by LENA DIAZ,
“Yeah, I know, Boss. I never saw either of you.”
“That would make it hard to explain my Jeep if anyone looks around. Just tell the truth, that you don’t know where we’re going. Because you don’t.”
Griffin nodded and ran to the sliding doors at the back of the barn facing away from the house. He slid one of the tall, heavy doors open, revealing a breathtaking view of the mountains. But separating the barn from those mountains was a deep green, open field.
“Come on,” Dillon urged. “Let’s go.”
Ashley nudged her mount over beside Dillon’s. “But there’s no cover. Agent Kent will see us if we go that way.”
“That’s why we’re not going that way.” He pointed out the door to the right. Acres and acres of tall cornstalks waved in the afternoon breeze. His mouth quirked up in a grin. “Let’s see if you earned those riding trophies honestly or not. Try to keep up.”
He kicked his heels into Boomerang’s side and the stallion took off in a gallop. Before Ashley could do more than blink, he disappeared into the cornfield.
“Keep up. Keep up? I’ll show you keep up.” She kicked her mount and took off in pursuit.
* * *
LUTHER ADJUSTED HIS position on the rocky outcrop in the mountains high above Harmony Haven and trained his binoculars on the FBI agent far below. Special Agent Jason Kent had been a burr in Luther’s side for months now. It was kind of nice seeing the agent have so much difficulty for a change.
Kent raised his hands in the air, obviously angry and frustrated as he talked to another man in front of the barn behind the house where Detective Gray and Ashley Parrish had been a few minutes ago. He whirled around and marched to his car parked on the side of the house. A cloud of dust spit up from his wheels as he punched the accelerator and drove back the way he’d come. The FBI agent was too dumb to take a harder look around. If he had, he would have discovered Gray’s red Jeep parked behind one of the outbuildings, not visible from the road. Kent hadn’t even considered that Gray and Parrish might have gotten away on horseback.
But Luther had no such affliction.
He’d seen them race out of the back of the barn and hightail it into the cornfield. And from his vantage point, he could see all four corners of that same field. All he had to do now was wait.
Sure enough, a few minutes later at the northeast corner, two horses and riders emerged from the waving dried-up stalks, moving at a fast clip toward a cluster of pine trees. Luther fondled the rifle in his hand. Tough shot from here, lots of variables—long distance, wind, heat, the unpredictability of horses who might shy or move sideways at any time. If he missed, he’d alert his prey he was following them. And while killing Gray wouldn’t bother him one bit, Gray was riding too close to Parrish to take the shot. He decided the risk wasn’t worth it. He needed Parrish alive.
At least for a little while.
He rubbed his aching shoulder. He wasn’t sure old Doc Brookes had done his best work with a gun held to his head. But at least he could use his arm again and the doc had given him pain pills to dull the ache. The bullet had only grazed him, so all he’d needed was stitches and disinfectant. Still, it had hurt like the devil. Parrish would pay for that. Once his friend’s scheme was done, Parrish would be all his. He’d carve out his pound of flesh.
And then he’d kill her.
Chapter Eleven
Dillon locked the cabin door and dropped the duffel bags onto the wood floor at the end of the couch, which—aside from a coffee table—was the only piece of furniture in the small space.
Ashley turned in a slow circle, her lack of enthusiasm evident in the tightening of her mouth, the slump of her shoulders. “Is this your cabin?”
“No. It belongs to a friend. He rarely uses it and told me where the spare key is in case I ever want to use it, which I do, during hunting season.”
“Are we staying here tonight?”
“That depends on Rosco P. Coltrane and whether he figures out we’re here.” He set the radio on the bar that separated the tiny kitchen from the main room of the cabin. “The couch does fold out into a fairly comfortable bed if we stay. And there’s a bathroom with a shower behind that door over there. But that’s pretty much it.”
She plopped down on the couch. “What do we do now?”
“I’ll unsaddle the horses and set them up on lunge lines so they can graze. After that, I figure we can put our heads together and discuss the case. I’m going to call Chris and see if he can give me more details on what Kent thinks he has against you. Sound good?”
“I suppose. Do you need help with the horses?”
“I’ve got it. It’ll only take me a few minutes. Lock the door behind me.”
* * *
ASHLEY PULLED HER feet up and sat cross-legged on the couch, staring down at the mass of paper and folders Dillon had spread out before them on the coffee table. He sat beside her, making lists, grilling her with questions.
He glanced at her legs. “You okay? Do your feet hurt? I can put more salve and fresh bandages on them.”
“They don’t hurt. Just shifting position.”
He cocked his head and studied one of the two-columned lists he’d just finished. “From what you’ve told me, we should be able to prove you were in completely different states at the time three of these audits Kent told us about were performed. I’ll get Chris to check out the hotel records and dates.”
“That’s a good thing, right? Doesn’t that give me an alibi?”
He tapped his pen. “Maybe. Can you audit someone long-distance, without physically going to their company?”
