Double Play: Ambushed! / High-Caliber Cowboy

“I had to know if she was in the car,” Cash said. “I took photos. I did everything by procedure.”

John had sighed. “If you’re smart you’ll stay as far away from this investigation as physically possible.”

Cash had said nothing. He knew Mathews was right but that didn’t make it any easier.

Now Cash watched Mathews look past him to the lake. “We’ll broaden our search to the area around the barn. When I hear something, I’ll let you know.”

Cash knew that was as good as it was going to get. He took off his western hat and raked a hand through his hair, unable to hide his frustration. “You know that was the year the lake was down because the new dam was being built.”

“Cash,” Mathews said, a clear warning in his voice. “I like you. That’s why I’m going to say this to you. Stay out of it. I realize this is your turf, you know the area, your expertise might be invaluable, but don’t go telling us to look in the lake, okay? If her body turns up in the lake… You know what I’m saying.”

He knew exactly what Mathews was saying. He was a suspect. He’d been a suspect from the moment Jasmine disappeared seven years ago. “I just want her found.”

“We all do. But you’re smart enough to know that the stain under the steering wheel was blood.” He nodded. “It’s her blood type. Given the dent in the right front fender, the fact that the car has been hidden in the barn all these years, the amount of blood on the floor mat and the steering wheel, we’re treating this as a homicide.”

Cash knew that Mathews thought Jasmine had been run off the road and then attacked, possibly hitting her head on the steering wheel, or had been struck while behind the wheel by the attacker, who had then gotten rid of her body somewhere and hidden her car in the barn. Cash knew that because given the evidence as it now stood, he would have thought the same thing.

What hit home was that Jasmine really might be dead. The hidden car, the blood, seven years without anyone seeing her. There was nothing else to surmise from the evidence. The weight of it pressed down on his chest making it almost impossible to breathe. Head wounds caused significant blood loss. He couldn’t keep kidding himself that she’d somehow walked away from a blow to her head.

The facts no longer gave credence to his fantasy that she’d taken off, had been living it up on some Mediterranean island all these years.

“Even if you weren’t a suspect, you’re too emotionally involved to work this case anyway,” Mathews said.

Cash fought to curb his anger and frustration, knowing it would only strengthen Mathews’s point. “Unless her disappearance is solved, I will always be a suspect. You have any idea what that is like?”

“You know how this works,” Mathews said quietly. “You still have your job as sheriff. You think you would if anyone believed for a minute that you had something to do with her disappearance?”

“Let me call the family.”

Mathews raised an eyebrow. “Not much family left as I hear it.”

“Just her stepbrother Bernard. But I’d just like to be the one to tell him,” Cash said.

Mathews nodded. “Maybe he’ll have some idea how her car ended up down here. But then if he knew his sister was coming down to see you, he would have mentioned it seven years ago, right?”

They’d been over this ground before. “She didn’t drive down here to see me. She had plans in Bozeman. But if someone wanted me to look guilty, hiding her car in a barn outside my town would certainly do it.”

Mathews nodded in agreement. “Awful lot of trouble to go to since she was living almost five hours away.”

“Covering up a murder sometimes requires a lot of trouble, I would imagine,” Cash snapped back.

Mathews nodded slowly. “You ought to take a few days off. Didn’t I hear that you have a cabin on the other end of the lake?”

Cash said nothing.

“Fishing any good?”

“Smallmouth bass and crappie are biting, a few walleye and northern pike,” Cash said, seeing where this was going. “I have some vacation time coming. I think I’ll tie up the loose ends back at the office and do that. You have my cell-phone number if you hear anything.”

Mathews nodded. “I suppose it is a godsend that her father didn’t live to see this.” Archie had died five years ago of a heart attack. Jasmine’s stepmother Fran was killed just last year in a car accident. “Her stepbrother Bernard is kind of a jackass but I liked the old man and he seemed to like you. He really wanted you to marry his daughter.” The investigator sounded a little surprised by that.

No more surprised than Cash, but looking back, Cash knew that was probably why he’d been able to keep his job as sheriff when Jasmine disappeared. Archibald “Archie” Wolfe had never once thought that Cash had anything to do with Jasmine’s disappearance.

Cash had expected the prominent and powerful Georgia furniture magnate to hate him on sight the first time they met—just after Jasmine had disappeared. It had seemed impossible that Archibald Wolfe would have ever wanted his Southern belle socialite daughter to marry a small-town sheriff in Montana. Jasmine had already told Cash that her father never liked any of the men she dated.

But Archie had surprised him. “You’re the kind of man she needed,” the older man had said. “I know she’s spoiled and would try a saint’s patience, but I think all she needs is the right man to straighten her up.”

“Mr. Wolfe, I’m afraid you have it all wrong,” Cash had tried to tell him.

“Archie, dammit. You know I disinherited her recently. I would have burned every cent I had to keep her from marrying the likes of Kerrington Landow. But once Jasmine is found and the two of you are married, I’ll put her back in my will, you don’t need to worry about that.”

“I don’t want your money, Mr. Wol—Archie, and I don’t need it,” Cash had said. “Let’s just pray Jasmine is found soon.”

Archie’s eyes had narrowed. He had nodded slowly. “I think you actually mean that. How did my daughter find you?”

Cash had shaken his head, thinking that’s exactly what Jasmine had done, found him and not the other way around. He’d tried to think of something to say. It hadn’t seemed like the time to tell Archie the truth.

Archie had died a broken man, the loss of his daughter more than he could stand.

“Cash? Did you hear what I said?”

He mentally shook himself. “Sorry, John.”

Mathews was studying him, frowning. “If there is anything you want to tell me that might come out during this investigation…”

Cash shook his head. How long did he have before he was relieved of his position and his resources taken away so he wouldn’t be able to work the case in secret? Not long from Mathews’s expression.

“There’s nothing I haven’t already told you pertaining to the case,” Cash answered truthfully.

Mathews nodded slowly, clearly not believing that. “Let me know how the fishing is.”

As Cash drove back into town, he knew he’d have to work fast and do his best not to get caught. It was only a matter of time before Mathews learned the truth—and Cash found himself behind bars.

North of Las Vegas, Nevada

THE FEAR DIDN’T REALLY HIT her until Molly lost sight of Vegas in her rearview mirror. She was running for her life and she didn’t know where to go or what to do. She had little money and, unlike Vince and Angel who had criminal resources she didn’t even want to think about, she had no one to turn to.

She wiped her eyes and straightened, checking the rearview mirror. In this life there isn’t time for sentimentality, her father had told her often enough. That was why you didn’t get close to anyone. If you cared too much, that person could be used against you. Wasn’t that why the Great Maximilian Burke, famous magician and thief, had never let her call him Dad?

He’d insisted she go by Kilpatrick. He’d told her it was her mother’s maiden name. Since Max and her mother Lorilee hadn’t been married when Molly was born, her name on her birth certificate was Kilpatrick anyway, he’d said.

Molly had asked him once why he and Lorilee hadn’t married before her mother died.

“Your mother wouldn’t marry me until I got a real job,” Max had said with a shrug. “And since I never got a real job…”

Her mother had died when Molly was a baby. She didn’t remember her, didn’t even have a photograph. Max wasn’t the sentimental type. Also, he and Molly were always on the move, so even if there had been photos, they had long been lost.

All she had of her mother was a teddy bear, long worn, that Max had said her mother had given her. The teddy bear had been her most prized possession, but even it had been lost.