do anything to disrespect the badge. It didn’t mean, however, that he wouldn’t grill Kelly. As much as he could grill an injured woman anyway.
“Watch your step with her,” Gabriel warned him as Jameson got into the ambulance. “When I frisked her, she had two guns and a knife, and she would have hit me with a karate chop if I hadn’t gotten out of the way in time.”
“I thought you were going to try to kill me,” Kelly said.
Jameson hadn’t even been sure she was listening, but she obviously was. He also hadn’t remembered Kelly having any martial arts skills. Of course, probably everything she’d told him about herself was a lie. As far as Jameson was concerned, he didn’t really know the woman in front of him.
“Are you going to try to kill me?” she came out and asked, glancing first at Gabriel and Cameron. Then at Jameson.
Jameson tapped his badge. “I’m not the bad guy here.”
Her gaze darted away from his, and she took another of those uneasy breaths. “Sometimes bad guys wear badges.”
That didn’t sound like a guess or a general observation. “Is your amnesia cured and you’re remembering something specific?” Jameson pressed.
But he instantly regretted the snark. More tears came, and even though Kelly quickly brushed them away—cursed them, too—Jameson still saw the pain on her face. Not just physical pain, either. Whether or not the amnesia was real, she’d still been through some kind of ordeal.
“The CSI swabbed her hands for gunshot residue,” Gabriel explained, “but she put up a real fight about being fingerprinted.”
Jameson pulled back his shoulders. People who did that usually didn’t want their identities known. Coupled with the dyed hair—Kelly had been a brunette when he’d met her—she was obviously trying to disguise her appearance. Even her eyes were different. She’d hidden her green eyes with brown contacts.
“Call me if she says anything we can use to figure this out,” Gabriel added, shutting the ambulance door.
Jameson nodded and got seated just as the ambulance driver took off. The EMT continued to hold a compress to Kelly’s head and probably would have to do that the entire time since it was still bleeding.
It wouldn’t be a long ride to the hospital, only about ten minutes, and Jameson wanted to make the most of that time. He started by reading Kelly her rights. Gabriel had likely already done that, but Jameson didn’t want there to be any unticked boxes if she did confess to everything.
Whatever “everything” was.
“Did you shoot those two men?” he asked. “And before you lie, just remember we’ll know if you’ve fired a gun because there’ll be gunshot residue on your hands. Your weapons will be tested, too.”
She touched her fingers to her mouth, which was trembling a little. “I honestly don’t know if I shot them or not. They’re dead?”
He nodded, though the confirmation might not have even been necessary. Because she might already know the answer. “Who were they?”
An immediate head shake that time. So fast that the medic told her to keep still. “I don’t know that, either,” Kelly answered. Her gaze came to Jameson’s again. “Did you send them after me?”
There it was again—her distrust of him. Well, the feeling was mutual. “Let’s get something straight. I didn’t send thugs after you. I’m not here to kill you. Everything I’ve told you has been the truth, but you can’t say the same, can you?”
She stared at him. “You’re talking about that file you mentioned to the sheriff. I don’t remember it. I need to remember,” she added as she choked back a hoarse sob. “Because I have to know who you really are and why this is happening.”
He huffed again. “I’m really Jameson Beckett, Texas Ranger,” he supplied. “Now, start from the beginning. Tell me everything you know, everything you remember.”
“I remember them,” she said, glancing at Chip and the other EMTs. “And the sheriff. Someone swabbed my hands.”
That was a good start, but nowhere near what he wanted. “What do you recall before that?” Jameson pressed. “Before the sheriff and the EMTs arrived.”
Kelly stayed quiet for several moments. “I remember the pain in my head. Being on the ground. It was damp. And I saw the blood.” She stopped, her gaze going to his again. “What did the sheriff mean when he said there’s a bad history and more between us?”
Well, there was nothing wrong with her short-term memory, that was for certain. Jameson didn’t answer her, but he thought she understood what he wasn’t saying because she muttered a simple response.
“Oh.” Then she groaned. “Oh, God.” The tears filled her eyes again. “But it doesn’t make sense.”
“I agree. Not much about this makes sense, but you mean something specific. What exactly?” When she didn’t answer, Jameson added another question, one that was at the top of his list of things he wanted to know. “If you don’t remember anything, why did you keep asking for me?”
“Because of this.” She moved her hand to the front of her shirt. Then stopped. “I need to show you something, and I don’t want you to shoot me.”
“Is it another gun or knife?” he growled. Because he was pretty sure his brother would have found something like that when he frisked her.
“No. It’s a message.”
Everything inside Jameson went still. “What kind of message?”
Her hands were shaking when she unbuttoned her top. Some of the blood had soaked through to her chest, too, and that’s why it took Jameson a moment to see the small piece of paper that she took from her bra. She unfolded it, the trembling in her hands getting even worse, and she showed it to him.
What the heck?
Jameson drew his gun. “Explain that,” he demanded, tipping his head to the note.
Or rather the threat.
Kill Jameson Beckett or you’ll never see her again.
Kelly hadn’t been sure what Jameson’s reaction would be, but she’d known it wouldn’t be good. And it wasn’t.
The anger flared through those already-intense blue eyes.
Eyes that she wished she could remember.
There was something about him that tugged at her. Attraction, probably. He was a hot cowboy after all. But there seemed to be something else. Something that she wished would become clearer in her muddled mind. Clearer because the last thing she wanted to do was kill this man.
He was glaring at her now, but still she studied him. Hoping there was something about him that would trigger a memory. He was tall and lanky. Dark brown hair like his brother.
