What does she know?
And will she die before she can tell it?
Amnesiac Jane Doe agrees to let Border Patrol agent Rob Valdez help unravel the mystery of her identity. They never expected they’d uncover ties to a dangerous drug supplier—and find an undeniable attraction to each other. But soon someone will go to deadly lengths to keep Jane quiet before she remembers everything...even if it means killing them both.
Jane’s bottom lip trembled. “I don’t know how I got so lucky that you were the one who found me. If it had been anyone else, my face would be plastered all over town.”
“I don’t think so.” Rob raised her hand to his lips and kissed the tips of her fingers, immediately regretting it.
He loosened his clasp on her hand, but she curled her fingers around his thumb.
“Why stop?” Her whispered words echoed in his head, as if they’d come from his own brain.
“You know why. It’s not a good idea for us...”
“It seems like a really good idea to me right now. You’re my anchor, Rob.”
“I’m your only acquaintance. Of course you’re going to feel this way about me.” He traced the curve of her neck with his fingertip. “You want comfort. I understand. It must be scary as hell to be where you are right now. I get it.”
Turning her head, she pressed a kiss on his palm. “I don’t think you get it at all, Rob...”
UNRAVELING JANE DOE
Carol Ericson
Carol Ericson is a bestselling, award-winning author of more than forty books. She has an eerie fascination for true-crime stories, a love of film noir and a weakness for reality TV, all of which fuel her imagination to create her own tales of murder, mayhem and mystery. To find out more about Carol and her current projects, please visit her website at www.carolericson.com, “where romance flirts with danger.”
Books by Carol Ericson
Harlequin Intrigue
Holding the Line
Evasive Action
Chain of Custody
Unraveling Jane Doe
Red, White and Built: Delta Force Deliverance
Enemy Infiltration
Undercover Accomplice
Code Conspiracy
Red, White and Built: Pumped Up
Delta Force Defender
Delta Force Daddy
Delta Force Die Hard
Red, White and Built
Locked, Loaded and SEALed
Alpha Bravo SEAL
Bullseye: SEAL
Point Blank SEAL
Secured by the SEAL
Bulletproof SEAL
Her Alibi
Harlequin Intrigue Noir
Toxic
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Jane Doe/Libby James—A crash survivor with no memory, she soon realizes the more she remembers, the more she puts herself in danger, but she’s forced to keep secrets from the only man who can help her.
Rob Valdez—When this Border Patrol agent comes across a crash scene and a woman with amnesia, his protective instincts kick into overdrive, but Jane Doe pushes him away with her secrets—secrets that might be the death of them both.
Troy Paulsen—A private investigator on the verge of solving the biggest case of his career is halted by his informant’s memory loss... He’ll do anything to get her to remember.
Pablo Bustamante—This stranger comes out of the woodwork claiming to be Jane’s husband, but his intentions are less than honorable.
April Archer—A Border Patrol agent’s wife, she has a vested interest in finding out the identity of El Gringo Viejo, and a woman with no memory might be her only hope.
El Gringo Viejo—A notorious and mysterious drug supplier in Mexico, he wants Jane Doe dead before she can ID him.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Excerpt from Someone Is Watching by Amanda Stevens
Chapter One
The smell of burning rubber assailed her nose and woke her with a jolt. Her head snapped up. Pain seared through her skull.
Her eyelids flew open. She blinked at the upside-down tree.
She clenched her teeth at the sound of a wheel spinning around and around, squealing with every turn. Her jaw throbbed.
The seat belt dug into her neck, and she reached down to tug on it. Her fingers crawled to the side of her head to probe the area that screamed with pain. The tips slid through strands of sticky hair.
She pulled her hand away and held it in front of her face. She tried to focus on the red streaks running down her arm. Blood. Her blood.
She swallowed and gagged. Swallowing and hanging upside down had its difficulties. She snorted out a laugh. People stuck on an amusement park ride must feel something like this—only this was no amusement park.
Her hand followed her seat belt to the latch. If she released too quickly, her head would bang against the roof of the car. It already hurt like hell. She didn’t need any more injuries.
She braced one hand on the roof of the vehicle and unsnapped the seat belt with her other hand. Her body slumped and curled in on itself in a fetal position as she rolled to her side.
She felt for the car door handle, but when she reached it, the handle wouldn’t release. Her fingers scrabbled to find the button for the door locks, and she clicked them open. She tried the handle again. This time, the door opened but not all the way. Repositioning herself, she shoved at the door with her feet, the edge of it scraping through dirt and sand.
When just enough of a space opened, she started to slither through it. Voices above her caused her to freeze with her feet just outside the car.
A man’s voice carried through the air, over the sound of the spinning wheel. “Should we go down?”
Another man answered him in accented English. “What do you think? I haven’t seen a thing move since it crashed.”
Terror seized her. Their words, their tone, their something pumped adrenaline through her system, revving up her sluggish, aching body.
She wriggled the rest of the way through the car door and crouched in the dirt beside the mangled, upended car. It lay at the bottom of a gully on the desert floor.
She peered over the top of the wreck at the ridge above and at two pairs of boots standing at the edge. The owners of those boots couldn’t see her,
