Luck of the Draw Page 15

  “I had to leave him for his own good. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

  The woman had smiled and hugged her. “But you have such luscious memories. Be thankful. Memories are often better than reality,” she’d said with a laugh as she rose to get off the bus at her stop.

  But reality looked awfully good right now, she thought, unable to look away from the cowboy. She wanted to memorize this moment in time, hold it close, tuck it away so it would always be there. She smiled to herself, remembering how she used to watch Garrett sleep, doing the same thing. Memorizing snapshots of him. Imagining what he’d been like, what he would be later in life, knowing she wouldn’t be there. Had he fallen asleep here in front of the fire as a boy? When he got older? This place fit him just as his boots and jeans and Stetson did.

  “There was a time we would have done this naked,” he said, his eyes still closed.

  She swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. “I know.”

  His eyes opened slowly and focused on her. She stared into all that familiar blue and felt her heart break. “Your memory coming back?” he asked.

  Her voice broke when she spoke. “I could never forget you.”

  He stared at her for a long moment before he took a sip of his drink. “So it was all a lie, what you told the sheriff, everything?”

  She knew what he was asking. “No. It’s true that I’ve lost the days before I ended up in the hospital. That wasn’t a lie, still isn’t. But before that...” She met his gaze and swallowed again. She felt tears blur her eyes. “I was afraid to tell the sheriff, afraid I couldn’t trust him.”

  “Afraid you couldn’t trust me?”

  She shook her head adamantly. “No. I just didn’t know how to tell you. I still don’t.”

  “Why don’t you start with that night at the convenience store.” There was hurt in his voice overlaid with anger. His blue eyes were bright and hard, his body still and stiff. He was waiting, coiled for the blow he knew was coming.

  “I wasn’t lying that night. If I’d had to stay there and talk to the police, give them my name...”

  “You lied about being an undercover cop.”

  She sighed. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. You weren’t one of them. Unfortunately, you came along at the wrong time.”

  He chuckled. “Wrong time? That’s why you didn’t leave a note when you left. That’s why you couldn’t even say goodbye? You had to know that I was in love with you.”

  Hot tears welled and spilled down her cheeks. “I knew.”

  His handsome face seemed to crumple as he downed his drink and set the glass on the coffee table where his boot heels had rested only moments before. Sitting up, he leaned toward her as if he wanted to reach across the distance between them. “You still left without a word.” He shot to his feet to move away from her to stand in front of the fire, his back to her, his hands buried deep in the front pockets of his jeans. He stood away from her as if he didn’t trust himself. “Why, Joslyn? Just tell me why.”

  She stared at his broad back. “There’d been threats against my life before I met you. I needed some place to hide until I decided what to do.”

  * * *

  GARRETT SPUN AROUND to stare at her. Was this just another lie? “So you hid out with me for a few months before you ran again,” he said, realizing that even if it wasn’t a lie, he was only a convenient stopover.

  “It began that way, I’ll admit.” She met his gaze and held it. “I hadn’t planned to stay long but then... I didn’t want to leave. I thought maybe you and I...” She shook her head. “I was just kidding myself. People were looking for me. They would have found me. They would have found you. Once I saw the engagement ring you bought...”

  “You saw it and you still left?” He let out a harsh laugh. “So you knew I wanted to marry you.”

  Tears filled her eyes again. “I can’t tell you how badly I wanted that, too.” Her voice broke and she looked away.

  He didn’t say anything for a few moments, his mind racing. “What happened to you after you left?”

  “I called the person who was to be my contact with the witness protection program and said I was ready to come in. They picked me up and gave me a new name, a new town. Not Joslyn Charles since I’d used that name with you.”

  He shook his head. “You’re telling me you went into the witness protection program?” Was any of this true? “Then how did you end up on the mountainside across from my family’s guest ranch?”

  She shook her head. “That’s what I don’t know. But I remembered something tonight. I received a photograph of the two of us. I realized my cover was blown but more important that if they knew about you...” She locked gazes with him again. “That you were in danger and I had to warn you.”

  “A photograph?” He didn’t want to believe her and knew he was afraid to. But there had been a map to the guest ranch. “None was found in the car you wrecked before being brought to the hospital.” He waited for her to say something about the map.

  “I don’t know where the photograph is. I don’t even know how I ended up in that car with that man.” She got up, casting off the quilt and took a step toward him. “The last thing I wanted was you involved in all this but the only thing that makes any sense is that I had been headed here to warn you when I ended up in the hospital.”

  He studied her, looking for the truth. How much of this did he believe? She’d had plenty of time to come up with this story. “Who did you call tonight?”

  She started. She hadn’t thought he’d find out. “My handler, a US Marshal. Apparently the sheriff ran my DNA and it came up on a federal site. That’s how he found out that I’d bolted.”

  “If any of this is true, then you should have told me back then,” he said angrily, thinking of the time they’d lost and all the if-onlys. “I would have gone with you.”

