Under Threat

She smiled her gap-toothed smile. “Hopefully I’ll get lucky and some handsome cowboy will take me home with him. Or maybe it’s not that kind of place.”
“No, it is. There’ll be cowboys and ski bums.”
“I might see you there then?” Lucy said. “Don’t worry. I won’t intrude if you’ve found your own cowboy. I’m guessing there’s one you’re planning to meet tonight.”
Christy felt herself flush. “Not exactly. I’m just hoping he’ll be there.”
Lucy laughed. “Hoping to get lucky, huh? Well, thanks again for your help.” She left smiling, making Christy shake her head as she tossed Lucy’s application on the desk in Andrea’s office. She’d ended up almost liking the woman. Now if she could just get through the rest of the day. She was excited about tonight at Charley’s. She did feel lucky. She had a job, an apartment to move into tomorrow and with even more luck, she would be going home with the man she had a crush on. Otherwise, she would be sleeping in her car on top of all her belongings.
Tomorrow though, she’d be moving into the apartment across the street that Mary Savage owned. How handy was that since she could sleep late and still get to work on time with her job just across the street?
Lucy Carson was also looking at the small apartment house across the street from Lone Peak Perk as she walked to her car. She had her heart set on a job at the coffee shop and an apartment across the street in Mary Cardwell Savage’s building. Not that she always got what she set her heart on, she thought bitterly, but she would make this happen, whatever she had to do.
As she climbed into her new car, she breathed in the scent of soft leather. She really did like the smell of a new car. Her other one was at the bottom of the Colorado River—or at least it had been until a few weeks ago when it was discovered.
Her disappearing act had gone awry when she’d tried to get out of the car and couldn’t before it plummeted toward the river that night. By the time she reached the bank way downriver, she’d wished she’d come up with a better plan. She’d almost died and she wanted to live. More than wanted to live. She’d wanted to kill someone. Especially the person responsible for making her have to go to such extremes: Chase Steele. As she’d sat on that riverbank in the dark, she knew exactly what she had to do. Fortunately, when she’d tried to bail out of the car, she’d grabbed her purse. She’d almost forgotten the money. Her plan really would have gone badly if she’d lost all this money. With it, she could do anything she wanted.
But as close a call as it had been, everything had worked out better than even she’d planned. The authorities thought she was dead, her body rotting downriver. Fiona Barkley was dead. She was free of her. Now she could become anyone she chose.
Since then she’d had to make a few changes, including her name. But she’d never liked the name Fiona anyway. She much preferred Lucy Carson. Getting an ID in that name had been easier than she imagined. It had been harder to give up her long blond hair. But the pixie cut, the dark brown contacts and the brunette hair color transformed her into a woman not even she recognized. She thought she looked good—just not so good that Chase would recognize her.
Her resulting car wreck had pretty much taken care of her change in appearance as well. She had unsnapped her seat belt to make her leap from the car before it hit the water. Had she not been drunk and partway out of the car, she wouldn’t have smashed her face, broken her nose and knocked out her front teeth.
As it turned out, that too proved to be a stroke of luck. She’d lost weight because it had hurt to eat. When she looked in the mirror now, she felt she was too skinny, but she knew once she was happy again, she’d put some pounds back on. She still had curves. She always had.
It was her face that had changed the most. Her nose had healed but it had a slight lean to it. She liked the imperfection. Just as she liked the gap between her two new front teeth. It had taken going to a dentist in Mexico to get a rush job. She liked the gap. It had even changed the way she talked giving her a little lisp. She’d been able to pick up her former Southern accent without any trouble since it was the way she’d talked before college. It was enough of a change in her appearance and voice that she knew she could get away with it—as long as she never got too close to Chase.
In the meantime, she couldn’t wait to meet Mary Cardwell Savage.
Mary stood across the street from Lone Peak Perk thinking about her date last night with Dillon. She’d seen the slim, dark-haired woman come out of the coffee shop and get into a gray SUV, but her mind had been elsewhere. As the SUV pulled away, she turned from the window, angry with herself.
She was still holding out hope that Chase would contact her. The very thought made her want to shake herself. It had been weeks. If he was going to answer, he would have a long time ago. So why did she keep thinking she’d hear from him? Hadn’t his fiancée told him that she’d called? Maybe he thought that was sufficient. Not the man she’d known, she thought.
And that was what kept nagging at her. She’d known Chase since he was fifteen. He’d come to work for the Jensen Ranch next door. Mary’s mom had pretty much adopted him after finding out the reason he’d been sent to live in the canyon was because his