now they were running for their lives. Scared, with no one to turn to and nowhere to go. Her sleepless hours filled her with nightmares. Not of the men chasing her and her daughter, but of the memory of the emotionless woman who’d pulled the knife from her husband’s chest, then calmly picked up her daughter’s doll and left without looking back.
What had she planned to do with the knife? Surely not use it as a weapon. What had she been thinking? And where did she think the two of them would go? What would they do?
She glanced at the envelope beside her on the nightstand, still upset and confused by what she’d found inside it. Nothing about the drug money Julio had stolen from Calderone. Nothing to help her.
She picked up the envelope. It still had some of Julio’s blood dried into one corner. She felt nothing. Not a twinge at the sight of the blood, nor anything for the cold distant man who’d been her husband. What kind of woman was she? she wondered again. How could she feel nothing for the man who’d given her Elena?
She opened the envelope as if the contents might explode, slipping the papers out onto her lap, quietly, cautiously, not wanting to wake Elena, still stunned by what she’d found.
A passport and Texas driver’s license tumbled out, the accusing eyes staring up at her from the photo on the license. The woman’s name, it read, was Abby Diaz. Abby, like the name engraved on the silver heart-shaped locket. Abby Diaz, an FBI agent.
But what made Isabella’s fingers tremble and her heart pound was that the woman looked like her.
She reached up to touch her face, running her fingers along the tiny scars left from her surgery. What had she looked like before the fire? She couldn’t remember. Worse, why did she suspect she’d been made to look like this Abby Diaz?
She didn’t want to think about that. Nor about the other papers she’d found in the envelope. She looked down at her daughter. Elena still had the locket clutched in her fist.
The sight tugged at Isabella’s heart and concerned her more than she wanted to admit. Her daughter had cried until she’d been given the locket to hold. The battered heart-shaped silver locket with a stranger’s face inside it.
Then Isabella had awakened to find Elena on the phone and the envelope’s contents on the floor beside her, the silver locket open and empty, the photo in Elena’s small hand.
“Why did you call the number inside the envelope?” Isabella had demanded after she’d hurriedly hung up.
She didn’t ask how the little girl had realized it was a phone number or how she’d known to make a call. Elena had taught herself to read at three. She was smart. Too smart, Julio used to say. Gifted. Precocious. Frightening even to Isabella sometimes. Her grandmother would have called Elena an Old Soul.
Elena had shown her the phone number and explained it was like ones Julio had called in the States. Isabella wondered who Julio had called.
“But why would you call this number?” she’d asked, growing more afraid for her daughter.
Elena had handed her the tiny photograph of the stranger from the locket. On the back was printed: “Love, Jake.” When Elena had found the name Jake Cantrell in the envelope with a telephone number, she’d called it.
“Daddy will help us,” Elena had declared stubbornly.
“Julio was your father,” she’d said, “And he cannot help us.”
Elena’s lower lip had begun to tremble. Tears welled in the child’s eyes. “Daddy Jake will help us, though.” She’d cried inconsolably until Isabella had put the picture back into the locket and given it to the child to hold again.
What disturbed her most was that Elena was convinced Jake Cantrell was her father. Why was that? Had Julio planted this seed? The same way the hospital surgeons might have been told to make Isabella look like another woman? A former FBI agent named Abby Diaz?
She felt sick now as she watched her daughter sleep. Elena expected some stranger to come and save them from Calderone’s men.
But what the child didn’t know was that if Jake Cantrell found them, it wouldn’t be to save them. In the envelope, Isabella had found evidence that former FBI agent Jake Cantrell had set up his partner Abby Diaz to die in a drug raid six years ago. What scared her was that she looked enough like this woman that he might think she was Abby Diaz.
Isabella now feared that Elena’s call for help had only given away their location and set an even more dangerous man after them.
Chapter Two
Everything from the wedding reception had been cleared away by the time Jake returned. The ranch house felt cool and dark and blessedly normal again. He regretted that he hadn’t got to tell Brady goodbye before he took off on his honeymoon, but he knew Brady would understand.
He could hear Rosa and Slim in the kitchen, Slim trying to flatter the short, round, good-natured cook, but Rosa resisting the crusty old ranch hand’s charm to the clatter of dishes and Mexican music on the radio.
He breathed it in, wishing he could get back some of the tranquillity he’d found over the last five years here at the Smoking Barrel. Usually riding his horse Majesty under the vast Texas sky brought him some peace. But not tonight.
He couldn’t get the call off his mind. Still, he felt a little better after his long ride and regretted snapping at Penny earlier when she’d followed him down to the stables. She’d only been concerned, but he’d wanted to be alone. He’d felt like a powder keg ready to blow and needed to feel the wind in his face and a good fast horse beneath him.
Hat in hand, he now tapped lightly at Penny’s door, hoping to catch her before she went down to the meeting.
She opened her door and looked surprised, the air around her sweet with the scent of perfume, her hair pulled up into a style he’d never seen on her before and a hairbrush in her hand. No, not surprised. Embarrassed to be caught primping. He wondered if the carefully applied makeup and new hairdo had something to do with the date he’d heard discussed over coffee this morning in the kitchen.
“These are for you,” he said, drawing the fistful of wildflowers he’d picked from behind his back. They seemed too small a gesture, but her eyes lit at the sight of them and her face softened as she gazed up at him.
“You didn’t have to do this,” she said, too much understanding in her voice.
The last thing he wanted was sympathy right now. He wanted even less to discuss the call.
“I’m just sorry I barked at you in the stables before,” he said, turning away quickly.
Before she could reply, he walked away. Downstairs, he took the hidden elevator to the basement, to find the three men already waiting for him. He realized Penny wouldn’t be joining them. Cody and Rafe were discussing the recent cattle-rustling and new evidence that someone had been camping on the ranch. For once, the young and cocky Rafael Alvarez wasn’t clowning around, but then Penny wasn’t here. Half Spanish, half Irish, Rafe had a way with women and he loved to tease Penny mercilessly.
Cody Gannon, a former rodeo bronc rider and the youngest of the bunch, was insisting what should be done about the rustling. Mitchell Forbes seemed only to listen