  * * *

  SHE SHOOK HER head as she moved to stand before him. “I couldn’t take you away from the ranch, from Montana, from everything and everyone you loved—”

  “Not everyone I loved,” he said, glaring at her. “You should have given me the choice.”

  “To go live somewhere with another name, another career, another life, living a lie?” She wiped at her tears, torn apart at the pain she saw in his handsome face. “I’ve done it. I know what it’s like to leave behind someone you love knowing you can never see them again without risking both of your lives.”

  He chewed at his cheek for a moment. She saw the anger slowly ebb from his features. In its place, she saw an unbearable sadness. “And yet here we are.”

  Joslyn nodded solemnly. “When I realized that you were in danger...” She swallowed. “I didn’t think anyone knew about you two years ago. You remember my neighbor, the old busybody who lived in the duplex next door?”

  “Devon Pierce.”

  It surprised her that he remembered the woman’s name. “Garrett, when I went back to move my things out of my apartment, she told me about the man who had come around asking about me. She described him. I knew then that whoever had tried to kill me and sent me on the run had found me again. I didn’t think he knew about you. It’s also why I didn’t want Devon to know about you.”

  Garrett looked away for a moment, his jaw muscle taut again. “I could have protected you if you’d only told me.”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t risk your life. I was putting your clothes away after I’d washed our laundry one day and I saw the engagement ring.” Tears were streaming down her face again, but she couldn’t stop them. All the pain of the past year and a half welled up inside her again. She was looking into Garrett’s bright blue eyes, seeing the pain, feeling it heart deep.

  “That must have been the last straw. You were out of there,” he said.

  She shook her head. “There wasn’t anything I wanted more than a life w
ith you.”

  “Then you should have stayed and we would have worked something out.”

  “Like now? They will be coming for me, for us—if they aren’t already. Your life is in danger because of me. Because I stayed with you as long as I did back then. You need to disappear.”

  He laughed. “No, that’s your thing. Whatever is coming for me, I’m staying right here and fighting.”

  She wiped at her tears. “I knew you’d say that. It’s why I’m here. I had to warn you. I wanted you to at least have a fighting chance.”

  “What about you? The program giving you a new identity?”

  “They want to, but I said no.”

  “You’d risk your life for me?”

  She heard the sarcasm in his words. “I already have.”

  His eyes widened. He bowed his head. “I’m sorry. Excuse me for not reacting well to all of this. But you should take the feds’ deal.”

  She shook her head. “I’m tired of running. A year and a half ago I thought I was saving you. Now I want to stay and fight. The problem is that I don’t know who we have to fear. There is so much you don’t know about me.”

  He met her gaze in the firelight. “I might surprise you, Monica.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE SHERIFF GOT the call the next morning early that Alistair Vanderlin was waiting for him in his office. He hadn’t expected that. He’d spoken with him on the phone last night and had to tell him that Monica Wilmington was no longer in the hospital or behind bars. When he’d refused to say where she was, it hadn’t gone over well.

  “You do understand a court order, don’t you?” Vanderlin had demanded. Sid hadn’t liked the man from the get-go. Alistair Vanderlin was the type who was so used to getting his own way. The man had seemed shocked that a small-town sheriff would buck him.

  “If you don’t honor the court order, you will find yourself behind bars, Sheriff.” He hadn’t liked the way the man had said sheriff, either.

  “I wouldn’t dream of not honoring a court order—especially if the woman in question really is a danger to herself or others,” Sid had said carefully.

  “Are you questioning me on that?”

  “My job is to question anything that doesn’t feel right to me, Mr. Vanderlin. I have no idea who you are let alone why I should hand this woman over to you. She’s under arrest here in my little burg. Another court order let her go to a safe place for her to recuperate. I can lock her up and hold her pending the rest of my investigation, trumping your court order or at least holding it up until this whole thing can go before a judge. And I will if I think it is in her best interest.”

  Alistair Vanderlin laughed. “You don’t want to play hardball with me, Sheriff. I have no doubt that you know where Monica is. Honor the court order. You don’t want to spend your retirement in prison.” The man had hung up, leaving Sid fuming.

  Was the woman a danger to herself and others? Other than her alleged memory loss, she’d seemed fine. Not that he was a doctor. He knew, along with disliking Alistair Vanderlin the first moment the man spoke, he wanted to help Garrett and the woman. But while he might be able to stall Vanderlin, he was pretty sure that his hands were tied. He would have to honor the court order to turn her over for a medical evaluation.

  Now, the man was waiting for him down at the sheriff’s department, no doubt with said court order in hand. He was anxious to meet Alistair Vanderlin and find out as much as he could about the woman staying high in the mountains at Sterling’s Montana Guest Ranch with Garrett. First and foremost he was a lawman—at least for a while longer.

  When he’d called the rancher last night to warn him, Sid could tell Garrett hadn’t believed any of it. Neither did he. But maybe they were both blind when it came to the woman.

  As he walked into his office, he found a distinguished gray-haired man in a dark suit waiting in a chair across from his desk. The man rose as he entered. “Sheriff Anderson? I’m Alistair Vanderlin, Ms. Wilmington’s guardian.”

