Thinking maybe he’d drive the bullet to a buddy of his at the forensics lab in Flagstaff, rather than sending it by courier, and wait for test results, just to be done with the situation.

  An obviously successful, gorgeous woman showing up in his town wasn’t all that unusual during the summer months. One with a bullet in her car’s frame, an address that didn’t exist, and claiming parents who’d lived and died in his town, parents who also apparently didn’t exist—it was all adding up to...someone who had some problems beyond his scope of diagnosing or solving.

  Adjusting the backlight on the screen in front of him, he scrolled one month at a time, through alphabetical listings. Found himself.

  Read his mother’s name. Twenty-four years younger than Jackson’s nearly fifty-year-old father, Celeste Redmond hadn’t hung around long after finding out that the elder Redmond would never leave his position as sheriff of Evergreen. That he had no political ambitions or any willingness to “move up” with his career as Jackson had been told she’d put it. He couldn’t speak about her from personal experience. He had none with her.

  Recognizing a lot of the names of people he’d gone to school with, his mind wandering from memory to memory, thinking about the lives some of them currently lived, wondering about others, his fingers stumbled on the little roller ball that powered the ancient machine.

  There she was. Born four months after him. In Flagstaff. At the same hospital. Delivered by the same doctor. Birth records naming Evergreen, both county and town, as residences.

  Had Adele and Celeste known each other?

  Shaking his head, he pushed that particular wondering away. Personal details had no place in the investigation. He had proof that an Aimee Cooper had been born at the time the new visitor said she’d been born. Had proof that at least a portion of her story was real.

  The part she’d brought to him.

  And had no explanation for any of the rest of it.

  No answers to her questions.

  Just a list of addresses with a possible line having been erased.

  And a bullet to identify.

  He had it. So, it made sense to start there.

  And a trip to Flagstaff meant he wouldn’t be able to stop back by Aimee Barker’s rental that afternoon.

  A man of his word, he pulled his phone off the case at his belt, left side, opposite the gun he always wore on the right, no matter if he was in uniform or not, and dialed the cell number she’d given when she’d first called in the shooting.

  “H...hello?” The apprehension lacing the stammered greeting was unmistakable. Grabbing his keys from his pocket, Jackson nodded at Landon the security guard at the front door of the courthouse and hurried out toward his cruiser parallel parked in a reserved spot out front.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, jogging down the courthouse steps.

  “Nothing. There’s...just...a rattlesnake outside my door. I’m sure I should have been prepared, but...wow.” Her deep breath was loud and clear.

  He wanted to assure her that it was probably a king snake. And nothing to be afraid of. But first things first. “Are you inside?”

  “Yes. I took a nap and then was heading out to unload some things from the car, and it was right there on my stoop...” Another deep breath, as the decibel of her voice rose with panic. “It did its rattle thing at me...”

  King snakes didn’t rattle.

  And the address she’d come looking for didn’t exist.

  Nor did the deaths of her parents in Evergreen.

  “Stay put,” he told her. “I’m just a mile away and heading in your direction.”

  With a call to Leon Goldberg, his second in command as deputy sheriff, he logged out for the rest of the day.

  And told himself that one way or another he’d have the Aimee Barker situation resolved and off his plate before morning.

  Chapter 3

  Of course, the sheriff would call right when she was heavy breathing over a stupid snake. She was in the rugged Arizona mountainous desert. She knew what kind of wildlife to expect.

  She just hadn’t expected it to be shaking its tail at her front door.

  Not quite the kind of greeting she’d envisioned when she’d woken from her nap feeling more like the capable, responsible self she knew herself to be.

  In a short lime-green denim skirt, a sleeveless and flowy hip-length lacy blouse in various shades of lime green and orange, complemented by dressier orange jeweled flip-flop sandals, she’d been prepared to take control of her life. And get back to New Orleans to get on with it.

  Five minutes after the phone call, her pulse had slowed considerably, her breathing returned to normal, until she heard, through the front door, “Well, hell,” followed almost immediately by, “Gerald, I’m at Blooming Bridges, cabin five. Get the snake removal gear over here. We’ve got a rattler on the front porch...”

  Though she’d just had a lunch of the fruit and crackers she’d brought on the flight, she brewed herself a cup of chamomile tea. She’d rather be sleepy than anxiety filled. And quit pretending not to be interested minutes later as she peered out the front window and listened as the sheriff and another guy conversed as with a long pole they attempted to coax the venomous snake into a cage.

  “When’s the last time you saw one of these out in the open in the shade?” The bearded bear of guy she was assuming to be Gerald asked. He was in charge of the cage.

  “Never.” Jackson Redmond sounded tense. Not that she knew him well enough to really know how he ever sounded. Could be, irritated was his norm. He nudged at the snake, getting it closer to the open metal door.

  “Can’t remember the last time Burley had anything worse than ants on his property,” the bear continued. “Not with the way he is about pest control and walling off the property. Can’t have a little nature scaring off his lucrative city guests.”

