Книга - The Interpreter

The Interpreter
RaeAnne Thayne


He found her, barely conscious, on a dark Utah mountain road–a woman with an affinity for obscure languages and seemingly no memory of her identity. But ex-agent Mason Keller was not about to fall for that–and despite his attraction to her, he had the children entrusted in his care to think of….Children that "Jane" found irresistible–after all, they, like she, were lost souls. Then her memory returned and she learned a lot of things she'd rather have forgotten. Like how much danger she, Mason and the children were really in. And how, like her past, her feelings for her rescuer were destined to be a permanent part of her life….









Fear had a bitter, metallic taste, almost like blood.


It welled up in her throat, then spilled into her mouth until she couldn’t breathe around it.

Something was out there. Waiting. Watching. Something dark and terrifying. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t seem to make her arms and legs move. She was caught, she realized with horror.

Escape! She had to find a way to break free. Evil lurked just beyond her restraints.

“Please. Please no,” she whispered, then cried out just as the evil force reached out to pull her into the tight, suffocating embrace of death.

“Easy now. Everything’s all right.”

She shouldn’t have found his voice so soothing, any more than she should have found such comfort in his presence. Somehow she knew—as long as he was there, she was safe. No one could possibly touch her while Mason Keller was around to protect her….




The Interpreter

RaeAnne Thayne





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




RAEANNE THAYNE


lives in a graceful old Victorian nestled in the rugged mountains of northern Utah, along with her husband and two young children. Her books have won numerous honors, including several readers’ choice awards and a RITA


Award nomination by the Romance Writers of America. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers. She can be reached through her Web site at www.raeannethayne.com, or at P.O. Box 6682, North Logan, UT 84341.


To the real Harry Withington and his beautiful wife, Jessie, for opening their home and their hearts to us.

And to Rose Robinson, for all the Tagalog help.

Many, many thanks!




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17




Chapter 1


She was in a regular bloody mess.

Bound and gagged in the back of what she thought must be a rented lorry, Jane Withington bit the inside of both cheeks in a vain attempt to keep the panic at bay.

It didn’t work. Though she was gnawing hard enough to draw blood, savage fear still prowled in her chest, in her head, through her veins—doing a much better job of choking her than the dirty kerchief they had stuffed in her mouth.

How could she not panic? Any sane woman would, knowing she was on her way to certain death, all because she had never been any kind of a decent poker player.

She wouldn’t be in this mess if only she had selected a different Park City restaurant for dinner on her evening off from her duties as an interpreter at the International Trade Summit—if only she hadn’t been seated at the booth next to the quartet of men with the low, intense voices, one of whom she recognized, first by his voice and then when she confirmed her suspicions by a furtive look behind her on the pretext of dropping her serviette.

None of this would have happened if she had been able to sneak away without Simon Djami, the Vandelusian trade minister, seeing her—or if she wasn’t so damn brilliant with languages and didn’t know a word of Vandish, the obscure Southeast Asian dialect they were speaking.

But she did know Vandish. And she knew herself well enough to be certain she hadn’t been able to hide her shock and horror at what she heard them planning.

“All is in place,” one of the Vandish men had said, not even bothering to lower his voice.

“Ah, wonderful,” Simon Djami had said. “You have indeed pleased me, my friend. Months of preparation will result in this grand protest, all for the glory of Vandelusia. We will show them the people of Vandelusia are not puppets to be yanked about by godless, unclean western hands.”

“It is good you have bought the loyalty of your two FBI lapdogs. With their help we will have the nerve gas canister by Sunday night and will be ready to prepare the detonation device for Wednesday’s treaty signing.”

Nerve gas? Detonation devices? Good Lord, they were planning a terrorist attack.

The quite pleasant roast duckling she had been enjoying up to that point now congealed in her stomach in a big greasy ball. She had to get out of here, to warn someone!

It was just her bad luck that before she could frantically summon the waitress for her bill so she could escape, Djami walked past her on the way to the men’s room. Though she tried to hide behind the book she had brought to keep her company at dinner, she hadn’t moved quickly enough.

For one tiny instant, their gazes collided. As she looked into his cold eyes, she saw recognition flicker there—recognition of who she was and exactly what she must have overheard and understood.

She was likely the only person outside of those four men in the entire western United States who spoke Vandish, and in that cold gaze, she saw that her fate had been sealed.

Now, hours later, the lorry hit a deep bump suddenly and Jane gasped as the jarring movement smashed her against unforgiving metal. Her head connected with a crack and for an instant, pain and fear made her woozy. She blinked away the dizziness, then felt warmth trickle down her face. Was she bleeding? She had hit something sharp as she had been jostled against the lorry wall. A screw, perhaps?

She tried to rub her cheek against her shoulder but with her tightly bound hands behind her back, she didn’t have the range of motion necessary to staunch the dripping blood.

It seemed the last straw. The fear she had been trying so hard to contain growled and snapped at its leash.

She was utterly helpless in a crisis. Always had been. And this particular crisis was bound to paralyze her. All of this—the gag, the restraints, the awful fear—was too much like before, that terrible time she had fiercely tried to wipe from her memory, impossible though that task was.

Just as in her nightmares, she was fifteen again in a foreign country, in the midst of hostile, angry enemies, praying to whoever would listen to her pleas to extricate her. Then, as now, she was a pawn in a game much bigger than she was.

And then, just as now, she had been completely worthless, unable to focus on anything but the rampaging terror.

Oh, this was horrible. She wanted to curl up into a tight little ball and let the jostling of the lorry rock her to sleep. Dying would be so much less terrifying if she could only sleep through it.

Buck up, darling.

Though she knew it was only her imagination, she could suddenly hear her father’s voice in her ear, gruff and hearty and wonderful.

Be strong for me, Janie-girl. You know you’re clever enough to get yourself out of this.

She wasn’t strong, though, or particularly clever. Harry Withington had always been the brave one, the forceful one in their little family unit of two. She had so wanted to be like him, reckless and brash and bold. Even with the rest of the world exploding around him in chaos, Harry was inevitably a rock of stability and good sense in a storm-tossed sea. He thrived on those situations that tended to send her spiraling into panic.

Heaven knows, he spent his whole life seeking them out, traveling to all the world’s hotspots. She sometimes used to think he much preferred the tumult to the calm.

The thought of her father brought her once more directly to that memory she wanted so desperately to forget. The last time she saw him alive, he had given her much the same advice as he did now in her imagination. Buck up. Be strong for me. I’ll get you out, Janie-girl. You know I will.

He’d kept that promise as he did all his others—though in the end it had cost him his life, snuffing out all that strength and vitality forever.

She drew in a shuddering breath. She couldn’t think of that now, of her last view of her father while she ran for her life with a squadron of American and British commandos as Harry had been viciously attacked on all sides by her kidnappers.

If she couldn’t force that image from her mind, she would never find the courage to escape—and she had to get away, no matter what it took.

She didn’t want to die. Not here, not like this.

The lorry rattled across another bump and the door shook on its hinges, separating enough to let in a thin crack of moonlight.

Where were they? she wondered. They had started this journey on highway roads but some time ago her kidnappers had left the relative smoothness of pavement for this jerky, rutted dirt road. The stifling heat inside the lorry had abated somewhat, making her wonder if they had ascended into the coolness of the Utah mountains.

It would make a grim sort of sense. They would want to dispose of her body somewhere remote and isolated where she wouldn’t be quickly discovered.

She drew in another sharp breath through the acrid gag. Stop thinking about it and do something!

What, Harry?

Her mind raced as she considered her options. Another drop of blood tickled as it slid down her neck, and the sensation reminded her of the screw that had cut her head. If it was sharp enough to break through flesh, perhaps it could be used to sever the nylon cord securing her arms.

She rose on her knees as best she could, and with her bound hands she searched the general location where she had bumped the inside wall of the lorry. Long moments passed until at last the sharp edge poked the pad of her thumb.

Her heart pumping, Jane dragged her hands across it again and again. For what felt like hours, she fought the jostling of the vehicle until she felt the cord begin to fray. The minor success accelerated her efforts and a few frantic moments later her hands at last slipped free.

Sweet relief washed through her as she ripped away the gag and quickly worked the knotted cords around her ankles.

Good girl, her father’s voice in her head praised.

Now what? She sat back on her heels, considering her options. The lorry rattled over another bump and the rear doors jostled open again slightly, spilling that thin slice of moonlight inside.

Could she push them open from the inside? she wondered. It was worth a try. She had nothing to lose, after all.

She scrambled toward the doors, looking out that narrow window at the world outside. All she could see were trees—dark forests of evergreens and the spindly, ghostly trunks of aspens.

There were bound to be wild animals out there. Deer, elk, badgers. Did they have bears in this part of Utah? she wondered.

Jane gnawed at her lip. What a lowering reflection on her psyche that she found that vast, dark wilderness outside almost more terrifying than what inevitably awaited her at the end of this journey.

