Runaround

by Jay Crownover

  I breathed a sigh of relief when he went away. He was too tempting. It was too enticing to give in to every single promise made by his easy smile and glinting eyes. Webb was several years younger than me, a man who was obviously lost and still trying to figure out who he wanted to be when he finally grew up. I was a woman who knew exactly who she was and who she would never be. I was never the type to chase after the bad boys, the wanderers, the reckless. No, I fell for the steadfast, the sturdy, and the solid. I gave my heart to the kind of men who held the world up and buffered everyone around them from the raging storm.

  I handed my heart to the oldest Warner brother, Cyrus, when we were just kids. Coming to terms with the fact the stoic and serious cowboy would never feel about me the way I felt about him had been one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. We shared similar dreams, knowing our lives were so much bigger than the ranches that had our family’s bloodlines entrenched in the soil. We both wanted more than Wyoming, and for a long time, I honestly believed we were on the road out of our tiny town together. It didn’t happen that way. Sure, we both got out in our own time and in our own way, but we both ended up back where we started. Cy was taking his return home in stride. He was far less resentful about his homecoming than I was. In fact, the wedding Webb was dragged out of two short days ago was Cy’s.

  I thought it was going to be hard, damn near impossible, to watch the man I’d openly loved from afar for most of my life promise his forever to someone else. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I envisioned. Mostly because Cy was stupid happy with his fiery city girl. He’d never been that happy with me, before we left or when we both admitted defeat and came back home. He’d never loved anyone like he loved his Leo, so the sting of watching him put a ring on someone else’s finger was minimal.

  I would gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon before admitting to anyone, especially myself, that since the start of the wedding most of my attention had been on Webb instead of the happy couple. To my surprise, my heart didn’t feel nearly as trampled as I thought it would. It was too busy stupidly racing over the man I believed I wouldn’t see again and knew I should keep my distance from.

  The blond man with a penchant for trouble hadn’t stayed gone like I predicted. Nope. He’d shown up right when Cy needed help on the ranch and offered to stick around. Webb claimed he wanted to learn a new skill, seemed he’d taken a shine to the rough way of life in the Wyoming backcountry and wanted to play cowboy for a while. Cy couldn’t say no, and as badly as I wanted to, I couldn’t stay away. I was caught in an endless game of cat and mouse, and some days I wasn’t sure if I was the predator or the prey. I tracked Webb out of the corner of my eye for months. I expected him to up his game and try to lure me to bed, knowing the wedding was going to lower my defenses. Never in a million years would I have predicted he was going to be led away from the festivities in handcuffs. He was a wildcard, as unpredictable as the wind, but I had a hard time wrapping my head around him being a master criminal.

  For one thing, a crime like armed bank robbery took major planning and preparation. Webb was more a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-too-tight-pants kind of guy. For another, the man had been on my heels since returning to the Warner property. I couldn’t shake him loose, no matter how much attitude and disdain I tossed his way. It was impossible he had the time to rob banks all over the damn state and beyond, only to be back in my pocket hours later, flashing that panty-dropping grin of his.

  I wanted to chase after the black SUV. I wanted to scream at the guy snapping the cuffs on him that he had the wrong man. However, in another life, I was a fed. I knew they wouldn’t have picked up Webb if they didn’t have the evidence to back up their actions. Besides, who was I to Webb Bryant? A passing fancy. His current curiosity. I had no grounds to march into the Denver field office and demand anything. Instead, I’d grabbed the older Bryant boy and demand he pass along any information he managed to pull from the agents who took his baby brother. Wyatt was DEA: a different part of the alphabet soup that made up the various branches of law enforcement, but he was more likely to get news on Webb than anyone else.

  I spent a sleepless night and a restless morning waiting for any word. It was noon the following day when Wyatt called and told me Webb was using me as his alibi. He ran down the dates and through the seemingly rock-solid evidence the feds had against Webb. They had his face and his DNA. He’d left a baseball hat behind at one of the banks, a bandana at another. Wyatt could neither explain the identical match to his brother, nor could he answer me when I demanded to know if anyone had collected fingerprints at the crime scenes. Identical twins could share a face, and they had matching DNA, but no one had fingerprints that were exactly the same. Wyatt was too frazzled and concerned for his brother to think clearly. I didn’t have the same problem. Sure, I was concerned about Webb, but I was more pissed about the fact he was obviously being railroaded and set up and no one seemed able to stop it.

  I assured Wyatt I would get my ass to Denver as quickly as possible to verify Webb was with me during one of the robberies where they had him on film. Before I swept into the field office, I stopped by the hotel where we’d crashed on the date of the robbery and asked to see the surveillance footage. When I asked if the feds had already been by, the security guy looked at me like I was crazy and told me no way. The laziness of the investigation into Webb’s involvement really pissed me off and reminded me why I was no longer an FBI agent. They had the evidence. They believed it was Webb. There was no other scenario they could piece together, so they were going to close the file and move onto the next case, even if the man they had in custody was innocent. That narrow, rigid thinking was one of the worst parts of being a federal agent.

