by B. J Daniels
“I could use a beer,” he said, and stepped back to let her lead the way. They walked through the darkness toward the rear of the bar, following the sound of country music. Once through a screened door, they passed along a hallway with restrooms and storage areas before they reached the dark bar with its knotty-pine walls and scarred wood floors.
A half dozen men and women were seated at the bar with another half dozen at the tables on the far wall. His friend spotted him and motioned to a room off the side. Thorn and JJ stepped into it and his friend joined them, closing the door behind them.
* * *
IT HAD TAKEN a while for JJ to get her land legs back under her after that wild motorcycle ride, but the shower had helped. She had gotten the feel of the root cellar off her skin, if not off her mind.
As she stepped into the small room with Thorn, she took it in. There was a table and four chairs and nothing else in the room. She suspected there had been poker games in here in the past. She still felt off balance from everything that had happened. Being here with Thorn, in this bar from another century or two, wasn’t helping shake how surreal all of this felt.
She watched Thorn’s friend slap him on the back, pulling him into a hug before the man turned to her.
“This is my friend Miguel.”
The stocky dark-haired man grinned. “You must be JJ.”
She couldn’t help her surprise. Thorn hadn’t had a chance to make a call since rescuing her. So he’d been that sure he’d find me and bring me here at some point? Well, the man had never lacked confidence, that was for sure. She smiled and shook Miguel’s hand. “Great place you have here.”
Miguel laughed. “It will be once I get it fixed up.”
“No, I like it the way it is. It’s perfect,” she said.
“Well, I can promise you that the food is good,” the proud owner said. “How about I get you something to drink. Two beers?” He looked to JJ. She nodded. Miguel grabbed Thorn’s hand again, pulling it close to his heart. “It’s been too long, old buddy.” With that he was gone.
JJ couldn’t help being touched by Miguel’s obvious affection for Thorn. It made her change her perception of him. The man had at least one good friend. She suspected there were more. So why did he live high in the mountains like some kind of hermit? Even as she questioned it, she knew it had to do with his deceased wife. He’d said he’d gotten her killed. She wondered if she would ever hear the whole story, or if they would part ways long before that happened.
Thorn took a chair at the table. Miguel had closed the door behind him, cutting off the loud jukebox music enough that they would have no trouble hearing each other once they started talking.
That was what this was about, right? It took her a moment before she dragged out a chair and sat down, dreading what was coming. She’d pulled off this life of hers for several years now without a hitch. Just her luck that some fools decided to kidnap Geneva Davenport.
Miguel brought in two beers, a bowl of fried hot corn tortillas and a tub of salsa. The smell was enough to make her stomach rumble. The last meal she’d had was elk hash earlier at his cabin. That seemed like days ago.
Thorn took a sip of his beer, watching her over the rim of his glass before he reached for one of the chips.
JJ helped herself to a couple of chips, heavy on the salsa, and washed them down with a gulp of the beer. How many people were looking for them? Her gaze settled on Thorn. She couldn’t even be sure which side of the law he was on. He said he was one of the good guys, and so far it definitely seemed that way. But still, it appeared that no law enforcement had been called in, and there were at least two men dead and a plane crashed in the mountains.
“So,” Thorn said as if feeling her questioning gaze on him. “Let’s hear it. You were about to tell me the story of how you ended up in Geneva Davenport’s house last night.”
She took a sip of her beer. “There are several ways to look at this. In a way I saved Geneva. If she’d been here instead of me...”
He chuckled. “That’s how you’re going to try to sell it? Good luck with that.”
“Fine.” She leaned back in the chair, cornered. One thing was clear at this point. Thorn had saved her again. Or had he caught her again? Either way, he had her. He knew who she was. There was no getting out of this. Unless she could convince this cowboy to help her. But that would mean telling him everything, including the truth.
“Where do you want me to start?” she asked, still stalling. She didn’t tell anyone about her life. She certainly didn’t want to open those old wounds to this man.
“How about the beginning? Tell me again how it was that you were kidnapped from Geneva Davenport’s bed.”
“As I said, I was house-sitting. Kinda.” She glanced away for a moment, his gray gaze too intense. She could feel it boring into her soul.
“Right. You said Geneva gave you her security code. So you’re friends along with being her travel agent?”
JJ sighed. “Not exactly. We’ve never met in person. She asked me to come by and pick up something she forgot and overnight it to her once. A while back. That’s how I knew her passcode to get into the house. She’s one of my clients at the agency where I work. I got to know her because she travels a lot. I take care of everything from having a luxury SUV waiting when she lands to booking a hotel, making restaurant reservations, buying her a new swimsuit from a shop she likes and having it delivered so she can step into it the moment she arrives at the hotel.”
He raised a brow. “You do everything for her but apply sunscreen. I got that. Still it doesn’t explain why you were sleeping in her bed. Or did she ask you to keep her bed warm?”
She mugged a face at him and leaned back in her chair again. It was late, and it had been a very long day. “I had booked her a resort, and I knew she wouldn’t be home for two weeks.”