No. She was Harry Withington’s daughter. She couldn’t just cower and let these men kill her to hide their evil plans. For once in her cowardly life, she would force herself to draw on whatever tiny portion of courage and strength her father had passed on to her.

She knew nothing about cargo lorry doors but she had to assume these either weren’t bolted properly or the bolt had loosened from the rutted road, otherwise she likely wouldn’t be seeing this moonlight. At the next bump when the doors separated slightly, she threw all her weight against them. They quivered but held fast.

Come on, she prayed. To her everlasting relief, someone must have heard her. It shouldn’t have worked but by some miracle, it did. At the next rut, she pushed harder with her shoulder, pounding with every ounce of strength, and to her amazement, this time the bolt gave way and the doors flapped open.

Already in motion, Jane was unable to check her momentum. Newton’s first law—an object in motion remains in motion—and all that. Even Harry Withington’s daughter couldn’t fight the laws of physics. Her arms flailing for balance, she tumbled out the open doors of the lorry at an awkward sideways angle.

Nor could she catch herself in time to avoid the rugby-ball-size rock wedged into the dirt road.

Her head connected with a hollow thud and the terrifying Utah mountains faded to black.



For a man who had spent most of his adult life staring into the gaping maw of danger, dealing with two little kids ought to be a piece of cake.

So why did he feel as if every step he took led him further and further into a hazardous minefield of emotion? Mason Keller wondered as he gazed at the girl and boy in the seat next to him in his pickup truck, one so grave and quiet, the other fidgeting like he’d just sat in a nest of fire ants.

“English, Charlie,” he told the wiggler, trying his best to keep the weariness out of his tone at having to issue the too-frequent reminder to the boy again.

Charlie Betran sighed heavily, as if he carried the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders.

“Yes, sir. I forget,” he said, each word precise and carefully enunciated.

“I know you do. You’re doing great, though.” Mason’s smile encompassed both of them. Charlie smiled back but Miriam just gave him her usual solemn gaze.

Maybe he shouldn’t push the two so hard to learn English. He could speak their native language, if not fluently, at least conversationally. But he knew Charlie and his older sister Miriam would be in for a mighty lonely existence if they couldn’t communicate with their peers by the time school started in a few months.

“Why do we go on this road?” Charlie asked in English. “It is bumpy like a goat trail.”

“I told you earlier. We need to check on my cattle grazing up here and then we’re going fishing.”

“Why?”

The kid’s favorite question, in English or in Tagalog. He had become mighty damn tired of that question in the last three weeks since he’d managed to bring them out of the Philippines—and the two months before that, spent doing his best to get them all to this point.

Mason swallowed his sigh as his fingers tightened on the steering wheel. He could spot a hostile operative in a crowd of a thousand people, could sniff out a few ounces of plastic explosives like a bloodhound, but he felt like a complete idiot when it came to dealing with these children.

“It’s fun, that’s why. Trust me, you’ll like it.”

He hoped.

It was worth a try anyway. He had vivid memories of early-summer fishing trips with his own father up here amid the aspens and willows. Here in the Uinta Mountains was where he and his father connected best—one of the only places they managed that feat—and he supposed on some level he hoped he and Charlie and Miriam could forge the same bond.

He and the kids had to build a life together somehow. For the last ten weeks they had tiptoed around each other, afraid to breathe the wrong way, and it had to stop.

Mason was uncomfortable with children, especially these children. Whenever he looked into their dark eyes, he couldn’t help thinking about Samuel and Lianne, their parents—two of the most courageous, most honorable people he had ever been privileged to know.

Assets, the intelligence community called them, but they were far more than that. They were friends, friends who risked their lives for years so they could feed him vitally important information about terrorism activity in their country.

He knew he shouldn’t have come to care for them, just as they knew the dangers going into it. When the pair began to suspect their carefully woven cover had begun to fray, Samuel had begged Mason for help in sneaking his family out of the country. He had tried, but in the end his superiors had said they believed the Betrans’ worries were unfounded and they were too valuable where they were.

After all their years of service, the people they had risked their life to help had turned on them and Mason counted himself among that number. He had done nothing to help them. Guilt and fury still overwhelmed him when he thought of their violent deaths in a car bombing two months earlier.

He hadn’t been able to help the parents, but he’d be damned if he was going to leave Samuel and Lianne’s children in some crowded, dirty Philippine orphanage.

What else could he do but bring them home to the Utah ranch where he’d been raised?

He’d hoped that after a few months as the children’s guardian he would be better at the job but he still felt as stiff and awkward with them as a squeaky new boot.

Miriam and Charlie would always grieve for their parents just as he would always be consumed with guilt over the deaths of his friends. But the three of them had to go on from here. They couldn’t live in this tense détente forever.

The pickup hit a rut on the dirt road and jostled them all together. Miriam’s eyes widened nervously but Charlie giggled.

“I like this bumping. It tickles here,” the boy said, pointing to his stomach.

Mason summoned a smile. “You’re a little daredevil, aren’t you? You ever been on a roller coaster?”

He had to laugh at the boy’s blank look. He was trying to think if he’d ever heard a Tagalog word for roller coaster when Miriam sat forward suddenly.

“Sir! Look out!”

He jerked his attention back to the road, barely in time to slam on the truck’s brakes. The big three-quarter-ton pickup fishtailed to a stop just inches before he would have plowed over a woman lying in the middle of the dirt road, as if it was the ideal spot to take a little nap.

What in the hell?

He gazed through the windshield at the woman, but she didn’t move even with the growling diesel engine practically crawling up her ear.

“She is dead, yes?” Miriam asked. There was resignation in her voice and Mason’s jaw clenched. The girl had become obsessed with death since her parents had been killed. He supposed it a natural byproduct of what she’d been through but it still broke his heart.

“I don’t know. I’ll find out, though,” he promised. “You two stay right here. Don’t move.”

He repeated the command in Tagalog to make sure they understood before he unlocked the jockey box for his Ruger and then stuffed in a couple of cartridges.

The woman didn’t move even when he shut the door with a loud thud that seemed to echo in this quiet solitude. He approached warily, his weapon ready at his side. He might be overreacting, but a man with his life experience didn’t take stupid chances.

One of the first rules of espionage. Anything out of the ordinary attracted attention, just as it should. And a woman lying in the middle of such an isolated mountain road was pretty damn extraordinary.

She definitely wasn’t dead. Though she was laid out just like a corpse in a casket, her slight chest beneath her folded hands rose and fell with each breath.

She wasn’t a hiker who had fallen, he saw as he approached. Not in those sandals and those dressy summer slacks. He scanned the mountains, looking for any sign of what might have brought her here. A car, a bicycle—a helicopter, for Pete’s sake—but he saw nothing but trees.

Mason turned back to the woman, cataloguing her pretty features with dispassionate eyes. She looked to be mid- to late-twenties maybe, Caucasian. She had straight brown hair with streaky blond highlights, a small straight nose, a generous mouth, high cheekbones—one of which had traces of dried blood, he noted.

He did a quick visual scan for more injuries but couldn’t see anything from here.

What was she doing here? He looked around again, his shoulder blades itchy. This would be a hell of a place for an ambush, isolated and remote enough to leave no witnesses.

Good thing there were no rebel fighters hanging out in Utah. Nothing stirred here but a few magpies chattering nearby and the wind moaning in the tops of the trees and fluttering the bright heads of the wildflowers that lined the road.

Still on alert, he engaged the safety on his weapon and shoved it into the waistband of his Levi’s at the small of his back, then crouched near her and picked up one slim hand.

“Ma’am? Are you all right?” An inane question, he thought, even as he asked it. She obviously wasn’t all right or she wouldn’t be lying in the middle of an isolated mountain road.

She didn’t respond so he gave her shoulder a little shake. That seemed to do the trick. The woman opened her eyes. They were blue, he noted. The same clear, vivid blue of the columbines growing wild all around them, and fringed with thick dark lashes.

She stared at him for just a moment and blinked a few times with a vague kind of look and then she smiled. Not a casual smile but a deep, heartfelt, where-have-you-been kind of smile and Mason wondered why he felt as though he’d just been punched in the stomach.

He had thought her pretty at first glance but with that smile, she was stunning.

“Hello,” she said in a voice that sent chills rippling down his spine. If he were the kind of man who had ever had any inclination to try phone sex, he had a feeling her voice would have been just the thing to make him hotter than a two-dollar pistol—low, a little raspy, and sheathed in an oh-so-proper British accent.

His sudden, unexpected reaction to that smile and that sexy voice ticked him off. He rose to tower over her, angry at himself for his loss of self-control and at her for being the catalyst.

“You want to tell me what you’re doing out here? I just about ran you over, lady. Don’t you think you could have found a better place for a nap than the middle of the frigging road?”

