Unraveling Jane Doe (Holding The Line Book 3) Page 7

  She sucked in her cheek before answering, formulating her lie. “If I knew who he was, like you claimed, why would I be searching him?”

  He snorted. “You randomly did a search on El Gringo Viejo the first opportunity you had? If you didn’t know him or know who he was, why would you do that?”

  “But I had heard his name before.” She held up her finger and then lowered it to point it at him. “You mentioned El Gringo Viejo on a phone call you took during lunch at the café.”

  “You heard that and immediately did a search for him?” His fingers bit into his biceps. “That makes no sense. Try again.”

  “It sounded fascinating.” She hopped up from the chair and spun away from him. “I was curious.”

  Hugging herself, she walked away from him and stopped by the window to peer through the glass.

  “Jane.”

  She hunched her shoulders and leaned her forehead against the windowpane.

  “Do you know what I’m thinking right now?” He couldn’t explain to her exactly the thoughts crossing his mind because along with irritation with her lies and his suspicions, he had a strong desire to take her in his arms. He couldn’t explain it to himself, so he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it to her.

  She shifted to display her profile. The defiance had gone out of her chin. Her long lashes and parted, pouting lips suggested a vulnerability all out of proportion to a woman who was a liar and possibly connected to the cartels.

  She’d been playing him since the moment she flashed her knife at him. A place to stay, a job, clothing, meals, sex... That hadn’t happened, but if he hadn’t uncovered her search history at the library, they might be tangled up in his sheets right this minute.

  He cleared his throat and repeated the dangerous question, the one he hoped she couldn’t guess in a million years. “Do you know what I’m thinking?”

  She turned to face him, tucking her hands behind her back like a chastened schoolgirl. “You probably think I’m connected to El Gringo Viejo, that I was on some kind of drug run that went bad, or that I double-crossed him and the drug cartels and they retaliated by running me off the road and torching my car. Or you think I’m still in their good graces and this—” she flapped her arms at her sides “—is some kind of setup, some sort of infiltration into the Border Patrol through my seduction of you.”

  He felt his eyes pop out of their sockets like some kind of cartoon character, so he closed them and rubbed them with his fists. She’d come up with more scenarios than he’d let creep into his brain. Had she been seducing him?

  “Is that close?” A little smile played about her lips, but her eyes drooped in sadness and he felt that crazy urge to charge across the room and engulf her in a bear hug.

  “Close enough.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Which is it, or is it all of the above?”

  She turned back toward the window and doodled on the glass with her fingertip. “I don’t know.”

  Rob blew out the breath he’d been holding, uttering a curse at the same time. “You’re gonna have to tell me, or I’ll have to...take action.”

  He crossed the room in a few long strides and touched her shoulder. “Just tell me, Jane. And why don’t you start by telling me your real name?”

  “I would...if I could.” She pivoted and grabbed his arm. “Rob, I am connected somehow to El Gringo Viejo, but I don’t know how. I—I think he’s trying to kill me, but I don’t know why. And my name? I don’t have a clue.”

  His gaze dropped to her hand on his arm just to make sure she didn’t have the knife. She wasn’t right in the head...or maybe he wasn’t. Either way, he couldn’t make sense of her words.

  “Wait.” He held up a hand as much to stop her words as to stop the thoughts swirling in his clouded mind. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me. If it’s more lies, I don’t want to hear them.”

  “I wish I were lying, Rob. I wish I knew enough to lie.” She rubbed the side of her scalp, digging her fingers into her hair. “It must’ve been the head injury. I don’t remember anything before waking up in that wreck. I don’t know my name. I don’t know who I am, and worst of all, I don’t know who’s trying to kill me and why.”

  The words tumbled from her lips in a rush, too fast for his brain to sort and comprehend. “We need to sit down.”

  He collapsed on a cushion of his couch, and Jane sat beside him, folding one leg beneath her—almost too close to him for rational thought.

  Now that the dam had broken, she couldn’t stop talking.

  “I heard those men talking about killing me, and that’s when I first heard of El Gringo Viejo. I had the knife in my pocket, so when you came along, I thought you might be one of them.”

  Placing his hands on her shoulders, he pinched his fingers into her flesh beneath the light T-shirt. “Stop. Tell me everything from the beginning...and I’ll decide if I believe you or not.”

  She took a deep, shuddering breath and folded her hands in her lap. “The first thing I remember is coming to in the car. It was upside down. I was disoriented right from the beginning.”

  He barely breathed as she told him about releasing herself from the car and then hearing another vehicle arrive and voices.

  “Something made me hide from those men. Alarm bells were sounding in my head.” She looked up, studying his ceiling as if searching for her memories there. “I saw their shoes but not their faces. They couldn’t see me at all. That’s when I first heard of El Gringo Viejo.”

  He took his thumb out of his mouth, where he’d been gnawing on the cuticle, on the edge of his seat as she spun her story. “In what context?”

  “Something about how El Gringo Viejo would be angry if they had to tell him they weren’t sure whether or not I was dead.”