“Yes, in theory. It’s frowned upon, not recommended. And I’ve certainly never done it.”
“But it can be done.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Yes. It can.”
“Then we still have no proof that you weren’t involved in this scam.” He picked up the list of companies he’d written down during his talk with Chris on the phone earlier. “It’s interesting that whoever pretended to be you performed audits on a lot of companies they didn’t embezzle from.”
“Why is that interesting? It just shows the audits didn’t yield discrepancies the fake Ashley Parrish could use to blackmail someone, right? That is, if we buy what Special Agent Kent said about what was happening.”
“True.” He leafed through one of the folders and frowned. He pulled another one toward him and compared some pages from each.
Ashley leaned forward. “Did you find something else?”
“More like a new avenue of questions.”
She plopped back against the couch cushions. “Great. More questions. Go ahead. Ask.”
He turned to face her, resting one arm on the back of the couch. “I think we’re going about this all wrong. We’ve been focusing on proving you’re innocent instead of trying to figure out who’s guilty. Let’s assume you’re innocent and move from there.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
He smiled. “If this is a scheme, which we’re assuming, and someone stole your identity, they’re passing themselves off as a real auditor. The only red flags being raised are that after the audits are complete, money goes missing. What kind of person could fake an audit that passes muster, that no one complains about?”
Ashley blinked as the obvious conclusion dawned on her. “They have to be a real auditor, a CPA, or at least have been educated as one.”
“I agree.” He grabbed a notebook and pen off the table and started a new list. The first bullet said “Auditor, or trained as one.”
“Our bad guy also knows your Social Security number, and enough personal information to have faked a convincing-looking website under your name. Tell me about the picture Kent said came from that website. Are you sure you’ve never seen it before?”
“Pretty s
ure. I mean, I don’t live near my family anymore. It’s not like I get my picture taken very often.”
“Where is your family?”
“Sweetwater.”
“Tennessee, just outside Chattanooga?”
“That’s it.”
“Far enough to keep your family from dropping in unexpectedly, but not so far you can’t go home if you need to?”
“Am I that easy to figure out?”
“No.” His mouth quirked sardonically. “You’re just a lot like me. I did the same thing. Left home the day I graduated high school, went away to college to put some distance between me and my family. I never intended to come back.”
“But you did. You were going to be a vet, right? What happened?”
His smile faded. “Life happened. Let’s get back to the case. I think it’s logical to assume that whoever stole your identity knows you very well—well enough to be able to take a picture of you without you thinking anything about it, someone who would have access to your personal papers so they could find your Social Security number and other personal information, someone who was trained as an auditor.” He added a bullet item to his list.
“I also suspect they must not have been very successful as an auditor in their own right, or they wouldn’t have tried to use your reputation and identity to get clients. As we discussed earlier, a lot of the audits this person performed didn’t raise any red flags with the FBI, and weren’t precursors to embezzlement. That kind of strikes me as someone who was trying to make a living as an auditor but couldn’t manage to get clients off their own reputation. So they used your reputation to get a foot in the door. The embezzling came later.” He wrote another entry on his list.
“To get around using your identity, this person performed audits remotely. That strikes me as a way for them to get around the whole fake-website thing.”
Ashley frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“If they used your name and their picture, they couldn’t blame you later, or frame you, really, if things went bad. To cover themselves, they used your picture. But by doing that, they forced themselves to have to do the audits long-distance, so none of their clients actually saw them.”
“But what about Mrs. Dunlop? She supposedly saw the auditor, and pointed at me and said I was the one who’d worked on the audit.”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure I agree with that statement. All Mrs. Dunlop said was that you were the woman who’d killed her husband. She never once said she’d actually seen you in person. Maybe Kent jumped the gun on that and gave too much credence to a grieving widow who blamed you for her husband’s death. It wouldn’t be the first time a witness stretched the truth when they believed the person they were identifying was really guilty.”
“Well, that’s kind of a scary thought.”
“That’s one of many reasons cops don’t rely solely on eyewitness testimony. Even without a motive to lie, a witness often truly believes in their testimony, even if their testimony is dead wrong. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously inaccurate. It’s human nature not to remember a face well enough to later make a positive ID, especially after seeing other pictures of that person.”
He passed her the list he’d made. “Is there anyone in your life, or anyone you’ve ever met in the past, maybe even someone you considered to be a friend, who meets all that criteria? Someone who knows what client accounts you take so they don’t end up approaching the same clients? Someone who knows where you’ll be at any given time? Someone you may trust?”
A sick feeling settled in the pit of Ashley’s stomach. “Oh, my God.”
Dillon narrowed his eyes. “You think you have a suspect?”
She nodded and handed the legal pad back to him. “There’s only one person I can think of who knows me that well. She only studied accounting in college after I started studying it. She struggled all the way through, barely passing, no matter how much I tried to help her. And later, when my company took off, she was still struggling to get her first client.” She pressed her hand to her throat. “She moved away a year and a half ago, saying she needed a new start. And suddenly she calls me to tell me her business is taking off. She’s getting clients now and finally making a good living as an auditor. I was surprised, but happy for her. And she started going on trips and cruises, things she never could have afforded in the past.”