She blinked at his harsh tone, then her eyes shifted to look around at the sage-covered mountains, the scattered stands of towering pine, the dusty road that stretched over the horizon, the complete absence of anything resembling civilization, except for one big rumbling pickup truck.

The woman’s gaze shifted back at him and the blank, baffled expression in her eyes raised the hairs at the back of his neck.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she whispered. “I don’t even know where here is.”

“You’re in the middle of the Uinta Mountain Range.”

“Wh-where is that?”

He frowned. What the hell was going on? “Utah. About an hour east of Salt Lake City.”

Those blue eyes widened. “Why, that can’t be possible. I’ve never been to Utah in my life. Have I?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Though I just set eyes on you five minutes ago and have no idea where you have and haven’t been, ma’am, I’m going to take a wild guess here and say a big yes to the Utah question. See that license plate on my truck?”

Her gaze shifted from him to his pickup and he saw the beginnings of unease stir on her expression. “What am I doing here? In Utah?”

With that upper-crust British accent, she made the word sound like a distant planet. A bizarre foreign planet in some galaxy far far away.

“I believe that was my question,” Mason growled. “Why don’t we start with your name.”

The blank gaze shifted back to him. “My…name?”

Okay. He did not need this, one more complication in an already entangled life.

“Your name. First name. Last name. Anything.”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Seems to me you don’t know much,” he snapped.

She scrambled to her feet, the beginnings of panic in her eyes. As she rose, he saw she was no taller than perhaps five foot four, slender and fragile-looking, especially with the dried blood on her cheek.

She was obviously injured somehow, he reminded himself. And he was interrogating her like she was some kind of enemy combatant. He moderated his tone. “Are you hurt anywhere besides your face there?”

She pressed a slim hand to her cheek and then to the back of her head as if she’d only just realized it ached. When she pulled her fingers away he saw more dried blood on her fingers.

“Let me see.” He stepped closer for a better look and she instinctively retreated from him, but she had nowhere to go with a throbbing pickup behind her.

He cupped her cheek in one hand and turned her head with the other. He was no medic but every intelligence agent had at least the bare bones of triage experience.

She had a nasty cut and what felt like a hell of a goose egg at the back of her head, just above where neck met skull. A head injury could explain the apparent memory loss, if that’s really what was going on here. If this wasn’t some elaborate ploy.

Why would anybody go to all this trouble to stage an accident? he wondered. He’d been in the game so long he suspected everybody of deception and subterfuge.

He was going to have to take her to help. Even if he didn’t completely trust her, he couldn’t leave a woman out here alone. It might be hours—or even days—before another vehicle traveled through this remote area.

Before he could explain that to her, he heard a truck door shut and he had time only for one bitter curse as Miriam and Charlie peeked around the pickup, anxiety in their dark eyes.

“Didn’t I tell you two to wait in the truck?” Mason asked. Was there not one part of his life under his control?

“Charlie was scared,” Miriam said in her native language. By the shadows in her eyes, he could see her little brother wasn’t the only nervous one. “We wanted to make sure the lady was all right.”

“I’m just fine,” his mystery Brit answered in perfectly accented Tagalog, smiling at the children. “And how are you?”

He stared at her. “You speak Tagalog?” he asked incredulously. What were the odds of finding a woman in the middle of a deserted Utah road who spoke the children’s language? This whole thing was beginning to seem more and more bizarre.

“Do I?”

He growled low in his throat in frustration. “You just did! How is it you know how to conjugate verbs in a foreign language but you apparently don’t know your own damn name or why you’re lying in the road in the middle of nowhere?”

She gazed at him, her blue eyes wide, distressed for several moments, with only the sound of his rumbling truck to break the vast silence, then he saw those eyes cloud with dismay and fear as the full reality of her situation soaked in.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember!”




Chapter 2


Panic was a wild creature inside her, clawing and fighting to break free. She stared at the stranger watching her through dark, suspicious eyes. He was so big, at least six foot two. The cowboy hat and the hulking, rumbling truck behind him somehow made him seem bigger, huge and dangerously male.

She had a funny feeling she didn’t particularly care for large men. Or men who frowned at her with such ill-concealed vexation bordering on outright hostility.

She climbed to her feet as pain sliced through, making her head throb and spin like a whirligig. Despite the change in altitude, the man still towered over her.

“Are you telling me you don’t remember your own name?” he asked, his voice as hard as the mountains around them. Her splitting headache kicked up a notch and she was afraid wild hysteria loomed on the not-so-distant horizon.

She screwed her eyes shut as if she might find the answer emblazoned on her eyelids and searched her mind for any snippet of information, no matter how tiny. All she found there was a blank, vast field of nothing.

No name, no age, no nothing.

“What’s wrong with me?” she wailed. “Why can’t I remember?”

The two children exchanged a nervous look at her outburst. Though she regretted scaring them, she couldn’t seem to focus on anything but the pain in her head and her own burgeoning panic.

“Don’t cry.” The little boy spoke in Tagalog as he patted her hand. “It will be okay. You’ll see. Mr. Mason will make it all better.”

How perfectly ridiculous that she could find such comfort from this funny little creature with dark eyes and a win-some smile, but she couldn’t seem to help it.

“Miriam,” the American said in English, his voice deep and somehow calming, despite the suspicion in his eyes, “take Charlie to the truck and wait there. We’ll be along in a minute.”

The girl nodded and grabbed the boy’s hand, tugging him toward the pickup. She watched them climb inside the big cab, already missing the buffer they provided between her and this angry-looking stranger.

“What’s happened to me?” she asked when she was once more alone with the man. “Why can’t I remember anything?”

His silver-gray eyes narrowed with mistrust. “If this is some kind of game, lady, you won’t get away with it. I find you’re trying to play me, and you can bet I’ll be on you like a magpie on a June bug.”

She wasn’t sure what a magpie or a June bug might be but she sensed the metaphor wasn’t intended to be pleasant. “It’s not a game, I swear to you. I can’t remember anything.”

“You don’t have the first clue what you’re doing out here miles from anywhere? Come on. Think.”

She would like to, but her brain seemed to have gone on holiday. Maybe she could hold a coherent thought if it weren’t for the excruciating pain squeezing her skull.

She wanted nothing so much as to curl up again in the dirt until everything disappeared—the noisy truck growling behind her, this terrifying, suspicious American, and especially the hot stab of pain searing her skull.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I told you that. Why won’t you believe me?”

He appeared to consider her question. “I’m not sure about the U.K.,” he finally said, his voice dry, “but here in America women don’t just drop out of the sky. How did you get here?”

All she wanted was a lie-down. Her head seemed to be inhabiting another postal code entirely from the rest of her body and she absolutely did not want to be standing here in the middle of the wilderness exchanging words with an arrogant cowboy who seemed determined to think the worst of her.

“I don’t know,” she repeated, pain and frustration and that skulking panic making her testy. “Perhaps I was abducted by little green spacemen who sucked out my memory before conking me on the head and tossing me out of their flying saucer.”

He gazed at her out of those suspicious gray eyes for another moment and then she could almost swear she saw fleeting amusement flicker in his expression. At this point, she wasn’t sure she really cared. Her small moment of defiant sarcasm seemed to have sapped her last bit of energy. She could feel herself sway and took a deep breath, forcing her knees, spine and shoulders to stiffen on the exhale.

“I’m sorry to have troubled you.” She tried for as much dignity as she could muster. “If you could be so kind as to point me in the direction of the nearest town, I’ll just be on my way.”

He stared at her in disbelief for about half a minute then shook his head. “The nearest town is about seven miles that way on a dirt logging road. You really think you’re up for that kind of hike in your condition?”

Daunted but determined, she nodded. “Certainly.”

She could only wish her knees weren’t so damned wobbly and her head wasn’t throbbing like a finger slammed into an automobile door. She managed to take about five shaky steps before the American gave a put-upon sounding sigh and scooped her into his arms.

Her head whirled as the rapid shift in position exhausted all remaining equilibrium.

“Excuse me!” she still managed to exclaim hotly.

“You really think I’m going to let an injured, delusional Brit loose in these mountains? You need a doctor.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but she couldn’t seem to form any coherent thought, not when the cowboy held her so close. Heat radiated from him and he smelled earthy and masculine, of leather and sandalwood and something else ineffable.

Anyway, it was ridiculous to squabble with the man, especially when he was perfectly right. She wasn’t sure she could have made it another step, much less trudged seven miles to the nearest town.

Her eyes drifted closed as he carried her to the large vehicle. Though she told herself it was to hold the vertigo at bay, in truth she was aware of a wonderful—but supremely foolish—sense of safety in his arms.

The cowboy opened the passenger door to the lorry and ordered the children to slide over, then set her inside with a careful gentleness that for some ridiculous reason brought tears to her eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He paused, studying her with an inscrutable look, then with an odd sigh he closed the door, walked around the vehicle and climbed inside. He worked the gears and the lorry surged forward. A moment later he had turned the huge beast around and they were headed in the opposite direction.

