Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade (Criminal Mischief Book 1) Read Free

know what name I planned to use either. I reached for one of the many I’d used before, “I’m Amanda Forster.”
    “And what were you doing out on the highway at this hour?”
    Ducking my head, I forced a blush. “It is terribly embarrassing, but my husband and I had an awful row. I didn’t think he would actually stop the car when I told him to.” It occurred to me I was not wearing a wedding band, and before he asked, he needed to know I had no identification. I clasped my empty ring fingers, saying, “I was so mad, I threw all my jewelry at him, then I threw my passport and driver’s license. I just threw it all at his face and told him to go. Wasn’t that silly?”
    Yes, ma’am, that was a little …” he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Then something else occurred to him. “How were you going to pay for a cab?”
    “Well, I’m not foolish,” I smiled to pull him in. “I didn’t throw my cash at him,” and we laughed together.
    “Where are you from?”
    “Tanzania.”
    He furrowed his brows. “Transylvania?”
    “Oh, deputy,” I giggled, “you are so funny.”
    He seemed pleased, then confused, and he asked again, “Where are you from?”
    “Tanzania.”
    “Really?”
    I could see he’d never heard of it. “It’s right next to Mozambique.”
    But that didn’t seem to clarify much either. He asked, “What language do they speak … there?”
    “Swahili.”
    One eye opened a little wider. “Say something for me in … that language. What is it again?”
    “Swahili,” I smiled. Then holding his eyes, I purred out the words, “Orrysay orfay omorrowtay.”
    “Isn’t that something?” He shook his head with wonder, then picked up the phone. I listened as he woke up the owner of a nearby cab company, explaining there was a woman in great need. The cab owner wouldn’t drive to Shelbyville but if the deputy would bring me the thirty miles to his business, he’d get me to the Nashville airport.
    I implored, “Oh, please do.”
    And the deputy smiled, “I can tell you haven’t been in the South very long. We are known for our hospitality.” Then as he was leading me out of the station to his car, he requested, “Say something in Swahili again for the boys.”
    And I called over my shoulder to the other deputies, “It’say eenbay unfay!”
     
    ~~~~~~
     
    My night with the police had not ended there. The cab broke down on the way to the airport, and I was transported to the Smyrna police station to play the same game a second time. But no one was too concerned with what had happened in Smyrna. The report listing me as a runaway was filed with the Shelbyville police, and it was the local police that dropped my picture on the desk of the sheriff’s deputy. He went pale and tried to cover my smiling face. He started shouting at the officer, but she had already seen his guilt. She demanded he speak, that he tell her what he knew, but he shouted louder, forcing her into the hall before slamming the door.
    The sheriff was called.
    It took an hour to reason with the deputy behind closed doors. When they finally emerged, both looked weak with disbelief, but there was no getting around it, they had to confess what had been done.
    When my father showed up, the deputy insisted, “But she spoke Swahili. I know it was a foreign language.”
    “Pig Latin,” my father told them. “She speaks fluent Pig Latin.”
    They tracked me to the Smyrna Police Department, and then to another cab company. I was last seen at the Nashville Airport, but no one guessed I was already in Dallas.

Dallas
     
    Sometimes I think there is something slightly wrong with me, and not in the way most people suspect. I lack a proper sense of fear. I’m hard to scare but easy to startle, and I’m not entirely fearless. For instance, I want no part of bungee jumping, skydiving, or any other high-altitude scare; but things on the ground have to get pretty extreme for my heart rate to change. I have a difficult time