  “To be sure, they torched the car.”

  She nodded and drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. “They thought I was still inside. Then they took off.”

  “Why did you hide in the desert? Why didn’t you go up to the highway and wave down a car?”

  “Why would I do that?” Her eyes widened. “All I knew was that someone was out to kill me, had probably forced me off the road. I didn’t know who. I didn’t know why. Those two men could’ve swung back around, and I wouldn’t have even recognized them as my attackers.”

  “Okay, I get that you’d think that at the beginning of your...ordeal, but what about later? You had to figure they’d be long gone.” He drilled his forefinger into his thigh. “And why not involve the police? Why didn’t you want to go to a hospital? Get treatment? Report the accident? Tell the police about these two men?”

  She hunched her shoulders. “I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of the police?”

  “Afraid of not knowing.” She tapped her head. “Do you know how it feels to have nothing up here? Of course you don’t. The thought of people, strangers, coming at me and telling me who I am and where I should be...fills me with terror.”

  “You think your assailants would hear about the accident and the woman with amnesia and make a move?” He scratched his chin. He could understand that, but it sounded more like a movie plot.

  “Can you picture it? One of them could come to the police or the hospital and tell the authorities I was his wife. That we had an argument. That he didn’t know where I’d gone.” She splayed her arms to her sides. “What could I say?”

  She made more sense than he’d expected—not that he would’ve handled the situation in the same way. He tugged on his earlobe. “What about your memory loss? Where’d you get the name Jane?”

  “Where do you think?” She stretched out her legs and kicked them up on top of the coffee table. “All I could think of while I waited in the desert was that I was a Jane Doe—no identity, no possessions, no memories. So, when you asked me for a name, that’s the first one that
came to mind.”

  “Don’t you want to discover who you are? Isn’t it more dangerous not knowing?”

  “I didn’t think so at first, but I realize it now.”

  He jerked his thumb toward the window. “You’re not going to find out working at Rosita’s Café in a town where nobody knows you.”

  Her gaze dropped to her wiggling toes, and she glanced up at him through her lashes. “You know me. You’re the only one who does.”

  “Jane, or whatever—” he clasped his hand on the back of his too-tense neck “—I don’t know you. You must have family somewhere, a mother, a father, a husband...people who are worried about you.”

  “You think so?” She chewed on her bottom lip and examined the ring finger of her left hand, devoid of a ring or a tan line. “I don’t feel married.”

  Rob snapped his fingers. “What about the tattoo on your back? Rosalinda? You didn’t know it was there, did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Where did you come up with that story about the dead girlfriend?”

  “My imagination.” She scooped her tawny hair back from her face. “Where else?”

  “I’m just wondering if any of those names and stories you came up with have some kernel of truth to them—something coming up from your subconscious.”

  “I can’t tell you. The only thing that resonated with me was when I told you I was an art teacher, but you already blew that theory out of the water when you told me my fingerprints aren’t on file. Teachers are printed, right?”

  “What about the fluent Spanish?” He shook his head. “My mother would be mortified that some gringa speaks Spanish better than I do.”

  “Gringa.” She pulled her knees to her chest again. “Why does that man, that drug dealer, want me dead? Maybe I’m a mule, a courier, a drug dealer myself.”

  Rob staggered up from the couch, not wanting to think about that possibility, even though it had been at the edges of his mind ever since he saw her search history at the library. “We need a pen and paper to start writing all this down—the car, the men, the knife, the tattoo, the name. All of it.”

  “Does that mean you believe me?” She twisted her hair into a ponytail with one hand. “I need you to believe me, Rob. I need help.”

  He ducked into the office and grabbed a legal pad from a desk drawer and a pen from the holder. Returning to the living room, he drummed the pen against the pad. “I suppose someone could make up a story this crazy to infiltrate the Border Patrol or to kill me, but there would be easier ways to do that—and I’ve seen that gash on your head. That head injury must’ve stolen your memories.”

  Rob perched on the arm of the couch, ankle crossed at his knee, pad of paper on his thigh. He wrote Jane? at the top of the page and started a bulleted list of everything she could remember.

  He enlarged the dark circle next to the Rosalinda tattoo on the list. “This is the most distinct thing about you. We should take a stab at it.”

  “Not literally.” Jane reached behind her and rubbed her lower back. “But that’s what I thought when I looked in the mirror and saw myself for the first time—nondistinct. At the time, it pleased me, as I figured I could blend in, but a less bland appearance might help me figure out my identity faster.”

  Rob’s mouth hung open. She couldn’t possibly think she had a bland appearance. The color of her eyes, hair that couldn’t decide between blond and brown and lush lips that turned up at the corners didn’t equal mundane to him.

  He muttered, “I think you lost your judgment along with your memory.”

  “What?” She prodded his leg.

  “Never mind.” He dropped the notepad on her lap and pushed up from the arm of the couch. “Now that we know Rosalinda is not the name of some murdered schoolmate, let’s do another search.”

  He swept his laptop from the counter where it was charging and squeezed next to Jane on the couch. He launched a search engine and entered Rosalinda once more.