They rode in silence for several long moments. Through the ache in her head, she was aware of furtive looks sliding in her direction with some frequency from the two younger occupants of the vehicle.

They were darling children, small and slender with huge dark eyes. Given their use of Tagalog, she had to assume they were Filipino and she wondered what they were doing with this large, formidable man.

“I am Miriam Betran,” the girl said after a few more moments. She spoke in solemn, careful English, as polite as if she were performing introductions at a garden party. “This is my brother, Charlie. I am nine, he is only five.”

“Almost six,” the little boy piped up.

“Hello,” she replied, wishing she had some kind of name to offer in return.

“Our mama and papa are dead. Mr. Mason says he is our papa now. That is why we come to United States.”

She shifted her gaze to Mr. Mason and saw a muscle twitch in that masculine jaw. He offered no explanation and she couldn’t summon the energy to request one, even if any of this had been her business.

“Thank you for helping me, Mr. Mason,” she said instead.

“Just Mason. Mason Keller.”

“Are you a cowboy, Mr. Keller?”

His mouth curved slightly. “Something like that. My family ranch is on the other side of these mountains.”

“I’m sure it’s lovely,” she murmured.

“I don’t know about that. Mostly sagebrush and dust. But I like it.”

She wanted to answer but couldn’t seem to make her brain communicate with her mouth to squeeze the words out. She also couldn’t for the life of her figure out why she was so drowsy suddenly but her eyelids seemed to weigh five stone each.

The urge to close them was overwhelming. Perhaps only for a moment, just long enough to ease the strain a bit….

She must have drifted to sleep. Her dreams were full of fear that tasted like bile in her mouth and the rapid pulse of blood through her veins. She needed to run, to get away. From what?

A sudden cessation of sound and movement finally awakened her, to her vast relief. She opened her eyes and found her escort had parked before a small single-story building of pale-red brick. A carved wooden sign out front proclaimed the structure to contain the Moose Springs Medical Clinic. Below it was the name Dr. Lauren Maxwell.

“She is awake, I think,” the boy pointed out, peering around his sister to be sure.

“Yes. I’m awake. I’m sorry I fell asleep.”

“It would really make my day if you could tell me you woke with crystal-clear memory of who you are and what you were doing in the Uintas,” Mason Keller said.

She poked around in her mind again but found it empty beyond that moment earlier when she had opened her eyes and found him staring down at her. That beastly panic returned to gnaw at her control. “No,” she whispered, her head still pounding.

He blew out a resigned breath. “Yeah, I figured that’s what you’d say. Let’s go see if Lauren can fix you up.”

“The doctor is nice,” Charlie confided in Tagalog. “She gives candy if you do not cry.”

She had to smile at the little boy, despite the nerves fluttering in her stomach. “I’ll try not to cry, then,” she responded.

The something-like-that cowboy climbed out of the truck then moved around to her side to open the door. He reached a hand inside to help her out and she had to admit she was grateful. Without his assistance she would have stumbled on knees that seemed as wobbly as a bowl of pudding.

The medical clinic was airy and bright, painted a cheerful yellow. The reception area seemed empty of patients but two women stood talking behind a desk, a matronly brunette who looked to be in her fifties and one at least a couple of decades younger, wearing jeans and a casual T-shirt.

She would have guessed the older woman to be the doctor but soon learned her error. The young woman’s features lit up when she saw Mason and the children, and she came out into the reception area through a door to the left of the desk.

She smiled at the children, touching Miriam gently on the shoulder. “Hey, kids. Great to see you again!”

The girl gave her a tiny smile in return, but Charlie turned suddenly shy, hiding behind the tall cowboy.

“Who’s your friend, Mase?” the woman asked.

“Hey, Lauren.” He stepped forward and kissed the lovely young woman on the cheek. “I brought you a little business. Jane Doe. The kids and I found her up in the Uintas. Damnedest thing. She was just lying in the middle of the logging road up near Whitney Reservoir. Claims she doesn’t remember who she is or how she got there.”

Beside him, her spine stiffened at his choice of words and the inherent suspicion in them. “I don’t remember! Why on earth would I lie?”

He ignored her heated defense of herself as if she were an annoying little bug. “I did a little triage on the scene. Looks like she cut herself somehow on her face—a while ago, I’d guess, judging by the dried blood—and she’s got a heck of a goose egg on the back of her head.”

“But no ID?”

“Nothing. No car, no purse, no nothing, at least not that I could see. I didn’t reconnoiter the whole area, though. I’m wondering if she might have taken a wrong turn up there somewhere, then had an accident and wandered away from the scene.”

“What a mystery.” The doctor gave her a curious look that made her feel a bit like a primate in a zoo exhibit.

“She seems to think little green men in a spaceship dropped her off,” Mason said.

“I do not!” she exclaimed. “I was merely responding to your suspicions with sarcasm.”

For some reason, that seemed to amuse him. A corner of his mouth lifted then he turned back to Dr. Lauren Maxwell. “On the way out of the mountains I put in a call to Daniel, since mysterious Brits with head injuries are his territory. He should be here any minute. I figured maybe you could check her out in the meantime, see if anything’s permanently busted.”

“Of course.” The physician gave her a friendly smile that was undoubtedly meant to be reassuring. “I’m sure everything will be just fine. Let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?”

She studied the other woman, but she couldn’t seem to make herself move, reluctant suddenly to leave Mason Keller’s side.

How perfectly ridiculous. She didn’t even know the man and what she did know, she didn’t particularly care for. He was dictatorial to the children and had treated her with nothing but harsh suspicion since stumbling upon her.

She knew she was being silly to cling to him but he and his Tagalog-speaking children were the only relatively known commodity in her world right now and she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving his side. What if he left her here?

When she couldn’t seem to make her legs cooperate to follow the young physician, Mason turned to her. For the first time since he’d found her, his gray eyes softened and his expression seemed to relax slightly. She blinked at him, disoriented. Why did he suddenly look so familiar?

“Go on,” he urged quietly. “We’ll wait out here until you’re done.”

“Promise?” She despised the slight quaver in her voice but couldn’t seem to help it.

“Stick a needle in my eye.”

Slightly reassured, she followed the young doctor down a hallway to a small examination room painted in a soothing blue and decorated with dried flowers and a pile of magazines stored in what looked to be a large antique washbasin. There was a mirror in the room above the sink and she had the disconcerting realization that she had no idea what kind of reflection she would encounter there.

The doctor gave her a friendly smile and pulled a hospital gown from a drawer built into the examination table. “So you have no memory of your name or anything?”

She shook her head, embarrassed and afraid all over again.

“Mason called you Jane Doe. Do you mind if I call you Jane until we find out your real name? It’s better than ‘hey, you’ and that way I’ll have something to put on your chart.”

The name didn’t seem wrong, exactly, so she nodded. In an odd way, it actually felt good to have a name to hang on to, even if it wasn’t the correct one. “Jane is fine,” she murmured.

“Good. And you can call me Lauren, all right?”

She nodded.

“Okay, Jane,” the doctor said. “Let me wash my hands then we’ll get started. Have a seat.”

She climbed onto the examination table and had time to wonder how she could possibly know that contraption hanging on the wall was called a blood pressure cuff but she couldn’t remember her own bloody name.

“All right, then, let’s take a look.”

Jane sat quietly while the doctor looked her over. “This cut on your face looks superficial,” she said. “I imagine it stung quite a bit but I don’t believe you’ll have a scar. I think I’ll order a tetanus shot under the circumstances, just to be safe.”

The doctor shifted attention to the bump on her head and Jane couldn’t contain a gasp at the pain at her gentle probing.

“I’m sorry. I’ll leave it alone now.” She stepped away. You said you don’t remember anything at all before Mason found you?”

Terror.

The bitter, metallic taste of fear in her mouth.

I have to get out of here. Help me. Oh, help me.

The impression slammed into her out of nowhere. She caught her breath, grateful she was sitting down.

“No,” she finally managed, frightened by the strength of the memory but somehow loathe to share it with the other woman.

The doctor studied her. “You’re obviously British, though you might be an expatriate, I suppose. Do you have any idea at all what you might be doing in our little neck of the woods?”

“No. It’s as if there’s a huge closet in my mind with all those memories jumbled away. I know it’s there. It has to be. But I can’t manage to fit the right key.”

She paused, then finally voiced the question that had haunted her since she’d opened her eyes on the road and found Mason Keller standing over her. “Doctor, will I ever remember?”

“I’m afraid I can’t give you a straight answer to that. All I can tell you is that you appear to have suffered a nasty head injury. It wouldn’t be unusual for such an injury to result in some degree of memory loss, but whether that’s permanent or not, I can’t say. I’m sorry.”

