by B. J Daniels
His head hurt but nothing like his throat. So, how the hell...? It didn’t matter. Everything would be fine, he assured himself again. As long as he got back across the border and—He swore.
Money. He wasn’t going anywhere without gas money. He hurried back into her bedroom, not surprised to find she hadn’t taken her suitcase in her hurry to leave. But she had taken her purse. Earlier she’d lied about how much cash she had with her. He’d been counting on that money. He should have taken it from her then.
Now he was going to have to get an advance from Gerald to even leave Canada. The humiliation of it galled him. Not to mention this latest setback. When he caught up with Kate—and he would—he was going to strangle her the way Jon Harper had him. Only he wouldn’t stop until she gasped her last breath.
He would find her, too. Somehow. Find her like Jon had found the two of them. The thought brought him back to the question of how Jon Harper had found them at this rental house in a quiet neighborhood outside of Moose Jaw. Collin was sure he hadn’t been followed and Kate hadn’t told.
Which meant... He let out a litany of curses and headed for the garage. Snapping on the light, he looked around for a flashlight. There was one sitting on the workbench. The batteries were half-dead, but there was just enough light that he knew he could find what he was looking for.
Collin located the tracking device and swore before ripping it from the vehicle’s frame and crawling back out from under the SUV. The bastard had put a tracking device on his car? When? He had to have done it the night before they’d left. Which meant he’d been planning to come after Kate all along.
That didn’t make Collin as angry as the fact that once he knew the man had been a cop and maybe worse, he should have checked. He swore again. What kind of criminal was so stupid?
He crushed the device under his boot, not that it did any good now. What an amateur mistake that had been. If he wanted to play in the big league, he had to at least pretend to be shrewder than he was. He hated to think about what Gerald was going to say about all of this.
How was he going to explain it to Gerald? He’d have no choice but to tell the truth and hope it didn’t get him killed.
* * *
“ARE YOU DANIEL JACKSON?” Kate asked, her voice breaking with emotion.
He stretched out his legs. The left one ached. He tried not to flinch, tried not to let her see that he wasn’t the strong, capable man she thought he was—let alone the one she wanted him to be. “I don’t know who I am.” He saw her disbelieving expression.
“Collin said you worked at the refinery in Houston,” she challenged.
He nodded. “I did. Apparently I was caught in the explosion. I woke up in a hospital room with a bandage around my head and no memory of what had happened—or who I was. So many people were killed or injured. There was a lot of confusion. I didn’t know anything about myself, but I wasn’t badly injured like a lot of others, so I was moved to another hospital. It was there that I was told that I was Justin Brown. I had no reason to believe it wasn’t true. Justin Brown had no family, so it all added up when no one came looking for me.”
“I went to one hospital after another,” Kate said, her voice breaking. Hadn’t she sensed this was what might have happened to him? But she’d been asking for Daniel Jackson—not Justin Brown. “So you just believed that was who you were?”
“Apparently Justin Brown had only been working at the refinery for a short period of time and staying at some fleabag hotel. When I went there after I was released from the hospital, they let me into Justin Brown’s room. I had no photographs, nothing but some clothing and a little money. There was no wedding ring and no wife waiting for me, so I assumed I wasn’t married.”
“You left your wedding ring by the soap dish in the bathroom that morning,” she said. “They found your wallet in the debris. That’s why they were so convinced that you were dead.” She’d often wondered in her darkest hours if he’d planned to walk away that day and had left the ring behind.
“If you don’t know who you are, then how can you believe that you’re not Daniel Jackson?”
His sympathetic look seized her heart in a death grip. “Because I can’t fathom the thought that I wouldn’t have remembered you and my children. I would have known there was someone out there who would be looking for me, missing me, wouldn’t I?”
She didn’t know what to say even if she could have spoken around the lump in her throat.
* * *
“WHAT THE HELL happened to you?” Gerald demanded the moment he walked in the door and spotted Collin’s neck. He grabbed his collar and jerked it to one side. “Someone choked you?”
Collin yanked his shirt closed as he stepped away. “It’s nothing.”
The man scoffed. “Nothing?” He glanced around. “Where is she?”
“Look, it’s no big deal—”
Gerald got into his face. “Tell me what happened.” He bit off each word.
“It’s the damned woman.” Collin sighed and dropped his gaze. “She met this man in Buckhorn—”
“I thought you were engaged?”
“Yeah, well, we were—until she saw this man in Buckhorn who she thought was her husband who died twenty years ago. It’s really messed up.”
“You could say that. Who is this man?”
“Nobody,” he said quickly. “A carpenter who makes kids’ toys out of wood for a living.” He wasn’t about to tell him that Jon Harper was an ex-cop who had a bounty on his head because he’d sent some mobsters to the slammer. Only a fool would trust a man like that.
“You’re saying this carpenter, who she thinks is her dead husband, followed you up here to take her back?” That about covered it. “You didn’t notice him behind you?”
“There wasn’t anyone behind me. I wasn’t tailed.”