  Burley... Randall Burley...the owner of Blooming Bridges...didn’t seem to have a fan in Gerald the bear.

  The sheriff didn’t engage in Burley conversation. With a few quick moves, he had the snake in the cage. Gerald flipped the lid, took the pole in his free hand and off he went.

  And a knock sounded on her front door.

  When she opened the door, Jackson Redmond was staring straight ahead, not glancing toward the window through which she’d been peeping at him.

  Did he know?

  Why should she care?

  She cared about the frown he was wearing. “I’m heading to Flagstaff to get the bullet checked out,” he said. “I’d like for you to ride along with me, if you don’t mind.”

  There was no command in his tone. She felt completely free to decline the invitation. Didn’t even think about doing so.

  “Did you get to the courthouse?” she asked, as soon as she was belted into the front seat of his cruiser.

  “I did.” He pulled onto Main Street, and then with a quick right, headed out of town. On the same road she’d come in on. He’d take it to Interstate 40, she knew, and then it was a long hour to the town where she’d landed early that morning.

  She hadn’t expected to be headed back so soon. Nor had she thought to have cause to meet the sheriff and get her answers the easy way.

  “And?” she asked, ready to take in whatever he had to tell her about the accident that had killed her parents. Or anything else about them that might have turned up.

  Her dreams had been about the desert. And the crying big boy.

  The angry voice approaching the swing that morning...making the boy cry...she’d known it like a little girl would know a voice of authority.

  She wanted to know what her brain was trying to tell her. To deal with it.

  It was the only way to get free from its harassment.

  Jackson, as he’d told her to call him as they’d headed to his car, was staring straight ahead. His face...flat. No indication of anything. Good. Bad. Friendly. Not.

  “I found your birth certificate,” he told her.

  She watched him. He was giving her something in the not telling. “I didn’t ask you to look up my birth certificate.”

  “You were born four months after I was. Same hospital,” he continued. “In Flagstaff.”

  She hadn’t known that.

  About being born in Flagstaff. For all she’d known, her stop there that morning had been the first of her life. Aunt Bonnie had picked her up from social services in Phoenix after her parents’ deaths.

  She and Jackson had birth circumstances in common. Kind of cool. She wondered if he thought so. Didn’t ask.

  The muscles in his upper arm bulged at the hem of his uniform shirt. She wouldn’t want to get on the guy’s wrong side.

  But figured being on his right one could be nice. For whoever was there.

  He didn’t have on a wedding ring. Didn’t mean he wasn’t married. Or hooked up.

  Someone as hunky as him would definitely be hooked up. Especially in a town where pickings were slimmer than the big city with which she was familiar. And with his job...

  Her mind wanted to meander further. She cut it off. Avoidance was not currently the key to success.

  “And?” she prompted a second time. He’d hit the cruise control. She’d seen him do it, but he still continued to monitor his dash as though watching his speed.

  As though she, or something about her, made him uncomfortable. A fact that kind of pleased her.

  But only because he made her a bit uncomfortable, too. Turnabout was not only fair play, but it made a woman feel a bit more normal at a time when she was fighting the idea of having serious doubts about herself.

  What kind of dill brain ran off to Arizona because of an onslaught of stupid dreams and a handwritten address, in handwriting she didn’t recognize, in a safe deposit box?

  Being shot at—for whatever reason—having a snake choose that exact morning to snooze on her rented porch—were both signs that she was on the wrong path.

  What would seem coincidences to most had often played bigger roles in Aimee’s life. She took the universe’s signs seriously. And with a grain of salt, too. Because they could just be coincidences. In this case, most likely were.

  Jackson’s silence was grating on her. Dammit. It wasn’t like she was out for a Sunday drive. Or on some peaceful vacation getaway in the mountains.

  She stared out at the mountain peaks through which they were driving, anyway. Hoping for a semblance of peace. Of comprehension or acceptance.

  “There was no record of the address you brought me ever being recorded.”

  Okay, so that mystery wasn’t solved. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t like she’d dreamed of a plot of land. Or any ties to an estate.

  And the tree that morning...it had just sparked something because...she was there, looking, and maybe there’d been the same kind of tree in her yard...

  With the same heart shape formed by the branches?

  “There was also no record of a car accident involving your parents, or any fatal accidents, in city or county files during the time in question. There’s no record of your parents’ deaths.”

  What? Her neck cracked with the speed with which her gaze shot back to him.

  “You’re...trying to tell me my parents aren’t dead?”

  Was he really careening so far of course? Their deaths weren’t in question. Of that she was certain.

  He shook his head. “I’m telling you there’s no record of their deaths here. Are you sure the accident happened in Evergreen? Did your aunt ever indicate who she dealt with to get custody of you? Or what happened to the bodies? Were they buried? And what about any insurance settlement from the accident? What about their possessions?”

