Luck of the Draw Page 4

  At least that was the case with his two stepchildren. Monica, Horace’s flesh and blood from his first marriage, had been the exception. She hadn’t cared about the money, often sending back the checks Alistair sent or forgetting to cash them. She preferred staying in hostels in Europe rather than luxury hotels. She was so much like her father, strong, determined, stubborn, independent, a rebel even at a young age. He often wondered though what she would have been like if her father had lived and if she hadn’t witnessed his murder at such a tender age.

  Not that she’d remembered what she’d seen. Her doctor said her memory loss was due to the trauma. The child didn’t speak for weeks after it happened. Alistair had put her into counseling right away. She’d had a psychiatrist on retainer ever since.

  It was part of what he’d promised Horace. That Monica would receive everything she wanted or needed. No expense was to be spared and since there was no end to the money... The newspapers had termed her Poor Little Rich Girl. It was a title that had stuck—and was relevant even more now. In a matter of days, Monica would turn thirty and receive the bulk of her inheritance, which was nearly a hundred million dollars.

  “That took long enough,” Amethyst said when he returned with the drinks. She’d taken a seat on the sofa. Her husband stood by the window looking petulant, as usual.

  Alistair had become used to being treated like a servant since he was sure that was how these people saw him. He doled out the money as well as the good and bad news. Just as he would be doing today.

  As he handed a drink to Rance, he saw that he was fingering the leather on the couch as if to gauge its worth.

  “Just tell us what is going on,” Amethyst ordered. “I’m not in the mood to wait for—” The doorbell rang. “My brother,” she finished.

  A few moments later, Peter walked in. He was blond and blue-eyed like his sister. But where she was tall and willowy thin, he was athletically built. He’d definitely gotten his mother’s good looks and he used them to his advantage living off wealthy women and squirreling his inheritance away as if for winter.

  “Peter,” Alistair said and handed him a beer, anticipating his arrival and his beverage of choice.

  “Thanks, Al,” he said and tipped the bottle at him in a salute.

  What struck him was that this had become his family just as it had become Monica’s. It wasn’t the way he’d planned it. But his wife had died of cancer after the two of them had been unable to have a child of their own. They might have adopted, had she lived. And he might have remarried, had he not had Monica and all these others to take care of.

  “So what’s up?” Peter asked after taking a long pull on his beer.

  He noticed that Rance had gulped his drink down and was now headed for the bar to make himself another one.

  “It’s about Monica.”

  “Oh, more drama,” she groaned. “Big surprise.”

  Monica had definitely been the wild child. He’d had to get her out of numerous binds over the years. Her psychiatrist said her reckless behavior was due to witnessing the murders of her father and stepmother. That she didn’t value life.

  Alistair hoped she would outgrow it. She seemed to be a loner who liked to keep moving as she’d traveled the globe. Since she’d been back in the states, she’d continued to move around. Until recently.

  He feared she was looking for something. Family? The three stepsiblings had never been close—since they were so far apart in age and other obvious reasons. The only time Amethyst and Peter seemed to acknowledge that Monica was part of their family was when they demanded updates on her. Where was she, what kind of trouble had she gotten into, how had she embarrassed them this time?

  They got angry with him if he kept information from them, since he was considered the outsider.

  “Apparently she’s disappeared.”

  That got their attention. Monica would celebrate her thirtieth birthday soon and receive her inheritance.

  “Disappeared?” Amethyst laughed. “More disappeared than she has been for years?” She shook her head. “She’ll turn up soon. Probably at the last minute to pick up her money.”

  He cleared his throat. They would hear soon enough. “The last time I spoke with her, she said she doesn’t want it and has made arrangements for all of it to go to charities.”

  Amethyst scoffed at that. “We’ll see, won’t we? She’s just taunting us, trying to convince us that she’s better than we are. Like she doesn’t want the money.” She let out an unladylike curse. “She’s taken it for years, hasn’t she?”

  Alistair didn’t answer. They’d all taken it for years, himself included. But that too was about to end. Once Monica turned thirty, it was all over and not just for her psychiatrist and her lawyer, but for him as well.

  “I haven’t seen her in over two years,” Amethyst said and narrowed her eyes at him. “But you know where she’s been, don’t you?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “So now you say she’s disappeared? How interesting. Why now?”

  “Why don’t we cut to the chase?” Rance said. “Is she alive or dead?” Peter said nothing as he finished his beer.

  “I don’t know,” Alistair said. “I was hoping that one of you might have heard from her.” He knew it was a long shot, but he had to ask. It wasn’t the first time Monica had disappeared and he doubted it would be the last. As her psychiatrist, Dr. Neal Foster always said, “She’s a troubled young woman who needs help.” But Neal had also benefited greatly for the past twenty-five years from Monica’s erratic behavior, thanks to Horace’s gruesome death and Monica’s “problems” following it.

  The three shook their heads, muttering that they hadn’t seen or heard from her.

  “What if she’s remembered?” Amethyst said, and exchanged a look with her husband. Her voice caught. “What if she’s remembered who killed my mother?”