Jane hugged her arms around herself, cold suddenly even though the room’s temperature was comfortable.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. I’d like to take an X-ray and possible CT scan, just so we know for sure what we’re dealing with, all right?”

Jane nodded, though she doubted any medical test could explain away the fear that seemed to simmer just below the surface.



“It sure is good to have you back in town, Mase.” Lauren’s receptionist Coralee Jenkins beamed at him, her wide features friendly and open. “I know you were doing important work in the military—your dad was mighty proud of you for it—but we missed you while you were gone.”

Mason had to force himself to smile politely. The last topic of conversation he wanted to dig into was what he’d been doing with himself while he was away from Moose Springs.

He had always liked Coralee. He’d even dated her daughter for a few months back in high school, and Coralee and her husband Bruce had always gone out of their way to treat him better than an obnoxious punk like him had deserved.

Still, he had to wonder what Lauren’s receptionist would have to say if he filled her naive little ears full of his real activities during the last dozen years instead of the politely vague cover he provided to family and friends.

In her quiet, safe world, she would probably never believe the kid who had stoically endured a thirty-minute lecture from Bruce after he’d returned Sherry home fifteen minutes past curfew could spend more than a decade submerged deep in a shifting world of lies and deceptions.

Coralee would understand little of that world—and he had to admit, that’s just the way he liked it.

“How’s Sherry these days?” he asked, keeping one eye on Charlie and Miriam watching a television set in the corner of the waiting room where SpongeBob SquarePants was frying up Krabby Patties.

The question diverted Coralee, as he’d hoped. Her eyes lit up and she reached for a framed photograph on her desk. She handed it over the counter to him and he studied the picture for any trace of the perky, flirtatious cheerleader he’d dated in the suburbanite who beamed back at him, flanked by a handsome balding man and a trio of red-haired kids. He couldn’t see much resemblance to that girl he’d known, except maybe for a little devilish light in her eyes.

“Great,” Coralee said with a proud smile. “Just great. Married to an Ob/Gyn in Utah County and she keeps plenty busy raising my three grandkids. Aren’t they something? The baby just turned two. He’s a handful, I’ll tell you. Keeps her running all day.”

She went on to detail Sherry’s soccer-mom lifestyle that seemed completely foreign to him, but he surprised himself by managing to carry on a halfway coherent conversation anyway.

Adaptation.

That was the key to being a good counterintelligence agent. His first lessons after being recruited from the Army Rangers had focused on learning how to conform to his surroundings, to blend in and appear part of the landscape, whether that was a crowded Manila bar or a tiny fishing village in Mindanao.

He had been good at that part of the job. Whoever would have thought that subterfuge and deceit would come so naturally to a hick cowboy from Utah?

He had spent so long trying to be someone else, it was sometimes hard to remember who he was.

“Speaking of kids,” Coralee said suddenly, “those sure are a couple of cute ones you brought back with you.”

He ignored the blatant opening she gave him to spill the details he was sure she hankered after about Charlie and Miriam.

The Moose Springs gossip line was no doubt buzzing like crazy when he’d showed up after all these years with a couple of Filipino kids. A few trusted friends knew as much of the story as he could freely tell, but the rest of the town probably had all kinds of ideas about where Charlie and Miriam came from.

He had to wonder what the gossips would say when word got out that he’d found a mystery woman up in the mountains.

Somehow his plans to come back to a quiet, uneventful life on the ranch weren’t exactly coming to fruition.

He was spared from having to come up with a polite answer to Coralee’s conversational probe by the door opening. A moment later the Moose Springs sheriff sauntered inside, looking big, bad and hard as a whetstone.

The other man took one look at Mason and narrowed his gaze. “I should have known trouble would follow your sorry ass back to town.”

Mason slowly straightened. “You got a problem with my sorry ass coming back to your town?”

His cool tone had the children looking up warily. Before he could reassure them, the sheriff’s stern expression melted into a grin and he slapped Mason on the back, the male equivalent of a hug.

“Damn, it’s good to see you, man!” Daniel Galvez exclaimed. “How long has it been? Three years? Four?”

“Something like that.”

Mason hated that he had come to avoid his good friends over the years. Friends tended to ask the kinds of questions he couldn’t answer honestly, like what he was doing with his life. Since he hated lying to his friends the way he did to everyone else, it had become easier just to stay away.

“How’ve you been?” he asked Daniel.

“Good.” His grin slipped a little but Mason pretended not to notice. “Dispatcher tells me you’ve got a mystery on your hands.”

“Not my hands. You’re the law around here, hard as that still is for me to believe.”

“That’s what they tell me, anyway.”

Mason quickly explained the events of the last three hours.

“Whereabouts did you say you found her?”

“I’ve got the GPS coordinates out in the truck. But you’ll know where it is without them. Do you remember that time in high school we camped up near Sulpher Springs with Truman and Fricke? This was about a mile down from where we camped.”

“Yeah, I know the area. Give me the coordinates and I’ll send a deputy up there to see if he can find any kind of vehicle pulled into the brush or down a ravine or something. I can also check missing persons reports in the region, although it may be a day or two before anything turns up. What do you plan to do with her in the meantime?” Daniel asked.

Mason frowned at the odd question. “Do with her? Not a blasted thing. I drove her down the mountain for medical attention and brought in the authorities. As far as I’m concerned, my work here is done. I’ve got enough on my plate without adding this, too. I’m done with it. The woman is your problem now.”

He heard a small noise in the doorway, just a strangled gasp. He waited about five seconds, then shifted his gaze to the doorway where she stood, his Jane Doe, looking pale and fragile.

He had no doubt that she’d overheard his callousness, heard him referring to her like a piece of garbage nobody wanted.

Damn.




Chapter 3


“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bother to everyone.”

That low, proper voice sent an oddly tangled shaft of guilt and heat through him. He didn’t care for either emotion. He had no business being attracted to this woman, not when the only thing he knew about her was that he couldn’t afford to trust her. And he certainly had nothing to feel guilty about, not when he had two children to protect.

“We all just want to help you, Jane.”

While Lauren spoke to the mystery woman, the reproach in her eyes was for Mason alone.

“Jane?” Mason seized on the last part of Lauren’s comment. “That’s her name? Is she starting to remember?”

Lauren shook her head. “Not yet but we have to call her something. Jane fits as well as anything else.”

He swallowed his oath as the physician greeted Daniel with a cool wariness at odds with her usual cheerful demeanor. Where did that come from? Mason wondered.

He didn’t have time to puzzle that out before the sheriff stepped forward, studying the mystery woman with interest.

“Hello.” His pleasant smile seemed to put the mystery woman at ease. “I’m Daniel Galvez, the Moose Springs sheriff.”

Mason watched closely for any sign of nervousness in her expression, the usual telltale signs of a person who might have something to hide from law enforcement. She was good, he’d give her that much. If she was hiding something, she didn’t betray it by so much as a blink.

“What did the examination show?” Daniel asked.

Lauren’s mouth tightened and Mason thought for a moment she wouldn’t answer him, then she shrugged. “The CT scan showed a definite head injury, relatively mild but still serious enough to warrant close observation. I don’t believe she needs to be hospitalized at this point, however.”

“What about the amnesia?” Mason asked. Is it real or some kind of scam? he thought but didn’t add.

“Memory loss is certainly a possible side effect of her kind of head injury.”

“Temporary or permanent?”

Lauren gave her patient a quick sidelong look, then shifted her gaze to his and he couldn’t miss the warning signals there for him to have a little more tact.

“At this point it’s too early to answer that with any degree of certainty. I have every reason to believe it’s a temporary condition but I can’t say how long that particular side effect may linger.”

“Can you give a ballpark figure?”

“No,” Lauren said firmly.

“Did you find any identifying features?” Daniel broke in. “A tattoo or a scar or anything?”

The doctor shook her head. “She seems in good condition. Other than the cut on her cheek and a little bruising on her arms, she doesn’t have any other injuries. I did find evidence of a broken arm that was poorly set and a couple of fingers that have been broken in the past but that’s all.”

Daniel wrote that down. “What about age, height, weight? Any idea?”

“I would guess her age somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.” She glanced down at the clipboard in her hand. “Five feet three inches tall and a hundred ten pounds.”

“You all do know I’m standing here, don’t you?” Jane asked suddenly, her voice tart and her cheeks slightly pink.

Lauren winced. “I’m sorry. We were talking about you a bit as though you weren’t here, weren’t we? Do you have any other questions?”

“No. I just want this to be over.”

Daniel gave her a reassuring smile. “I’ll put out some feelers, see if we can find out who you might be. Somebody’s probably looking for you, and I doubt it will take long to solve this mystery. But in the meantime, we need to find somewhere for you to stay.”

Daniel and Lauren turned toward Mason in unison, as if they were bobblehead dolls on the dashboard of a jacked-up GTO doing a fast turn around a corner.

