Showdown!

If she wouldn’t accept protection, then she should go where no one would easily find her. Who, Adam had argued, would think to look for her in Idaho? He’d made a good point. She’d thought of little else during her time off.

“Yes, I have a few minutes,” she said to the deputy, putting off the moment when she had to make the difficult decision.

“Can you find the coffee shop? I seem to go around in circles here.”

She had to smile. “The casino’s designed that way. You have to go past the slots and gaming tables to get anywhere else.” She led the way to the café. “Tell me about your cousin,” she said when they were seated.

“There isn’t much to tell. She disappeared when she was three and a half from a car wreck, which killed her mother. Tink was nowhere to be found when help arrived.”

“Maybe she wandered away and got lost,” Honey said. A vision of the child roaming dazed and confused through a dark forest, perhaps searching for her father, flashed on her mental screen. Sympathy stirred in her.

He shrugged. “All we know for sure is that someone else was at the site. The cops found tire tracks and boot prints, a child’s prints next to them. A man in a pickup had come through town that morning. He stopped for gas. The station owner recalled his license plate was from California. How did you get the scar on your leg?”

Honey blinked at the change in subject. “My aunt said my cousin pushed me and I fell on a broken bottle.”

“Your aunt?”

Honey nodded, her mind still on the little girl who had disappeared. She knew what it was like to feel lost and bewildered. Abandoned. It was a scary thing for a child.

“What happened to your parents?” he demanded, leaning forward over the table to stare at her intently.

“They died.”

“How? When?”

“My father was accidentally shot in a bar. My mother got sick a couple of years later. It was a long time ago,” she said to forestall the questions she could see coming. “I wasn’t quite four. I don’t remember anything except my mother left for the hospital and never came back.”

“The woman who said she was your aunt—”

“She is my aunt.”

“Does she have children?”

Honey tried to figure out what he was driving at. “A son. He’s six years older than I am. Aunt May couldn’t have more children.”

“Hmm,” the deputy said as if this was significant.

“What?”

“What if she wanted another child, a little girl to complete her family? What if she was willing to pay?” the deputy asked earnestly.

Honey kept a straight face. Her aunt had hated having her and her brother in the house. She’d hated spending any money on them, even though she got a check from welfare each month to support the two orphans.

“I don’t think that’s likely,” she told him wryly, wishing she had been the loved and wanted little girl his words described, wishing she could have had a family like this man apparently had. If wishes were wings…

“Come to the ranch with me and talk to Uncle Nick,” he urged. “You might remember something. If nothing else, I can promise you a great vacation. Mountain air. Beautiful views. Quiet. No one to bother you.”

Did he realize how appealing that sounded? “I have to work.” She paused, knowing she couldn’t use him for her own purposes but already regretting the loss. “I’m sorry about your cousin. I hope you find her.”

“Thanks.”

He let her go, his expression thoughtful. Honey was aware of the scar on her thigh as she walked away.

Idaho. She’d studied maps of it last night. The state seemed far from everything she’d ever known. He, or the uncle he was so fond of, had a ranch there. It sounded like heaven, a sanctuary for the weary soul.

Peace. Quiet. Safety.

Oh, yes, she was tempted, so very tempted.

Chapter Two

By ten o’clock Zack knew the layout of the casino and had a plan. If there was the slightest chance the waitress was Tink—and in addition to the scar, there was enough about her past to justify the possibility—he couldn’t leave without trying to convince her to come home with him and at least talk to Uncle Nick.

He waited for her next to the locker-room door where he hoped she would soon appear. It should be her dinner hour about now.

“Ah,” he said in satisfaction. His hunch had paid off. She was right on time. “Hi,” he said when she came near.

Her head jerked up. One hand flew to her throat. For a split second she looked like a frightened deer caught in car headlights, then all signs of expression disappeared behind the heavy mask of makeup she wore.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “The deputy.”

“Zack Dalton,” he reminded her. “The cousin.” He shot her a questioning glance, wondering if she would tell him her name or call for the security guards.

She hesitated, then spoke firmly, as if making up her mind it was okay to share the information. “My name is Hannah Carrington. I’m called Honey.”