  “Our mother,” Peter corrected with a scowl at her. “And Monica’s father. Our mother wasn’t the only one to die that night.”

  The thought had never even occurred to him that Monica might have remembered that night. It was presumed that she’d seen the killer since, when she’d been found, she was covered in blood and hiding upstairs in a closet.

  “I suppose she might have,” Alistair said and nodded slowly. He saw that they all looked shell-shocked as each considered what this could mean to them. The murder would be in the news again.

  “Wouldn’t she have gone to the police if she had remembered?” Peter asked. No one spoke.

  What if after twenty-five years her memory had come back? Hadn’t doctors said it could happen? But now? Right before her thirtieth birthday?

  * * *

  THE WOMAN IN the hospital bed fought to open her eyes, coming up from the bottomless pit she’d fallen into. Instantly, she felt the pain in her head as she blinked in the dim light of the unfamiliar room. For a moment at the edge of consciousness, she felt only confusion and pain. Then the hospital room came into focus.

  Her eyes flew all the way open. Panic filled her every cell. She tried to sit up but was too weak.

  Oh God, don’t let it be happening again.

  A dream? She closed her eyes shut tightly, fighting to breathe. The image behind her closed eyelids was blood. So much blood.

  But when she opened them, she was still in a hospital, still had the desperate feeling that something horrible had happened. But like all those years ago, her mind was a blank slate. She had no idea where she was or what had happened or maybe worse, how she’d gotten here. It was as if her memory had been wiped clean. Again.

  She froze as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw her hands lying against the sterile white of the hospital bed sheets. “No!” The word came out a whimper. “No, please no.” Feeling as if they were weighted by lead, she slowly raised her hands, willing her mind to be wrong.

  Her heart rate spiked at the sigh
t of the dried blood under her fingernails. She opened her mouth. “No!” She hadn’t realized she’d screamed until the nurse and doctor came running in. They rushed to her, trying to assure her that she was in the hospital and everything would be fine. But she knew better. Through the open hospital room door she saw a uniformed officer standing outside. The deputy’s gaze caught hers for only a moment before she returned to the darkness.

  It was happening again.

  * * *

  AFTER THE PIZZA and beer, Garrett was starting to relax a little. He’d convinced himself that as horrible as what he’d seen had been, it was over. He might never know what had happened on that mountainside. He’d done what he could to save the woman and apparently it had worked.

  But a part of him wondered if he’d saved the wrong person.

  He knew that was crazy thinking. It made him think of the other time he’d done what he’d thought was the right thing when he’d withheld information from the police. He’d helped out a woman only to find out later that he’d been wrong about her. Wrong about a lot of things.

  Shoving those memories back into the dark corner where he’d left them, he tried to put today’s events behind him. Dorothea and Shade seemed engrossed in the movie playing on the television, but every time a wind gust rattled a window, they all started.

  It would have been funny, them all being jumpy, except for the fact that the sheriff hadn’t called to say the woman from the mountainside had turned herself in. Only then could they all relax.

  He tried to follow the television movie, but he was too distracted. He told himself he’d done the only thing he felt he could earlier today. Firing the shot in the air had given the woman the opportunity to turn the tables on the man. Clearly she must have feared for her life to put four bullets into him.

  Still it nagged at him. How could she have gotten hold of the gun and shot the man four times in that narrow length of time? It seemed impossible unless as Dorothea had suggested, the woman had experience disarming a man and turning a gun on him. So who was this woman? A cop? Or a criminal? Or just a woman who’d been trained in self-defense?

  That thought did nothing to reassure him. He shook his head, realizing he would probably never know. Whoever had been driving that dark blue SUV had gotten away. He assumed it was the woman but then again, he’d assumed it was the woman they would find dead on that mountainside. Maybe there had been someone waiting in the car. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

  When his phone rang, they all jumped. He saw it was the sheriff and quickly picked up, hoping for some kind of closure, if not good news. At this point he wasn’t sure what would constitute good news though.

  “Garrett, would you mind coming down to the hospital?” the sheriff asked. “I need you to take a look at the woman who was driving what we believe to be the dark blue SUV you saw earlier.”

  He sat up in his chair. “Is she all right?” Shade muted the television.

  “She rolled the vehicle and is unconscious but stable, according to the doctor,” Sid said. “I know it’s a long shot, but I’m just trying to connect the dots as best I can. Would you mind taking a look at her?”

  “I’ll be right there.” He pocketed his phone as he rose from his chair. “That was the sheriff,” he said to his brother and Dorothea who were both staring at him expectantly. “The woman he thinks is the one I saw leaving in the dark blue SUV apparently wrecked it and is in the hospital. He wants me to come down and see if I recognize her.”

  “I thought you didn’t see her face,” Dorothea said.

  “I didn’t, but I saw her hair and I could estimate her height and body build,” he said. “Sid is sure it’s the same woman I saw. He just wants me to verify it.” He reached for his coat. “I shouldn’t be long.”

  “Wait,” Dorothea cried and rushed to him to grab his hand and press a small crystal stone into his palm. “Keep this with you at all times for your protection.”

