, “Who are you?”

“You know exactly who I am.”

She pushed off the cot and crossed to the bars. He was several inches taller than she was, forcing her to crane her neck to meet his hard gaze. “I know your name. Now I know your job. But I don’t know you.”

“You’re really good, you know?” He raised his arms and gripped the bars over her head, leaning toward her. He seemed to fill all the space in the narrow cell, even though he remained outside. “Even I can’t tell if you’re lying about not remembering.”

Jane gripped the bars in front of her, trying not to let his imposing presence shake her. “Even you?”

His smile was an awful thing. “We go back a ways, Jane. Or is it Sandra?”

Sandra Dorsey, she thought, remembering the name on the papers in Joe’s hotel room. “Maybe it’s Sandra. I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“That’s convenient.” His tight smile widened but grew no warmer. “But unfortunately for you, I don’t think it’ll be a convincing defense.”

“Defense for what?” she asked, not sure she wanted to know the answer.

Joe leaned forward, his face pressed between the bars. “Eight months ago, in Canyon Creek, Wyoming, you killed my brother.”

Chapter Three

Jane’s face blanched. She backed away from the bars, groping behind her for the cot, and sat with a graceless thud on the lumpy mattress. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

“How do you know?” Joe asked, unsurprised by how guileless she sounded. The woman he’d known as Sandra Dorsey had raised sincerity to an art form.

“I couldn’t,” she insisted, her voice ragged. “I know I couldn’t.”

The uncertainty in her voice caught him flat-footed. He lowered his voice to a sympathetic murmur. “You don’t really know what you would or wouldn’t do, do you? Since you don’t remember who you are or what life you’ve lived.”

She looked down at her hands, clasping them together to stop their nervous twisting. “I just wouldn’t,” she muttered stubbornly.

“I’ve asked the Trinity police to transfer you to my custody for further questioning in Wyoming, but they’re not ready to let you out of their jurisdiction yet. Not while there are still questions about your roommate’s murder.”

She put her hand to her mouth, her face growing even paler. “Angie,” she whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? He was after me.”

Joe gripped the steel bars and watched in silence as she pressed her hands to her face, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. He hated the rush of sympathy burning a hole in his gut as he watched her obvious distress, hated that even now, he wanted to believe her.

She had a vulnerability about her that drew a man’s interest, like a lost little lamb that needed protection. It’s what had drawn Tommy to open his home to her and give her a job, no questions asked.

It’s what drew you to her, too, he mocked himself, tightening his grip on the bars.

“Has Chief Trent found anyone who saw the man in my apartment?” Jane asked, her voice hoarse.

“Not yet.”

She looked up at him, biting her lower lip. “You don’t think there was a man at all, do you?”

“I didn’t say that.”