“Honey,” he repeated, keeping his tone neutral. “Are you ready for supper? I’m starved.”

“Are you joining me?” she asked with a certain wry amusement he found encouraging. Her lips, when she smiled, were delectable, like ripe cherries.

He grinned. “Yes, if you don’t mind. My treat. I cashed in the quarters, so I’m flush. I, uh, also have an idea I’d like to discuss with you.”

Once again seated in the coffee shop, he studied his companion while she glanced over the menu. Her absurd eyelashes cast long shadows over her rouged cheeks. He wondered how Uncle Nick would react to this “painted” woman.

Humor mingled with worry. The soft, full mouth with its sweet sensitivity belied the toughness implied by the makeup and costume. Which one was the true Honey Carrington?

His curiosity was piqued by the contradictions. Even if she wasn’t Tink, he wanted to know more about this woman of unexpected depth and mystery.

Depth and mystery? He shook his head at his musings. Except for the scar, he really didn’t know a solid fact about her, other than what she said.

After they’d ordered, he inhaled deeply, then began his argument to persuade her to return home with him. “I think I told you my uncle Nick had a heart attack recently?”

“Yes. That’s why you’re looking for his daughter.”

“Right. I think you could be her.” He held up a hand to forestall denials. “You have the scar. Both your parents are dead. You were raised by someone claiming to be a relative. What if she wasn’t your aunt? What if you were taken from your mother’s side and sold on the baby black market?”

“That’s…that’s ridiculous.”

But she no longer sounded so certain, he noted. “So maybe something went wrong, and you didn’t end up at the place you were supposed to go. Maybe the kidnapper needed to lie low and deposited you with a relative or girlfriend for safekeeping, but never came back. Where were you born?”

“California,” she said, then glared at him for slipping the question in when she wasn’t expecting it.

“You’re sure of that?”

She lifted those fake eyelashes enough to stare at him in confusion. Her eyes were blue, light blue with silvery flecks. His heart upped its beat. Tink had had blue eyes.

“My aunt,” she began in a low voice, then paused. “My aunt had to get a birth certificate for me when I went to school. It was certified by a sworn statement from her. She said I was born at home, with a midwife, instead of a doctor. Apparently the birth wasn’t registered at the time.”

A shot of excitement zinged along Zack’s nerves. The lack of a usual birth certificate clenched the matter as far as he was concerned. “You have to come to the ranch and talk to Uncle Nick. I’ll pay you. Five hundred dollars, free and clear, for two weeks of your time. You’ll have room and board, of course.”

He couldn’t tell anything from her silence.

“Look, it may not come to anything, but if there’s a chance you’re Tink, we have to take it. Uncle Nick might not survive another heart attack. If you are his daughter, wouldn’t you want to know?”

The lush mouth trembled for just a second before she crimped her lips firmly against each other. “Yes,” she said in an almost inaudible voice. “I’d want to know.”

He considered his anemic savings. “Today’s August the sixth. I’ll give you a thousand if you’ll stay the rest of the month.”

“I don’t want your money,” she told him seriously. “Tink is your cousin’s name?”

“Theresa. She insisted on Tinker Bell, so we started calling her Tink for short. It stuck.”

“You remember her?”

“Sure. I was around eight when she disappeared.”

Honey nodded and bent her head to study the table as if she might actually be considering his proposition. Zack waited for her to think it through. While he had his own doubts about bringing a strange woman home, this was for Uncle Nick. He couldn’t ignore the opportunity fate had thrown his way.

He saw her chest rise and fall. Bleakness darkened her eyes, then she said softly, “All right. I’ll go with you. To Idaho, right?”

“Yes.” He hooked an arm over the back of the chair and sighed in relief, unaware of the tension until that moment. “It isn’t the end of the world,” he assured her when she looked so oddly woebegone, or was it worried? Curiosity got the best of him. “Why have you decided to go?”

“I hate working in the casino.”

The emotion underlying the statement spoke of truth. He wondered what he would have done if she’d refused. He could hardly kidnap her.