  * * *

  ALISTAIR HAD ALREADY made up his mind that he wouldn’t be as confrontational as he’d been on the phone the night before. He studied the very fit, silver-haired Western sheriff. Always before when Monica got in trouble, he’d dealt with younger men, police in larger cities around the world. Usually Monica’s ability to look innocence and money did the trick.

  One look at Sheriff Sid Anderson and he knew there was no bribing this man. He shook the man’s hand, not surprised by his strong grip.

  “I’m a little confused why a woman her age has a guardian,” the sheriff said as he took his place behind his desk.

  Vanderlin settled into the chair he’d been sitting in earlier. “I’m not sure what she’s told you...” He hesitated, and seeing that the sheriff wasn’t going to respond continued. “But Monica is a very troubled woman and has been for some time. I’m here to make sure she gets the help she needs.”

  “And what kind of help is that?”

  “Her medical condition is privileged information.”

  The sheriff leaned back in his chair. “Oh, come on, you’ve already said it’s mental. I have a judge here in town who will take a look at your commitment order and if it isn’t spelled out—”

  “It’s more than the fact that she isn’t behaving rationally, although that is cause for concern. She’d been doing so much better before this. All I can assume is that something sparked this latest...ordeal.”

  “Ordeal?” The lawman let out a bark of a laugh. “Excuse me, but not many people would be behaving rationally after someone tried to kill them. I have an eyewitness who saw the whole thing.” Not quite accurate but close enough with this man. “You’re her guardian, what was she doing in Montana?”

  “Truthfully, I have no idea. I was led to believe that she simply took off from where she’d been living and was gainfully employed.”

  “Since the feds are involved, I’m assuming she was in the witness protection program?”

  Vanderlin sighed. “As I understand it. I just know that she had a habit of disappearing for months at a time. I would send her checks and sometimes they would come back, addressee unknown. For over a year now, the checks have gone automatically into an account for her. A few days ago, I was notified that she no longer had that account. That’s when I knew that she’d disappeared again. I won’t know what happened until I speak with her.”

  “That could be a problem. She doesn’t remember. After the shooting, she escaped in the man’s vehicle, was in an accident and has a head injury, which the doctor says could explain her lack of memory.”

  “Yes, I spoke with her doctor at the hospital. He told me about the memory loss.” Vanderlin nodded. “It wouldn’t be the first time she’s lost her memory after...an incident. Her doctor wants her under observation back in Seattle. I’ve hired several attendants to take her by ambulance.”

  “What kind of hospital?”

  “Not what you’re imagining. It’s much like a resort. Most of the patients are there for drugs or alcohol rehabilitation, unlike Monica.”

  “Privileged or not, I need to know what I’m dealing with here. I have a body in the morgue and your...ward killed him. She has information I need to close my case.”

  Alistair looked away for a moment before he settled his gaze on the sheriff again. He could see that butting heads with his man would get him nowhere. “Her psychiatrist is afraid that she suffers from DID, dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as a split personality.”

  * * *

  SID SAT BACK after making a disbelieving sound. “You can’t be serious.”

  “It’s very rare, usually brought on by some form of trauma.”

  “What trauma brought hers on?”

  He could see Alistair reining in his impatience. “Monica saw her father and stepmother murdered when she was five. Anyone would have been trau
matized by something so horrific. She didn’t speak at all for weeks after that and still claims to have no memory of the event. But unfortunately, she had begun to show symptoms of DID.”

  “How long ago was that?” Sid asked.

  “Two years ago.”

  About the time Garrett met her.

  “Like this time, she had taken off without a word. I hired a private investigator to find her. She was convinced her life was in danger and demanded help, calling the FBI without my knowledge. She believed that the man behind bars for her father’s and stepmother’s murders all those years ago had sent someone to kill her. She was the only eyewitness to their murders, but she couldn’t testify at the trial because she had no memory of the crime.”

  Sid frowned. “So how was she able to get into the witness protection program?”

  “I had to pull a few strings but since she was the only witness...”

  He could just imagine what kind of strings the man had to pull.

  “She believes that the man the police arrested, the man who claims to be innocent, isn’t the real killer but that he holds her responsible for his being in prison because she is the only one who can clear him, if that makes any sense.” Vanderlin shook his head.

  “The feds must have believed her for them to allow her to go into the program even if you had to pull a few strings.”

  The man nodded. “You can see why I was upset to hear that she’d left it the way she had—and had immediately ended up in the hospital after an...incident.”

  “Wait. So you didn’t even know where she was before this?” Sid asked.

  “No. I didn’t know if she was alive or dead, quite frankly. It wasn’t until a US Marshal contacted me. He hadn’t even known where she was until her DNA came through the system. Then I got a call from Seattle law enforcement. You sent her photo over the wire. They recognized her since there have been numerous stories about her and the murder over the years. That’s how I found out she was in the hospital here.” He shook his head as if the young woman had been a trial for years and that this was just more of the same.