  When I walked into the field office, I was full of fire and righteous indignation. There was no way Webb had been in two places at the same time, and I was bound and determined to make someone listen to reason. When I was led into one of the familiar, empty rooms to give my statement, the last person in the world I expected, or wanted, to walk through the door, did.

  Gage Gordon was the Assistant Deputy Director of the Criminal Investigations Division of the FBI. He was my former boss and my ex-fiancé. It’d been almost three full years since I last saw the man, and I honestly hoped I would never have to lay my eyes on him again.

  I sat back in the uncomfortable metal chair and tapped my fingers on the table in front of me. “Did you ask for this case?”

  Gage settled in the seat across from me, his familiar gaze assessing. He was a handsome bastard, in a polished kind of way. He didn’t look much different than the day I’d thrown both my job and his platinum and diamond monstrosity of a ring in his face. When we’d first gotten involved, I couldn’t ever quite get my head around why someone like him was interested in someone like me. I should have listened to those instincts.

  “No. I didn’t ask for it. But when the director asked me to oversee it, I didn’t say no. It’s been a long time, Tennyson. You look good.” A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth, and I wanted to smack the smile off of his face.

  I hated it when he called me Tennyson. I was Ten. Always had been to the people who mattered to me. It should have been the first red flag when Gage refused to abide by my wishes to use the shortened version of my name.

  “He’s innocent, Gage. You've got the wrong man in custody.” I wasn’t about to get pulled into any of the old games I used to let this man play with me.

  Gage leaned back in the chair across from me, calm and certain as can be. “The evidence says otherwise.”

  I rolled my eyes, not bothering to hide my irritation. “Evidence only tells part of the story. You really think Webb just took off his hat in the middle of a robbery and left it behind? He just absently left his DNA? He planned multiple robberies but didn’t bother to try and hide his identity at all, but oh, he didn’t leave any fingerprints? None of that adds up, Gage, and you damn well know it.” I pushed the still from the hotel security camera, complete with a time
stamp on it, across the table in his direction. “Not to mention that he wasn’t lying about being with me at the time of the robbery.”

  In the picture, I was standing next to the tall, handsome, blond man. We were leaning in toward one another, Webb’s head bent down, my chin tilted up as we walked across the lobby of the hotel. It looked intimate. We looked like a couple headed up to the room we shared. There was no way to know Webb had been intently telling me he knew all too well what happened to a young kid on the streets with no one to turn to for help. My heart was breaking for the child the man next to me had been, but there was no denying it was Webb in the picture. There was also no getting around the fact there was clearly something there, hovering between me and the younger man. I knew Gage could see it. I saw the recognition flare in his eyes and his jaw clench. For all the things he was, stupid had never been one of them.

  Gage tapped a finger on the picture in front of him, eyes lifting to mine. “The cop verified he was in Denver at the time of the robbery as well.” He didn’t sound at all happy about that fact.

  I grunted in a very unladylike way and crossed my arms over my chest. “Because he was. I don’t know who was robbing that bank in Wyoming, but it was not Webb Bryant. I can round up at least three more witnesses to corroborate that Webb’s ass was right next to mine in that hotel in Denver.”

  A dark eyebrow winged up and the smile he’d been playing with died. “What happened to your one true love? You couldn’t hightail it back to Warner fast enough when you walked out on me. You decide he was too old and boring for you, as well, so you moved on to a younger cowboy with tighter jeans? Were you looking for someone whom you could boss around? Someone who would let you take charge?”

  I gritted my teeth and counted backward from ten so I didn’t jump across the table and wrap my hands around his throat. He’d always been a condescending prick, but it seemed like he’d grown even more patronizing. Still, he was a good interrogator. He knew exactly what buttons to push to get a reaction.

  “Cy is a happily married man. I’m sure you know that. I wouldn’t put it past you to have sent your boys in during the wedding on purpose. You never could keep your knee-jerk reactions in check.” He’d treated me like a doll, a trophy. He acted like I didn’t have two brain cells to rub together and pretended the only reason I was part of his unit at the agency was because I was blonde and had a nice rack. He never, not once, took into consideration how hard I’d had to work to earn my badge and title.

  “Bryant’s pretty young.” His other eyebrow lifted. “Do you know how extensive his prior criminal record is?”

  I sighed. “He’s not mine, so none of that matters.” But I did know all about his transgressions, and there were times he did feel like mine, but Gage didn’t need to know any of that. Webb never tried to hide who he was or where he’d been. He was technically young, but the man had lived a lot and lived hard in his years. He was no innocent lamb, and despite his glorious, golden good looks, he was obviously no angel.

  Gage leaned forward in the chair, a frown pulling at his mouth. “You seem pretty attached.”

  I threw my head back and lifted my hands to pull at my hair in aggravation. “What I am, is annoyed. You have the wrong guy. Get off your ass and go find the guilty party. I know it’s been a while, but I figure you can’t solve a crime without getting off your ass and doing some . . . I dunno . . . investigating.”

  “I don’t remember you having that mouth on you.” He climbed to his feet and gave me a narrow-eyed look.

