His fists tightened on the wheel. Who was he kidding? She’d rocked him onto his heels when she’d flung herself into his arms there at the house, and the impact had nothing to do with the hundred and twenty-three pounds her license said she carried on that perfectly proportioned frame.
Even now, with his mind spinning like a rat on a wheel, his senses insisted on working their own agenda. Much as Marsh wanted to deny it, Becky/Lauren Smith knocked the breath back in his chest every time he pulled in her scent, an elusive combination of shampoo, seductive perfume and nervous woman. Those long legs that were stretched out beside his didn’t exactly help his concentration, either. His fingers itched to hit the window button and drag some sharp night air into the Blazer to diffuse her impact on his senses. He needed all his wits to pull off the next, delicate step in his swiftly revised plan.
His passenger didn’t know it yet, but he didn’t intend to let anyone at the Valley of the Sun Inn get close enough to positively ID her.
Luckily, he didn’t have to resort to any extraordinary measures. When he turned into the curving drive that led to the front entrance of the exclusive hotel and golf resort, he found it clogged by a fleet of the hotel’s minibuses disgorging conventioners in golf shirts and shorts. From the chorus of the raucous male laughter, the businessmen had scored more booze than birdies that day.
That suited Marsh just fine. So did the harried expression the valet parking attendant wore as he wove through the throng to get to the Blazer. Marsh lowered the darkened driver’s window just enough for the attendant to see his face. The tint on the other windows kept the Blazer’s interior in shadows.
“Checking in, sir?”
“No. I’m checking to see if the owner is on the premises tonight.”
“Mr. Jannisek? I don’t think so. I just came on an hour ago, but someone said he hasn’t been around for a few days.”
Marsh had his badge ready. The kid’s eyes widened when he caught the glint of blue enamel on gold.
“Call the front desk. Tell them Special Agent Henderson from the DEA wants to talk to Jannisek. If he’s not here, I want to know where he is.” He indicated his passenger with a little jerk of his head. “So does Miss Smith.”
The valet stooped lower, his eyes widening.
“Becky? Hey, where have you…?”
Marsh made sure he got a glimpse—only a glimpse—before cutting him off with a brusque order.
“Move it! We’re in an exposed position here.”
“Huh?”
“Make the call, kid. Now!”
“Yes, sir!”
The window whirred up. Marsh waited, his pulse hammering, for the woman beside him to break the sudden silence.
“That….” She wet her lips and started again. “That doesn’t prove anything. He didn’t really see me.”
“He saw enough to recognize you.”
She shook her head.
Even in the dim light filtering through the tinted windows, her hair gleamed a rich auburn. Marsh had known that tumble of burnt cinnamon would tag her. Had counted on it.
“He saw just what you wanted him to see,” she said slowly.
The shrewd guess surprised him. So did the question she threw at him next.
“You wanted him to think I was Becky, didn’t you?”
It hadn’t taken her long to figure that one out. Marsh shifted in his seat, ready to deny the charge. He’d do whatever was necessary to bring down Ellen’s killers. He’d already decided that. Already put himself over the line and made this pursuit his personal crusade. He was damned if he would offer either excuses or explanations.
He didn’t have to. She came up with the explanation on her own.
“You don’t really care who I am.” Anger spiraled through her voice. “One sister will serve your purpose as well as the other, as long as David Jannisek doesn’t know which one you have.”
“Look, Becky or Lauren or whoever…”
“The name’s Lauren, and you look!” She turned to him, twisting in her seat far as the seat belt would allow. “I decided back there at the house to go along with you because I love my sister and thought it was safer for her to stay hidden while I drew the dogs off her scent. If I find you’ve lied to me about this—about any of this—if you’re just stringing me along for some perverted purpose of your own, I swear I’ll…I’ll…”
Her sputtering fury almost convinced him she was who she said she was. She looked so indignant, sounded so fierce, that if the valet hadn’t come running back at that moment, Marsh might have abandoned his plan completely. Or at least, revised it yet again.
