He had spent so long trying to be someone else, it was sometimes hard to remember who he was.
“Speaking of kids,” Coralee said suddenly, “those sure are a couple of cute ones you brought back with you.”
He ignored the blatant opening she gave him to spill the details he was sure she hankered after about Charlie and Miriam.
The Moose Springs gossip line was no doubt buzzing like crazy when he’d showed up after all these years with a couple of Filipino kids. A few trusted friends knew as much of the story as he could freely tell, but the rest of the town probably had all kinds of ideas about where Charlie and Miriam came from.
He had to wonder what the gossips would say when word got out that he’d found a mystery woman up in the mountains.
Somehow his plans to come back to a quiet, uneventful life on the ranch weren’t exactly coming to fruition.
He was spared from having to come up with a polite answer to Coralee’s conversational probe by the door opening. A moment later the Moose Springs sheriff sauntered inside, looking big, bad and hard as a whetstone.
The other man took one look at Mason and narrowed his gaze. “I should have known trouble would follow your sorry ass back to town.”
Mason slowly straightened. “You got a problem with my sorry ass coming back to your town?”
His cool tone had the children looking up warily. Before he could reassure them, the sheriff’s stern expression melted into a grin and he slapped Mason on the back, the male equivalent of a hug.
“Damn, it’s good to see you, man!” Daniel Galvez exclaimed. “How long has it been? Three years? Four?”
“Something like that.”
Mason hated that he had come to avoid his good friends over the years. Friends tended to ask the kinds of questions he couldn’t answer honestly, like what he was doing with his life. Since he hated lying to his friends the way he did to everyone else, it had become easier just to stay away.
“How’ve you been?” 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,