make up another lie. That would be easier than finding some guy named Jones, marrying him and dragging him along to Texas with her.
Angela had driven a hundred miles before she decided she would tell Kirkland that she used Jones because she had been engaged but he left her at the altar. Kirkland would feel sorry for her, but that was better than killing off her imaginary husband.
She’d straighten it all out Monday. She’d even practice just how she’d say it.
Monday, she’d dress in a suit and accept the position as curator for the three-month trial period, but today simply exploring the place would be enough. After days in the car she needed to stretch her legs and breathe in the clean air. She’d dreamed of being in Texas for years. A wild country—untamed, open, free. Something she’d never felt before, but she planned to now. For the first time, she was free to make her own future.
The grounds behind the museum had been left natural, just as it must have looked a hundred and fifty years ago when settlers came to this top square of Texas.
Since the day she’d read there was an opening here for a curator, Angela learned everything she could about this area. The history was interesting, but the people who founded this frontier town fascinated her. They were hearty. Stubborn. Independent. Honest. All things she’d never been. But the first settlers were also broken, desperate and lost. Somehow they’d managed to work together to build, not just ranches and a town, but a future.
Now she had to do the same with no family or friends to help her.
She didn’t know if she belonged here. She fainted at the sight of blood. Gave in at the first sign of disagreement.
That left honest. She didn’t want to even think about how dishonest she was. She’d lied to get the job as curator of this closed museum.
Standing near the edge of a canyon that dropped a hundred feet straight down, she let the sun’s dying rays warm her face. Everything about her had to change. She had to make it so. She had to start over.
Somewhere along the road between Florida and here, she’d come to the conclusion that her father’s death wasn’t an accident. Maybe he knew something about the company or his brother. Maybe he’d overheard trouble moving in. Why else would he have told her to run? If her life weren’t in danger, why would it be so important that she vanish?
Maybe he’d been planning to disappear with her, only time ran out for him. But he had left her prepared. He’d put money in her account. He’d even suggested that she tell no one about this job in Texas.
The old trailer he bought and hid in the garage fit into the plan. Last month, he’d had her car fit with the hitch. She’d told him she had no need to pull a trailer, but he’d said that if he ever needed the trailer, he didn’t want to use it on the company car he drove. Only, she’d been the one who needed the trailer. She’d done what he’d told her to do in the note and now she had to somehow blend in here in Texas.
Taking the curator job was the first step. This time her title didn’t have “assistant” attached to it. She would be the boss. This time she would have no aunt to criticize every move she made.
Angela smiled. Her aunt had probably dropped by the beach house to have that talk with her by now. After all, it had been a week. She’d find the key in the mailbox. No note. No forwarding address. No friends notified. Any mail concerning her life on Anna Marie Island would be trashed.
Angela had even cancelled her cell phone service and tossed the phone off the Bradenton Bridge when she crossed onto the mainland.
Disappear, her father’s note had said. She’d seen enough spy movies to know what that meant.
She touched the necklace she wore. A replica of the Greek coin on display at her uncle’s store. She’d thought of tossing it into the ocean with her phone, but decided it would always remind her of her father. The real one had caused many an argument between the brothers. Her father saw it as a family treasure. Uncle Anthony saw it as something to be sold to the highest bidder. They’d compromised and made copies to sell for a few hundred dollars each.
Glancing toward the sound of crunching gravel, she watched a white-and-blue sheriff’s car pull into the museum’s parking lot. Her heart stopped.
Trouble had found her halfway across the country. Somehow her uncle had tracked her. But how? She’d parked her old car in a twenty-four-hour Walmart lot in Orlando and walked across the street to rent a pickup with a hitch for her trailer. Then she’d turned the pickup in before she crossed the Florida state line. She’d bought a junker of a car with cash but it wasn’t powerful enough to pull the trailer, giving her nothing but trouble for two hundred miles. Two days later in Georgia she’d traded in the junker and her old two-wheel trailer to a mechanic for a van in a town too small to have a stop sign. The guy said he’d mail the title to the van, but she had given him a fake name and address.
What if the van had been stolen? The law could be about to arrest her, and she had no proof she bought the van.
Angela stared at the patrol car as it pulled in beside her van. Her freedom had lasted less then a week. Maybe her uncle had put out a missing person alert? That wouldn’t surprise her. Her aunt probably told everyone Angela was so lost in grief she wasn’t to be left alone.
A man in a uniform unfolded out of his car. She expected him to pull his gun as he walked toward her. After all, she’d run away from home at twenty-seven. Something all her relatives would swear quiet Angela would never do.
“Pardon me, miss,” the man said as he neared. “This place has been closed for months. We got a no-trespassing sign at the turnoff, but you must have missed it.”
In her shorts, no makeup and her strawberry-blond hair in a day-old ponytail, she must look more girl than woman. The echo of her mother’s familiar speech about how Angela was too chubby, too squat to wear shorts, circled through her tired mind.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t notice the sign.” She straightened, trying to look at least five foot five, though she knew she missed her goal by two inches.
She moved toward the lawman trying her best to look like a professional. “I’m Angela—”
Hesitating, she tried to remember the last name she’d used on the application. It slipped her mind completely. “Smith.” Angela mentally shook her tired brain awake. “Jones.” Of course. How hard could that be to remember?
There, she’d gotten it out. After not talking for three days, words didn’t want to form in her brain.
She stared at his name tag. Sheriff Brigman looked as if he easily read the lie that lay in her mind like oil slush. He pulled off his Stetson stalling for time, but she didn’t miss the way he looked her up and down from ponytail to sandals.
“Welcome to town, Mrs. Jones. Kirkland told me you were coming.”
A hint of a smile lifted the corner of his mouth. He reminded her of a sheriff from the Wild West days. Well built, a touch of gray in his sideburns and stone-cold eyes that said he’d finish the job, no matter what it took, whether it was catching the outlaw or satisfying his woman.
She mentally slapped herself. No time to flirt or daydream. Angela had to think of what to say. Was it too early to ask for a lawyer? Should she start confessing? But to what? She wasn’t even sure what crimes she’d committed. Running away at her age didn’t seem to be illegal,
