"Zoe Robinson, now." Bobby sighed from the memory. "I always kind of figured Mitch had a thing for her."
"She have her baby yet?" Wes asked. "I never knew a pregnant woman could be so sexy until Zoe got knocked up."
"She's not due for another few weeks," Lucky said, looking at Bobby and rolling his eyes in exasperation. Only Wes could refer to the pregnancy of a highly decorated and respected admiral's wife as "knocked up." "Can we stay on track here? Let's focus on Mitch Shaw. I didn't get to know Mitch very well either."
"He was one spooky dude," Wes said.
"Jake Robinson trusts him," Bobby pointed out. He frowned slightly at Wes. "And don't talk about him in the past tense, please."
"Okay." Lucky pointed at Bobby. "You go make friends with the office staff at the church." He pointed at Wes. "You get on the computer and search out whatever personnel records and files you can about Mitchell Shaw. I want to know where he grew up, what his nickname was during BUD/S training, what medals he's won, his favorite vegetable, his favorite color. I want to know everything there is to know about this guy."
Bobby stood up. "I'll grab a donut on my way out." He pulled the motel room key out of his pocket and put it on the table in front of Lucky. "You'll be wanting that."
"I want it but I'm not going to use it. I'm going to go check out the neighborhood around the church shelter. See if anyone in the grocery shops remember seeing Mitch. And as soon as the bars open, I'll check them out, too."
"Forgive me for singing the same old refrain, but you look worse than you smell, Lieutenant," Bobby said. "Maybe you should crash for a few hours."
"We've got another check-in with the captain coming up in twelve hours," Lucky reminded them. "I'm not looking forward to giving him a repeat of this morning's sit-rep—that we're here but we're still clueless." Lucky slid out of the booth's bench seat and threw enough money onto the table to cover his breakfast. "I'll take a quick shower, but that's all I have time for. Let's meet back at the motel at hours."
"God, I wanted a real breakfast." Wes gazed longingly at the scrambled eggs and ham pictured on the menu, then pushed himself out of the booth.
"I'll buy you a super-deluxe breakfast special to go," Bobby said, "if you'll trade assignments with me."
"Searching computer records versus duking it out with the church ladies?" Wes shook his head. "I don't want breakfast that bad."
The Aldens were leaving.
Mish waved goodbye to Chip as the van pulled away, down the long driveway.
Last night's events had been too much for them. Their vacation was over, Ted Alden had told him as he'd thanked Mish again. Besides, they wanted to get Chip checked out by their personal physician back in New York.
"Are you completely insane?"
Mish turned to see Becca standing slightly behind him. She was holding a piece of paper in her hand and...
He turned away, recognizing it as the exorbitant check—a thank-you gift, the man had called it—Ted Alden had tried to press into his hand as he said goodbye.
"How could you refuse to accept this?" Becca asked, moving in front of him, holding the damned thing up.
There was no way he could explain that the thought of taking money for saving a kid's life made him squirm— especially since the nightmarish dreams that continued to haunt him made him wonder if maybe he'd earned that big wad of money he carried by taking people's lives.
"I didn't go into the river after Chip because I wanted a reward," he told her. "I did it because I liked the kid." He shook his head. No, that wasn't exactly true. "Look, I would've done it even if I didn't like the kid. I just...I did it, okay? I don't want Alden's money. He thanked me—that was enough."
Mish headed back toward the barn. There were stalls
to shovel out and other chores that needed doing. He'd gotten a late start today, and he was moving more slowly than usual, thanks to that piece of telephone pole that had smashed into him in the river. He didn't think his rib was broken, but it probably had been cracked. Either way, there wasn't much he could've done about it. He'd grabbed an Ace bandage from the first-aid kit in the barn, and he'd wrapped himself up—not that it really helped. It hurt, but that would fade in time.
Becca followed him, a sudden brisk breeze making her clutch her cowboy hat to her head. "Casey—Mish. God, this check is for a hundred thousand dollars! That kind of money is nothing to Ted Alden—he's got bushels of it back on Wall Street. But for someone like me or you... You can't just say 'no thanks' to an opportunity like this."
He stopped short, and she nearly ran into him. "Funny, I thought I already did."
She was completely bemused and almost entirely confused as well as she stood there gazing up at him, as if she were trying to see into his head. "I promised Ted I'd talk you into accepting this."
"You're going to have to break your promise, because I don't want it," Mish said again. He reached for it, intending to tear it up, but she pulled it away from him, safely out of reach, as if she had been able to read his mind.
"Don't you dare! I'm going to hold on to this for you while you think about accepting it. Take all the time you need."
Exasperated, he turned back to the barn. "I don't need time. I've already thought about it. You'll just have to send it back to him."
Again, she followed, all the way inside. "With this kind
of money, you wouldn't have to work here, shoveling horse manure for most of the day."
He glanced back at her as he picked up his shovel and started doing just that, trying to ignore the flare of pain in his side. "Are you firing me?"
"No!" Her answer came quickly. "That's not why I said that. I need you to stay, I'm shorthanded already, but actually I'd..." She cleared her throat. "I'd like it if you stayed."