“So you decided to curl up in her bed and stay for a while? This is starting to sound like a fairy tale.”
“I guess you could say that it is. I’m homeless.”
He blinked. “But you just said you have a job, a job where at least one of your high-end clients trusts you.”
She had to look away out of shame. “I can’t afford a place to live.” He raised his brow in disbelief. Was she going to have to tell her entire life history to this man? It appeared so, since he was waiting for a rational explanation and she only had one, the truth.
Fortunately, Miguel came in with two steaming plates of food. He put them down and quickly left, no doubt sensing the tension in the room.
Thorn motioned to her plate. “I’m sure you can eat and talk.”
She picked up her fork. The meal smelled so good, she took a quick bite. It was delicious. She took another bite and saw that he was still waiting. He wasn’t going to let her get away without telling her whole story. She realized it was like ripping off a bandage. Just get it out and be done with it.
“I was raised by my mother until I was fourteen. She was a meth addict. We lived in Billings.” She took another bite, chewed and swallowed. She noticed that he hadn’t touched his yet. “I never knew where my next meal was coming from. I won’t bore you with how I survived, but I ended up getting a juvie record because of it. Then one day I came home from school, and there was this man there I’d never seen before. Turns out that he was my father.”
She raised her gaze and looked into his face, waiting for his reaction. To her surprise, he merely nodded as if he’d heard the story before. There was no surprise, no judgment. If anything, Thorn’s expression had softened, his gray gaze not so fierce. She felt herself relax a little.
“I’d always wondered about my father, but my mother had never told me anything about him,” she continued. “Turns out, he hadn’t known that I existed, but one look at me and he knew I was his. He saw my living conditions, and he paid my mother to let him take me. From then on, he rai
sed me, paid for my college, gave me a...life.” Tears filled her eyes at the memory of how her father had sacrificed to make sure she was taken care of. She made a swipe at them, turning away.
When Thorn spoke, it was barely above a whisper. “I’m guessing something happened.”
She nodded and made another swipe at her tears. “My father got sick. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was a junior in college when I found out. I quit college even though he fought me on it, and I took care of him just as he had taken care of me.”
Thorn picked up his fork. “He didn’t have medical insurance?”
“Not enough. I found out after he’d passed that he had mortgaged everything he had to put me through college. I got a job at the travel agency, but I couldn’t save the house. I looked around for a place I could afford to live and still pay off the medical bills. I found an affordable studio and got my car broken into the first night. Then at my job, I was asked to house-sit. I realized I could couch surf and not pay rent. It would help me pay off the medical bills faster. I keep a suitcase in the back of my car and a duffel bag with just what I needed.”
She knew it was trespassing. She knew she shouldn’t use her position at the travel agency to even get house-sitting jobs. Worse to sleep over when she wasn’t invited.
But she used every dime she made to pay down the medical debt. As it was, it would take her years. She’d lived hand-to-mouth with her mother long enough that she’d learned to survive on little. Her father wouldn’t have approved, and that bothered her more than the fact that she could get caught and arrested.
She’d never dreamed she would get kidnapped while doing her version of house-sitting.
He shook his head as he began to eat his meal. “This explains a lot.” He glanced down and then back up at her. “But why didn’t the kidnappers realize they had the wrong woman?”
She shrugged. “Geneva and I are both blonde and have similar features I guess, and since they found me in her bed...” She felt raw and exposed. She’d always been strong. But she’d never let anyone close enough after her father’s death, to know the truth about her life. She couldn’t help feeling ashamed. She should have known what her father had gone through to give her the life he did. What he’d sacrificed. She’d just been so happy living with him that she’d never questioned it. That was one reason she was determined to pay off every cent of his medical bills. She owed him that much and more.
They both fell into a long silence as they finished their meals. As Thorn pushed away his empty plate, she asked, “The person who asked you to find me...”
“He’s the judge I went before when I was young. I wasn’t hired. This debt you feel you owe your father, it’s more like that. The man who asked me to find you saved me from prison. Like your father, he saw that I got an education. I owe him.”
She nodded in surprise. “I have a record from when I lived with my mother. Car theft.”
He laughed. “Seems we have more in common than either of us thought.”
“Does this judge know that the kidnappers took the wrong woman?”
“I called him after I found your ID in your duffel bag and told him there had been a mix-up, but that’s all he knows. But since you made the arrangements for Geneva Davenport’s trip, you know where she is, right?”
JJ nodded as Thorn’s cell phone rang. He glanced at it and said, “I have to take this.” But as he rose to leave the room, she touched his arm. He must have seen the fear in her gaze. “It’s going to be all right.” He left the room, closing the door behind him.
* * *
FRANKLIN LOOKED UP as his friend came back into the living room after he’d stepped out to make a call.
“Could we speak in private?” Willie asked.