Dillon reached for her hand. “Ashley, who is she?”
She swallowed hard, and squeezed her eyes shut. “My best friend since kindergarten, the same woman who called you the night I was abducted. Lauren Wilkes.”
* * *
THE THEORY THAT her best friend had perpetrated such an awful fraud against Ashley was enough to make sleep nearly impossible for her. But surprisingly, it wasn’t thoughts of Lauren’s possible betrayal that were keeping her awake.
It was the fact that she was sharing a bed with Dillon.
Sleeping with him should have been awkward because they’d only known each other for a couple of days. And it was awkward, but for an entirely different reason. It was awkward because it should have felt wrong, but it felt totally...right. And if Ashley was certain he would welcome her interest in him, she’d be in his arms right now.
She wanted him, desperately. She wanted to reach out and slide her fingers over his skin, feel his muscles bunch beneath her touch. She wanted to explore the fascinating angles of his face, experience the raspy feel of his stubble gently abrading her skin as he explored her body. And more than anything right now, she wanted to feel him inside her, loving her, and for a little while at least, making her forget all her troubles.
Her skin grew heated and her fingers ached from clenching them together to keep from reaching for him. What was wrong with her? She’d never yearned for a man’s touch like this. What was it about Dillon that made her feel so...out of control? Maybe a cold shower was what she needed. Anything would be better than this torture.
She flipped back the covers and started to get up.
Dillon’s strong arm immediately wrapped around her waist, trapping her, pushing her back down. The bed dipped as he rose above her, leaned over her. The moonlight filtering through the thin curtains revealed far too much of his glorious body, naked from the waist up, and had her digging her nails into her palms to stop from reaching for him.
“What’s wrong? Did you hear something outside?” He turned his face toward the window, as if to listen for whatever had disturbed her.
“No,” she whispered. “I didn’t hear anything. I...couldn’t sleep.” As if of their own will, her hands reached up and feathered across the stubble on his jaw.
He sucked in a breath, but didn’t pull away.
Feeling as if she’d been granted a treasure, a magical moment to satisfy her curiosity, she continued her exploration. She slid her hungry fingers down the side of his neck, lower, over the hard contours of his chest, lower still, to the tautness of his stomach muscles, which jumped beneath her touch. She hesitated, her gaze locked with his, waiting, wondering what he would do if she moved her hands...lower.
“Don’t stop now,” he whispered, his voice ragged, deeper than usual.
Those three words were the key that unlocked a floodgate of pent-up frustration and emotion. Ashley didn’t hesitate again. She slid her hands down to the waistband of the jeans he’d worn to bed, then groaned in frustration when she couldn’t get past that barrier. She plucked at the top button, but her hands were shaking so hard she couldn’t get it undone.
Dillon laughed and sat back, his thighs trapping hers as he made quick work of the button and zipper. He rolled to the side and lifted his hips to shuck off his pants and underwear. Ashley followed, her eager fingers searching for their prize.
He sucked in a sharp breath when she wrapped her hands around him.
“Ashley, wait, not so fast. We have p
lenty of—” He arched off the bed when her mouth covered him. His hands fisted in her hair and he shuddered beneath her.
She couldn’t believe how perfect he was, how hot and hard. He must have been lying awake thinking of her like she’d been thinking of him.
She couldn’t seem to get enough of him—his smell, his heat, his delicious salty taste. He shuddered again and she could feel he was close. Suddenly he bent down and wrapped his arms beneath hers and pulled her off him. She cursed in frustration and reached for him again.
He gave a pained laugh and pulled her hand away, then rolled and trapped her beneath him. He grabbed her wrists in a viselike grip and pulled them up above her head.
“If you don’t stop,” he said, his voice hoarse, “I’m going to disgrace myself like a randy teenager. Slow. Down.”
“But I want—”
“So do I. But I want to last. I want to make this good for you, too.”
He reached down and pulled her shirt off over her head, then expertly removed her jeans and panties until she was naked, too. Then he covered her with his body and captured her lips with his in an open-mouthed, ravenous kiss she felt all the way to her toes.
Every stroke of his tongue against hers sent a wave of heat straight to her belly. She was so ready for him she thought she might die if he didn’t take her right then. She was about to demand he do so when he slid down, his stubble against her breasts her only warning before he sucked her nipple into his mouth.
She cried out and bucked beneath him, but he was unmerciful in his assault on her senses. He lavished both her breasts with careful attention until she was aching with the pleasure-pain of it. And then he leaned up until his hot breath washed over her neck.
“My turn,” he breathed.
She shivered at his dark promise, and then he slid down her body and fastened his mouth on the very core of her. Her climax was immediate, an explosion of pleasure that flared across every nerve ending in her body, bowing her spine off the bed. He continued to explore and worship her with his mouth and tongue until she begged him to stop.
