An Impostor in Town (Colorado Series) (4 page)

“It’s going to be all right.” Peyton pushed the hair from Shelly’s forehead. She hoped she wasn’t lying to the girl.

A surgical nurse adjusted Shelly’s drip line. “Just a few more seconds. The meds should be working soon.”

Her eyes fluttered. “If I die, will you take care of-”

“You’re not going to die!”

“Please, promise me.” Shelly mumbled something else too low for her to hear. The girl’s eyelids drooped. “Take care of my baby. Don’t let my mother…”

As soon as Shelly fell into unconsciousness, Peyton rushed out of surgery and down the hall to the restroom. As she passed Brian he shot her a questioning look, but she ignored it and kept walking. Once inside a stall, she threw up. Shelly’s mother’s treatment of her daughter reminded Peyton too much of her own mother.

****

Peyton turned into the lot across the street from the hospital, weary from her fruitless trip to Albuquerque. Johanna never showed. She returned from New Mexico more apprehensive than when she left. Had Johanna received her letter? What if someone intercepted it?

She had traded duty with another nurse and barely made it back to Durango before the shift started at eleven. She would be in the emergency room until at least three a.m. It was going to be a long night.

She parked her vehicle in her assigned spot and sat for a moment to collect her thoughts. Her position demanded concentration. The emergency room wasn’t constantly busy, but it had its moments of chaos. She couldn’t afford to let her mind stray at a critical moment. She hoped it would be a slow night.

Her hopes shattered as she walked in through the side entrance. The crowded waiting room meant full exam rooms. An orderly wheeled a crash cart through the double doors separating the emergency room from the main part of the hospital. The irritating ring of an unanswered phone jangled through the chaos. Cries of pain and shouted orders vibrated against the walls. She drew in a steadying breath and headed for the admitting desk.

The pace stayed brisk until around two-thirty in the morning. She scratched notes and studied doctor’s orders on medical charts as she finalized the documentation for the new cases that arrived on her shift. They’d seen it all tonight. Ruptured appendix. Mysterious stomach cramps. Broken arm. Multiple injuries from a car accident. Stab wounds. Heart attack.

The strident wail of a siren assaulted her ears. Flashing red and white lights lit the entrance to the emergency room. The doors flew open and a paramedic wheeled another accident victim into the now almost vacant ward. Peyton nearly collapsed as she recognized the woman on the stretcher. The face was twelve years older but still very familiar.

“Take her in there.”

The light of recognition flickered in her eyes as Johanna Caldwell gazed up at Peyton. Johanna tried to rise, but Peyton pushed her down. She grabbed the woman’s wrist and counted the beats. Her pulse was slow and thready.

“Jake,” Johanna whispered.

She shook her head, just the slightest of movements. Would Johanna reveal anything in her disoriented state? She chastised herself for the selfish thought. The woman’s condition was the more pressing issue.

Johanna wrapped weak fingers around her wrist. “He’s with someone I trust.”

She acknowledged the message with a slight nod. “Of course he is.” She forced a smile, relying on her most professional manner to keep her escalating fears in check. “He’ll be all right.”

She glanced around the room. No one was any wiser. She uttered reassurances all the time to emergency room patients.

****

Peyton climbed four flights of stairs and paused outside room four-fifty-two before knocking. A male voice entreated her to enter. She peeked around the door, wondering if she had found the right room. A man sat in the guest chair next to Johanna. They both turned to her with weary expressions.

All the things Peyton had planned to say flew out of her head. The moment became awkward. Johanna spoke first, splitting the thick apprehension in the room. “Pierce, this is the nurse that was in the emergency room last night.”

“How do you do? Austin Pierce.” He nodded his dark head, stood, and offered Peyton his right hand. His easy manner broke the tension in the room.

Johanna’s eyes glittered while the man greeted Peyton. She understood now why Johanna had lingered in Ouray. There was obviously something going between Johanna and Pierce. Johanna continued staring at him instead of turning her attention to Peyton. Another uncomfortable silence ensued.

“Would you mind if I have a word with Miss Caldwell alone?” She hoped the man would think her visit routine, so she tried to sound official, but her request came out forced and unnatural. Pierce looked at Johanna as if getting her approval. She nodded and he left the room, but not before he tossed Peyton a scowl.

