he asked Daniel.
“Good.” His grin slipped a little but Mason pretended not to notice. “Dispatcher tells me you’ve got a mystery on your hands.”
“Not my hands. You’re the law around here, hard as that still is for me to believe.”
“That’s what they tell me, anyway.”
Mason quickly explained the events of the last three hours.
“Whereabouts did you say you found her?”
“I’ve got the GPS coordinates out in the truck. But you’ll know where it is without them. Do you remember that time in high school we camped up near Sulpher Springs with Truman and Fricke? This was about a mile down from where we camped.”
“Yeah, I know the area. Give me the coordinates and I’ll send a deputy up there to see if he can find any kind of vehicle pulled into the brush or down a ravine or something. I can also check missing persons reports in the region, although it may be a day or two before anything turns up. What do you plan to do with her in the meantime?” Daniel asked.
Mason frowned at the odd question. “Do with her? Not a blasted thing. I drove her down the mountain for medical attention and brought in the authorities. As far as I’m concerned, my work here is done. I’ve got enough on my plate without adding this, too. I’m done with it. The woman is your problem now.”
He heard a small noise in the doorway, just a strangled gasp. He waited about five seconds, then shifted his gaze to the doorway where she stood, his Jane Doe, looking pale and fragile.
He had no doubt that she’d overheard his callousness, heard him referring to her like a piece of garbage nobody wanted.
Damn.
Chapter 3
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bother to everyone.”
That low, proper voice sent an oddly tangled shaft of guilt and heat through him. He didn’t care for either emotion. He had no business being attracted to this woman, not when the only thing he knew about her was that he couldn’t afford to trust her. And he certainly had nothing to feel guilty about, not when he had two children to protect.
“We all just want to help you, Jane.”
While Lauren spoke to the mystery woman, the reproach in her eyes was for Mason alone.
“Jane?” Mason seized on the last part of Lauren’s comment. “That’s her name? Is she starting to remember?”
Lauren shook her head. “Not yet but we have to call her something. Jane fits as well as anything else.”
He swallowed his oath as the physician greeted Daniel with a cool wariness at odds with her usual cheerful demeanor. Where did that come from? Mason wondered.
He didn’t have time to puzzle that out before the sheriff stepped forward, studying the mystery woman with interest.
“Hello.” His pleasant smile seemed to put the mystery woman at ease. “I’m Daniel Galvez, the Moose Springs sheriff.”
Mason watched closely for any sign of nervousness in her expression, the usual telltale signs of a person who might have something to hide from law enforcement. She was good, he’d give her that much. If she was hiding something, she didn’t betray it by so much as a blink.
“What did the examination show?” Daniel asked.
Lauren’s mouth tightened and Mason thought for a moment she wouldn’t answer him, then she shrugged. “The CT scan showed a definite head injury, relatively mild but still serious enough to warrant close observation. I don’t believe she needs to be hospitalized at this point, however.”
“What about the amnesia?” Mason asked. Is it real or some kind of scam? he thought but didn’t add.
“Memory loss is certainly a possible side effect of her kind of head injury.”
“Temporary or permanent?”
Lauren gave her patient a quick sidelong look, then shifted her gaze to his and he couldn’t miss the warning signals there for him to have a little more tact.
“At this point it’s too early to answer that with any degree of certainty. I have every reason to believe it’s a temporary condition but I can’t say how long that particular side effect may linger.”
“Can you give a ballpark figure?”
“No,” Lauren said firmly.
“Did you find any identifying features?” Daniel broke in. “A tattoo or a scar or anything?”
The doctor shook her head. “She seems in good condition. Other than the cut on her cheek and a little bruising on her arms, she doesn’t have any other injuries. I did find evidence of a broken arm that was poorly set and a couple of fingers that have been broken in the past but that’s all.”
Daniel wrote that down. “What about age, height, weight? Any idea?”
“I would guess her age somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.” She glanced down at the clipboard in her hand. “Five feet three inches tall and a hundred ten pounds.”
“You all do know I’m standing here, don’t you?” Jane asked suddenly, her voice tart and her cheeks slightly pink.
Lauren winced. “I’m sorry. We were talking about you a bit as though you weren’t here, weren’t we? Do you have any other questions?”
“No. I just want this to be over.”
Daniel gave her a reassuring smile. “I’ll put out some feelers, see if we can find out who you might be. Somebody’s probably looking for you, and I doubt it will take long to solve this mystery. But in the meantime, we need to find somewhere for you to stay.”
Daniel and Lauren turned toward Mason in unison, as if they were bobblehead dolls on the dashboard of a jacked-up GTO doing a fast turn around a corner.
He looked from first one to the other. “What? Why are you looking at me?”
“Finders keepers.”
Despite the fact that Daniel was one of his oldest friends, Mason wondered if punching him would wipe that grin off his face.
“That’s fine for pennies you pick up outside the hardware store,” he muttered, “but not so appropriate when it’s a strange woman you’re talking about.”
“She has to stay somewhere. I can’t put her in jail since she hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Perhaps there’s a hotel I could check into somewhere close by.” Jane’s features suddenly clouded over. “Though I suppose without a purse, I have nothing to pay them with, do I?”
Lauren shook her head. “Even if we had a hotel in town, I wouldn’t be able to recommend that. You’ve had a head injury and while you don’t need hospitalization at this point, you do need someone close by the next