He looked from first one to the other. “What? Why are you looking at me?”

“Finders keepers.”

Despite the fact that Daniel was one of his oldest friends, Mason wondered if punching him would wipe that grin off his face.

“That’s fine for pennies you pick up outside the hardware store,” he muttered, “but not so appropriate when it’s a strange woman you’re talking about.”

“She has to stay somewhere. I can’t put her in jail since she hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Perhaps there’s a hotel I could check into somewhere close by.” Jane’s features suddenly clouded over. “Though I suppose without a purse, I have nothing to pay them with, do I?”

Lauren shook her head. “Even if we had a hotel in town, I wouldn’t be able to recommend that. You’ve had a head injury and while you don’t need hospitalization at this point, you do need someone close by the next few days to keep an eye on you. I would take you to my house but I’m heading to a conference in Ogden for the weekend.”

“And I’m working double shifts all week,” Daniel added.

In desperation, Mason turned to Coralee, who had been eavesdropping shamelessly on the whole conversation. The receptionist shook her head firmly. “Sorry. No can do. Bruce and I are spending the weekend in Vegas for our thirty-fifth anniversary.”

Damn. He was stuck with the woman. As if he needed a headache like this in his life right now.

“I’m sorry to be such a bother,” she whispered again. To his dismay, her chin started to wobble a little and tears welled up in the depths of those blue eyes.

Mason frowned, horrified that all he seemed to want to do was wrap his arms around this small, fragile creature and pull her against him. Anything to keep those tears away.

He wasn’t sure where all these protective impulses were coming from but he’d better do his best to get rid of them.

“I guess she can stay at the ranch for a few days.” His voice came out gruff but he was still rewarded with a pleased nod from Lauren, a measuring look from Daniel and a watery smile from Jane Doe herself.

At least at the ranch, he could keep an eye on the woman, he thought. He was a highly trained intelligence operative for the United States government. If she was up to something, he would do everything in his power to find out what.



The children were thrilled to have the woman they considered their own personal discovery riding home with them.

Charlie bounced in his seat and chattered a mile a minute to her in his native language and even Miriam consented to give a few hesitant smiles to their guest.

Those smiles made his gray mood even darker. It was all he could do to get the little girl to look at him, forget about smiling. This strange woman waltzes in and suddenly she becomes the children’s best friend without even lifting a finger.

“We were going to catch a fish today but we found you instead,” Charlie said in Tagalog.

“English,” Mason said, a little more curtly than he intended. His reminder earned him long-suffering looks from Charlie and Miriam and a decidedly annoyed look from his mystery guest.

“What harm can it do for them to speak their native language?” she asked him quietly.

Mind your own damn business, he wanted to say. He wasn’t about to get into this with her in front of the children—especially since Miriam, at least, understood a great deal more English than she let on.

He could smile, too, when the occasion called for it so he pasted a polite one on his face.

“Despite the fact that Tagalog speakers suddenly seem to be dropping out of the sky today,” he said dryly, “for the most part no one around here will understand them if they don’t learn English. They won’t have friends and they won’t be able to keep up in school. I’ve told them they can speak Tagalog to each other all they want but I want them practicing English with me and with others as much as possible before school starts.”

She opened her mouth and he saw arguments brewing in her eyes. Don’t do it, he thought.

He was in no kind of mood for a lecture and the last thing he needed was parenting advice from a stranger who claimed she didn’t even know her own name. He felt inadequate enough about this whole fatherhood gig. He didn’t need her making it worse.

Instead, she surprised him. “Yes, I can see the wisdom in your approach,” she murmured, her expression thoughtful. “I’m sure they will learn English more quickly and efficiently if it’s spoken to them often. Being a child in a new country where one doesn’t know the language can be quite lonely.”

“How would you know that? The voice of experience?” Maybe this was a clue to her past, one he should mention to Daniel.

Her brow furrowed and he could almost see her trying to concentrate. “I don’t know, precisely. Just an impression.”

Mason seemed content to let the matter drop, to her vast relief. Trying to probe around in her mind only made her head throb with tension. Still, she couldn’t seem to keep from it. Without a past, she had nothing. She was nothing.

She forced her mind away from those kinds of grim thoughts and turned her gaze out the window, letting Charlie’s aimless, cheerful chatter soothe her spirit.

They drove through a raw-looking landscape of foothills covered in little more than a silvery-green brush—sage? she wondered—and dust. The landscape seemed huge here, wild and almost savage. If not for the occasional vehicle passing in the other direction, she would have thought they were alone out here save for the cattle; huge dark beasts contained by rusty barbed-wire fences.

This all seemed so alien to her, vaguely frightening in its vastness and isolation. She had to wonder if the strangeness of it was due to her memory loss or whether she would have found it disconcerting even if she remembered everything.

It was wild and harsh-looking, she thought after a few more moments of gazing out the window, but there was a raw and almost painful beauty to the landscape.

“Can you tell me where we are?” she asked after a moment. “I seem to remember something you said earlier about Utah, but would you mind perhaps being a little more specific?”

The look Mason sent her was full of suspicion. What made him so mistrustful? she wondered. Was it something about her or did he behave that way with everyone? It seemed a dreadful way to live, if the latter was the case.

“The town you just left is Moose Springs, population about three hundred, give or take a few,” he said after a moment. “We’re about an hour northeast of Salt Lake City.”

Useful information, she thought. If only she knew anything about Salt Lake City.

“The ski resort community of Park City is just over those mountains as the crow flies but more like a half-hour if you’re in a car,” he went on. “The road we found you on was inside the Uinta Mountain Range, in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, a vast tract of land that includes a wilderness area of about half a million acres.”

For some reason, her stomach clenched at that. She had a feeling she wasn’t particularly enamored of anything with the word wilderness in its descriptor.

“And where are we going now?” she asked.

“My family’s ranch, the Bittercreek. It’s about three miles out of town. We should be there in a minute.”

She had the sudden disquieting thought that she was traveling with a man she’d known less than a few hours to stay with him at his ranch, out in the middle of nowhere. She knew nothing at all about him. Perhaps she might have been better to throw herself on the mercy of the law officer back at the clinic.

“Mr. Mason, he has many of the horses and cows,” Charlie Betran said in his careful English.

“They are very big,” Miriam added.

“You’ll get used to them,” Mason said to the girl with a surprising gentleness. “Like I’ve told you, once you’ve been here awhile you won’t be so nervous around them. I know you’ll like the horses once you let me take you for a ride. Charlie likes them, don’t you, bud?”

The boy nodded his head vigorously, beaming at Mason.

What was the story here, she wondered. Why did this strong, masculine cowboy have custody of these two children who seemed so far from home? They seemed such an odd mix for a family.

At least they had each other.

She had no one, she thought. At least no one she remembered. What a demoralizing thought. Could she have a child somewhere? A husband who might be looking for her?

Helpless frustration washed through her and she let out a long breath. The lovely physician had said her memory would likely come back in a few days. She had to hang on to that hope. Worrying about something she couldn’t control would accomplish nothing and would only make her ill from the effort.

Dr. Maxwell said she needed to give herself time to heal and she resolved to do just that.

A few moments later, Mason turned the vehicle under an archway constructed of two massive upright logs topped by a horizontal one just as big with the word Bittercreek carved into it in letters that had to be at least two feet high.

The rather grand sign out front turned out to be fancy wrappings for old rubbish, she discovered as he drove up a long winding driveway. She was surprised to find Mason Keller’s ranch had a tired, worn-out feel to it—weathered outbuildings in want of paint, sagging fencelines, old rusted farm machinery hulking in fields.

Odd, that, when the vehicle they were riding in smelled new and had to have cost him a pretty penny.

Perhaps he spent all his money on vehicles—and on adopting two Filipino children.

The ranch house squatted square and solid at the end of the long gravel driveway. It looked to be two stories, with a trio of gables and a porch that stretched across the entire width of the house. The whole thing was painted a bright white that gleamed in the hot afternoon sun, even though she could see it needed a fresh coat.

Someone was making an effort to spruce up the place, she thought, if the raw plywood and cans of paint on the porch were any indication.

The children climbed out on the driver’s side after Mason but Jane remained seated.

She couldn’t seem to make her muscles cooperate. Her head still pounded and she was suddenly exhausted by all that had happened to her since she’d opened her eyes and found Mason looming over her.

After a pause while they waited for her, Mason finally walked around the truck and opened the passenger door. “Are you coming?” he asked.

Heat scorched her cheeks. He must think her a total idiot, which she was. “Ah, yes. Thank you,” she murmured.

She straightened her shoulders and slid out of the truck, where she wobbled just a little before finding solid ground.

“Welcome to the Bittercreek,” Mason said. His features were sardonic but she thought she detected something else. Not quite embarrassment, perhaps, but something close to it. “I’m afraid the red carpet is at the cleaners.”

