She didn’t bother to check out since she wasn’t registered anyway. For someone like her, getting past a hotel-room lock was a walk in the park.
From experience she knew that entire floors of suites were set aside for high rollers and those rooms got little use even when rented for the night. She was always gone shortly after sunrise and even the couple of times she’d been caught, she’d been able to bluff her way out of it.
She thought about picking up her last check at the café where she’d been working. It wouldn’t be enough money to make it worth the risk.
Vince and Angel would find out soon enough that she’d taken off. No reason to alert them yet. It was too much to hope that the police had gotten to Lanny’s quick enough to catch the two convicted felons in the act.
No, she could only assume that Vince and Angel had not only gotten away but were looking for her at this very moment. If anything, fifteen years in prison would have made them even more dangerous.
On the way through the hotel, she stopped at one of the slot machines. It was foolish. She should be getting out of there as fast as possible. But superstition was something else she’d gotten from her father. And right now she needed to test her luck to make sure it was still with her.
She dropped a quarter into the slot machine and pulled the handle. The cylinder spun, stopping on first one bar, then another and for a moment she thought she might hit the big jackpot, but the third bar blurred past.
A handful of quarters jangled into the metal tray anyway. She scooped them up. Not as lucky as she had hoped but still better than nothing, she thought as she shoved the quarters into her jeans pocket, picked up her suitcase and headed for the exit.
As she moved through the noisy casino, she looked straight ahead but noticed everything, the hectic movement of gamblers pulling one-armed bandits, change girls stopping to hand out rolls of coins, cocktail waitresses weaving through the crowds with trays of drinks.
Goodbye Vegas, she thought as she cleared the door-less opening and stepped from the air-conditioned casino into the hot desert night. She breathed in the scents, knowing she wouldn’t be back here, not even sure she would be alive tomorrow. She had no idea where she would go or what she would do but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t done this for as long as she could remember.
As she headed toward her car parked in the huge lot, a white-haired couple came out of their RV, a homeless man cut through the cars toward the busy street and a handful of teenagers rolled through the glittering Vegas night on skateboards.
There was no one else around. But still she studied her car under the parking lot lights as she neared it. She doubted she had to worry about a car bomb. Vince and Angel preferred the personal touch. Also, they would want her alive. At least temporarily.
She unlocked the trunk of the nondescript tan sedan, put the suitcase in and slammed the lid. As she opened the driver’s side door, she surreptitiously took one quick glance around and climbed in.
Not one car followed her as she wound her way through the lot and exited on a backstreet. She headed down the strip toward Interstate 15, took the first entrance ramp, and saw that she was headed north. It didn’t matter where she was headed, she had no idea where she was going to go anyway.
Keeping an eye on her rearview mirror, she left the desert behind. But she knew she wasn’t safe, not by any means. Vince and Angel would move heaven and earth to find her.
And they’d kill her when they did.
Chapter Two
Wednesday
Outside Antelope Flats, Montana
Sheriff Cash McCall stood next to his patrol car and watched as the last of the officers came out of the old barn. They’d been searching for hours and he knew without asking that they still hadn’t found her body.
He felt himself sag. He’d hoped that Jasmine’s body was in the barn, that this would finally be over. He hadn’t slept, couldn’t get the sight of her car with the old tarp, the dented fender, the blood stain on the driver’s side floor mat out of his mind.
He rubbed a hand over his face as the lead state’s investigator came toward him.
John Mathews shook his head. He was a large man with a bulldog face. “We’ll continue searching the farm in the morning.”
Cash knew it would take days, possibly weeks, and even using the latest equipment, there was a good chance her body would never be found, that her disappearance would never be solved, that he would have to live the rest of his life without ever knowing when or if she would turn up.
“I’m sorry,” Mathews said. “We didn’t find anything.”
Cash nodded.
Mathews had been furious when he’d realized that Cash hadn’t called him immediately upon finding the car. “That was a fool thing to do. What the hell were you thinking looking in the car before we arrived?” His tone had softened. “I know how hard this must be on you. But you were her fiancée for cryin’ out loud. That makes you a suspect. Especially now that her car has been found within sight of your office.”
“I had to know if she was in the car,” Cash said. “I took photos. I did everything by procedure.”
John had sighed. “If you’re smart you’ll stay as far away from this investigation as physically possible.”
Cash had said nothing. He knew Mathews was right but that didn’t make it any easier.
Now Cash watched Mathews look past him to the lake. “We’ll broaden our search to the area around the barn. When I hear something, I’ll let you know.”
Cash knew that was as good as it was going to get. He took off his western hat and raked a hand through his hair, unable to hide his frustration. “You know that was the year the lake was down because the new dam was being built.”
“Cash,” Mathews said, a clear warning in his voice. “I like you. That’s why I’m going to say this to you. Stay out of it. I realize this is your turf, you know the area, your expertise might be invaluable, but don’t go telling us to look in the lake, okay? If her body turns up in the lake… You know what I’m saying.”
He knew exactly what Mathews was saying. He was a suspect. He’d been a suspect from the moment Jasmine disappeared seven years ago. “I just want her found.”
“We all do. But you’re smart enough to know that the stain under the steering wheel was blood.” He nodded. “It’s her blood type. Given the dent in the right front fender, the fact that the car has been hidden in the barn all these years, the amount of blood on the floor mat and the steering wheel, we’re treating this as a homicide.”
Cash knew that Mathews thought Jasmine had been run off the road and then attacked, possibly hitting her head on the steering wheel, or had been struck while behind the wheel by the attacker, who had then gotten rid of her body somewhere and hidden her car in the barn. Cash knew that because given the evidence as it now stood, he would have thought the same thing.
What hit home was that Jasmine really might be dead. The hidden car, the blood, seven years without anyone seeing her. There was nothing else to surmise from the evidence. The weight of it pressed down on his chest making it almost impossible to breathe. Head wounds caused significant blood loss. He couldn’t keep kidding himself that she’d somehow walked away from a blow to her head.
The facts no longer gave credence to his fantasy that she’d taken off, had been living it up on some Mediterranean island all these years.
“Even if you weren’t a suspect, you’re too emotionally involved to work this case anyway,” Mathews said.
Cash fought to curb his anger and frustration, knowing it would only strengthen Mathews’