Double Play: Ambushed! / High-Caliber Cowboy

“Who knows who she’d be married to now if she were still alive.”

Bernard made a scoffing sound on the other end of the line. “Assuming she’s dead.” He hung up.

Assuming she’s dead. Kerrington stood holding the phone. Did Bernard know something? It had been Bernard who’d come to him with the offer of an alibi.

“If you need to, you can say you were with me,” Bernard had said two days after Jasmine disappeared—just before the cops arrived to question them. “I was hiking in the Bridger Mountains. Took my gear and camped up there. Didn’t get back home until well after dark the second day.”

Kerrington had been so grateful to have an alibi at all that he’d gone along with Bernard’s. It wasn’t until later that he realized he’d also given Bernard an alibi.

He hung up the phone, then turned, bracing himself for the mother of all arguments he knew he was about to have with Sandra.

But Sandra was gone.

Antelope Flats, Montana

NEWS TRAVELED AT the speed of light, even in a county where there was little or no cell-phone service and ranches were miles apart.

The news about Jasmine’s car being found had given Shelby McCall’s return-from-the-dead story a rest. For hours Cash had been able to avoid his mother’s call, but when the phone rang shortly after he’d hung up from talking to Bernard Wolfe, he knew before he answered who was calling.

“Cash? Are you all right?”

He wanted to laugh. He was so far from all right…. “I’m fine.”

“I think you should move back home so you are close to your family during this time.”

That did make him laugh. This coming from a woman who’d been gone for thirty years? Where was his mother when he’d needed advice about Jasmine? Being raised in an all-male household had left him pretty clueless about women. Dusty hadn’t counted since she was just a kid. He really could have used a mother during those years.

“I’m sorry, Cash.”

Sorry that Jasmine’s car had been found and searchers expected to find her body in some shallow grave on the old farm at any time? Or sorry that she’d never been a mother to him and it was too late to start now?

“I know what you must be going through.”

“Do you?” he said, then could have kicked himself.

“Obviously you loved her or you wouldn’t have asked her to marry you.”

He said nothing, afraid of what would come out.

“Let me know if there is anything I can do.” She seemed to be waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, she hung up. She didn’t mention dinner. Must have realized it would have been a bad time to ask for anything.

When he looked up, his brother J.T. was standing in his office doorway.

“Mother? She means well,” J.T. said, closing the door behind him as he came in.

Cash grunted.

J.T. stood, looking uncomfortable. That was the problem with being raised by a bad-tempered man like Asa and a disagreeable ranch foreman like Buck. The brothers had grown up believing that softness was a weakness. So they sure as hell knew nothing about comforting each other.

Even Dusty was more tomboy than girl.

But J.T.’s rough edges had been smoothed a lot since Regina Holland had come into his life last fall. Cash had seen the change in him and approved. Reggie, as J.T. called her, was perfect for his brother, strong and yet soft in all the right ways. She was like a ray of sunshine in J.T.’s life and it showed in his older brother’s face. Cash had never seen J.T. so happy.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked now.

Cash shook his head, figuring Reggie had sent him. “The state investigators took over the search. I’m supposed to go fishing.”

J.T. nodded. “You’re not going to though, are you?”

Cash smiled. His brother knew him too well.

“Reggie said if you need someone to talk to…”

Cash laughed. He knew Reggie had sent J.T. His brother looked too uncomfortable for words. “Tell her thank you.”

J.T. nodded, looked down at his boots, then up at Cash. “I’m sorry.”

Cash nodded. “Maybe it will finally be over.” He knew that was what his family had hoped for, that he’d be able to move on once he knew what had happened to Jasmine. If they only knew the truth. He feared though that before this investigation was over, they would know. Everyone would.

After J.T. left, Cash picked up the phone and dialed the number for Jasmine’s car insurance company, which he’d found in her glove box. He knew Mathews would find out soon enough that he was doing some investigating on his own and all hell would break loose.

But all hell was going to break loose eventually anyway and he couldn’t just wait for the state boys to call and tell him they’d found Jasmine’s body and they had some questions for him.

Atlanta, Georgia

BERNARD WENT THROUGH the motions. He called to have the company jet readied, instructed George, his English butler, to pack for him, and told the chauffeur to stand by to take him to the private airstrip later tonight.

Bernard had held it together fairly well he thought. Even when he’d had to deal with that jackass Kerrington. It was just like the fool to fly to Montana.

But he’d wanted to be the one to tell him. He didn’t want Kerrington seeing it on the news and doing something stupid. And it would be hitting the news, if it hadn’t already. He seldom paid any attention to more than the financial news.

He thought about ringing George and having the bottle of champagne he’d asked to be chilled brought out and opened. But he could wait.

He’d waited seven years so he could have Jasmine declared legally dead. Before their father had died, Archie had put aside part of his estate for Jasmine, still holding onto the ridiculous hope that she would turn up one day.

Bernard deserved that money. He’d spent his life “watching out” for his stepsister. “Keep an eye on her, won’t you, Bernard,” Archibald Wolfe would say. “Take care of your sister.”

He wished he had a dollar for every time he’d heard his stepfather say those words.

His mother had married Archie when Bernard was four. Jasmine had been just a baby, her mother having died in childbirth.

Bernard had seen his stepfather struggle with trying to love him as much as he did Jasmine. There had been times when Bernard had felt loved, felt like he really was a Wolfe, not just adopted because his mother had married Archie.

But then Jasmine had grown up, been a wild teenager and an even wilder adult. Keeping her out of trouble had proved impossible. She had loved to upset their father, hadn’t cared that she got Bernard and herself into trouble, had rebelled at every turn as if it were her birthright. The Wolfe money had meant nothing to her. She was Daddy’s golden girl and she’d known he would never disinherit her. At least not for long.

Bernard had never felt that secure as the stepson.

When Jasmine had decided to get another degree in a long line of degrees, this time in Montana, Archie had asked Bernard to go with her. “Just keep an eye on her. Make sure she’s all right. Be there if she needs you.”