“It’s more than that,” he protested. “Whoever took my wallet knows where I live. He might have swiped a cell phone, too, which would reveal even more about me. We have to stay alert and be prepared for the worst if we actually find out where I’m from.”
“You’re talking about another ambush?”
“He could be there before us.”
“I’m staying with you until Coeur d’Alene,” she said. “I have a feeling about that place. Let’s get some sleep, okay?”
Before he got back in bed, he snatched the chair at the desk and levered it under the knob.
In the morning she called her mother and found out Bill was home and the dreaded nephew had shown up full of demands. “He treats this place like it’s his already,” Frances fumed. “Always prowling around, looking for something. And he grew a beard. All that red hair—he looks like a Viking. Anyway, where are you now?”
“Idaho. Just a couple of places to check.”
Frances was silent for several beats before she said, “Idaho?”
“Yeah,” Kinsey said. “One of the few states we didn’t live in.”
“We were there for a few months when you were three. You just don’t remember. I have to go. Chad is taking apart Bill’s desk.” The phone clicked off.
Zane had come into the room. “Your mother?” he said.
“How did you know?”
“You get a certain look in your eyes after you talk to her.” Kinsey actually cracked a smile.
The Twin Falls Travers’s Tractors was a bust, just like the others. They reached Falls Bluff by noon, their expectations rock bottom. The town’s namesake seemed to be the flat-faced mountain that sported a waterfall located to the north. Evergreens covered the hillsides surrounding the town, while open plains baked in the sun.
The city was tiny and Festival Street was easy to find. So was the green-and-white sign repainted with the name Shorty’s. The interior didn’t resemble a Travers’s outlet. There were no cubicles, no open floor space. Every inch seemed to be crammed with shelves displaying must-have country equipment and goods.
There was no one in sight, so they bided their time, unsure how to attract attention, listening to a country-western station on the radio. Finally, they heard a noise coming from the back and turned in time to see a young woman enter the room carrying a forty-pound sack of feed. She dropped it next to the counter and slapped her hands together. Strawberry-blond pigtails on either side of her head made her look younger than a probable age of twenty. Looking right at Zane, she called, “Hey, Gerard, I didn’t know anyone was out here. Hope you haven’t been waiting long.”
The song on the radio seemed to fade away as a moment in time stretched endlessly inside Kinsey’s head. This girl knew Zane. Was this it? His name was Gerard?
“Just in town, thought I’d stop by,” Zane said. It appeared he wasn’t going to announce amnesia if he didn’t have to.
“He’s showing me around,” Kinsey added. “I’m visiting from New Orleans.” The girl didn’t respond to New Orleans, so apparently it wasn’t a place she associated with Gerard.
“Long as you’re here, do you want to pick up Pike’s order?” She rounded the counter and opened a box, riffled through receipts and read aloud. “Galvanized fencing staples, half a dozen sacks of oats and molasses horse feed, dog food and two reels of utility chain. Oh, and he wants a dozen calf bottles.” She looked up at Zane and added, “I have most of the order put together out back. You can pull your truck around to the loading doors.”
“I don’t have the truck with me,” he said and Kinsey could see he was angling his head to get a look at the order. The salesgirl noticed him doing this and handed it over. Kinsey looked, as well.
The order was made by someone named Pike Hastings and was billed to the Hastings Ridge Ranch, Falls Bluff, Idaho.
How was Zane, or rather, Gerard, related to Pike Hastings?
The girl must have been a mind reader. “Tell your brother everything is here whenever he wants to come into town and get it.”
“I will,” Zane said, his voice kind of hollow.
The girl turned her attention to Kinsey. “Did you know Lily from before she got married?”
Lily? Was this a sister or was this a wife? More to the point, was this Zane’s wife? Kinsey bit her lip and tried not to look as shaken as she felt. She murmured, “No, I didn’t.”