The air grew heavy with memories, unspoken doubts, and underlying uncertainties. “I must have missed you in Albuquerque. That’s where you were coming from, wasn’t it?” Her strained voice reverberated around the small room.

“I looked for you for nearly half an hour and then left. That was our agreement, wasn’t it?” Was there a hint of criticism in Johanna’s question?

Where had Johanna been all this time if not still in Albuquerque? Peyton had arrived in Durango hours ago. “I was there, but I never saw you.” A thirty-minute wait was their agreed-upon time limit. She wasn’t going to admit she had stayed almost an hour.

They could both be to blame for the failed attempt to meet…and they could both be blameless. “Why did you want to see me?” Johanna pushed past the unspoken accusations they hurled at each other.

She pulled the crumpled letter from her pocket. Johanna’s eyes widened with shocked comprehension when she read the red-inked addition at the bottom. “Oh no.” An apology spread across her face.

“Do you know anything about this?”

“I didn’t do it, if that’s what you mean,” Johanna sputtered.

“I didn’t think you did.” That wasn’t what she was implying. “Do you have any idea who might have done it?”

Johanna squirmed on the mattress. “When did you get it?”

“The same day
your
letter arrived.” She pushed a button and raised the upper portion of the bed without thinking.

“I think I know who did this.” Johanna appeared to retreat into her private thoughts.

“Well?” Her patience with the woman was wearing thin.

“His name is Jeff Corbin. He works for Pierce.”

A sinking fear formed in the lower regions of her gut. “Jeff Corbin? Can you tell me what he looks like?”

“I have a picture of him. I don’t think he knows I took it. He avoids getting his picture made.” Johanna pointed at the wardrobe. “If you’ll get my purse, I’ll show it to you.”

Peyton retrieved a large handbag for her. Johanna dug in the bottom until she pulled out a ragged photograph and passed it to her. She studied the picture in disbelief. He was twelve years older, but she recognized Mason Osborne’s son. “His middle name is Corbin. His last name is Osborne. He’s Mason’s son.” She collapsed onto the guest chair.

“What are we gonna do?” Johanna’s question was barely audible.

She wanted to scream at the woman, but now wasn’t the time for recriminations. She focused her attention on Jake’s safety. So far neither of them had dared mention his name. “You said he was with someone you trust.” She couldn’t keep the bite out of her voice.

“He’s downstairs in the cafeteria with Art and Nancy.”

“Who are they?” She barely controlled her rising panic.

“They’ll take care of him.” Steel undergirded the defensiveness in Johanna’s reply.

She stared at the woman, trying to assess her ability to make that kind of judgment. She knew about Johanna’s past, how she’d made a sorry mess of her life.

A new fear assaulted her before she could finish analyzing the old one. “Do you think Jeff recognized him?”

“I think we should assume the worst. I should have burned those letters. I just thought that one day you might want them—”

“Why would I?”

“So you could prove you hadn’t really abandoned him.” Johanna’s hot retort scorched her guilty conscience.

Had she abandoned her child? Should she have kept him? Was he really safer without her? Had she lied to herself all these years? Maybe she let him go because life would be easier without him. She killed the thought before it had time to take hold. Life hadn’t been easy since the day she found out she was pregnant.

Johanna was about to comment further, but the door opened. Pierce entered the room with a boy. She drew in a deep breath that nearly punctured her lungs.

Johanna held out her hand to the boy. He took hers without hesitation. “This is Jake.”

His pictures had not portrayed his reality. He was a handsome mixture of Peyton’s father, Jacob Chandler, and Jake’s biological father, Cory Powell, a man she hoped never to see again as long as she lived. Her son had the same sandy brown hair and slate gray eyes as the Powell men. The striking resemblance was more than she could bear.

She wanted to reach out to him—to embrace him. She wanted to confess to him who she was and how much she loved him. Her intense inspection must have seemed strange to him, because his face registered confusion. She tried to modify her reaction—make it more pleasant and nurse-like.

She dragged her gaze away from her son and addressed Johanna. “Well, I wish you well in your recovery.” She attempted using her professional voice, but the comment fell on the floor with a thud.