“Mr. Jannisek’s not here,” the kid panted. “But the hotel phone operator said he called the lounge a little while ago, looking for Becky, uh, Miss Smith.” He bent down, craning to see the woman in the passenger seat. “She said he was real anxious to talk to you.”
“Did he leave a number?”
The question jerked the valet’s attention back to the driver. “No.”
“Dammit.”
Marsh slammed the wheel with a hard palm. They’d missed establishing contact with Jannisek by minutes. Mere minutes. Yanking open the glove compartment in the Blazer’s dash, he shoved aside his spare ammo clip and cell phone to dig out the notepad he never went anywhere without.
“Here.” Scribbling fast, he tore off a ragged-edged sheet and handed it to the valet. “Give this number to the hotel operators and tell them to pass it to Mr. Jannisek if he calls again asking for Miss Smith.”
“Yeah, sure.” The young man bobbed lower. “Anything you want me to tell him, Beck…?”
The window whirred, cutting off the question. Marsh shoved the Blazer into reverse.
Silence sizzled through the SUV’s interior during the drive out of the city. Within minutes, the signs for Interstate 17 flashed in the headlights. Marsh didn’t breathe easy until the lights of Phoenix blurred in the rearview mirror.
He’d half expected the woman he now thought of as Becky-slash-Lauren to jump out at a red light or stop sign. He would’ve gone after her, of course, but slapping on a pair of cuffs and dragging her kicking and screaming back into the Blazer wouldn’t exactly win him any points with her, much less win her cooperation for the next phase of his plan.
The possibility that such rough-and-ready tactics might also land him in the middle of a lawsuit for a violation of civil rights when this was all over was a risk he was willing to take. He’d already accepted that he could lose his badge for operating outside the parameters of his authority. When his brother Evan had heard that Marsh had decided to pick up the search for Ellen’s killers where the locals had left off, the assistant D.A. had warned bluntly that Marsh was skating too close to the edge. So had his partner, Pepper Dennis.
He’d better call Pepper, Marsh thought as he downshifted to take the Blazer up the steep inclines of the mountains that ringed the valley. Alert her to the fact that Jannisek might try to check up on him, or discover just why the heck his girlfriend was now in the company of a DEA special agent.
Pepper would cover for him. She was a good agent, one of the best. Marsh had trained her himself. Although she wasn’t particularly happy about the fact that her partner had put himself on indefinite leave or that he was operating without backup or official sanction, she understood why he had to see this thing through to the end. No matter how long it took.
And it might not take as long as he’d feared, Marsh thought, on a spike of pure adrenaline. He’d just received confirmation that Jannisek was alive and looking for his girlfriend. With a little luck and the right pressure, he could lure the man out of hiding and into custody within a few days, a week at most. His heart pumped pure adrenaline at the prospect of bringing Jannisek in.
To do that, though, he’d need at least a show of cooperation from the woman beside him. He slanted her a quick glance. Her rigid posture and stony profile scraped some of the edge off his anticipation.
The next phase might just prove the mo
st difficult step in his plan. Funny, he’d thought it would be the easiest. He’d figured she’d be shaken by a seeming break-in—counted on her feeling isolated and helpless after being whisked away from her usual support systems. In his experience, most victims fell all over their rescuers in relief and gratitude.
Particularly a woman like Becky Smith—a sexy, kittenish flirt with more air than brains under that mass of silky auburn hair.
He gave her another sideways look. If this woman was Becky, she had proved that even the most detailed reports sometimes erred. She was no airhead, and she had more grit than anyone gave her credit for. She hadn’t hesitated to grab a garbage can lid instead of running for cover back there at the house. Nor had she been shy about challenging his authority. After doing his damnedest to shake her up, Marsh hadn’t expected her to stand toe to toe with him and demand to see his badge.
Maybe she really was this other sister, Lauren. Her passionate speech a few minutes ago about wanting to protect Becky had rung with angry sincerity.