The mention of a woman and the word married in the same sentence seemed to affect Zane in the same way it had her. He quietly handed the order form back to the girl, who plopped it in the box. Kinsey could feel the tension coursing through his body and she suspected he needed to get out of that store and decompress. She knew she did. “It’s about time we get back,” she said vaguely, waving in the direction of the door.
Zane seemed to suddenly recall the key fob that had played such a big part in this ritual, and he took it from his pocket. “Do you have any more of these?” he asked, showing the girl the Red Hot tag.
She shook her head. “I’ve never seen one of these before.”
“I must have picked it up somewhere else,” he said. “Well, see you later.”
“Give Lily and Charlie my best.”
“Sure thing,” Zane said.
*
PIKE, LILY AND CHARLIE. Three names he should recognize, three people, one of them his brother. Who was Charlie? And Lord, was Lily his wife? Was Charlie his son or father or another brother?
For a minute or two, they both sat side by side in the cocoon of the rental car. Zane finally cleared his throat. “That girl seemed very sure I was Gerard Hastings.”
Kinsey looked over at him. Her tongue flicked across her luscious candy-apple lips, her huge eyes glittered like dark water trapped in a cool well. “She did. You are.”
“But that doesn’t mean Lily is my wife. She didn’t actually say that.”
“No, she didn’t. But you know what, Zane—I mean, Gerard. Wow, that’s going to take some getting used to.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What I was going to say is that for your sake, I hope one look at her and you’ll remember who you are and what’s important to you. You’ll remember who you love.”
“I think I know who I love,” he whispered with a quick glance into her eyes.
“Don’t say that. Listen, all we can do is find out.” She took her cell phone from its pocket and brought up the map. Two minutes later, she said, “Here it is. Hastings Ridge Ranch, Route 109.” She plugged her phone into the car charger and added, “Twenty miles from here lies what is apparently your home. You’ll finally learn the truth.”
He stared at her until she lowered her gaze, stuck the keys in the ignition and started the car.
The truth. Would he be able to live with it once he found it?
Chapter Eight
The countryside flattened out as they drove east of town. Zane—he simply could not think of himself as Gerard yet—studied each house, farm and ranch as they sped by. How many hundreds of times he must have traveled this road and yet nothing looked familiar. When they pulled around a yellow school bus, kids waved through the windows. Had he ridden that bus or one like it to school? How far did his past go back here?
The thought that the man who had attacked him might be waiting at the ranch added another level of tension. Even when there ceased being people or houses and the scenery turned into bucolic vistas, his stomach stayed tied in a knot. Kinsey seemed as distracted as he was, which he supposed meant she was just as nervous.
Had he left this place in a huff? Would his family welcome him back or be shocked he’d returned? He didn’t know if he’d been away a week or a month. The girl at the store hadn’t seemed surprised to see him, so probably not that long. She also hadn’t reacted to the mention of New Orleans. Had his destination been a secret and, if so, why?
“It shouldn’t be far now,” Kinsey said. “It sure seems to be out in the middle of nowhere, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,�
�� he said uneasily. Did this mean it was a poor ranch struggling to make ends meet? How was he ever going to pay Kinsey back in a timely manner if that was the case?
At the top of the next hill they looked down into a valley of sorts. No buildings were visible from the highway, but they did see a long road accented with a line of power poles bisecting the floor leading to another hill a mile or so away. A small red car drove toward them along that road, a cloud of dust in its wake.
Kinsey stopped the rental at the point where the paved and the gravel road intersected. A herd of cattle, these with calves by their sides, looked up at them, mooed their disapproval and moseyed away from the fence.
“Are you ready for this, Gerard?” Kinsey asked, gesturing at the approaching car.
“Not Gerard, not between us, anyway, not until it means something. And I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s get out and ask the driver if we’re at the right place.” He stepped from the air-conditioned comfort of the sedan into the summer heat of the day. The smell of animals and dried grass filled the air. A minute later, the red car pulled alongside their rental and the door opened.