Mish didn't stop his work cleaning out the stall, but he couldn't keep himself from glancing up at her again.
She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt open and untucked over a T-shirt. It hid the soft curves he didn't need to see to know were there. She'd fit perfectly in his arms last night. Maybe a little too perfectly. As she gazed back at him, her eyes were dark brown, bottomless pits that he knew he could fall into and lose himself in far too easily.
She was looking at him as if he were some kind of hero. And he knew with a flash that his refusal to accept that money had only made her like him more. Damn.
"That is, if you want to stay," she added, embarrassment tingeing her cheeks with pink. "You know, just...for a while."
Mish forced himself to look away, forced himself not to think about the fact that he couldn't remember the last time he'd had sex. Of course he couldn't remember. Everything before Monday was a total blank. Yet still, somehow he knew—as he'd known the waist and inseam measurements of his jeans—that it had been a long time since he'd been with a woman. A very long time.
And he found this woman to be incredibly appealing.
She'd turned down his offer to walk her back to her cabin as the sun was starting to creep over the horizon
early this morning. That had been a good call on her part—Mish didn't know what he'd been thinking at the time. She'd just been through an emotional wringer and surely had been vulnerable.
He himself had been running what-if scenarios all morning. It had been sheer luck that Chip had been swept directly into his arms in the river. Sheer luck the kid hadn't been killed. The line between what was and what might have been was a very thin one. Tragedy had been averted by mere inches. And afterward, Mish had been a little too close to an emotional edge himself, and he knew now what he'd only suspected last night.
It wouldn't have taken much for that friendly comfort he'd given Becca to turn into comfort of an entirely different kind. If he'd walked her home and she'd invited him in, he would've kissed her sweet mouth. And if he had kissed her...
He focused on the job at hand, attempting to banish the too-vivid thoughts of just where kissing Becca might've led. He couldn't let himself think that
way. It wouldn't be fair to her. It wouldn't be right.
Mish couldn't tell her the truth, although, Lord, there were times when he longed to confide in her. But he couldn't. Just the thought of it filled him with an overpowering sense of unease. Somehow he knew he wasn't supposed to talk about any of this—why he was here. He couldn't risk revealing too much, couldn't give anything away. Why? He didn't remember. But the need for secrecy had obviously been ingrained in him. He couldn't tell her.
And he'd already deceived Becca once—by convincing her he was capable of this job as a ranch hand, during that phone interview he couldn't remember. There was no way he was going to deceive her again by becoming phys-
ically intimate with her. At least not until he knew for sure exactly who he was. And maybe not even after that.
This was not a woman who'd want to have anything to do with a criminal. And he was probably an ex-con at best, if his dreams of handcuffs and prison walls were based on any kind of truth.
Although, when she looked at him the way she'd been looking at him just a few seconds ago, it was easy to imagine his resolve to keep his distance flying right out the window. It was easy to imagine her melting willingly in his arms as he pulled her down with him, right here on the sweet-smelling, fresh hay he'd just spread on the floor of the stall and...
Lord have mercy. Yes, it had been far, far too long since he'd been intimate with a woman.
But Becca wanted him to be a hero, so he was going to do just that—by not letting himself get too close to her.
She looked down at the check she still held in her hands, her cheeks still slightly pink, as if she'd been able to follow his wayward thoughts. "I just can't imagine why you would want to work for slave wages, with somebody willing and ready to hand you this much money."
Mish shrugged as he set the shovel down. *'Money's not everything." He picked up the handles of the nearly full wheelbarrow and pushed it out of the stall. He passed closely enough to Becca to catch a whiff of the same fresh perfume he'd breathed in last night when he'd wrapped her in his arms. Lord, but she smelled good. He moved away from her quickly, leaning closer to the overpowering contents of his wheelbarrow to exorcise her scent as he headed toward the back entrance of the barn.
"It may not be everything, but it's damn close," Becca countered, following him out. "If had this kind of money—" She broke off. "Mish, please, you should at
least think about accepting this check. This could be the break you need."
He squinted against the bright morning sunshine as he pushed his pungent load out to a manure pile well back from the barn, his side smarting with every step he took. "Your giving me this job was the break I need," he said. "Of course, that assumes I need a break in the first place."
"You walked in here with one change of clothes under your arm, no wallet and no ID," she pointed out. "You accepted a job at an embarrassingly low hourly rate. This isn't the movies. I've pretty much rejected the idea that you're some kind of eccentric millionaire in disguise."
He glanced back at her. "Yeah? What if I am?"
Becca laughed, her eyes sparkling with amusement. She really had beautiful eyes. "If you are, why the heck are we having this conversation while you lug a load of manure in this heat? Let's call for a break and reconvene for dinner at your favorite restaurant in Paris. Because as long as you can afford it, I've always wanted to fly on the Concorde."
She was teasing, but there was some truth in her words. She wanted to have dinner with him. He could see it in her eyes. Mish dumped the wheelbarrow, feeling glad— and very stupid. He didn't want her to like him. He couldn't want her to like him. Yet he was happy that she did. "Sorry, I seem to have misplaced my bankcard."
"Aha," she said with another smile. "Proof that even if you are a millionaire in disguise, you need a break."