He smiled. He didn’t have to worry about the next step now that she’d agreed with his plan. “What kind of notice do you need to give the casino?”

“Thirty minutes,” she said with a cynicism touched with some other emotion he couldn’t name. “People come and go at the drop of a hat here.”

“Great. Can you be ready to leave at six in the morning?” At her startled glance, he said, “Okay, seven. Can you be ready by then? Where shall I pick you up?”

“I’ll meet you in the lobby here. At six.” She dropped her hands into her lap so the waitress could place her order on the table. “I’ll need the address and phone number of the ranch. So I can tell my aunt,” she added as if he’d questioned the need to know.

“No problem.” He gave her the information. Picking up his hamburger, he bit into it hungrily. Lady Luck had finally smiled on him.

If this woman really was his long-lost cousin, Uncle Nick would be in high alt, as the old man liked to say.

But what if she wasn’t? What if she was playing some game with them, hoping to cash in somehow? Huh, she’d refused the money he’d offered, so what could she want? And he’d been doing all the pursuing, so it was unlikely she’d planned it all. And let’s face it, con artists weren’t likely to target Idaho ranchers or deputy sheriffs!

He weighed the evidence. She had the scar, her parents were gone, her birth certificate was questionable, so there was the possibility that she was legitimate. For Uncle Nick’s sake, he had to take that chance.

At five-thirty on Sunday morning, Honey left all her worldly possessions, which were crammed into two suitcases and one duffel, behind the supervisor’s desk in the office that adjoined the employee lounge. No one was in at the moment, since it wasn’t time for a shift change.

She didn’t want any of her co-workers to spot her, dressed as she was in baggy pants, a tank top and a long-sleeved shirt, her hair hidden under a baseball cap with a skimpy dark-haired fake ponytail attached. She thought she looked enough like a boy to pass a casual glance, but she wasn’t sure about a direct perusal from those who knew her.

Keeping her head low, she left the lounge and hurried to the elevators. At Zack’s room, she slipped a note under the door.

It opened at once. “What is it?” he asked.

Startled, she could only stare up at him for a second, then she ducked her head. “I was told to deliver a message to this room, sir,” she said in a deeper tone than her normal one. She gestured toward the letter.

“Wait,” he ordered.

She froze in place.

He picked the letter up, tore open the envelope and read it, a suspicious frown on his face. Finished, he handed her two casino tokens worth a dollar each.

“No reply,” he said, and closed the door.

She let her breath out slowly, then returned to the elevator. After leaving her employee badge and a note telling her supervisor she had to leave town due to a family emergency, she carried her luggage to the service door.

Zack appeared right on time. “Where is she?” he asked.

“I’m to take you to her,” Honey told him. She pulled her baseball cap a little lower when he tilted his head and tried to study her face.

“Uh, this is her luggage,” she added.

He nodded, hoisted the duffel and left her to deal with the two bags. She followed at his heels, taking longer steps in an insouciant and masculine—she hoped—manner.

They stored the bags in the back of a black SUV. She climbed in the passenger side, fastened her seat belt and slipped on sunglasses. She noted the protective bullet-proof glass and chain-link-type divider between the front and back seats. For a second she wondered if he would order her into the rear of the vehicle, where prisoners rode.

The deputy got in, started the engine, then eased into the sparse traffic along the strip.

Honey breathed a sigh of relief. Surely no one would expect her to leave Vegas in a vehicle emblazoned with the badge of a sheriff’s department on its sides.

“Okay, where is she?” Zack demanded.

“Here,” she said. She removed the sunglasses.

Zack stopped at the red light and turned to his passenger. The youngster he’d taken for a boy gave him a defiant grin.

The silvery-blue eyes met his. The lashes and eyebrows were golden brown. A tiny mole dotted the corner of her mouth, which was totally bare of makeup, as was the rest of her face. She looked fresh and young and entirely foreign to the waitress from the casino.

“What’s going on?” he asked, feeling he’d been set up.

“Nothing,” she said innocently.

Too innocently. He knew a scam when he saw one. “That getup is certainly different from your usual.”

