by Linda Conrad
Jericho frowned again. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. But I think she might be okay from now on.
“Last night Sheriff Montalvo in San Javier County was found shot to death in his official sheriff’s unit, parked down by the Rio Grande. They also found the body of a known hitman nearby in the river. The theory is that it was some kind of Mexican drug deal gone sour.”
“Montalvo? Rosie said something about how creepy he seemed and that maybe he was behind the attack against you down by Gage’s Arroyo the night before last.”
Jericho nodded and heaved a sigh. “Yeah. I’ve come to the conclusion Rosie must’ve been somehow involved with Montalvo in her past. And that he was the one who hired those goons to come after her.
“I intend to keep investigating what his motives might’ve been and what precipitated the kidnapping. But with Montalvo dead, I think she should be okay.”
He figured maybe she would be more okay with her old life rather than with him in a new one. At least she wouldn’t have to keep looking over her shoulder. She could relax and heal. And while he worked to get over her and figure it all out, he wouldn’t have to keep worrying about saving her life.
Twisting her hands together nervously, Rosie peered down the hall as they stepped out of the elevator. They were on the sixth floor of the Austin office building that supposedly housed the governor’s campaign headquarters. She really didn’t want to be here. But Jericho had insisted.
She still couldn’t figure out what had gone so suddenly wrong with him. All during their fabulous and intimate night, Jericho had given her everything. He’d made her every wish come true. She’d been so positive the rest of their lives would stay that way.
But right after she’d had the vision of her and Daniels, um, making a baby, Jericho had changed into someone else entirely. Someone angry and withdrawn.
He’d barely said a word to her since then. His attitude had surprised the devil out of her. After all, he had to have known someone else was the baby’s father. But he’d suddenly started insisting they go to Austin and confront the governor rather than talk it over, figure out the truth and learn why no one had reported her missing.
Rosie wasn’t too sure why she didn’t want to see Daniels. But maybe it was for just that very reason. Why hadn’t he cared enough to report her absence? Why weren’t the Texas Rangers and all the county sheriffs out looking for her? He was the governor. He had the power to find her anywhere, if he wanted to.
She took a couple of steps along the rather ordinary-looking hallway behind Jericho and hesitated. Yes, this place did seem vaguely familiar. But it also seemed scary. She didn’t like it.
“What’s the matter? Come on.” Jericho turned, and she wished she could see his eyes better but they were hidden under his broad-brimmed sheriff’s Stetson. He took her by the elbow and gently tugged her forward. “We just barely managed to get this appointment. We can’t be late for it.”
“I don’t…” She was shaking so badly that she couldn’t speak. What if she’d been wrong and Daniels didn’t even recognize her? They shouldn’t be here. Everything just felt bad.
But right then Jericho stopped in front of the door marked as the Daniels’s campaign headquarters. He opened it and drew her inside with him.
A couple of women stood at a reception desk. Both of them were engrossed in something on the desktop and didn’t glance up. Directly behind them was a big open room with rows of long tables, all empty at the moment. Off to each side were a couple of office spaces with closed doors. Everything had a temporary and bare feeling.
Both of the women were dressed in pantsuits, very businesslike. One was in her twenties, blond and pretty. The other must’ve been in her fifties. She had salt-and-pepper gray hair, but it was cut with sophistication and made her face look fragile. Jericho cleared his throat to get the women’s attention.
The older one looked up first. “Olivia! You’re back. It seems like you’ve been out forever. How’re you feeling? Are you finally completely well?”
Olivia? Rosie took a step backward, but Jericho held tight to her arm and kept her beside him.
The second woman had lifted her head by then. “What on earth did you do to your hair?” She tilted her chin to study Rosie. “I simply loved all your long blond hair, Olivia. It always made me so jealous. This style isn’t too terrible, though…I guess. It frames your face. But the color. Why in heaven’s name did you darken it? That shade doesn’t do a thing for you.”
Jericho moved forward a few feet, dragging her along. Rosie’s feet didn’t move willingly. In fact, her whole body was going numb. These women weren’t the least bit familiar to her, even though they seemed to know her well.
“You know this woman?” Jericho asked them.
They both looked at him as though he had materialized out of the woodwork.
The older one recovered first. “Of course we do, Sheriff…uh…Sheriff…”
“Yates. Sheriff Jericho Yates from Campo County. I called about an appointment with Governor Daniels for our amnesia victim.”
“Amnesia? Our Olivia? Really?” The older woman stared into Rosie’s eyes.
“Then you do know her,” he interjected, taking charge of the situation, as he usually did. “How? What’s her full name?”
“Olivia Halprin,” the younger of the two blurted out and then also came closer to study Rosie. “And we work with her. She’s Governor Daniels’s campaign treasurer. She’s been out sick with the flu for the last ten days.
“Or at least that’s what we all thought,” she amended.
Rosie’s knees were trembling and she was afraid she might be sick again. Clinging to Jericho’s arm, she fought to bring images to her mind. Any images.
The name Olivia did sort of ring a bell. Maybe Olivia was her real name. At least it could be. But that was all there was. Nothing else was making any sense.