Gerald raised a brow. “Then how did he find you, since you didn’t even know exactly where you were going until my guy pulled you over and gave you the address?”
Collin rubbed the back of his neck, but only for a moment before he felt where the cord had cut into his flesh. His throat ached. If he ever found that bastard... He realized Gerald was waiting for an explanation. “He put a tracking device on my rental car.”
The man’s eyes widened in disbelief. “A carpenter put a tracking device on your car? What in the hell aren’t you telling me?”
“It turns out that he’s also an ex-cop. But none of that matters. I found the device and destroyed it once I realized...” He shook his head. “It’s all fine now.”
“How can you say that?” Gerald demanded. “At any moment cops could swarm this place—if they aren’t already out there.”
“Did you bring the—”
“Of course not!”
“Then, why would the cops arrest us?” Collin reasoned. “I told you, it’s cool. She isn’t going to do anything. I have someone on her kid. She’s not stupid.” It was a lie, but Gerald didn’t have to know that.
The man merely shook his head and stepped away. Collin felt his breath catch, his stomach roiling suddenly as he realized this deal might not go down now. After everything he’d put into this transaction, it had to happen. He had to convince Gerald. He was flat broke, hounded by creditors, with no chance of paying his debts unless this drug deal went down.
He stepped to the man. “I can handle this.”
Gerald turned so quickly, he flinched and took a step back. “Handle this? You can’t be serious. Something smells rotten. How long have you known this woman?”
“Months. She’s a published author with two grown kids, solid and financially set for life. We were getting married once we returned to Texas.”
“So, how did this happen?”
He couldn’t explain it even to himself. “Bad luck. She saw this man and was convinced he was her dead husband. It was just a fluke, a coincidence
.” He raked a hand through his hair. “The crazy thing is that Jon might really be her husband.”
“That’s the crazy part?”
Collin fell silent. He didn’t know what more to say. There was only one way to prove himself, but that meant the deal had to go through. “I can do this,” he said quietly. He could feel Gerald studying him, assessing the situation and looking as if he was trying really hard not to hurt him.
“I’ve given it some thought,” Collin rushed on. “At the border, if it’s the same cop and he asks about my fiancée, I tell him she is staying a few more days at the spa with her friends. With everything she bought, including a wedding dress, there isn’t room for her in the car anyway, I tell him and chuckle. Then I add, Maybe I should think about what I’m getting myself into.” He was watching Gerald’s expression closely. “I will make it work.”
“Maybe,” Gerald said after a long enough time that Collin was sweating profusely. “But not without the woman and the man you called Jon. Any idea how we might find them?”
“Well...” he said, thinking quickly. Moments before he wouldn’t have been surprised if Gerald had pulled a gun and shot him. Now he felt there might be hope. “She can’t cross the border. I have her passport and her phone.”
“But if she tried to cross, she would tell them about you, wouldn’t she?”
“No, I told you. I have one of her daughters. She isn’t stupid.”
Gerald gave him a look that said he thought Collin was, though. “What’s the man driving?”
He described the pickup. “I’m sure it’s registered to Jon Harper.” He spelled the name for him. “Montana plates.” He gave him as much of the plate number as he could remember.
Gerald nodded. “Let me see if I can find them.” He looked at his watch. “In the meantime, you have something to pick up.” He handed him a piece of paper with the address on it.
“Me?” Collin had hoped Gerald would be bringing the goods to him. Now, it seemed that he was being sent to get them. That way, if anything went wrong, Gerald would simply disappear, and Collin would take the fall.
He tried to breathe through his apprehension as he nodded and turned to leave. Why would Gerald set him up? He’d lose the drugs. The man wouldn’t do that. No, everything was fine. The deal was going through. He hadn’t blown it. Gerald wasn’t going to kill him. At least, not yet. Kate didn’t know when he was picking up the wedding dress or where, so neither did Jon Harper. There shouldn’t be any problem at the bridal shop. No cops waiting.
But as he drove to the address he’d been given, he also couldn’t help feeling as if he was being watched. His skin crawled. He’d asked for this. Begged for it so he could get himself out of trouble. What had he been thinking? If he got caught—worse, if he screwed this up—
He couldn’t let himself think about that. He parked in front of the shop, sat for a moment as he tried to calm down. It was early. There was hardly anyone on the street. But that didn’t mean they weren’t watching from one of the rooftops, just waiting for him to get out of the SUV and pick up the goods.
It wasn’t like he had a choice. He couldn’t back out now. They’d kill him. It was now or never, he thought as he opened the door and stepped out. A gust of winter air stole his breath. Closing the door, he walked to the front of the shop. The door was still locked, but when he tapped on it, an older woman appeared, unlocked it and ushered him quickly into the dark shop before relocking it behind him.
She led him through racks and racks of wedding dresses to the back. A huge box sat on the table. “It’s all ready,” she said.
He stepped to the box and started to lift the lid, but she stopped him. “Best not to disturb the dress. If it is opened at the border, it will just look like a beautiful wedding dress with lots of volume. So be very careful with it.”