He merely nodded and followed his friend into the den. “Well?” He couldn’t help feeling impatient as Willie closed the door. He would soon have the money. Ten million dollars. The price for his granddaughter’s life. He would have paid twice that much to make sure she was safe.
“You might want to sit down,” the judge said solemnly. “I just got off the phone with my contact.”
Franklin dropped into a chair, his heart lodged in his throat. “Geneva?” He listened as the judge gave him an update.
“Your granddaughter had given the woman staying at her house the passcode. Geneva wasn’t home, but I suspect she knew the woman resembled her. Geneva also must have known about the tracking device on her phone, because she left it in her bedroom. The kidnappers searched for it and took it before they left in the plane that crashed.”
“What are you insinuating? That Geneva set this woman up?” He wanted to leap to his feet, to argue that his granddaughter would never do something like that, yet he couldn’t find the strength to do either.
“I’m not sure what to think at this point,” Willie said. “But I’m not ruling out that there’s a chance Geneva’s involved in the kidnapping. Or her boyfriend is. Either way, she’s in danger.”
He shook his head, not wanting to believe the evidence against his granddaughter. “We haven’t been close for some time now. She keeps secrets from me. If she’s involved in this, then that boyfriend of hers is to blame.” His friend said nothing. “Zac Judson.”
Willie pulled out his phone. “What do you know about him?”
“Just what little Geneva shared with me. They met after she got sailing lessons for her birthday. Zac was one of the instructors. He grew up in the Houston area. His father is a boatbuilder.” He saw that the judge was waiting for his take on the man. “He’s close to forty, too old for Geneva, and too...experienced.” He waved a hand through the air. “She led me to believe that he came from money.”
“You don’t think he does?”
Franklin shook his head. “The one time I met him, I saw him looking around the estate. There was a hungry look in his eyes. It was one of the reasons I took Geneva’s passport from her purse. I also cut her allowance to just necessities, which in her case is more than most people make in a year. But the boyfriend? He looks like a gold digger to me.”
The judge was searching his phone. “I’ve found a Zachariah Judson in Houston, but he’s in his sixties.”
“The man’s father.” He watched Willie keep searching.
“Okay, here’s a Zac Judson.” The judge looked up from his phone and turned the screen toward him. “Is that Geneva’s boyfriend?”
“That’s him.”
Willie tapped the keys on his phone. “He’s had his share of run-ins with the law. Assault and the sale of illegal drugs at the top of the list.”
Franklin swore and pushed himself to his feet. “I need a drink.”
“I’d take one of those now too,” WT said.
* * *
JJ WISHED SHE could believe that everything was going to be all right. That once she contacted Geneva, all of this would somehow get sorted out.
She could hear Thorn just outside the door talking to his friend Miguel after taking the call. She’d finished her meal, too nervous to sit still. She kept thinking about Geneva and how to go about telling her what had happened. The only way was to admit she’d been staying in the master bedroom at the woman’s house. Geneva needed to know what was going on. What if she changed her plans and came home early? The woman needed to know that there were some desperate men looking for her.
Deciding to get it over with, she pulled out her cell phone and hurriedly called the hotel where she’d made reservations for her client. The line rang four times before the front desk finally answered.
“Geneva Davenport, please.” She had to at least warn the woman.
“Just a moment.”
She glanced at the door and silently pleaded with the desk clerk on the other end of the line to hurry. She was beginning to trust Thorn, wasn’t she? He’d saved her twice today. But she di
dn’t kid herself. He also wasn’t letting her out of his sight until this was over. And that’s what made her afraid to trust him entirely. He could throw her to the wolves, once he paid his debt to the judge by finding Geneva.
The hotel clerk came back on the line. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have anyone by that name registered.”
That wasn’t possible. “I made the arrangements myself for her. Davenport. Please, can you check again?”
“I’m sorry, it appears someone with that last name did have a reservation, but the person never arrived and we were unable to reach the party, so it was canceled.”
JJ disconnected as Thorn came back into the room. He glanced at the phone in her hand and then at her face. “Geneva,” she said, and swallowed the lump in her throat. She’d been so sure the woman was safe as long as the kidnappers thought she was Geneva—and the real Davenport heiress was beside the pool in Palm Springs.
“Geneva never made it to the hotel I booked for her.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THORN STARED AT HER. All the color had drained from her face. He could see that she hadn’t been worried about the real Geneva Davenport because she’d thought she knew where the woman was—and that Geneva was safe.
“She wasn’t expected back for two weeks,” JJ said, sounding scared. “She couldn’t be reached because she left her phone behind in her bedroom. I assumed that she left it behind because she knew about the tracking device her grandfather put on it. She didn’t want anyone to know where she was going.”
“Except her travel agent?” he asked skeptically. “But her kidnappers were looking for something in the bedroom, right? Isn’t that what you told me?” He saw her shiver. “Did they find anything else besides her phone?” She shook her head. “Then apparently, other than you, all they wanted was her phone. So they’d known it would be there. My question is, how had the kidnappers known her phone would be in her room?”
