Cowboy Alibi. Paula Graves

Park, one-fifteen.”

      Jane hung up and grabbed a couple of menus as a pair of hikers entered the restaurant and headed for table six. She took their drink orders, trying to steer her mind away from what she’d just done.

      When her shift ended at one, she changed out of her uniform in the employee locker room and donned her sweater and jeans. Not the most appropriate attire for a mysterious assignation, but she wasn’t actually going to the park to meet Joe Garrison.

      Not yet, anyway.

      First, she was going to the Buena Vista Hotel.

      

      THE SECRET to flying under the radar, Jane knew, was to act as if you knew what you were doing at all times. Keep your eyes forward, head up, stride purposeful—not too slow or too fast. Exactly how she knew this, given the vast blank that was her past, she couldn’t say, and she had a feeling she wouldn’t like the answer if she knew.

      She’d spent the last hour at work with half her mind occupied with what to do about Joe Garrison’s cryptic note. Meeting him was out of the question. She wasn’t about to walk into a trap. She needed to know more about who he was and what he was up to. And that meant getting him out of his hotel room—and herself into it.

      She crossed to the pay phone on the lobby wall, put a couple of coins in the slot and dialed the number on the card Joe had given her.

      Somewhere behind her, a phone at the front desk rang. A woman answered. “Buena Vista Hotel.”

      Jane resisted the urge to look behind her at the desk clerk. “This is room number 229. I need housekeeping to bring me extra towels as soon as possible.”

      “Certainly, ma’am. Right away.”

      Jane waited a few seconds after the desk clerk rang off before hanging up the pay phone, in case anyone was looking. She crossed to the elevator and hit the button for the second floor.

      On the second floor, she stepped out of the elevator and glanced down the hallway. Halfway down, a plump woman with straw-blond hair knocked at a door. “Housekeeping.”

      Jane started walking down the hall toward her, careful not to look too interested in what the woman was doing. After a few seconds, when there was no answer, the maid pulled out a key, unlocked the door and disappeared inside.

      Jane moved quickly then to find room 225. She took a breath and knocked on the door, listening carefully for any sound from within. When she heard nothing, she knocked a little more loudly. “Joe, baby?”

      The maid exited room 229 and glanced at Jane.

      “Locked myself out.” Jane plastered a sheepish smile on her face. “And my husband doesn’t seem to be here. I swear, I’m going to have to fit him with one of those tracking devices—”

      The maid smiled, lowering her voice. “I have a man like that at home. Want me to let you in?”

      “Would you?” Jane didn’t hide her excitement, knowing it would help her sell the cover story. “Joe is always teasing me about being a ditz—I’d hate for him to find out I locked myself out of the room! I’d never live it down.”

      The maid unlocked the door for her. “There you go.”

      “Thank you so much!” Jane dug in her purse and found a couple of dollars. “Here—for your time.”

      After the maid left, Jane closed the door behind her and leaned against it, her heart pounding. What the hell had she just done, and how had she known how to do it?

      She couldn’t give in to her nerves for long. There was no telling how long Joe Garrison would wait for her at the park. She had just a few minutes to look around this place and see if she could figure out exactly who the tall, dark cowboy really was.

      The room was unnaturally neat, the suitcase in the bottom of the closet empty. He’d packed his clothes away in the narrow dresser at the foot of the bed, four shirts and four pairs of jeans neatly folded in one drawer, white cotton boxer shorts and white socks carefully lined up in the adjacent drawer.

      Pretty buttoned-up for a cowboy.

      She spotted a laptop computer on the desk and briefly considered booting it up and taking a look inside, although she had to pause to figure out what, if anything, she knew about computers. But the one thing she did know about them, for sure, was that most people password-protected their systems, and she didn’t have time to play hacker, even if she knew how to do it. Which, for all she knew, she did. She seemed to possess some disturbing skills, if her con job with the hotel maid was anything to go by.

      She opened the desk drawer. A manila folder lay inside, thick with papers. Taking a deep breath, she pulled out the folder, careful to keep the contents from spilling, and laid it on the laptop.

      She pulled up a chair and started scanning the papers. Many were faxes from police departments—Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas—with responses to a request for information about someone named Sandra Dorsey. Caucasian female, midtwenties, five-seven, green eyes, brown hair.

      Jane looked up at the mirror over the dresser by the desk. Frightened green eyes stared back at her.

      She scanned the faxes for more information. After a few seconds, the rest of the truth became clear. All of the faxes were addressed to Chief Garrison of the Canyon Creek, Wyoming, Police Department.

      Chief Joe Garrison.

      The cowboy was a cop.

      

      JOE CHECKED his watch. One-fifteen, just as the message had specified. He hadn’t figured she’d choose a rendezvous point so close to where she lived, but Trinity, Idaho, wasn’t Boise. Everything was close to everything else in a place with only five hundred residents.

      Besides, the woman he’d been chasing for months was savvy enough to stick to familiar territory, where she knew all the shortcuts and secret hiding places. She was nothing if not resourceful, or she’d never have evaded him this long.

      The Trinity Police Department had cooperated once Joe flashed his badge and briefed them on the case he was working. He’d left out a few details, such as his relationship to the deceased—and to the suspect, short-lived as it had been. But what he’d provided had been enough to ensure that the Trinity police gave him the information he needed to find Sandra’s apartment.

      Not Sandra, he reminded himself, his mouth tightening into a scowl. Sandra Dorsey was a mirage. Might as well stop thinking of her as a real person.

      She was no more real than Jane Doe.

      Jane lived in a one-bedroom unit above a hardware store on one of four cross streets intersecting Main. Alliance Park sat directly across the street.

      She liked places like that, Joe remembered. She liked bare grass beneath her toes. Fresh air, warm sunshine—

      He ruthlessly cut off the images racing through his mind and focused on the job he’d come here to do. He wasn’t here to relive a past that he now knew had never been anything more than another of her lies.

      He stood inside the hardware store, faking interest in the boxes of nails on the shelf in front of him. Just behind the shelves, the wide picture window gave him an unencumbered view of the park, while the mirror effect of the bright sunshine outside and the relatively darkened interior of the story would hide him from view.

      He didn’t trust “Jane” to play fairly, especially if she was faking her amnesia. He wasn’t about to walk into one of her traps.

      He moved slowly up and down the aisle, pretending to read the box descriptions, while the minutes ticked further from their agreed-upon meeting time. By one-thirty, he was beginning to draw the attention of the store employees, but still Jane Doe hadn’t shown.

      Where the hell was she?

      

      JANE APPROACHED her apartment building from the rear, trying to keep her