  I barked out a sharp laugh. “It was always there, you just never listened.”

  He gave a grunt. “You do realize how unbelievable it would be if this kid has an identical twin he never knew about trying to set him up? Things like that don’t happen in the real world. Even if he gets out, there is a good chance he’s going to end up right back here.”

  We stared at one another locked in a silent battle. I knew Gage was going to cave first. He walked out of the room mumbling something about getting a status update on Webb. I needed to find Wyatt so we could have a chat. I didn’t think for a second that Gage was going to put any effort or resources into tracking down the man with Webb’s face, which meant someone with a vested interest in keeping Webb Bryant out of jail was going to have to do it.

  There wasn’t a question the person who was going to do it was me. I was the best tracker the FBI had ever seen, and against my better judgment, I was very invested in keeping Webb out of trouble.

  Webb

  In a perfect world, the powers that be would simply believe me when I said there was no way the man in the picture was me. They would take my alibi—a cop and a former FBI agent for Christ’s sake—at face value and let me go. Of course, the world was far from perfect, and lady luck didn’t owe me any favors. I ended up cooling my heels in the federal building’s holding center for four days before they let me go. By that time, my brother was fit to be tied and had hired a top-notch lawyer for me. He was the only person they’d let in to see me. I knew from him that both the Denver police woman and Ten had verified my whereabouts on the day of the last robbery. I also knew Wyatt was already doing his best to track down our mom so he could ask about the fact I obviously had a twin she never bothered to tell either one of us about. Having confirmation that an identical twin did indeed exist from the woman who birthed us would go a long way in proving exactly how my face and my DNA ended up in a place where I had never been. I wasn’t holding my breath. My mom was tricky and damn sneaky. She’d bounced in and out of our lives since we were kids, and she’d been pretty much missing in action from the minute Wyatt took responsibility for raising me. She was always on the run from something, so tracking her down was never going to be an easy task.

  The lawyer also mentioned how Ten was trying to find the man who had my face. He told me she was going toe-to-toe with the FBI agent in charge of my case. Apparently, she was making a lot of noise, maintaining it was impossible that I was guilty. Now, that was something that made me breathe a little bit easier. I could still hear her asking what I’d done when I was being led away from the wedding. I could still see the questions in her emerald green eyes, the doubt and the uncertainty. The fact she was here at all, championing my cause, was a miracle. Knowing she was pushing back at her former fiancé on my behalf was something else entirely. It gave me hope. Not necessarily hope my happy ass was going home anytime soon, but there was a small, bright spot in the center of my chest that glowed hot and bright at the thought of Tennyson McKenna not being as indifferent to my considerable charms as she pretended to be. If she cared at all, even in the smallest way, well, that was more than I’d believed possible.

  I wanted to see her. I wanted to see my brother. I wanted out of this damn building so I could figure out what the fuck was going on in my wayward life. There were answers out there, and I needed to go find them. My mom owed me an explanation, and so did the man committing federal crimes and trying to pin them on me. It was obvious the other me had to know I existed. I couldn’t figure out another reason for him to rob banks without trying to hide his identity. His moves were bold as fuck and served a purpose. It was planned. I needed to know how he knew about me when I had no clue he existed until I was taking the fall for him. The longer I spun the information around in my head, the more impatient I became. I’d paced a hundred miles in the small holding room, mind racing, questions building. The FBI had yet to formally charge me with anything, so I was holding out hope someone was going to show up and set me free sooner rather than later.

  I got my wish on the fourth day. I had no clue what time it was since there were no windows or clocks in the small, industrial space. The door opened and my lawyer walked in, followed by the FBI agent who used to be engaged to the woman I couldn’t get off my mind. Truth was, I had no idea what Ten had ever seen in the stuffed shirt. The guy was a total tool. His head was so far up his own ass it was a wonder he hadn’t suffocated yet. He treated me like I was something gross stuc
k to the bottom of his shoe every single time he’d come in to interrogate me, so I’d taken great pleasure in pissing him off every chance I got. I wasn’t intimidated by his badge or title. I was angry and jealous he’d had his hands and mouth on Ten, even if it had been years ago, so I let those feelings guide my responses. I wouldn’t give the asshole the satisfaction of seeing me sweat.

  “You’re getting released within the hour, Mr. Bryant.” My lawyer sounded pleased; the FBI agent looked like he’d been forced to suck on a lemon.

  I lifted an eyebrow and crossed my arms over my chest. “What’s the catch? I gotta wear one of those GPS ankle bands or something?”

  The lawyer grinned. “No. You are free to go. There won’t be charges filed right now. Not until the FBI can figure out a way to explain how you managed to be in two places at once. Without fingerprints to distinguish who was on the surveillance from the bank in Wyoming, there isn’t much they can do. Your brother is here to take you home.”

  The FBI agent with a chip on his shoulder scowled at me. “Don’t do anything impulsive, Bryant. We still have a string of robberies someone is responsible for. We’re not going to stop until someone is locked up and punished for those crimes.” That someone was obviously supposed to be me.