Paula Graves - Cowboy Alibi

She followed him into the hotel and waited impatiently while he picked up the key to her room from the desk clerk. “You’re in room 223. It’s an adjoining room to mine.”

“Adjoining?”

“You know, there’s a connecting door between our rooms?”

“I know what adjoining means.” She frowned at him as they entered the elevator. “I just wondered why.”

“Easy access,” he answered cryptically.

“I’m surprised you didn’t request that Chief Trent just put me in your room with you. Maybe supply you with a set of handcuffs to chain me to the bed or something.”

“I did. He nixed it. But I have my own set of cuffs if you’re interested.”

She looked up sharply, surprised at the hint of humor she heard in his deep, gravelly voice. “My God, that was a joke, wasn’t it? Cowboy Joe just told a joke.”

The half smile quirking his lips faded and his gray eyes darkened. “Don’t get used to it.”

She sighed as the elevator lurched and settled on the second floor. The door swished open and she started to step out, but Joe swung his arm out, stopping her.

“Let me check it out first.” Holding the doors open with one hand, he stuck his head out of the elevator and looked both ways. “Okay, let’s go.”

She followed him into the deserted hallway, remembering her earlier visit to his hotel room. What would Joe say if he knew she’d been here already, conned her way inside his room and gone through his things? Check that. She had a feeling she already knew what he’d say.

Joe stopped in front of room 223 and swiped the card key in the lock, opening the door. Jane took a step inside ahead of him and stopped dead in her tracks.

Behind her, Joe uttered a low profanity.

Spread across the bed, in the unmistakable shape of a body, lay hundreds of blood-red rose petals.

Trinity Police Chief Hank Trent took one look at the rose-strewn hotel bed and uttered a scalding string of epithets.

“We can’t stay here,” Joe said when he was done.

“I’ll find you another hotel.”

“We can’t stay here in Trinity,” Joe said firmly.

“You expect me to just let you waltz out of town with my only eyewitness to a murder?”

Joe glanced at the Jane. She stood a few feet away, her gaze still fixed on the rose-petal effigy posed like a crimson corpse on the pale bedspread. She had said almost nothing since they’d opened the hotel room door, but her distress was evident in her pale face and wide, haunted eyes.

“The only people who knew we were coming here besides Jane and me were you and your department, Chief.” Joe turned his gaze to Trent. “She was in your custody the whole time.”

“You weren’t.”

“You want to check my credentials again?”

Trent frowned. “No. Just guarantee me you’re not pulling some fast one here to get her back to Wyoming.”

“I just want to keep her alive until we can figure out what the hell is going on here,” Joe assured him. “I’ll take her somewhere safe and get back in touch with you directly to let you know where we are.”

Though his face reflected his reluctance, Trent gave a grudging nod. “Stay in this state, Garrison. I mean it.”

Joe nodded. “I’ll be in touch as soon as we settle somewhere.” He crossed to Jane and touched her elbow.

She gave a little jerk and turned startled green eyes to him. “What’s happening now?”

“I’m taking you out of town.”

Her eyes darkened with suspicion. “To Wyoming?”

“No. We have to stay in Idaho.”

“But not here.”

He cupped her elbow in his palm, trying to ignore the way her warmth seeped into his bloodstream and settled in the center of his chest, the way it had always done, right from the start. He led her out into the hallway, away from the handful of police and technicians examining the hotel room for evidence. “You’re not safe here.”

She looked away. “I’m not safe anywhere.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked, tightening his grip on her elbow.

She pulled her arm from his grasp. “Just a feeling.”

“Not a memory?”

She met his gaze again. “Not a memory.”

“You don’t remember anything.”

She shook her head.

If she was faking, she was amazingly consistent about it. He’d watched her carefully over the past few hours as she dealt with the aftermath of her friend’s murder, and not once had she slipped.

He picked up the small suitcase filled with women’s clothes Hank Trent’s sister had brought for Jane, nodding for her to follow him to his room. He closed the door behind them and turned to look at her. She looked even more wary and pale. “Are you okay?”

She gave a brief nod.

He motioned toward the chair next to the bed. “Sit down before you fall down.”

She obeyed, tucking her feet up and wrapping her arms around her knees. She looked so much thinner than he remembered. Fragile, almost. A fist of tension formed in the center of his chest and he forced himself not to cross to her side and pull her into his arms.

Once, he’d have done so, without hesitation. But that time seemed like decades ago, not just a short, harrowing eight months. The woman he’d known in Canyon Creek had been an illusion.

He’d thought he could trust her, just like he’d thought he could trust his stepmother. Like he’d thought he could trust Rita. But they’d left him, just like the woman he’d known as Sandra.

Women couldn’t be trusted. He couldn’t let himself forget it.

“Where are you taking me?” Jane asked, her voice raspy.

“I don’t know. I thought we’d head to Boise and decide from there.”

“Why are you trying to protect me?” She turned her wide-eyed gaze on him again.

He swallowed a rush of pure, masculine desire and looked away. “It’s my job.”

“No, it’s Chief Trent’s job.”

“I need answers,” he admitted after a brief pause. “I need to know exactly what happened the day Tommy died.”

“I thought you already knew.”

A knock at the door kept him from having to say more. He found Hank Trent standing outside. “Just thought you’d want to know that the FBI resident agency in Idaho Falls has offered the services of a profiler on this case. I don’t have a good reason to say no.”

Probably not a bad idea to have a profiler on this, Joe had to admit, though he generally didn’t like the feds nosing around on a case he was working. But that would be Trent’s headache, not his. Joe turned to Jane. “You ready?”

She picked up the suitcase he’d set by the bed and squared her jaw. “Let’s do it.”

He shook Trent’s hand, promised to be in touch and led Jane down to the hotel parking lot.

CLINT SLOWLY approached the Chevy Silverado parked in the hotel lot, taking in the Wyoming plates. So Joe Garrison was in town.

“Guess you got the memo, too,” he murmured wryly. He should have figured. But the cowboy was out of luck this time. He could swagger around in his stupid hat and his Wrangler jeans, but it would make no difference. Clint was no steer to be wrangled into submission nor a horse to be broken. He wouldn’t let a two-bit hayseed hick keep him from getting what he came to Idaho to retrieve.

He stuck the device to the Silverado’s undercarriage, just behind the passenger door, and straightened, dusting off his hands and tugging at the folds of his dark trench coat. He slipped into the shadows as two people emerged from the hotel and headed for the parking lot.

From his hiding place behind a mud-splattered Dodge Durango, he watched Joe Garrison open the door for Jane and help her into the truck. What a gentleman. His lip curled in a sneer at the thought.