“It looks very comfortable and the view is lovely.”

“I would apologize that it’s probably not what you’re used to. But since you claim not to be used to anything, I guess it doesn’t much matter how humble the accommodations might be, does it?”

“Anything will be fine.” She wasn’t at all sure how to respond to the low antagonism in his voice so she decided to simply ignore it. “You’re very kind to take me in,” she went on politely. “Especially as I know how inconvenient it must be.”

A muscle tightened along his jawline but he said nothing to either verify or deny her statement. “Sorry about the dust. We’re in the middle of about a hundred renovations. The place has been empty for a couple years and it seems like everything needs to be done at once.”

Why had the ranch been empty? she wondered. Where had Mason and the children lived before they came here to open up the Bittercreek again? She didn’t have a chance to ask before the children grabbed her hands, one on either side.

“Come, Jane.” Miriam gave one of those rare smiles. “You may sleep in my room.”

“That’s not necessary,” Mason said. “We can air out one of the empty bedrooms for her. There’s plenty of room.”

He led the way up the rickety porch steps to the front door and then inside. Instantly, the delicious scent of roasting meat and vegetables wafted to them.

Antimacassars spread across the backs of armchairs.

Tea in a silver pot gracing a carved wooden tray.

A plump striped cat sprawled out on a rug before a merry little fire to take the chill out of a damp and dismal afternoon.

The memories were tiny and fleeting, but they still stopped her in her tracks as she tried to pin them down.

“Everything okay?” Mason asked.

“I…yes. That smell seems very familiar, that’s all.”

He gave her an odd look. “Smells to me like Pam’s making a pot roast for dinner.”

“Pam? Is that your wife?”

A shout of laughter greeted her question. She followed the sound to its source and found a woman standing across the room. She was short and slightly plump with a wild, curling mass of vivid red hair in a shade that couldn’t possibly be natural. The woman laughed again, her expression friendly and open as she walked into the room.

“Better not let my Burnell hear talk like that. Though he’s never been the jealous type, he just might start if he thought a troublemaker like Mason Keller had designs on me.”

“Jane, this is Pam Lewis. She and her husband own the closest ranch down the road a way and they’ve been running things over here for me for the last few years. She’s helping me out with the kids and the cooking temporarily, until we find our feet.”

The woman stepped forward with a smile. “You must be our Jane Doe. You’re even prettier than I heard.”

Mason raised an eyebrow. “The Moose Springs grapevine has certainly been busy.”

“Mase, you know your sudden return to town is the most exciting thing to happen around here since Doolley Shaw hit the cold medicine a little too hard and drove his truck clean into the side of Ben Palmer’s barn.”

Pam grinned at him. “Anything you do starts tongues flapping. What do you expect the gossips to do when you show up at Lauren Maxwell’s clinic with a beautiful mystery woman on your arm? The phone lines are bound to start buzzing.”

“I figured I’d at least have an hour or so lead time.”

She laughed. “Coralee called to give me fair warning the minute you pulled out of the clinic’s parking lot.”

Mason’s handsome features tightened into a grimace. “Surely there’s something more exciting to gossip about.”

She shook her head. “I, for one, don’t know what that might be. I guess until Doolley gets the sniffles again, you’re all we’ve got, boy. Better get used to it.”

The woman shifted her attention to Jane and the amusement in her gaze gave way to compassion. “You poor little thing. You look dead on your feet. When was the last time you ate?”

Jane stared at her blankly and Pam slapped her forehead. “I’m such a dunce. You probably have no idea, do you? Well, are you hungry?”

She had to think about it. Though her stomach felt hollow, she wasn’t sure she would be able to keep anything down with her head still throbbing. She had to try, though.

Common sense told her her body needed food to heal and she had a feeling her mind wouldn’t heal until her body did.

“I am a little hungry,” she admitted. “And I must say, your roast beef smells delicious.”

“What you need is some food in your stomach and then a hot bath with a good book. I’ve got just the thing for you. Come on now, Auntie Pam will take care of you.”

The woman looped her arm through Jane’s and headed across the room. Left with little choice in the matter—and feeling rather as if she was caught in the whirl of a typhoon—Jane followed her with one last, bewildered look toward Mason.




Chapter 4


The Bittercreek ranch office was just down a short hallway from the kitchen. As Mason held the phone to his ear, waiting eternally on hold, he could hear through the open doorway the soft, musical voices of women and the occasional higher sounds of Miriam and Charlie chiming in.

He heard a small laugh, strangled before it really began, and realized it was Miriam’s voice. How long had it been since she’d even attempted a laugh? he wondered. She had been a silent, watchful wraith since the day he’d showed up at her school in Butuan with the grim news about her parents.

He wanted fiercely to hear her give in to it. What would he give to hear her giggle and laugh like any other nine-year-old girl? Would that day ever come? She sure didn’t laugh around him. She treated him with the same cool politeness he would employ with a slightly-less-than-adequate waiter.

The worst part was, he didn’t have the first idea how to reach her.

He’d contacted a couple of grief counselors over the Internet and they’d both said it would take time for the children to adjust to their new life. In the blink of an eye, the spark of a fire to plastic explosives, their lives had changed completely.

They had lost everything they knew. First their parents had died and then he had dragged them away from all that was comfortable and secure, into a strange country with different customs and even a new language.

How could he blame Miriam for being slow to accept some of the changes in her life?

The music in his left ear continued to drone on. Over it, he heard Jane say something in that proper British accent, though he couldn’t quite catch the words.

Low though it was, the sound of her voice seemed to slither through his skin and his insides clenched in response. This was getting ridiculous, he thought in disgust. It was only a voice. He had no business letting it slide across his nerve endings like a silk caress.

He couldn’t trust her. This whole situation bugged the hell out of him. Yeah, she had a head injury. X-rays and CT scans didn’t lie. But he still wasn’t buying the whole amnesia story. It seemed entirely too unlikely.

What reason would she have for concocting the story, though? What could she be hiding? And how had she ended up on that mountain road in the first place?

His mind couldn’t stop running through the possibilities, even as he waited on hold with the FBI. He couldn’t help it. He’d been wading in counterintelligence waters too long to turn off the tap at will.

Scenario one, she’d had a car accident somewhere up in the mountains and wandered away from the scene, disoriented and injured. That could certainly be possible, but only if Daniel’s deputies managed to stumble on to a damaged vehicle up there. Even if they did find a car, that still wouldn’t explain why she might have been driving the dirt backroads of Utah in the first place.

Scenario two, this one a whole lot less palatable. Somebody who wanted to get rid of her whacked her over the head and left her for dead up in the mountains. She needed a convenient hiding place and found it here at the Bittercreek.

He didn’t like considering that one. What could she have done to piss somebody off enough for that? If this theory were true, was anybody still looking for her? Was he placing the children in harm’s way by allowing her to stay at the ranch?

He pushed that theory away as the telephone music changed to a murdered Elton John tune. He winced and went back to his speculations.

Scenario three was his least favorite. What if Jane was faking the whole thing—the head injury, the amnesia, everything—for nefarious reasons he couldn’t quite work out yet?

He found it tough to reconcile the fragile, frightened-looking woman with someone who could carry out such a cold-blooded scheme, but those who could blend in and appear innocent on the outside always made the best operatives. Maybe she was just damn good at her job.

He had to admit, the whole thing smelled of a setup. But who could she be working for? Who would put so much time and energy into planting an operative on an isolated mountain road for the express purpose of having him find her?

He had more enemies than he liked thinking about—hostile operatives in organizations he’d worked to weaken like Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamayah in the Philippines and similar groups in other countries, but also a few within the U.S. intelligence community.

His whereabouts were supposed to be a secret from all but the top echelons of the Agency but leaks were as common in the spy business as flies in a manure pit. A government can’t expect to give its operatives the skills to infiltrate the organizations of enemy combatants without running the risk that they could turn those same skills inward and sneak through all the firewalls and safety nets.

He had angered a lot of people by dropping out of the Game. Mason couldn’t deny that. He’d been a key operative in Mindanao and his cover had been solid. Though there were layers and contingency plans built into the system, his exit would certainly leave a void, one that hadn’t gone over well with some.

As long as they kept their antagonism to themselves, Mason didn’t care if the entire Agency had him on their shit list. He had given twelve years of his life to the cause—and most of his soul. Yes, he believed the work was important. Yes, he had played a valuable part in protecting the security of his country. But he had wondered for a long time—well before Samuel and Lianne were murdered—if the cost was worth it.

The music in his ear stopped abruptly and Mason sat up straighter.

“Hello?”

Finally, just when he’d been about ready to give up in disgust, he heard the slight West Texas twang of one of his FBI contacts in the Salt Lake City field office.

“Hey, Davis. Mason Keller.”