One of the two side doors opened and Allan Daniels stuck his head out. “What’s going on out here?” He turned to her and his eyes widened. “Olivia. Sweetheart. There you are. How are you feeling? Better, I hope.”
A picture formed in Rosie’s head of kissing those smiling lips. Of kissing the nightmare prince.
With legs collapsing under her, she started down a long dark tunnel. Where things began growing smaller and smaller, like Alice in Wonderland, until her whole world simply disappeared.
Sometime later Rosie lay back on the leather couch in Allan’s office with her eyes closed and listening to Jericho finish explaining to Allan how he’d found her and about everything they’d been through for the last few days.
It all sounded fantastic. But to her it was the only reality. She still couldn’t come to grips with an old life. A few shadows, like old black-and-white movies moved across her consciousness. But most of it didn’t stick around long enough for her to bring it into focus.
Shifting a plastic baggie full of ice that one of the women had plopped on her forehead after she’d been carried to this couch, she remained quiet with her eyes closed. But she still paid attention as the two men talked about her as if she were someone else.
“I can’t believe she’s been through all that just in the time she’s been gone,” Allan said. “We were lucky you were the one who found her, Jericho. You don’t mind me calling you that, do you? I owe you a big debt of gratitude and I hope to find a way to pay you back.”
Allan hesitated and Rosie could just picture him taking off his jacket and loosening his tie, the big phony. “So you believe this Sheriff Montalvo from San Javier County was somehow responsible for the things that happened to Olivia?” The image of Allan Daniels was now firmly formed in her mind. From her past. And from her present.
Jericho must’ve nodded his head because she didn’t hear him agree. She might not be able to see him, but she was tuned into his responses. Feeling him growing colder, more distant, with every passing moment, she wished they could leave. She couldn’t really blame Jericho. With every word and movem
ent Allan seemed more snakelike and slimy. How could she have ever let herself be conned by the man?
“Well, then,” Allan said to Jericho. “I would take it as a personal favor if you’d follow up on that. I’ll put you in touch with Chief Aldeen of the Rangers. He’ll see you get all the help you need for your investigation.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re…”
“Allan.” Rosie decided it was time to come back into this life, though truthfully she was as hesitant as Jericho. Most of the things that belonged in her previous world were still only vague images. And not all of them would apparently be full of sunshine and light. There continued to be lots of dark, black holes that she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—fill in.
And all of it seemed to circle around the governor of Texas, for crying out loud.
“Olivia, you’re up,” Allan said as he came close and helped her to stand. “Are you sure you don’t need to be checked out at a hospital?”
“No,” she heard herself say. “A doctor looked me over in Esperanza. I’m going to be fine.”
He gave her an odd look, and Rosie wondered if he had any idea she was pregnant. She would bet not. Well, it remained to be seen whether she ever told him the truth. At the moment, chances were slim.
Like a silent beacon of hope, Rosie felt drawn instead toward Jericho, who stood behind the desk. He was her savior. Her protector. Her love.
Shooting her a rather creepy and lecherous look, Allan let his gaze linger on her breasts. Her growing unease around him became an urgent sense that she needed to get out of here. Away from this man.
Allan put his arm around her shoulders, and a disgusted shudder skittered clear down her spine. Why was she so sure this guy was not who he seemed? She inched away without making a big deal.
“I just want to go home.” Amazingly, she did remember where her old condo was all of a sudden. However, she found herself dearly wishing to go to the home a hundred miles southwest in a blip on the map called Esperanza.
Allan’s pleasant expression turned frustrated. “I can’t take you home right now. I have that $10,000-a-plate fund-raiser coming up in a couple of hours. You remember—you set it up.”
She did not remember. Nor did she want to. It was all wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Afraid Allan might insist she go with him, she began, “I can get there by…”
“I’ll see her safely home, sir.” Jericho had moved to stand at attention by the door, but he interrupted her firmly and came closer. “If you’ll give me her address, I’d be happy to take care of it.”
Jericho sounded like a damned bodyguard. Was that all their time together meant to him? Just because she was on the governor’s campaign staff and probably had sex with the man—
“That would be terrific, Jericho, if you wouldn’t mind,” Allan said in what she vaguely remembered were his normal, charming tones. Then he turned to her. “There’s always been a spare set of keys to both your condo and your car stashed in your office. Just in case of emergencies. Let’s go see if they’re still there. Then all of us can be on our way. And I’ll contact you later at home.”
“I wonder what happened to my car?” Rosie said absently as Jericho unlocked her condo and ushered the two of them inside.
She lived on the twelfth floor of a downtown building with parking below and a doorman in residence. Jericho wasn’t surprised at the condo’s sweeping views of Austin and the Hill Country from the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“You don’t remember?” he asked as he hesitated just inside the threshold. “What kind of car do you own?”
“A Mercedes S550.” After a silent instant, she continued with a grin. “Wow. A few minutes ago I couldn’t have come up with that answer. Things are just flashing into my brain at lightning speed.”
She strolled wide-eyed through the large foyer and stepped into the sunken living room. Gracefully, she walked around the room, touching white leather couches, staring at expensive artwork on the walls, marveling at marble sculptures. The furnishings seemed to bring memories back into her mind.