“I had to wear the casino costume. It was part of the job. Now I can dress in my own clothes.”

The light turned and he drove on. “Those are your usual clothes? Tell me another one before that one gets cold.”

Fury washed over him, but he wasn’t usually a hot-tempered person. An effective cop had to consider the facts from a cool distance. He reached a logical conclusion.

They were on the highway now. The Sunday-morning traffic was heavier as people went to work in the resort town. He pulled off the road onto the shoulder just before an exit ramp and stopped. With the engine idling, he said, “What are you running away from?”

He had to give her credit for control. Her clasped hands tightened slightly, but that was her only reaction.

“I’m not,” she said.

“Okay. Who are you running from?”

“No one.”

“Either tell me, or I’ll put you out right here and you can walk back to the casino.”

The hands tightened again, then relaxed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We made a deal—the rest of the month at your uncle’s ranch. That’s what you said.”

He locked eyes with her. If it hadn’t been for that ever-so-slight tremor in the luscious mouth, he would have called off the whole thing. However, he felt a warning was called for. “If you try to bring any harm to my family, I’ll ship you out so fast your head will spin.”

“How could I do that? I don’t even know them.” She glared at him. “If you’ve changed your mind, the least you can do is take me back to my apartment before my landlady finds the note telling her I’m gone.”

“You don’t plan on coming back here?”

“It’s a big world. I’ve only seen California and Nevada so far…and maybe Idaho if what you say is true.”

This hard-edged, fresh-faced person was certainly at odds with the heavily made-up waitress who’d been concerned about him last night. More contradictions.

He put the police SUV in gear and headed north once more. Home was a sixteen-hour journey away. He planned to make it before midnight.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Honey mocked her morbid thoughts as the miles peeled away under the tires. Other drivers, upon realizing the SUV was a sheriff’s vehicle, slowed noticeably. It was evident they weren’t sure of the authority of an out-of-state cop, but they weren’t going to take any chances.

At midmorning they stopped for gas and picked up coffee and rolls at a fast-food drive-through. She watched the passing scenery, fascinated with the desert and colorful mountains.

When she asked about their travel plans, he told her they would follow Highway 93 to Twin Falls, pick up I-84 until they reached Boise, switch to state roads 55 and 95, then the county roads, which would take them to the ranch. He handed her a map from the door pocket.

Curious, she asked questions about the remote ranch. He answered each of them, painting an idealistic picture of his life with a stern but loving uncle and cousins galore. By the time she ran out of questions and his replies were growing shorter, she was filled with an envy that fueled the loneliness she felt as she traveled with the handsome deputy into the unknown.

For the rest of the day, she traced their route on the map as they drove north. They pulled into truck stops for gas and meals, first lunch, then dinner. As time passed, she couldn’t help but feel she was on some grand adventure that would take her to…where?

Glancing at her companion, a tremor rippled through her like the warning quiver of an earthquake ready to roar up from the bowels of the earth. His perusal said he didn’t quite trust her. She didn’t blame him.

She fought a guilty conscience for taking advantage of his offer, knowing she wasn’t the cousin he sought. However, she had to protect her brother, and that surely outweighed Zack’s concern for his uncle. Didn’t it? Anyway, he was the one who’d insisted she come with him, and truly she didn’t mean the Daltons any harm.

While he drove, she studied him covertly. He was an attractive man. He wore no ring and had mentioned no wife in his list of family members, so she assumed he wasn’t attached. If circumstances had been different, they might have met, fallen in love, even married.

Ah, she’d always been a romantic. A sigh, filled with sadness she couldn’t quite fathom, worked its way out of her. At his quick look, she managed a smile.

Life was what it was, she reminded herself sharply. All the wishing and hoping and dreaming she’d ever done had never changed her fate, not one iota.

As the day grew longer, she became weary. She’d had no sleep the previous night due to her preparations for leaving. Her head dropped forward, startling her as she drifted into sleep. At last she asked, “Are we going to travel all night?”

“We’ll stop at the next town if you’re tired.”

“How far are we from the ranch?”

“Four or five hours.”

“I can make it. Are we in Idaho yet?”

“Just about.”

