Cleaning supplies? He couldn’t remember, but he didn’t have time to think it through. He eased the door open, breathing a sigh of relief to find the tiny space mostly empty except for a couple of suede work coats and a small table piled high with extra blankets.
It was a tight fit, but it would do. He pushed Jane into the cramped closet and pulled the door almost closed.
A sliver of light from down the hallway was all the illumination they had, but it was enough for Joe to see the terror in Jane’s eyes. He stroked her hair, pressing his lips against her forehead to calm her, even though his own heart was galloping wildly. The scent of her filled the small space, spicy sweet and feminine. A shudder of pure masculine need ripped through him in response, but he tamped it down, his need to hear what Riley and Clint were saying taking precedence.
In the kitchen, Riley’s voice had taken on a note of frustration. “I’m sorry the trail went cold in Nevada, but I’m telling you, Joe hasn’t contacted me since he and the woman were in Boise a few days ago.”
“Would you tell me if he had?” Clint asked coolly.
“Are you suggesting I can’t be trusted?”
“Clint got to your friend,” Jane whispered, her voice little more than breath against his throat.
Joe shook his head, though the first glimmer of doubt was nagging at the back of his mind. Riley hadn’t been the same since Emily’s death, had he? He’d been working late, eating poorly, losing contact with all his old friends-
“It’s been a long day, Mr. Holbrook. I’d like to eat a little dinner and get some shut-eye. I’ll be in touch.” Riley’s boot falls rang on the tile floor. A moment later, the back door creaked open. “Good night.”
The door closed and for a moment there was only silence in the kitchen. Then Joe heard his friend mutter a string of curses he hadn’t heard since Riley broke his collarbone in a football game their senior year.
Now was the time he should open the closet and go tell his friend he was there. But he didn’t move, except to pull Jane’s body closer to his, tightening his arms around her to ease her wild trembling.
If he were the only person at risk, he’d take the chance that there was a good explanation for Riley’s involvement with Holbrook. But he wasn’t going to risk Jane’s life that way. They’d have to stay put, keep quiet and wait for Riley to settle down for the night. Then they could get out of here and figure out someone else who could help them work through the mess they were in.
He heard Riley’s footsteps on the kitchen tiles, restless and heavy. Then the sound of water running in the kitchen sink, followed by the clink of glass against metal. Riley was probably getting a glass of water-
The bowls, he realized with a start.
“We left the bowls in the dish rack,” Jane whispered.
Riley would notice. No matter how strangely he’d been acting over the past couple of years, he was still a good, observant cop. He’d know he hadn’t left a couple of extra bowls drying on the dish rack. Or the damp drying cloth on the sink counter.
Maybe he’d think they’d come and gone. Their bags were still outside Riley’s house, hidden behind a small clump of juniper bushes near the dilapidated storage shed behind the house.
He heard Riley’s boot steps moving down the hallway, getting closer. He held his breath until Riley passed, his footsteps fading as he entered the bedroom. The creak of bedsprings and twin thumps of his boots hitting the floor caught Joe by surprise. Maybe Riley hadn’t noticed the bowls in the dish rack after all.
Jane’s fingers curled into the fabric at the back of his shirt, pulling it tight. A soft twinge of pain in his side came and went quickly, eclipsed by the pounding pulse of adrenaline flooding his body. He listened carefully for further sounds, but beyond another soft creak of bedsprings, he heard nothing for several minutes.
Carefully, he pushed the closet door open a few inches, praying Riley had oiled the hinges recently. It moved noiselessly, to his relief. He stepped out first, Jane following. He closed the closet door again, stopping it just before it latched.
A faint light from the kitchen still glowed-not unusual, given the depth of darkness out here in the sticks so far from the lights of town. He usually left a light glowing somewhere in the house himself, to keep from banging a shin or stubbing a toe in the dark.
He kept one arm around Jane as he looked back toward the two bedrooms. The door to Riley’s room was open, but Joe couldn’t see the bed from his vantage point in the hallway, and he didn’t want to risk walking down the hall to check. He and Jane needed to get out of there now.
Walking on the balls of his feet to minimize the noise of his footsteps, he led Jane down the hall to the kitchen. They made it a few steps inside the warm room when the overhead light came on.
“Going somewhere?” Riley Patterson asked from behind them.
Joe whirled around, putting Jane safely behind him. Riley stood with his back flattened against the wall next to the refrigerator, his service weapon in his left hand and his right hand still on the light switch.
“I’m a careless housekeeper at best,” Riley drawled, “but even I know when there are extra dishes stacked up by my sink, Joe.” He looked behind Joe, his lips curving in a half smile. “Hey there, Sandy. Long time no see.”
Jane stepped out from behind Joe, keeping her fingers tightly twined in his. “I go by Jane now.”
Riley’s half smile widened. “So I hear. Still with the amnesia?”
“Some things are coming back,” she answered with a deliberate composure that almost hid the tremors Joe could still feel rippling through her body.
He tightened his grip on her hand. “We’re going now, Riley. Nobody has to know we were here.”
Riley’s eyes narrowed. “Are you afraid of me?”
“Well, I might feel better if you put the gun down.”
Riley looked down at the Glock still held at the ready in his left hand. He lowered it, tucking it into the back of his jeans. “Better?”
“Much,” Jane answered before Joe could say anything. “I’ve had enough guns pointed at me for a lifetime.”
Riley’s expression softened a bit. “I reckon you have at that.” He looked back at Joe. “I hear you got winged.”
“It’s nothing,” he answered. “I heard you talking to a killer.”
Riley’s eyebrows notched upward. “A killer?”
“The man you were talking to here earlier. Clint Holbrook.”
Riley frowned. “Agent Holbrook? You know him?”
“Agent Holbrook?” Joe asked.
“With the FBI,” Riley said.
“He’s lying to you,” Joe said. “That man killed a woman in Trinity, Idaho. I saw him kill two Idaho deputies with my own eyes. He shot at Jane and me. He followed us to Reno, Nevada, and sent two bullies to beat up Jane’s father. He’s no more an FBI agent than-”
“Riley’s right,” Jane interrupted.
Joe turned to look at her. “What?”
She looked up at him, her expression troubled. “Clint really is an FBI agent,” she said.
THE MEMORIES had come in a rush. The flash of the badge. The confident air. The knowing look he’d given her as he waited for her to acknowledge his presence.
It had been five days after her eighteenth birthday, and she had been waiting in line at the bus station in Reno, waiting to see how far the $372.00 in her pocket would get her.
He’d quietly come to stand by her, outside the line. She’d felt his interested gaze and finally turned to look at him, and that’s when he’d showed her the badge.
“He said he’d had his eye on me for a while,” she told Joe and Riley, her shaking hands tearing strips out of a paper napkin on the table in front of her.
“Why?” Riley asked, returning to the table with a couple cups of coffee. He set one in front of Joe and slid the other across the table to Jane.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “It’s just a piece of a memory. I don’t know what happened next.”
“Maybe he lied to you, too,” Joe suggested.
“Joe, I checked him out as soon as he showed up a few days ago,” Riley said. “He’s who he says he is. The Denver field office confirmed he’s a profiler who usually works out of headquarters in D.C. Denver claims Holbrook happened to be in Idaho on vacation when he heard about the murder in Trinity, and he called the Denver office to