She had such a beautiful smile, it was impossible not to smile back at her. And as he did, Mish felt himself start to slip.
She more than merely liked him. He may not have been able to remember his own name, but he knew how to read
p
Suzc
I a woman. And this woman was Interested, with a capital /. If he pulled her into his arms and lowered his head, she would lift her mouth to meet his. And while getting it on with her on the floor of the barn in the middle of the day was stretching the edges of the fantasy envelope, the idea of spending the night in her bed in the very near future was not so far-fetched.
But she wanted a hero, he reminded himself. So instead of moving closer, Mish took a step back.
"I do need a break," he told her, willing her not to move any closer. "And the fact that you're letting me stay despite knowing that I lied to you is—''
"But you didn't/' she told him, moving closer despite his attempt to control her through telekinesis. She moved close enough for him to see the individual freckles that swept across her nose and cheeks. Close enough to see the flecks of green and gold mixed in with the darker brown of her eyes. "Not really. I looked in your personnel file, at the notes I made when we spoke on the phone. You definitely omitted some information, but I didn't ask, so it wasn't a lie. You told me you were mainly a handyman and that you'd worked on ranches before. I made the mistake of assuming you'd be able to handle the horses, too."
Personnel file. There was a personnel file with his name on it, somewhere in Becca's office. It was entirely possible that file would contain his last known address and phone number. He had to have some clothes, some belongings some where, didn't he? If he could find those, he might start to remember who and what he was.
"I wasn't completely honest with you, either," Becca continued. "I didn't mention the fact that your starting salary isn't going to increase any time in the near future. The owner of the Lazy Eight doesn't believe in raises."
"The money you're paying me is good enough for now." Mish pushed the wheelbarrow back toward the barn. He was far from done with the stalls, yet it was nearly time for lunch. He was simply going to have to grit his teeth against the pain and pick up his pace.
Becca's pager went off and she looked down at it, turning it off. "Shoot, I've got to go take this call." She started toward the office, walking backwards. "What do you say you let me treat you to a drink after dinner tonight? As a sort of a thank-you? There's a roadhouse about twelve miles down the road—it's not too far away. They have a really great band on Thursday nights."
She'd asked him out.
Mish had thought he was safe as long as he kept his distance and didn't do something crazy like invite her to have dinner or a drink with him. But he should've known that Rebecca Keyes wasn't the kind of woman who'd sit back and wait for something she wanted.
"Um," he said, but she didn't give him a chance to figure out how he could turn her down without hurting her feelings.
"I've got to run," she told him with another of those killer smiles that made his insides tangle. "I'll talk to you later."
And she was gone, leaving Mish with an entirely new set of what-if questions.
What if he let himself go out with her? She only wanted to have a drink. It wasn't as if she'd invited him over to her place to spend the night, was it?
So what if he went? He'd have a chance to sit across the table from her in some dimly lit bar. He'd have a chance to gaze into her eyes as they talked.
As she asked him questions about himself.
Where he came from. Where he'd worked before this.
Questions about his family. His childhood. His hobbies. Former girlfriends. Present girlfriends.
Lord God, what if he was married? What if he had a wife and children somewhere, but he simply couldn't remember them?
Of course, it was entirely likely that if he had been married, his wife had left him while he was in prison.
Mish shook his head as he began shoveling out the next stall in the barn, almost welcoming the punishing pain in his side.
Yeah, he was one hell of a hero.
Chapter
&nbs
p; JVlish cleared his throat. "Excuse me. Is Becca here?"
Hazel, the gray-haired woman who worked part-time in the Lazy Eight's office, looked up from her computer and smiled at him. "Oh, hi, Casey. Yeah, she's in the back. You want me to call her for you?"
"No," he said. Somewhere in this office was a personnel file with his name on it. Was it in the file cabinet underneath the far window, or the one next to the computer? "Thanks, but if she's busy, it's not necessary."
"She's not busy. Becca!" Hazel called, then turned back to Mish. "A package came for you today," she told him.
That drew his attention away from the file cabinets. A package. For him?
"It says Hold For Arrival," she continued, pushing her chair back and pulling herself to her feet, "but since you arrived early, I can just give it to you now, can't I?"
Hazel pulled a small brown padded mailing envelope
from a set of mail cubbyholes and slid it across the counter to Mish.
A package.
There didn't feel as if there could be much inside as he picked it up and turned it over. There was no return address, not even on the back. "Casey Parker" and the address at the ranch was written in a large, faintly childish hand. The handwriting—messy block letters—was completely unfamiliar to Mish. But then again, just a few days ago, his own face had been unfamiliar.
The post-office cancellation stamp on the package read "Las Cruces." That was the closest large town to Wyatt City, where he'd woken up in a homeless shelter. Coincidental? Maybe.
Maybe not.
"Hey, Mish, hi. Did you get mail?" Becca came out from the back, her eyes and smile warm, clearly glad to see him.
"Yeah, I, uh, did." Mish nodded to Hazel. "Thank you."
"Anything good?" Becca leaned over the counter, smiling up at him.
Suzanne Brockmann - Team Ten 08 - Identity Unknown Page 6