Jericho wasn’t too pleased to see this much opulence. No expert, he still would bet there was several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of art and sculptures skillfully placed around the room. And her car was a Mercedes. Of course it was. Daniels no doubt kept his girlfriend in diamonds, too.
How could his handmade cabin and seven-year-old truck ever compete with all this? How could he ever hope to compete with the governor of Texas?
The answer was simple, he couldn’t.
But he could do his job and also do the governor his favor at the same time. “If you’ll give me your license number and a description, I’ll report your car as missing. We’ll find it.”
She nodded idly. “Thanks.”
“Are more things coming back?” he asked, hoping against hope that they weren’t. That she would only ever remember him and their time together. He had to guess it was already too late for that.
“A few,” she told him. “Like the fact that my birth name is Olivia DeVille Halprin. The only child of Chester Halprin and Suzanne DeVille. And before he passed away, my father built an Internet empire that’s been valued in the billions.”
Oh? Maybe it wasn’t Daniels’s money that had provided all the opulence then. But that didn’t give Jericho much comfort. He still couldn’t live up to any of this. Never would.
“So your father is no longer alive. How about your mother? I’m wondering why she didn’t report you missing?”
Rosie turned and graced him with a wry smile. “As cold and ruthless as my father was, Suzanne is just the opposite. Beautiful and outgoing and a pillar in hundreds of Texas charitable foundations. She has just never had much time for a daughter. She’s much too busy devoting her life to really good causes.
“I haven’t talked to my mother in months.” Rosie continued a little too quietly. “In almost a year now, I think. But I’m sure she would’ve missed me eventually.”
Jericho couldn’t imagine such a family. Okay, so his mother had disappeared and never come back. But both his father and his brother had always been the rocks in his life. What would he have become without his family?
He took a step in Rosie’s…no Olivia’s…direction before coming up short. He didn’t know Olivia Halprin, and he had absolutely nothing in common with her. She wouldn’t want sympathy from him, and he couldn’t stand to have her back out of his arms when she realized the same thing.
Olivia blinked a couple of times then said, “A bath?”
“Excuse me?” He hadn’t said anything about a bath.
She shook her head as though to clear it. “What? Oh, sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I never take baths. But it just popped into my head while I was thinking that things seem a little off.”
“A little off? How do you mean?”
Shrugging, she turned and walked over to open one of the many doors that led off the main room. “My office is in here. Let me see if it feels funny, too.”
Jericho shoved his hands in his pockets and followed. Funny feelings were not in his jurisdiction.
Olivia’s office was crammed with computer equipment. It made him wonder if she’d inherited her father’s genius.
“Before I became the Daniels campaign treasurer,” she began as she studied the machines up close, “I was a CPA. A Certified Public Accountant. That’s just what I love to do. I know it doesn’t sound interesting, but I specialized in forensic accounting. Chasing bad guys around inside their bank accounts.”
She turned and smiled at him. A real smile. “Maybe that’s why I fell under the spell of a lawman. You think?”
He couldn’t talk to her about that right now, so he shrugged one shoulder and stayed quiet.
Her smile faded slowly, then she turned and moved one of the keyboards a few inches to the left. “I swear it feels like someone has been in here since I was last in this room. I’m sort of fussy—okay anal would be a better word—about my work
space. Everything has to be just so. Must be the accountant in me.
“And my things have been moved. I could swear to it.”
“You sure it isn’t just that it’s been a while?” he asked soothingly. “Your security alarm was still armed when we came in. We had to disarm it. Besides, you’ve been through a lot over the last few days. Especially with your memory. Maybe things are still hazy in your mind.”
She looked around. “Lots of things are still a little hazy. But not this room.” Sighing, she turned back to him. “I guess I need more time. How long are we going to stay here? Do I have time for a bath?”
Those seemed like odd questions, but he decided it was past time for him to get out of town. Let her have her bath and anything else she needed. The lady was home. She hardly needed him to stick around anymore, despite the fact that leaving was bound to kill him.
“You go on and take your bath. I’ve got to be heading back to Esperanza. Just come see me to the door. Make sure your doors are locked and the security alarm is set behind me.”
“You’re leaving without me? But…”
“Look, Olivia. You’re where you belong. You have a job and people who care about you. But I sure don’t belong here. Let’s just cut our losses while we still can.”
Her face crumbled and big tears welled in her eyes.
“I’ll stay in touch,” he offered. “Let you know how the investigation is coming along. And I’ll be sure to work on finding your car.”
She sniffed and reached out a hand to him. “But can’t you see that I don’t belong here anymore, either? No one in my old life even bothered to check up on me. That would never happen in Esperanza. I need…”
Jericho needed to get out of there—fast. “You’ll change your mind when more things start coming back. I mean, for one, yours would be the only Mercedes in all of Esperanza, Texas. And that’s just for starters. There’s no place to shop. We don’t have any art museums. I can’t think of anybody who would need the services of a CPA.”
He waved his hand as if that explained everything. And to him, it did. He could never stand to work at making a life with her only to lose her back to the big city.
