Deserves to Die by Lisa Jackson Page B

that was probably several weeks past its pull date.
    “So where are you?” he asked aloud as he pulled several ziplock bags from his duffel and laid them on the table that sufficed as a desk in the room. From each bag, he pulled out pictures, eight by tens, all in black and white, which had been taken of different-looking women, but whom, he believed, all were one and the same: Anne-Marie Calderone, the object of his search.
    If he was right, and he’d bet his truck that he was on the money, she’d taken a crooked path from New Orleans to Grizzly Falls, Montana.
    She’d become a master of disguise. Each photo was different; her style of dress, her hair color and cut, the shape of her body, whether she wore glasses or not, the curve and thickness of her eyebrows and lips. In one case where he thought she was wearing a short blond wig, she appeared seven months pregnant. In another, her bare leg was exposed by a short skirt and a tattoo was visible on her calf. In still another, her eyes appeared dark, almost black, though through the gray filter it was hard to determine the shade. Makeup accentuated her high cheekbones, or an appliance stuffed beneath her cheeks sometimes stole them from her. Her teeth were never the same, sometimes crooked, sometimes straight, but always longer or wider or with odd, gaze-catching overlaps than usually graced her smile. He found one where she’d placed a mole above her lip, and another where her fingernails were impossibly long, still another where her hair was stringy and dull. There were all kinds of distractions to catch the eye so that the viewer wouldn’t take in the whole picture of her face and be able to say for certain that she was the woman in the first photograph, the one in color, of the real woman.
    Picking up that photo, he studied the details of Anne-Marie’s oval face—straight, aquiline nose dusted with fine freckles, naturally arched eyebrows, wide gold eyes, and full lips that, he remembered, stretched into a sexy and secretive smile. Her teeth were straight, incisors a little longer than the others, and the glint in those incredible eyes had caused more than one male heart to beat a little faster. A natural athlete, her hips were slim, her breasts small, her legs long. She was far more clever than he’d given her credit for. Twice, he’d nearly caught her and just as many times she’d given him the slip.
    “No more,” he vowed as he found his iPad where he’d stored most of his notes on her. The pictures were on the device as well as his phone, but he liked the photographs as they were easier to pocket and pull out when necessary if he came across someone who might have run into her. They were easier to give to the person rather than let anyone handle his phone with all of its stored data.
    Also, it seemed more likely to him that if he were “her brother,” or “her cousin” or “a friend,” all claims he’d made while tracking her down, that he would have an old photo. Bringing out a gallery of different shots stored on a computer file might be off-putting.
    He checked his notes again. Her connection to Grizzly Falls was frail at best. Then again, when it came to the chameleon that was Anne-Marie Calderone, what he knew about her was about as solid as quicksand, the lies soft and shifting, hiding the solid footing of the truth.
    His jaw grew tense at the thought of how she’d duped him.
    All too easily.
    Because he hadn’t been thinking with his head when he was around her.
    He felt the same cold fire burn through him as he gathered up her pictures and stuffed them back into the plastic bags.
    Time to get moving.
    He didn’t know where she was. But he knew where to start looking for her.
    Cade Grayson.
    He shouldn’t be too hard to find. Grayson was an ex-rodeo rider. Hard drinking. Womanizing. Trouble. The kind of man Anne-Marie had found irresistible. So of course, she’d come to seek him out.
    From what Ryder had read in the local newspaper,