She placed her toothbrush on the edge of the sink and contemplated the locked bathroom door between her and the tight-voiced stranger.
“Of course. It’s your door.” She took a few steps on the cold tile floor and threw open the door, the smile on her lips drooping. “Wh-what’s wrong?”
“The Arizona Highway Patrol found your wreck.”
She placed a hand on her stomach, against the slick material of the nightgown, all thoughts of covering her jiggling breasts lost in a flood of fear. “Why’d they call you?”
“They found something in the car.”
Her heart pounded, causing the silky material covering her chest to quiver. “My ID? My purse? Why would they call you?”
“They didn’t find that stuff.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “They found drugs. You were hauling drugs across the border...Libby.”
Chapter Nine
Her fingers curled into the nightgown at her waist, bunching and twisting it.
Did she think that evidence would be burned beyond recognition, or did she really not remember? Either way, she had drugs in the car, whether or not she remembered.
She swayed on her feet and he had an urge to catch her, pull her into his arms, but he needed to stay objective—something he’d been failing at in a big way.
She shook her head slowly at first and then so vigorously, her hair whipped back and forth like a swirl of caramel. “Nothing survived that inferno. You don’t think I checked it out when the fire burned down?”
“It would’ve still been too hot for you to do anything more than give it a cursory look.” He set his jaw, but she’d planted a seed of doubt in his mind.
She must’ve seen the flicker and pounced. “You looked, too. Did you see any drugs or any packages that looked like drugs or were even intact? Pretty much everything was incinerated.” She thrust out her chest and one strap of the flimsy nightgown slipped from her shoulder. “Where were they? What were they? Who found them?”
His gaze bounced from her bare shoulder to her scowling face. “Packages of meth, thrown from the vehicle. They escaped the fire. The highway patrol spotted the burned-out vehicle and went down to inspect it.”
“Meth? You mean like powder?”
“Crystals. Crystal meth in plastic bags, stuffed inside a paper bag.” He scratched the stubble on his chin. “About ten feet from the crash site.”
“How convenient. And you believe that?” Her nostrils quivered, and a red flush stained her cheeks. “You saw that area, and believe me, so did I. I searched around the car for anything that would tell me who I was and what I was doing there, and then I searched again for water, food, crumbs. There was nothing there but trash, debris from the highway.”
Rob pinched the bridge of his nose. The scene of the crash swam before his eyes—desert, sand, dirt, cactus, a few bits of highway trash, a few trees. Had he done a thorough search of the area? It had been dark, and there was no blackness like nighttime in the desert without a full moon.
He huffed out a breath. “It was dark out there.”
“I’m telling you there were no drugs.” She slammed her hand against the porcelain of the sink, and her toothbrush bounced and fell to the floor.
“What are you saying...Libby?” He dug two fingers into his temple and massaged, as if that could get rid of the pounding in his head.
“Someone planted those drugs there, Rob.” She wedged a fist against her hip, the curve of it just visible in the loose-fitting nightgown. “How did the highway patrol know about the accident? You said yourself you couldn’t see it from the highway, but you smelled it and saw the smoke. That would’ve been long gone the next morning and certainly by today. So, how’d they know it was there? Helicopter? Drone?”
He still held the phone that had brought him the bad news in his hand and he tapped the edge against his chin. “Someone reported it.”
“Aha!” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Don’t you see? Somebody threw the drugs out there and then called the highway patrol about the accident so they’d see the drugs.”
Libby would want to explain away the drugs so that he wouldn’t connect them to her, but her claims held more logic than desperation. He hadn’t seen anything out there on the desert floor. If the drugs had been secured in the car or hidden in the trunk, how’d they get thrown in the accident?
Her version might make more sense and clear her, but the implication didn’t bode well for her safety and well-being.
“You know what you’re suggesting?”
Her eye twitched. “I do. The men who caused my accident came back to check their handiwork. Maybe they wondered why there was no report of a dead body found with a crash and discovered it was because there was no body there.”
“And that means not only do they know you survived the crash, they left those drugs there as insurance to implicate you if you went to the authorities.”
“It almost worked, didn’t it?” She stooped to pick up the toothbrush and ran it beneath the faucet. “You charged in here to accuse me of being a drug runner, or whatever.”
“Do you blame me?” He reached back to shove the phone in his pocket and realized he’d rushed in here with just his boxers on. “We still don’t know anything about you.”
She placed her hands on either side of the sink and leaned in to peer at herself in the mirror. “We know my name is Libby, I’m an artist and I own an art gallery in Mexico...and I’m in some kind of trouble with a drug dealer.”
Feeling a sudden chill, Rob rubbed his arms. “I hope those two guys moved on after dropping those drugs...if that’s what happened.”
“Still doubting me? Why’d the highway patrol call you, anyway?”
“They didn’t call me personally. They called the Border Patrol because of the drugs, and my