The Woman Most Wanted. Pamela Tracy
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they didn’t move.
She sighed and sat back. Looking out the big window, she watched as a few cars drove by, followed by a firetruck, complete with streamers. No doubt it had been featured at the Founder’s Day celebration.
Why had her parents left and why didn’t they talk about their hometown, family, or friends. The way she figured it, this was the town where she could have been raised. Instead, from the time she was one until she turned sixteen, she and her parents had moved from one town to another, about every three years. Her dad claimed his military background had put the wanderlust in him. Her mother said it was the need to explore that drove him.
At sixteen, her mother’s diabetes meant it was wise to stay in one place and with one doctor. Or maybe, Heather now mused, they’d decided they were safe.
Maybe their feeling safe had something to do with Sarasota Falls. Maybe not. Maybe she was silly to come here. There were way too many maybes. But in her heart, she knew there was a piece missing from her life: her roots.
Roots were so important to her, she’d started putting in job applications from the moment she’d arrived in town. No luck yet, but people had seemed encouraging.
Earlier today, she wandered around the Founder’s Day celebration trying to get a better lay of the land. Once the crowds got to her, she decided to take a drive. The countryside was so different from the metropolis of Phoenix.
Sarasota Falls: thirty-two thousand. Phoenix: four million and climbing.
She wondered who her parents had been friends with, and if they’d missed this place.
How they’d thought it would somehow remain a secret.
Why she was crazy enough to think that moving here, even temporarily, was a good idea.
She shook off the doldrums. Moving had been a brave and wondrous thing.
Right.
She’d just have to keep telling herself that.
* * *
“SHE’S HIDING SOMETHING,” Captain Daniel Anderson said.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Tom glared at Heather, willing her to glare back, annoyed when she didn’t.
Daniel cleared his throat and said the words Tom didn’t want to hear. “She’s hiding something but it isn’t that she’s Rachel Ramsey. I can tell you what you already suspect, which is that everything points to a case of mistaken identity. This lady is shorter than Rachel and—”
“Shorter? You’ve got to be kidding me. We’ve had her in custody not even an hour and you can already tell—”
“I’ve studied Rachel’s photos, almost as often as you, especially the ones from the convenience store,” Daniel said calmly. “Plus, I watched the surveillance video a hundred times.
“She was wearing heels during the robbery! Keep talking to her,” Tom ordered before heading to his office to study the photos, even the ones that would tick him off. He switched out Heather’s photos to compare to what they had of Rachel.
Heather Graves might indeed be legitimate and just happened to look like Rachel Ramsey.
Right down to a red birthmark!
The most recent photo they had of Rachel, save the surveillance video, was her driver’s license. A head shot, which while nice, didn’t tell them all that much, except that Daniel was correct. The woman he’d hauled in was shorter than the height listed on Rachel’s license But, everything else was spot-on.
Rachel Ramsey, girlfriend of Jeremy Salinas. Guilty of robbing the convenience store—at gunpoint—and taking off. Max hadn’t been looking for them on that hot, muggy August day. He’d been responding to a call on the other side of town. Somehow, they’d crossed paths. The final radio check-in from Max gave a license plate number and reported that he’d hit the siren to warn the vehicle ahead of him—someone driving erratically, dangerously—to pull over.
Jeremy Salinas and Rachel Ramsey.
Guilty of murdering a cop.
Max hadn’t even been aware that the car they were driving was stolen.
Tom should have been with him that day, and would have, if his court appearance hadn’t taken twice as long as necessary.
The only witness to the shooting, a frightened high school senior who’d skipped school that day and had been trying to keep a low profile heading home, said that the car Salinas was driving spun out of control and hit a telephone pole. Max had parked next to it and jumped out. Then the passenger side door had flung open from the impact, and Rachel had fallen from the car, on her stomach, acting hurt.
Max, doing what he did best, bent down to help her up. The moment he’d made sure Rachel was all right and was straightening, the boyfriend fired his weapon into Max’s heart.
Max’s blood was on Rachel’s hands in more ways than one.
“Hard to believe she’s been living under an assumed identity and has been so successful.” Lucas was back and staring over Tom’s shoulder at the mug shots—left side, front, right side—of Heather’s face on screen. How she managed to keep her expression both shocked and innocent-looking was pretty amazing. Maybe she’d worn the same expression the day she pretended to be hurt.
She was that good of an actress.
But making herself shorter? a little voice questioned inside Tom’s head.
“I wonder why she didn’t try to change her looks more,” Lucas remarked.
Tom wondered the same thing.
“Man, I’ll bet this is making your day,” Lucas added.
“It would make my day if she’d just admit she was Rachel,” Tom muttered, knowing it wouldn’t happen.
Deputy Oscar Guzman walked over and looked at Heather’s photo. “Maybe Rachel Ramsey was the fake name all along—maybe Heather Graves is the real name.”
If only it was that easy, but Tom knew Rachel’s history like the back of his hand.
“Not a chance. I knew Rachel personally. She is Diane Ramsey’s daughter.”
Oscar raised an eyebrow. He’d brought Ms. Ramsey in twice for being drunk and disorderly. She’d died of an overdose a year ago.
“Rachel was born to an alcoholic mother and raised by a succession of stepfathers and squatters. She even spent some time in foster care,” Tom said, momentarily feeling sorry for the girl, then remembering what she’d done. “She’s been in and out of trouble with the law most of her early life. Despite it all, I’d thought she was a decent person, until...” Reminding himself that he was talking to colleagues, he kept his voice even and his words matter-of-fact. “Both Jeremy and Rachel, we figured, disappeared across the border. Maybe we were wrong about Rachel. She—” he looked at the computer screen, hit a button and continued hoping that saying the words would make him believe them “—went to college and became a dental hygienist in Arizona.”
No one said, “Yeah, right,” but he wondered if anyone besides himself thought it.
Five years. He’d been looking for her for five years. Still, disappearing was nothing compared to the way she’d reinvented herself.
He almost believed her name was Heather.
Almost didn’t count.
HEATHER GOT THE feeling that while everyone—everyone, that is, except Chief Riley—knew they’d made a mistake, no one wanted to admit it.
No, that wasn’t quite right.
No one wanted to be the one to admit it and then