Yet…
Like a video replaying in his mind, he pictured Becky Smith’s cluttered living room, saw again the lace-trimmed scrap of violet silk on the floor. Saw, too, the sexy little smile she’d turned on like a light switch. She’d practically purred when she asked if he was wondering how her undies had ended up on the living room floor.
He’d wondered, all right. Okay, he’d done more than wonder. For a few seconds there, his imagination had pulled out all the stops. The tantalizing image of Becky Smith—or the woman he’d thought was Becky Smith—in the high-hipped lavender silk and nothing else had done a serious number on his respiratory system.
Just remembering that image, his chest got tight again. With some effort, Marsh banished the erotic picture. He intended to win Becky Smith’s reluctant cooperation, not let her seduce him with those mile-long legs and perfect, pouty lips.
Unless he had to.
The thought slammed out of the darkness, hitting him like a fist to the jaw. For two, maybe three seconds, it raced around Marsh’s head before he shoved it out.
No! No way he was going there. Getting cozy with another man’s mistress went too far over the line, even for someone as determined as Marsh. If she was Jannisek’s mistress. Like a dog chasing its tail, his thoughts made another frustrated circle.
Dammit, which sister was she? The uncertainty irritated Marsh, despite the fact that he’d already decided to proceed regardless of which Smith he’d pulled into his plan. It didn’t matter, he reminded himself, as long as Jannisek didn’t know who was talking to him on the other end of the phone line. Assuming Marsh could convince her to talk at all.
He might as well begin the convincing process by breaking the taut silence. A rustle of fabric as she rubbed her forearms provided an opening. Belatedly, he realized that the temperature had dropped a good ten degrees since they’d left Phoenix’s desert environment behind and started the climb to the higher elevations of north-central Arizona.
“Are you cold?”
Still stiff, still obviously angry, she nodded. “A little.”
“I’ll turn on some heat, but I better warn you the thermostat’s out of whack.”
Since he rarely used the heater, even during El Paso’s occasional blasts of frigid winter, Marsh hadn’t bothered to get the thermostat adjusted after a wild chase through the Texas scrub. The chase had knocked the hell out of the Blazer and, in the process, netted two scum-sucking drug smugglers and three hundred kilos of uncut cocaine.
The stifling hot air that blasted out of the vents when he flicked the switch made him regret his lapse. Grimacing, he prepared to sweat. Scant minutes later, his passenger swiped her palms along her temples.
“I’m suffocating. Turn it off.”
No please. No thank you. No kiss my left foot. Miss Smith was definitely ticked.
“I’ve got an extra jacket in the backseat,” he said as he cut the heat. “You’d better put it on.”
She shook her head, her eyes on the road ahead.
Marsh curled his fingers around the wheel. Nursing a sneezing, runny-nosed female through a cold didn’t constitute part of his plan.
“Put on the jacket. There’s a first-aid kit at the cabin, but I doubt if it contains any cold remedies.”
“Cabin?” She lowered those winged brows, suspicion sharp in her voice. “I thought you said we were going to a ranch.”
“We’re going to a line cabin on a ranch. It’s up in the foothills, at almost six thousand feet. That’s why I brought a jacket along for you. You’ll need it.”
Reluctant but shivering again, she stretched around to reach between the seats for the flannel-lined suede jacket Marsh had tossed in at the last minute. The movement brought her head to within a few inches of his. To his disgust, he found himself holding his breath to keep from drawing in her seductive scent.
Great! They’d spent all of an hour together, and he was already steeling himself against her impact on his senses. The next few days could prove a real test of nerves for both of them.
“How long have you been seeing David Jannisek?” he asked, determined to keep his focus on his purpose—his only purpose—for drawing her into his scheme.
“How long has my sister been seeing him, you mean?” She shoved one arm into a jacket sleeve and groped behind her for the other. “You’re the one who’s been checking up on her. You tell me.”
So they were going to play it the hard way. Fine. Marsh had broken far tougher prospects than this one in his time.