  Right. She knew some of those answers. “There was money—I understood it to be from the sale of their possessions, but it could have been insurance settlement, too. As I said, I have no idea if anyone was ever charged in the accident. My aunt invested the money when she got me and I used a portion of it to pay for college.” She tackled the least upsetting, and most clear, first. “She dealt with child services in Phoenix. After I questioned her about my parents, and found out she was my aunt, she told me all about the day she got me. She’d seen me once before, when I was seven months old. Mom brought me to New Orleans to meet her, just a quick trip without my dad, but we only stayed one night. Anyway, she said she’d never expected to fall so much in love the day she knew I was hers...”

  Her throat clogged a bit as tears pushed at the backs of her eyes. She’d let enough of them fall. It was time to move on from that place.

  “From that point on we always celebrated ‘gotcha’ day, as well as my birthday. And every year, she’d tell me the story of coming to Phoenix to get me and how I made her life worth living...”

  “And your mom? Did your aunt ever say anything about losing her?”

  “She said she lost her when she married my dad, but she never said how or why. She didn’t seem to think he was a bad guy, though. She mentioned once that she’d never been in love like my mom and dad had been. Mostly, though, she talked about Mom when they were younger, and since I wanted my aunt to be my mom, I never asked questions a daughter should ask about the woman who gave birth to her.” Saying the words aloud made them worse than they’d been in her head. “I sound like a selfish little creep,” she said. “A woman gives birth to me, adores me, according to my aunt, and because I can’t remember her, I’d rather not know about her...”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said. “I can’t remember my mom from when I was little, either, nor do I feel any particular affinity for her.”

  “Your mother died, too?” Her mouth hung open. How weird was that? The man who showed up to help her was not only born the same year as her, in the same hospital, but he lost his mom, too?

  “No, she split.” He quashed the idea she’d been about to consider as another possible sign. “Marrying a man her deceased father’s age, the sheriff to boot, had been great right up until she found out that there was no way he was going to move to Phoenix, where they’d met and courted in a very short period of time, and let her family money move him up the political ladder. I suspect she thought she loved him at the time...”

  He stopped, shook his head. Because he’d never understand his mother?

  Or because he’d said more than he’d meant to.

  “Did you ever see her while you were growing up?”

  This time when he shook his head, there was no mistaking the intent—a definitive no.

  “I looked her up the year I was graduating from high school. She was married to a guy who didn’t know about me. And when it became clear that him not finding out was more important than seeing me for the first time in seventeen years, I made it easy on her and blocked her number.”

  “Did she ever try to get in touch with you?”

  He shrugged, thrummed a thumb on the steering wheel. “I’d have no way of knowing that, with the number blocked, and all.”

  Which had been the point, she surmised.

  He could tell himself she’d tried and just hadn’t been able to get through.

  In case she hadn’t tried.

  Because, really, if she’d wanted to be in touch with him, at any point, it wasn’t like he’d be hard to find. Or to contact by some other means.

  She didn’t mention the obvious. Something else was pushing at her.

  The probable woman in his life. And the fact that she felt so...drawn to him. Like they’d been meant to meet from the days they were born.

  And another similarity—his big-city mother had been so incapable of living in the remote mountain town his father wouldn’t leave that she’d left her own son. And while Aimee would never walk out on any child of hers, no matter where it was, she sure could understand a woman not being able to live in Evergreen.

  And one other thing...

  “Why are you telling me this? You don’t seem the type of guy to spill his guts. Most particularly with a stranger who comes to town with flying bullets, nonexistent addresses and supposed deceased parents she can’t remember, who died in a car accident that doesn’t exist.”

  He glanced her way.

  Didn’t respond.

  And she decided to leave him alone for the rest of the way to Flagstaff, lest she inadvertently convinced him not to help her after all.

  * * *

  Jackson drove because driving had always been his panacea. Yeah, he had to get to Flagstaff, but regardless of what he found out about the bullet he carried, he needed to get out ahead of whatever had come into his day. He did that by clearing his mind. Letting the facts speak for themselves.

  Problem was, no facts. Or not enough of them to form any kind of conversation. In addition to his lack of findings at the courthouse, nothing had turned up on the Evergreen estate.

  The rattlesnake was a problem. It rankled more than anything else that had gone on that day. More than the dual flying bullets. More even than no evidence of an accident or deaths. All of the above he could explain away between bites of a burger.

  But the snake...

  He’d been certain it would be a king...they were more prevalent, partially because they just were, and partially because people in Evergreen tended to want them around. They were harmless to humans and ate rattlers.

  Rattlers were more active in the early morning. They’d come out to sun themselves sometimes, if the weather was cooler, which it wasn’t that day. Beyond that, in his experience, they generally hid in the brush, or maybe a woodpile.

  Still, a snake on a doorstep in a mountainous desert town wasn’t going to make the news. It happened.

  But to Aimee? Hours after she’d arrived? And been shot at?

  Nothing about the situation felt right.