“He told me about Whirlwind.”
“Good.” The other woman smiled softly.
As Bram kneed his horse into a lope, Deborah tore her gaze from his broad shoulders and turned to her family.
Mrs. Blue continued, “He plans to talk to the sheriff and explain what’s going on.”
“Did he tell you about the money?” she asked. “And Cosgrove?”
“Yes.”
“Cosgrove!” Jordan frowned. “What does he have to do with anything?”
“I don’t like him, Deborah,” said the girl with the mouse.
Deborah recalled her name was Marah.
“What money?” Michal asked, pulling her long black hair over her shoulder.
Jordan watched Deborah somberly. Almost warily. “Do you really not remember Bram?”
“No.”
“You’re completely smitten with him.”
Mrs. Blue herded them toward the door. “Let’s go inside. Your sister might like to eat or bathe. And we can talk.”
Sister. Deborah looked at the women around her. All raven haired, all pretty, all showing the same puzzlement that she felt. And she didn’t recognize a single one of them.
Any more than she recognized the man who had asked her to marry him. The man she was supposedly in love with.
Chapter Five
“What do you mean, you found Deborah Blue and forty thousand dollars?” Whirlwind’s sheriff, Davis Lee Holt, shoved a hand through his dark hair, his blue eyes narrowed on Bram.
Bram pointed to the saddlebags he’d brought inside the jailhouse and dumped beside the other man’s scratched oak desk. “Take a look in there.”
Sunlight glittering off his badge, Davis Lee knelt and flipped open one pouch, then the other. He let out a slow whistle. “Forty thousand dollars. This is from the Monaco robbery.”
“Yeah.”
His friend rose. “What’s this about Deborah? I didn’t know she was missing and needed to be found. When you left Whirlwind and headed to Monaco, I thought you were going after Cosgrove.”
“And that’s what I did,” Bram said. “But he isn’t who I found.”
Staring out the window toward the smithy next door, he explained how he had come upon the woman he’d hoped to marry. The woman who didn’t even know who he was!
Davis Lee eased down on the corner of his desk. “Deborah’s note said she was going to Abilene to meet with the school board about her teaching position. How did she end up with Cosgrove?”
“She says she doesn’t know.”
The lawman barked out a laugh. “Then who would?”
“She can’t remember anything or anyone.”
“Not even her family?”
Bram shook his head, lifting a hand to greet Ef Gerard, the black man who owned the smithy. Ef gave a broad smile and returned the greeting.
“Or you either?” Sobering, Davis Lee eyed Bram consideringly.
“That’s right.”
“How can that be?”
“Evidently I’m not all that memorable,” Bram muttered. Which blistered him up good.
“How does someone lose their memory?”
“I have no notion.”
“Have you talked to Annalise?”
“Not yet.” Bram planned to visit the doctor before he left town. Annalise Fine was a lifelong friend who had recently returned from back East. She and Matt Baldwin had reunited after seven years apart.
Bram bet Annalise would never forget the man she claimed to love.
He turned back to the sheriff, bracing one shoulder against the wall beside the window. “Deborah’s hurt, too. She has a cut on her temple, and her face and back are bruised.”
Davis Lee’s jaw firmed. “Did Cosgrove rough her up?”
“Could be. She was with him.”
“Doesn’t sound like it was willingly.”
Bram wanted to believe it wasn’t. He shrugged. “Who knows?”
The lawman arched a brow. “I’d think you might know, seeing as how close you two are.”
“Were.” He didn’t know anything. “How close we were.“
“I thought the pair of you—”
“No.” Bram cut him off.
His friend studied him for a moment. “Cosgrove could’ve made her write the note to her family to keep anyone from knowing she was with him. And to keep anyone from coming after them.”
Three weeks ago Bram had been so furious upon reading her words that it hadn’t even entered his mind to wonder if things weren’t the way they seemed. Had he missed a clue because he was angry that she’d left? He didn’t think so, but he wanted to see the note again.
He glanced at Davis Lee. “Deborah also could’ve written the note of her own free will, too. For the same reasons.”
“True, but I don’t think she would go anywhere with Cosgrove willingly. Do you? I mean, do you really think so?”
Yes. But Bram didn’t want to get into an argument over this with the sheriff. “I’m keeping my mind open to the possibility until I get some proof one way or another.”
“She’s sweet on you. Why would she run off with that bastard?”
She’d been so sweet on him that she’d refused to marry him.
“She’s not all that sweet on me.” Done with talking about Deborah, he said, “I assume Jericho isn’t back from New York City or Mrs. Blue would’ve told me.”
“That’s right.”
Deborah’s sisters had overwhelmed her enough. Bram had no idea how she would’ve reacted to her older brother. Though quiet, the former Ranger was big and had an intimidating presence until you got to know him.
Davis Lee stroked his chin. “Do you think we should send a wire letting him know what’s happened?”
He