  He groaned inwardly but had learned over the years that the best thing he could do was go along. “Got it.” He made a show of putting the stone into his front jeans pocket and gave her a patient smile as he left.

  In truth, he was nervous about IDing the woman—but also anxious to know the truth so he could finally put it all behind him.

  * * *

  THE SHERIFF WAS down the hall having a cup of vending machine coffee when the doctor joined him.

  “She’s drifting in and out of consciousness, which is a good sign,” Dr. Bullock told him. “But I’d prefer that you put off questioning her, though, until she is fully conscious.”

  “Garrett Sterling is coming in. I need to see if he recognizes her. I can wait on questioning her. One of my deputies is outside her door. I don’t want anyone but hospital personnel going into her room.”

  The doctor nodded but didn’t look pleased. “If you really think that’s necessary.”

  Somehow this woman had disarmed a man holding a gun to her head and killed him with what Sid was assuming was the man’s own gun. He wouldn’t know until he got the ballistics report. But he knew that a woman like that could easily walk out of a hospital without anyone noticing.

  He mentioned that to the doctor.

  “Without any clothing?” Dr. Bullock asked. “Hers was bagged for your forensics team, remember?”

  The sheriff chuckled. “You really don’t have a criminal mind, Doc. Finding something to wear would be the least of her problems.”

  At the sound of footfalls, they both turned to see Garrett Sterling headed for them. The rancher looked a bit haggard, but ready to see if he could ID the woman.

  “Please just make this quick,” the doctor said. “Suspect or not, the woman needs her rest.” He walked off and Sid turned as Garrett joined him.

  “You all right?” Sid asked.

  Garrett nodded and swallowed. “You know I only saw her from a distance and not under the best circumstances.”

  “Got it. I just need to know if she could be the woman you saw.”

  “I can do that,” the rancher said.

  “Then let’s get it over with.”

  They walked down the hall to the woman’s room. Sid went in first. He wanted to see Garrett’s reaction to the woman, not that he was expecting much. Garrett had just told him that he hadn’t gotten a good look at her.

  But the rancher should be able to tell from her size and shape and possibly the color of her long hair. Sid already knew that she was driving the stolen car that Garrett had described as the getaway car. Also the lab had found gunpowder residue on her hands and wrists as well as her clothing.

  She was the woman, he was sure of that. But he liked to cover all his bases. With luck this one would tie up quickly. Once the woman told the same story Garrett had, it would be a case of self-defense and quickly off the books.

  The sheriff was looking forward to retirement as he turned to watch the rancher come into the woman’s room. Garrett glanced toward the bed and Sid was glad that he’d followed his instincts.

  Otherwise, he might have missed the dumbstruck look on Garrett Sterling’s face when he got a good look at the woman lying in the bed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  GARRETT STUMBLED TO a stop only feet inside the hospital room door. He blinked, unable to believe what he was seeing. He stepped closer to the woman in the bed, telling himself that after the day he’d had, he couldn’t trust himself.

  The hair was a different color, darker like polished mahogany, but that face, even with part of it bandaged, wasn’t one he was likely to forget. He stepped to the bed, reached out and caught a lock of her hair between his thumb and fingers.

  A man also didn’t forget the feel of a woman’s hair he’d buried his fingers in. And that mouth. Oh, he knew that mouth so well it made him ache. The bowed curve of it, the full lips, the pale pink of a rose. He could almost taste her. Had he pulled back
the covers, he would have known every inch of that body even after all this time. He knew this woman, intimately.

  But how was this possible?

  It wasn’t. The woman in this bed, the same one he’d seen on the side of that mountain earlier, had to be a doppelgänger. A double. An identical twin. It couldn’t be the woman he’d known. The woman he still knew on sight.

  Her eyes fluttered open and he felt himself gasp as he looked into them. A glowing amber. Like a wild animal’s. How many times had he lost himself in those eyes? She tried to focus on him for an instant and then the lids fell shut, the dark eyelashes relaxing against her pale skin.

  His mouth had gone dry. All he could hear was the pounding of his pulse and the rain outside the hospital room window. He felt as if he needed to sit down and dropped into the chair next to her bed to put his face into his hands. How could she be the woman he’d seen earlier? The woman who’d almost gotten killed and had ended up killing her attacker?

  Until the sheriff touched his shoulder, he’d forgotten Sid was even in the room. He raised his head to meet the man’s gaze, still telling himself it couldn’t be possible that he knew the woman—even though he knew there was only one Joslyn Charles.

  He got to his feet and let the sheriff lead him away. But at the door, he stopped to look back, telling himself that only then would he realize how wrong he’d been. That he’d merely wanted to see Joslyn in that bed. That it wasn’t her.

  But even from a distance, he knew it was. No doppelgänger. No identical twin. It was Joslyn.

  “Well?” Sid asked, after drawing him down the hallway away from her room and the deputy seated outside it.

  Garrett hedged, wondering if he was trying to protect her. Or himself. He’d protected her once and look where that had gotten him. “I think she’s the same woman I saw across the ravine.”