Ambushed!. B.J. Daniels
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his sister Dusty sitting behind his desk. She leaped to her feet like the teenager she was and ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck.
“Did they find her?” she asked stepping back from the quick hug, a mixture of hope and fear in her expression.
He shook his head and stepped around behind his desk.
Dusty was dressed in her usual jeans, western shirt, boots and a straw cowboy hat pulled low. A single blond braid trailed down her slim back. She was a beauty, although she seemed to do everything possible to hide the fact that she was female. Cash wasn’t sure if it was because Dusty was raised pretty much in an all male household or because she actually loved working on the ranch more than doing girl stuff.
“You’re going to keep looking though, aren’t you?” She sounded surprised he was here rather than out with the other officers searching the Trayton place.
“I’m off the case, Dusty,” he said dropping into his chair. His sister had been only eleven when Jasmine disappeared. He doubted she understood the implications of Jasmine’s car being found so close to town, but she would soon enough, once the Antelope Flats rumor mill kicked in. He wanted to be the one to tell her, but still the words came hard.
“I was her—” he paused, the word coming hard “—fiancée and with her car found near here, I’m a suspect in her homicide.” He waved a hand through the air, knowing there was more that would come out but no reason to open that can of worms until he had to.
“Homicide?”
“A sufficient amount of her blood type was found in the car to change her disappearance to a probable homicide,” he said.
“How could anyone think you would hurt her?” Dusty cried. “She was the love of your life—is the love of your life. She can’t be dead. She’s probably in Europe just like you thought. She’ll come back once she hears about her car being found and, when she sees you again, she’ll remember what you shared and she’ll be sorry she stayed away and she won’t ever leave again.”
He smiled up at her, surprised that his tomboy sister was such a romantic and touched that she cared so much. He didn’t have the heart to tell her how wrong she was. “What are you doing in town? I thought you were helping with branding?”
“Shelby sent me in to check on you and tell you that you’re expected at dinner tomorrow night.” Dusty rolled her eyes. “Who knows what big bombshell she’s planning to drop now.”
Shelby was their mother, but it was complicated as all hell. Just a few months ago, out of the blue, Shelby Ward McCall had shown up at the ranch. What made that unusual was that Cash thought his mother had died when he was just over a year old.
Shelby had not only announced that she was alive, but that she and their father Asa had cooked up her demise. It seemed they had thought it would be better for Cash and his three brothers to believe she had died rather than just left. Shelby and Asa couldn’t live with each other and didn’t want the children to have the stigma of divorce hanging over them.
At least that was their story and they were sticking to it. But to make matters worse, he and his brothers had always thought that their little sister Dusty was the result of an affair their father had nineteen years ago. Asa had brought Dusty home when she was a baby with some cock-and-bull story about her being orphaned. He’d legally adopted her and Cash guessed he thought his sons didn’t notice how much she looked like them.
Turned out that Dusty was the result of Asa and Shelby getting together years ago in secret to “discuss” things.
Well, now Shelby was back at the ranch and tongues were wagging in four counties. Cash was trying to keep both of his parents from going to prison for fraud and Dusty was hardly speaking to either parent.
His family had always been the talk of the town for one reason or another. Cash knew that was partly why he’d become sheriff. He was tired of being one of the wild McCall boys.
“Say you will come to dinner,” Dusty pleaded. Dusty had taken the betrayal the hardest. It didn’t help that she looked so much like her mother. She’d also been the closest to their father and felt betrayed by him. But she was especially angry with her mother. While Dusty could possibly understand how Shelby might walk away from four sons, she couldn’t forgive her mother for giving up a daughter.
Since Shelby’s astonishing reappearance, the family undercurrents were deadly. She never had explained why she’d returned to the living. But it was obvious a lot more was going on between her and Asa than either had let on. Cash had seen the looks that had passed between them, seen Shelby crying and Asa hadn’t been himself since she’d come back. Their father, a cantankerous, stubborn, almost seventy-year-old man who’d alienated all four of his sons on a regular basis, was actually trying to be nice.
It worried the hell out of Cash.
So it was no wonder that the last thing he wanted to do was attend one of the McCalls’ famous knock-down-drag-out family dinners—especially now.
But he knew that an invitation to a family dinner was really a summons to appear. If he sent word back that he wasn’t coming, Shelby herself would drive into town to try to change his mind. He didn’t need that.
“I’ll be there.” He hated to think what new surprises might be sprung at dinner tomorrow night.
Dusty sighed in relief at his acceptance. “I think the dinner is probably about Brandon. You know he’s been acting weird lately.”
Cash had noticed a change in his brother, but didn’t think it weird. Brandon, at thirty-three, seemed to have finally grown up. He’d taken on more responsibility out at the ranch, had really seemed to have settled down. He was talking about attending law school next fall and, according to their older brother J.T., had opened an account at the bank to save for it. “Isn’t it about time Brandon grew up?”
Dusty didn’t seem to be listening. “He comes in really late at night. I think he has a girlfriend, but he denies it.”
Cash laughed. “If you’re right, he’ll tell us when he’s ready.”
She made a face at the “if you’re right” part. It was a given that a McCall was always right, especially a female one. “Aren’t you even curious why he would try to keep a girlfriend secret?”
“No, we’re a family of secrets,” Cash said, realizing just how true that was. He thought of his own secret, pushed for years into some dark corner of his heart.
The problem with secrets was that they didn’t stay that way. It was only a matter of time, now that Jasmine’s car had been found, before his came out.
Somewhere outside St. George, Utah
AFTER LEAVING THE CAFÉ, Molly found a newspaper stand and bought a copy of the paper. She ripped out the article and sat behind the wheel of her car, studying the photograph of the missing woman.
On closer inspection, the woman didn’t look that much like her. The resemblance was in the shape of the face, the spacing and color of the eyes, the generous mouth. The hair was different, long, straight and white-blond compared to Molly’s curly, short, darker blond locks.
But with some makeup, a few highlights in her hair and the right clothes… The clincher was that the woman was close to her age—just a year and a half older—and about her height—an inch taller and ten pounds heavier.
As Molly looked into the woman’s face, she felt a chill at just the thought of what she was thinking of doing. Talk about bad karma.
According to the article, Jasmine Wolfe was last seen at a gas station on the outskirts of Bozeman seven years ago. The clerk at the station had noticed a man approach the blond woman driving the new red sports car. The man was about average height wearing a dark jacket, jeans and cap. The clerk didn’t see his face or note his hair color.
When the clerk had looked up again, the man was holding the woman’s arm and the two were getting into the car.