  Jane ran her finger down the display. “A TV show, restaurants, people, a brand of tortillas. Do you think one of those Rosalindas could be me?”

  “Only one way to find out.” Rob clicked on the first Rosalinda, which turned out to be a politician in Texas, the smile on the middle-aged blonde’s face promising more school funding and better infrastructure.

  He went through all of the names, but not one of the Rosalindas matched Jane.

  He slumped, tipping his head back and staring at the ceiling. “What else do people tattoo on their bodies?”

  He could feel her gaze on him, assessing him in a way that heated his blood.

  He rolled his head to the side. “What?”

  “Do you have any tattoos, Rob?”

  “No.” The word came out in a burst and Jane reeled back.

  “Not a fan of inking your body, I guess.”

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to snap at you.” Rob shoved a hand through his hair. “I was constantly pressured as a kid into getting the gang symbol tattooed on my arm. Both of my brothers had them. My refusal was kind of like a magical talisman in my head that assured me if I didn’t get the tattoo, I’d never join the gang.”

  Jane squeezed his thigh. “And it worked.”

  “I’ve been tattoo-free ever since and probably always will be.”

  “But if you were a tattoo kinda guy, what would you get? What do your friends have? Your girlfriends?” She removed her hand from his leg and tapped her fingers on her knee.

  “I don’t have any girlfriends. Do you think I’d be running around with you, having you spend the night here, if I had a girlfriend?”

  “You wouldn’t be if I were your girlfriend.” She brushed her hands together as if resolving that issue. “Tattoos.”

  If she were his girlfriend? He liked the sound of that and he didn’t even know who she was.

  “My buddies who were in the military have military tattoos, insignia, animals, stuff like that. The women, not my girlfriends, tend to have flowers, maybe little sayings, hearts.” He shrugged. “Places?”

  “Are there any towns called Rosalinda?” She flicked a hand at the keyboard. “We could go through each state. Rosalinda, Alabama. Rosalinda, Arkansas. Rosalinda, Arizona, of course.”

  “Rosalinda, Mexico.” Rob clutched the sides of the laptop.

  “Why Mexico?” She licked her lips and clasped her hands between her knees.

  She knew.

  He coughed. “Well, you speak Spanish fluently. Rosalinda is a Spanish-sounding name. We’re close to the Mexican border.”

  “And I know El Gringo Viejo.” She pressed her lips together in a straight line. “I’m not sure I want to know how well we’re acquainted. Could he be my...husband? There weren’t any pictures of him online.”

  Rob swallowed a lump in his throat. “There are no pictures of him. Nobody knows what he looks like.”

  “But with a name like that, Viejo, he has to be old...older.” She interlaced her fidgety fingers. “People do have May-December relationships, though, don’t they?”

  He placed his hand over both of hers. He couldn’t help it. “What made you think he might be your husband?”

  “Because of the story I told you about escaping an abusive ex. Remember, we talked about kernels of truth.”

  “And remember you told me the only flicker of recognition you felt was when you said you were an art teacher.” He stroked his thumb across the smooth skin on the back of her hand. “In all our years tracking El Gringo Viejo, nobody ever mentioned a spouse or partner for him.”

  She jabbed her finger at the monitor. “Enter it.”

  He typed Rosalinda, Mexico in the search engine and hit Return.

  Jane leaned into his space, the ends of her hair tickling his hands still poised over the keyboard. “There’s the TV show again. Maybe I’m just a big fan of that
telenovela.”

  Rob eked out a breath. “Doesn’t look like there’s a town called Rosalinda, at least not one that rates top billing on this search engine.”

  “Rob.” She grabbed his wrist. “There’s an art gallery called Rosalinda. Right there.”

  He followed the direction of her trembling finger and clicked on an article from an online art blog that teased the name Rosalinda in the blurb.

  He read it aloud, as Jane seemed to have been struck mute. “‘For funky art pieces in a variety of media, some created by the gallery’s owner, visit Rosalinda in Puerto Peñasco, better known to the gringos as Rocky Point. The proprietor and artist, Libby James, is knowledgeable about the...’”

  Jane dug her nails into his flesh. “That’s me. That’s who I am—Libby James.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Libby James.” She said the name again, feeling it on her tongue, her lips, the roof of her mouth. “I’m Libby James.”

  Rob’s arm went around her shoulders, and she leaned into him. “That’s amazing. You remember. You can go to the police now, tell them about the accident and the men threatening you.”

  She stiffened. “I don’t remember. I just know.”

  “You just know?” His arm sagged halfway down her back. “What does that mean? You don’t remember your life as Libby James? Your association with El Gringo Viejo?”

  She hated to disappoint Rob. He’d sounded so hopeful, so relieved that he didn’t have to worry about her stabbing him in the gut while he slept.

  Pounding a fist above her heart, she said, “I feel it here. I had that flash of recognition, that same flash I felt when I told you I was an art teacher. Don’t you see? I am an artist, maybe I even teach others. The tattoo on my back is the name of my gallery.”