A small dynamo of a woman wearing jeans and a T-shirt waved when she saw them. While her expressive dark brows framed equally dark eyes, her hair was very blond and spiky short. Beaded earrings dangled toward her shoulders. “Gerard, I didn’t know you were back,” she said. “Have you seen your brothers yet?”
Just like that, he learned he had more than one brother. “I...I just got back,” he said. Was this Lily?
“What happened to your throat?” she gasped. “And your cheek. Were you in a fight? I thought that was Chance’s area of expertise.”
It was hard to miss the derogatory tone in her voice. Who was Chance? And who, exactly, was this woman?
“No, not a fight,” he said. “I had an accident.”
She studied the marks a moment and narrowed her eyes. “That must have been quite the accident. It looks to me like someone tried to choke you.”
Zane wasn’t sure what to say that wouldn’t reveal his memory loss and he didn’t want to do that right now. Kinsey must have sensed his feelings for she jumped into the silence. “My name is Kinsey Frost,” she said, extending her hand.
“Lily Kirk,” the woman said and shook Kinsey’s hand. “Are you a friend of Gerard’s?”
“Yes,” Kinsey said.
“I see by your license plate you’re from Louisiana.”
“The car is a rental,” Kinsey said without volunteering any additional information.
Zane, who’d been fooling with his shirt collar, added, “Kinsey and I met a few days ago. She gave me a ride home.”
“Where’s your truck?”
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“That makes no sense.” She shook her head. “Never mind, it’s none of my business.” She glanced at her watch, then peered down the road. “The bus is late. Poor Charlie is stuck on that thing for forty-five minutes coming and going to summer school. It’s only for three weeks and heaven knows he needs to be around other kids, but I still feel sorry for the little guy.”
She wore a ring on her left hand, but it was hard to tell if it was a wedding band or something else. Zane wondered if she was married to one of his brothers. The last name was wrong, but many women didn’t automatically change their name upon marrying.
“We passed a bus about ten miles back,” Kinsey said.
“Good, then it’ll be here any minute. The gal who drives that bus knows these roads like the back of her hand.”
There was no way to ask the next question that wouldn’t be abrupt, so Zane just put it out there. “Is there anyone new at the ranch, say, within the last two days?”
“One guy.”
“When did he get here?” Zane asked.
Her eyebrows knit together as she thought. “Not long. What’s today, Tuesday? Maybe since Sunday. I guess he asked around town and found out who was hiring. Pike’s the only one who talked to him that I know of. He said the guy is a drifter on his way to New Mexico and needed a few weeks’ work because he ran out of money. That’s all I know. Why?”
“I was just wondering,” he said. He glanced at Kinsey and read what she was thinking in her eyes: the timing was pretty darn suspicious. Was this man there for them? Striving to sound casual, he added, “What’s he look like?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met him. Oh, wait. Pike says he has a red beard and I think he said he was about thirty.” Kinsey looked startled by the description. Meanwhile, Lily tilted her head as though a thought had just occurred to her. “Where did you run off to, Gerard? No one here knew. Chance just said that you left right after the wedding but wouldn’t tell him where you were going or how long you’d be gone. Of course, he could be lying through his teeth and who would guess?”
Zane didn’t have the slightest idea what Lily was talking about, but there was the name Chance again and said with the same derision. He tried to look confident as he said, “I’m not trying to be secretive. I’d just like to explain it later, okay?”
She lowered her gaze for a second, then looked back. “I’m sorry I said that about your brother. Sometimes I forget my place.”
Grumbling engine noises preceded the arrival of the school bus. It ground to a halt beside them and as Lily walked toward the door, a small boy with fair hair and freckles appeared on the stairs. He was a slightly built kid who wore torn pants and a red-and-white-striped shirt. He jumped off the bus as though exiting a burning building.