She turned on her heel and left the room. As soon as she reached the empty stairwell, she leaned against the cold, gray walls—her insides churning. She hoped she wouldn’t throw up before she got to the ladies room.

****

Peyton stood in front of her post office box, clutching a letter addressed in Johanna’s handwriting. The postmark read Ouray. So Johanna hadn’t moved. There were only a few reasons Johanna would write so soon. This had to be good news. She tore the envelope open and read the short note.

The man has disappeared. J.

He didn’t just leave. He
disappeared
. Jeff had vanished from the ranch. It could mean he had moved on or it could mean he was in Durango. No matter. Jeff was away from Jake. That’s all that counted. She shuddered and glanced over her shoulder.

Would Jeff tell his father where Peyton was? She rubbed the back of her wristwatch as if to massage the scar underneath. It had taken years for her to overcome the psychological damage Mason Osborne had done to her. She would never return to Austin. She would rather die than meet Mason again. She didn’t regret running away from him, but she did regret not being there when he discovered she had taken her two-day-old baby and ran with Johanna to Albuquerque where Johanna’s parents lived. He’d caught up with them there, and that’s when she and Johanna decided it was best for them to split up and Johanna had taken Jake with her.

Now she might have to run again. The idea of leaving Durango caused her stomach to churn. She stopped the dangerous thought before it gathered momentum. This time she would stand her ground. If Mason meant her harm, he would have to come to her.

It might be time to cut off all contact with Jake. If she did…well, she wanted to see him one more time before she lost him forever.

****

Peyton barely noticed the bank of clouds hovering over the peaks as she drove west out of Durango. She traveled highway five-fifty into the mountains near Purgatory, through three mountain passes, and into the old mining town of Ouray on the north side of Red Mountain Pass in the Uncompaghre River valley. As she turned off the highway onto a two-lane road that disappeared into the red rock cliffs towering over the river, she could hear the far off splash of a waterfall through her open window. A rain cloud had yet to drop its load onto the earth below. The air pushed heavy against her skin with unspent moisture.

Her hands trembled as she steered her new Hyundai onto the ranch’s drive. A freshly painted sign proclaimed entrance to Twin Rivers Ranch. The track twisted and curved toward the western wall of mountains. After a seemingly endless drive, she pulled up in front of a large two-story building she assumed was the main lodge. Nestled in a stand of trees at the base of a box canyon, it presented an idyllic picture.

Her heart skipped a few beats and then restarted at an alarmingly fast pace. She hadn’t reacted well the first time she saw Jake. How would she handle it this time? Her eyes roamed the property looking for her son. How would she explain her abrupt appearance to Johanna? What if Pierce asked questions?

One fear after another bounced off her rattled brain. She shoved them all aside. Nothing mattered except seeing Jake one more time. Her desperate heart craved it like an undiagnosed diabetic craves sugar.

She entered the building by the main door and stood in the darkened front room trying to adjust to the dim interior. Someone inhaled sharply. She turned to see Johanna on the stairway at the back of the large front lobby. A chandelier decorated with deer antlers shed soft light over Johanna’s shocked countenance. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I…I wanted to…I’m not sure.” She bit her lower lip.

Johanna looked as frightened as she felt. “You’ve come for the boy, haven’t you?”

Where had that come from? She hadn’t given Johanna any hint she planned to take Jake. There was no way Jake could come with her. He was safer with Johanna.

Just as she began to answer, Pierce entered the room. He stopped when their eyes met. She didn’t like the way he seemed to sum her up with one swift examination. He broke the uneasy silence. “Maybe you’d better come into my office.” Johanna turned without a word and walked toward an open doorway. Pierce motioned her to follow. She hesitated, uncertain whether to comply. She didn’t like his brusque manner. His craggy face split into a smile. “It’s all right, Miss Chandler. I don’t bite.”

Once Johanna and Peyton were seated in his office, he reminded them who was in charge. “If you want my help, you’ve got it, but you’ve got to tell me the truth.” She stared at Johanna in alarm. The other woman studied her chipped fingernails. Neither of them spoke. Pierce sat on the edge of his desk. “You do need help, don’t you?” Johanna nodded her head and Peyton gulped back a denial. “All right. First of all, Jake isn’t Johanna’s son or her sister’s, is he?”