She fell silent as tension crept up her neck. Whatever happened, she was committed to this course. For a moment she felt the way she had the day the social worker left her and Adam at her aunt’s house, only this time she didn’t have her brother’s hand to cling to. She exhaled shakily. She was really, truly on her own.

Darkness closed around them. She glimpsed the sign that welcomed them to Idaho as it flashed past. At one point she heard his voice, but the words didn’t register. “What?”

“You can let the seat back a little,” he said more loudly. “The barrier keeps it from going very far.”

She did so. The act was merely a blink on her consciousness, then it was gone.

Sometime later she was woken by a curse. She grasped warm flesh and felt the contraction in his thigh muscles as he braked, then the wild skid of the SUV as it swung in an arc. The rear end slid past the front and they came to an abrupt halt facing back the way they had come.

“What is it?” she asked, releasing her hold on him.

His snort was sardonic. “There’s water across the road. Sit tight.” He removed his shoes and socks, got out and checked the depth of the water.

Cold air swirled into the warm vehicle. Rain splattered in waves across it. She shivered and pulled her shirt closer around her. August in Idaho was definitely cooler than in Las Vegas.

The deputy returned, letting in another blast of chilly air. She looked around. There wasn’t a house or building in sight, not even a distant light to indicate civilization.

Hail suddenly hit the windshield. “It’s cold,” she said. She was shivering.

“Yeah. We’re caught in a freak storm. We’re stuck until the water goes down.”

Her escort dried his feet on a handkerchief, put on his shoes and socks, then restarted the SUV. He parked off the road at a wide point that looked out on a shallow valley and a long range of mountains. The landscape all around them was lit by flashes of lightning.

She could detect evergreen trees and the ever-present desert sage. Along the edge of the road, Russian thistle and wallflowers formed soft mounds that constantly changed their shapes in the brisk wind. She shivered as if someone was walking on her grave.

“What do you mean, stuck?” she finally asked.

“As in, we can’t go on.”

“Well, let’s go back,” she said, wary of the storm and the dark.

“Where?” His tone was sardonic.

“The last town. We can stay in a motel until the storm is past.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, but the last town was a hole in the wall with one quick-stop market-gas station combo, which, I might add, wasn’t open.”

“No motel?” she asked. Something akin to panic shot through her. She forced herself to stillness.

“Nothing.” He slammed his fist on the steering wheel, the perfect picture of male irritation.

After a couple of minutes of silence, she dared ask, “What now?” The fact that not one car was visible in any direction wasn’t lost on her.

“There’s a town fifteen or twenty miles down the road. That’s a far piece to walk for help, even if we got across the flood over the road.” He glanced at her. “The current is swift, but I could probably make it.”

The thought of being left behind caused the near-panic to stir painfully. “Maybe the water will subside soon.”

“Probably not before morning.”

He picked up the handset of a police scanner, his manner resigned but not particularly worried. All she heard was the crackle of static with a sharper crack at each flash of lightning on the horizon as he turned the dial. He tried calling several times, but got no answer.

When the lightning hit close, he turned the radio off. “Too dangerous in this storm,” he muttered.

“I have my cell phone.” She got it out of her bag. When she tried to reach an operator in order to locate a nearby town and, she hoped, a place to stay, she got mostly static and faintly heard a recording that told her she was out of range. “Out of range.”

He didn’t appear surprised. “Yeah. There’s nothing open now, anyway.” He yawned and stretched. “We’ll have to wait it out. Luckily the land drains fast. I have a sleeping bag.”

With that enigmatic statement, he got out, opened the rear door and climbed in. He laid the rear seats flat and spread a puffy bag over the cargo space.

“I can move our luggage so you can curl up back here and sleep,” he told her.

Silently she watched while he stacked her three bags and one other against the back of the front seat.

“Sorry, no pillows,” he said. He twisted and looked at her. “Your bed’s ready.”

The cold was getting to her now, and shivers racked her. “Where are you going to sleep?”

“In the front seat.”

She immediately saw that this wasn’t fair. “You’re taller than I am. You take the back and I’ll stay in the front.”