Nodding, he gently picked up the box. It was incredibly heavy, but he doubted a homeland security officer was going to lift the box out of the SUV or take the dress from the box. The one thing he hadn’t seen at the border was drug dogs.
She followed him back through the shop. At the front door, she unlocked it and put up the open sign as if he was just another customer. He walked to the SUV, opened the hatch and carefully put the box in as if it was filled with explosives. As he closed the hatch and went around to the driver’s seat, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched, that any minute cops would be all over him.
He climbed behind the wheel. Still no cops. He started the engine. The street was relatively empty. He let out a laugh. This had been almost too easy. He tried not to look around for Kate or Jon. He’d told Kate about the wedding dress, but she probably thought it was a lie. Even when the bags of drugs were cut from inside the dress, it would still be a beautiful, one-of-a-kind wedding dress. He’d ordered it in her size.
Just the thought of her slim, beautiful body now in Jon’s hands... He touched his throat, thinking of her neck and his hands around it. But first he had to get the drugs across the border—without her. Unless Gerald’s men were successful and found her—and Jon Harper.
As he drove back to the rental house, he began to get nervous again. What would happen if Jon and Kate couldn’t be found?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WHEN COLLIN REACHED the house, he drove into the garage, shut off the engine and went inside to find Gerald in better spirits. Apparently the man put the word out on the pickup with Montana plates. Jon’s truck had been found in the parking garage at a local hotel.
That surprised him. He’d expected Jon to take off with Kate. Maybe not to the border, but at least to run and hide. Not stay in a local hotel. But if Kate told him about the highway patrolman who stopped them, Jon might have realized that running was the wrong thing to try to do.
“You have Kate?” Collin asked, half-afraid of the answer.
“Not yet. My men are waiting for them to leave the hotel,” Gerald said.
“What are you going to do with her?”
Gerald studied him for a long nerve-racking moment. “You still need her. Given what you’ve told me about her feelings for the man, it sounds as if we can use him to get her to do what we want.”
Collin nodded. “That’s good.” Especially since he’d lost Danielle. “She would do anything for him.” He hated the bitterness he heard in his voice.
Gerald hadn’t missed it, either. “You aren’t getting too personally involved, are you?”
“I was planning to marry her,” he snapped.
The older man raised an eyebrow. “You seriously thought that was going to happen after this little engagement trip of yours? I think that is pretty naive of you. She doesn’t sound stupid. Even if this other man hadn’t come into the picture, do you really think she wouldn’t have caught on? You just picked up a wedding dress for her that she didn’t choose, didn’t even get to try on.”
“I could have sold that,” he said stubbornly. “After all, I talked her into this trip.” Gerald said nothing. “She was ready to marry me.”
“Until she saw this carpenter she believes is her dead husband.”
Collin looked away. “I told you, she might be right about that.”
“I suspect so, since he followed her all the way up here to get her away from you.”
“He’s just that kind of guy,” Collin said, thinking how much worse that would make it if his fiancée had fallen in love on their engagement trip with a complete stranger. It wasn’t a story he would be telling anyone when this was over. If he lived that long. That was still a chance he couldn’t ignore.
Gerald had found Kate. Collin would get her back, and they would cross the border together. That still left a lot of what-ifs. He saw Gerald check his phone.
“Your fiancée is about to get our version of room service.”
* * *
KATE WOKE FROM a restless, short sleep. For a moment,
she didn’t know where she was. But then it all came rushing back at her, leaving her emotionally exhausted. She eased out of bed. She wore one of Jon’s T-shirts and her panties. She couldn’t bear putting on the clothes she’d worn for the past two days.
Pulling the comforter around her, she tiptoed into the adjoining room. Jon lay on the couch, his eyes closed. She stopped to study his face. She couldn’t look at him without seeing Danny. Did she just want to see Danny in this man?
Maybe, since it seemed she couldn’t trust her instincts after trusting Collin. Had she known something wasn’t quite right with him? Was he right about her never getting to the altar with him, even if they hadn’t broken down outside of Buckhorn, Montana? Would she have seen through him?
“I’m not asleep,” Jon said, startling her as he opened his eyes. He swung his legs off the couch and sat up to look at her. He was still fully clothed as if he’d been biding his time until they left. “Can’t sleep?”
She shook her head, swallowing as she met his brown eyes. They were filled with so much concern for her. She’d gotten herself into this mess, and now she’d dragged him into it. And yet, he was worried about her.
He moved over to give her room to sit on the couch. They’d talked some before daylight. Jon wasn’t much of a talker—just like Danny. It made her heart ache to think of all the wasted years. Danny had been alone in the world because of a mix-up, and so had she. Their daughters hadn’t had a father. There was no going back. Worse, she’d now jeopardized his life.
Shivering even with the comforter wrapped around her, she sat down next to him, pulling the thick fabric around her bare legs.
“Do you want me to turn up the heat?” he asked. She shook her head. “I told you last night that your daughters were fine. You can use my phone to call them if you need reassurance.”