“From all reports, Jannisek and Becky Smith have been an item for about four months,” he replied evenly, reaching over to help her into the jacket. “The same sources indicate he fell a lot harder than she did.”
“If you say so.”
“You may not see any reason to cooperate right now,” he said softly, “but it’s in your best interests to tell me everything you know about David Jannisek. Either firsthand or from your sister,” he tacked on, as a concession to her insistence that she wasn’t Becky.
“Why? You’ve got what you wanted. Bait for your trap. What more do you need?”
“A good hunter always knows his prey. I want every detail you can tell me about this guy. Things only a lover might know. His favorite dessert. The last movie you watched together. Hopes or plans or little wishes he might have let drop in bed.”
“Even if I was Becky, do you think I would tell you intimate secrets like that?”
“You would if you wanted to save his hide,” Marsh fired back. “The mob boss Jannisek owes big time to has already tried to gun him down once, remember?”
That took some of the starch from her spine. Slumping down in her seat, she tucked her hands under her arms and stared out at the narrow slice of landscape illuminated by the headlights. It had changed considerably during their journey.
Southern Arizona’s fat saguaros and curly creosote bushes had already given way to mesquite and scrub pine. Soon, Marsh knew from so many drives along this route, the land would rise into the wind-sculpted red rock mesas surrounding Sedona. After that came the mountains, with their stands of aspen, blue spruce and ponderosa pine. They were only an hour away from their destination, maybe less. Once again he was heading home.
Only this time, Ellen wouldn’t be there to welcome him back to the Bar-H, her arm wrapped around Jake’s waist, and her shy smile lighting her eyes.
Marsh’s gut tightened.
“What if I can’t remember anything?”
The subdued question came out of the darkness. He forced himself to relax. Was she finally going to admit the truth? That he had, in fact, pulled the right sister into his net?
No such luck.
“We talked about Dave Jannisek,” she confessed. “My sister and I. But…” Her hand lifted to spear through her hair. “Becky falls in and out of love so easily, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the details.”
That was the understatement of the century. The report on Becky Smith’s
past liaisons had read like a soap opera magazine. Well, Marsh was willing to take whatever crumbs he could get.
“I’ll help you,” he promised. “Sooner or later, the details will come back.”
“Sooner or later?” She tested the words, turning her head toward his. Her brown eyes were unreadable in the darkness. “Does it make a difference which?”
“Not to me.”
Chapter 5
“We’re here.”
Henderson’s deep voice brought Lauren out of a semi-stupor induced by her two flights that day, long stretches of unbroken silence, and mile after mile of empty road.
She blinked owlishly and glanced at the clock on the dash, surprised to find that it was well after midnight. Sitting up, she searched the thick pines surrounding the car. If there was a cabin anywhere out there, she sure couldn’t see it.
“Here where?”
“This is as far as the road goes.”
He shouldered open his door, letting in a slice of cold air that nipped at Lauren’s lungs. Her nose burrowed deeper into the collar of her borrowed jacket as she climbed out. She’d gotten used to its comforting combination of leather and flannel and spicy aftershave, with just a hint of horse thrown in for added fragrance. Once out of the Blazer, the sharp tang of pine resin added its scent to her still groggy senses.
“It’s another fifty yards or so to the shack,” Marsh announced as he dragged out her bag and his. “We walk from here.”
“Hey, hold on a minute!”
“Is there a problem?”
“You tell me.” Her breath pearling on the night air, Lauren faced him across the hood. “This place started off as a ranch. Then it morphed into a cabin on a ranch. Now it’s a shack?”
“A line shack,” he said with a touch of impatience. “Don’t worry, it comes equipped with the necessary modern conveniences. Most of them, anyway.”
Lauren didn’t like the sound of that. She liked her first glimpse of the so-called cabin even less when it came into view a few moments later. Huffing from the cold and the uphill climb along a narrow dirt path, she took one look at the weathered structure and stopped in her tracks.
Mistaken Identity Page 5