“See you tomorrow, Sue,” Lily called as she waved the bus off. She looked down at the child and shook her head. “Oh, Charlie, those are your new jeans! How did you get a hole in them already?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie mumbled.
“Come on, fess up. What happened?”
“Nothin’.”
“Charlie, did someone push you again?”
“No,” the boy said quickly.
Lily put her hands on her hips. “It was Trevor, wasn’t it? I’m going to call his mother.”
“Mommy, no!” Charlie said in a panic. “No! Everyone calls me a baby.” Suddenly the boy seemed to realize they weren’t alone. He looked from Kinsey to Zane and the threatening flood of tears vanished. “You’re back!” the child cried.
“Yeah,” Zane said. “I’m back.”
*
“I’D LOVE TO paint that woman,” Kinsey said as she followed Lily’s car down the gravel road. Zane figured Kinsey kept a good distance between them in case Lily’s tire threw up a rock. He knew she was nervous about the rental. “She’s really pretty, but it’s not that. There’s something haunting behind her eyes. Did you notice it?”
“No,” Zane said truthfully. It was impossible not to recognize Lily’s charm and quirkiness, beauty even, but he hadn’t looked closely at her, not really. “Her hair is sure blond.”
“Bleach,” Kinsey said. “It’s a good look for her. Different.”
“Yeah,” he said. Right now, he was just anxious to get to the end of this road and find out what came next. He didn’t know if the land they were passing was part of the Hastings ranch or if the ranch existed down one of the smaller roads they’d passed.
Fenced pastures lined either side of the road, the land beyond glowed golden in the afternoon sun, changing from rolling mountains dotted with bright green trees to the high mountains beyond with their permanent cover of evergreens. Every once in a while they would top a rise and catch a glimpse of a river twining its way far below. Cattle grazed everywhere.
They also caught glimpses of houses, some old-fashioned and some very modern, all far off the road and secluded from one another. Each had an assortment of outbuildings and barns.
“Do you remember any of this?” Kinsey asked.
Zane stared out at the rows of mown hay that lay drying in the sun before the hay baler came along and did its work. He didn’t know how he knew this, he just did. “Not really. It all seems vaguely familiar. You kno
w, I really don’t think Lily and I are married to each other. And she didn’t ask if my wife knew I was home. I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”
“You two could be in the middle of a terrible marriage, I guess, but she didn’t treat you that way.”
“No, she seemed more or less indifferent to me.” He took a deep breath and touched her leg. “There’s only one woman in the world I want to be attached to, Kinsey. You know that, right?”
She cast him a serious look. “I know that’s what you think now. I know that we’re immensely attracted to each other and that if you’re single, I can guess what we’re going to do about that attraction. But I also know your life right now is one-dimensional. For all intents and purposes, you’re four or five days old and I am the single familiar face in a sea of strangers. That could change.”
“And you don’t want a broken heart,” he stated flatly.
“No, do you?”
“No.” Though he suspected that one or both of them were going to end up with just that.
They were silent a few seconds and then Kinsey added, “Why didn’t you just tell Lily the truth and ask for her help?”
“I don’t know for sure,” he said.
“I got the impression she’s no one’s dummy,” Kinsey added.
“So did I. I guess I just want to tell my family all at once. There’s so much I need to explain, and so much I need explained to me. Lily mentioned a wedding and a guy named Chance and don’t forget the new wrangler, which makes me remember you acted kind of weird when she described him.”
“That’s because she used the same words my mother did to describe Chad Dodge. But it can’t be him. I talked to my mother this morning and she was yelling at him. I swear, so much has happened since this morning, it seems like three days have passed.”
Zane rubbed his forehead. They grew quiet as they drove by a crew mowing the tall fields of hay, four combines working in harmony across a huge sweep of land. Were any of them family members? While he studied their far-off action, Kinsey crested yet another hill. Her intake of breath earned his attention.
Alice Sharpe Page 10