Cale Davis had been sent to the Philippines as part of the FBI’s Crimes Against Children unit. He was investigating a sex-slave ring where homeless Filipino kids were being sold to wealthy international businessmen. Though it wasn’t typically his area of expertise, Mason, in his cover as an expatriate bar owner and sometimes arms trader, had found himself in a position to help the CAC investigation.

Their two worlds had collided and through it, he and Cale had somehow connected.

A long silence met his greeting and he could only guess what was running through the agent’s mind.

“Keller,” the other man finally said. “I’ve heard some interesting rumors about you.”

“I can imagine.”

“Did you really tell your division director to pull his thumb out of his ass before he dug around and found a terrorist cell up there?”

Mason grimaced. “Uh, something like that.”

“Man, you always did have stones as big as watermelons. I heard you’re gone from the Agency. Did they fire you?”

“I didn’t give them the chance. I submitted my letter of resignation before that little altercation with my superiors.”

“Why the grand exit?” Cale asked.

Mason thought of all the reasons he’d quit. The disillusionment. The grinding challenge of constantly playing a role, wallowing in filth and ugliness and unrelenting hatred every day of his life. The growing fear he was losing himself somewhere along the way.

Those were all secondary. He might have continued in counterintelligence forever, no matter the cost emotionally, if not for those two most important reasons now giggling in the kitchen with Pam and a strange Brit.

How to explain all this to Cale?

“Lianne and Samuel Betran are dead,” he finally said. The other agent had met them during his time in the Philippines. Though he couldn’t know the extent of their work for Mason, he would likely remember how instrumental they had been in his sex-ring investigation.

“I’m sorry,” Cale said after a moment. “They were decent people. I know they were good friends of yours.”

“They shouldn’t have died.” He pitched his voice low to ensure the children didn’t inadvertently overhear. “Samuel came to me a week before they were killed. He wanted help smuggling Lianne and the kids out of the country. He was afraid their cover had been blown and his contact in the Jemaah Islamayah was beginning to suspect he was working with the Americans.”

Acid washed into his stomach, as it did whenever he thought of the role he had played in their deaths with his helpless inaction.

“I tried to convince the brass but I couldn’t get anybody to listen. The Betrans were too valuable where they were, they said. It was hellishly difficult to infiltrate the JI and any of their satellite organizations, and we would lose years of effort without Samuel in place. An extraction at that time wouldn’t be in the best interest of our mission, they said.”

“They were important assets in the region.”

“They were people, damn it! A husband and wife who loved each other and their two kids, who thought they were doing something right and good. They believed in freedom and democracy and protecting the innocent and they spent ten years risking their lives for us! What did they get for it? When they needed help, we sacrificed them for the greater good.”

He knew he sounded bitter but he didn’t care. The fact that he couldn’t really blame anyone but himself left more than acid in his gut. He should have tried harder, should have told his superiors to go screw themselves and helped the Betrans catch the next boat out of Butuan, no matter the cost to himself or the mission.

Every time he looked at those two orphaned children, his own failure to act haunted him.

“I’m sorry, man,” Cale murmured.

“Yeah, me, too.”

“I’m sure they weren’t thrilled to lose you down there, too.”

“Not my problem anymore.” He couldn’t let it be.

“I suppose that’s true enough. So what are you doing with yourself?”

Besides failing completely as a father figure, trying to relearn ranching after years away from it and stumbling on to strange women up in the mountains?

“A little of this and that,” he answered, loathe to explain to the agent about Miriam and Charlie. “You know I’m back in Utah, don’t you?”

“I’d heard rumors. Something about a ranch in the family and you playing cowboy for a while. You’re just over the mountains, right?”

Cale had been working out of the Salt Lake FBI field office for the last few years, precisely the reason Mason had tracked him down. “Yeah. Outside Moose Springs.”

“Close enough to catch a beer sometime. Hope we won’t run into any angry Filipino scooter gangs this time.”

Mason laughed, to his great surprise. “Definitely. Next time I’m in the city, I’ll call you.” If he didn’t have two little rugrats along, anyway.

“Listen,” he went on, “I called because I need a favor.”

“Anything. You know I’m in deep to you after you saved my ass in that bar in Tandag.”

“I have no doubt you would have charmed your way out of it. It wasn’t your fault you hit on the Vespa King’s girlfriend.”

He paused, trying to figure out the best way to explain about his Jane Doe. “Look, I know missing persons isn’t your specialty—at least not missing adults—but I figured you could maybe keep your ear to the ground for me.”

“About?”

He heard a small exclamation of laughter from the other room and somehow he knew it had to be Jane. The low, delighted sound seemed to slide down his spine, distracting him from his thoughts. He strained to catch more of it, or some clue into what might be so amusing, but couldn’t hear anything future.

“About?” Davis prompted again after a moment.

“Sorry.” He let out a breath and focused. “I need you to let me know if you hear any buzz about a missing persons case involving a woman—late twenties, maybe, with brown hair and blue eyes. British.”

Cale said nothing for several seconds and Mason could almost hear his eyebrows rise. “Okay.” The agent drew the word out. “You want to tell me what this is about?”

He sighed. “Long story, one I’m sure you’ll never believe. I’ll have to tell you over that beer.”

“And in the meantime I’m supposed to keep my eye open for a missing persons report. I don’t suppose you might have a name to narrow things down. Quite a few missing persons reports pass through the field office.”

“Negative on that. Only a description.” Small, delicate. Beautiful.

“Of course not. A name would make things too easy, wouldn’t it?”

The kitchen had fallen silent, he realized. A moment later he heard a flurry of footsteps going up the stairs. “I wouldn’t need your help if I had a name.”

“Right. Okay. I’ll make a note of it. I can’t make any promises. We’re not always brought into missing persons cases and this one could slip through the cracks.”

“That’s all right. I appreciate your help.”

They spoke a few moments longer about shared acquaintances. Cale told him he was off CAC for a while and working on other projects.

“You have to have a heart of iron to work Crimes Against Children all the time,” he said.

“Yeah. I don’t know how you’ve done it this long.”

Even as he spoke, Mason found himself distracted, wondering what Jane and Pam and the kids were all doing up there. A moment later his question was answered when he heard the thump and moan of the pipes in the old ranch house and realized someone was running a bath upstairs in the clawfoot tub of the guest bathroom.

He had a quick mental image of that slender form slipping into warm, scented bubbles, all creamy skin and tantalizing curves. He lingered for only an instant on the image before he shoved it aside, disgusted with himself.

He was still castigating himself—and doing his best to keep those images from reappearing—when he and the FBI agent ended their conversation a short time later.

“I’m sorry again about the Betrans, Keller,” Cale said quietly. “I lost a partner a few years back. I was in a bad place for a long time, blaming myself, angry at the world. But I can tell you things do get better.”

Did you have two constant reminders living with you? Mason wondered. Two children you didn’t know what to do with, who cried in their sleep and looked at you out of dark, lost eyes?

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Mason murmured, then thanked the agent again for his help and hung up.

The water abruptly stopped and all was silent from upstairs. It took every ounce of willpower not to dwell on those images of bubbles and curves again.

He was half-aroused, he realized with disgust. He had been without a woman far too long if he could get turned on trying not to imagine his mystery guest taking a bath.

He would have to do something about that, but he had no idea what. This was rural Utah. Unattached women willing to have a no-strings affair with a man who was lousy at relationships weren’t exactly growing on trees in this region of the country.

In the meantime, he would have to just do his best to ignore his unwilling attraction to Jane Doe—and hope to hell he could figure out her game.



After a delicious meal and a long, hot soak in water softly scented of lavender and chamomile, Jane felt almost human again.

Though her skin was wrinkled and pruney, the pervading ache in her muscles eased and even the pounding in her head had dulled to a steady throb. Perhaps with a little sleep even that would fade.

She dried herself, dressed in the voluminous cotton nightgown loaned her by Pam Lewis, and found her way to the guest room Mason’s housekeeper had pointed out.

The room was a little threadbare with only a bed, an old-fashioned carved chest of drawers and a small bedside table, but it was clean and comfortable enough and had a lovely view of the ranch and the surrounding mountains out the window.

All she really cared about was the bed, anyway. She wanted to sink into it and not climb back out for days.

She pulled back a pale-blue quilt of worn, soft cotton and slid between sheets that smelled of sunshine and fresh air. Ah, heaven.

Sleep didn’t come immediately, despite her exhaustion. She couldn’t have expected it to, not when her mind raced with a hundred questions. What was the story here with Mason and the children? How did a ruggedly handsome Utah rancher come to be the caretaker for two foreign-born children?

Why had his ranch been empty for the last few years? Where was he during that time and what had he been doing?

Why was he so suspicious of her, so unwilling to believe she was telling the truth about her amnesia? And why did he seem to be surrounded by a subtle air of danger, of keen alertness, as if he would be ready to take on any threat?





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