скачать книгу бесплатно
Double Play: Ambushed! / High-Caliber Cowboy
B.J. Daniels
Suspense, passion, cowboys and the wide skies of Montana–all the hallmarks of New York Times bestselling author B.J. Daniels combine in this thrilling volume! AMBUSHED! Molly Kilpatrick has kept ahead of the criminals who want to kill her, but her luck is up…until she reads about Jasmine Wolfe. Jasmine has been missing for years, and Molly resembles her enough to assume her identity. She must convince Jasmine's fiancé, Cash McCall, though. One look at the sexy sheriff and she knows it won't be a hardship. But someone wants Jasmine dead, too!HIGH-CALIBER COWBOY As the black sheep, Brandon McCall isn't expected to rescue damsels in distress. But Anna Austin is in trouble, and he's never walked away from a beautiful woman. Anna is determined to find out what happened to her past. And someone wants those secrets to remain buried. Can Brandon protect Anna long enough for her to uncover the truth?
Dear Reader,
USA TODAY bestselling author B.J. Daniels is a master of the romantic suspense genre, with more than fifty books published and numerous awards to her credit. Daniels has lived in Montana since she was five, and her love for the state shines through in many of her most beloved books—including the two favorites showcased here, Ambushed! and High-Caliber Cowboy.
In Ambushed!, Sheriff Cash McCall has spent the past seven years looking for his fiancée, Jasmine Wolfe. When her car is found—with blood inside—not far from his office, the evidence seems to be mounting against him. Then Molly Kilpatrick appears, claiming to be Jasmine, and if Cash can prove that she’s who she says she is, he’ll be of the hook. But Cash has a growing suspicion that Molly isn’t Jasmine, and that whoever she is, she’s running scared from something. Now Cash is fighting on all sides to exonerate himself and protect Molly, both from the past she’s trying to leave behind and the dangerous situation she’s walked into.
The suspense doesn’t let up in High-Caliber Cowboy, featuring Cash’s brother, Brandon. Brandon invites trouble when he decides to work for his family’s archenemy, Mason VanHorn, whose ranch has been hit by a rash of vandalism. Brandon is out to nab the culprit…until he finds out who it is. Suddenly, Brandon is caught between family loyalties, old desires and even older secrets that someone is willing to kill to keep hidden….
Daniels hooks her readers from the very first page with edge-of-your-seat suspense that moves at a breakneck speed. Enjoy the ride!
The Editors,
Harlequin Books
B.J. DANIELS
wrote her first book after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and author of thirty-seven published short stories. That first book, Odd Man Out, received a four-and-a-half-star review from RT Book Reviews and went on to be nominated for Best Intrigue for that year. Since then, she has won numerous awards, including a career achievement award for romantic suspense and many nominations and awards for best book.
Daniels lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and two springer spaniels, Spot and Jem. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards, camps, boats and plays tennis. Daniels is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, Kiss of Death and Romance Writers of America.
To contact her, write to B.J. Daniels,
P.O. Box 1173, Malta, MT 59538 or email her
at bjdaniels@mtintouch.net. Check out her website
at www.bjdaniels.com.
Double Play
Ambushed!
High-Caliber Cowboy
B.J. Daniels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is dedicated to Teagan and Hayden.
Thank you, baby girls, for all the hugs and kisses.
I can’t tell you what the tea parties
with you two mean to me. I love you both dearly.
CONTENTS
AMBUSHED!
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EPILOGUE
HIGH-CALIBER COWBOY
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ambushed!
B.J. Daniels
CHAPTER ONE
Tuesday
Outside Antelope Flats, Montana
THE ABANDONED BARN loomed out of the rain soaked landscape, the roof partially gone, a gaping black hole where the doors had once been.
Sheriff Cash McCall pulled his patrol car up next to Humphrey’s pickup. Through the blurred thumping of the wipers, Cash could see Humphrey Perkins behind the steering wheel, waiting.
Cash cut the engine and listened to the steady drum of the rain on the patrol car roof, not anxious to go inside that barn. Hadn’t he known? Hadn’t he always known?
Steeling himself, he pulled up the hood on his raincoat and stepped out of the patrol car. Humphrey didn’t move, just watched as Cash walked past his pickup toward the barn.
Five minutes ago, Humphrey had called him. “I found something, Cash.” The old farmer had sounded scared, as if wishing someone else was making this call, that someone else had found what had been hidden in the barn. “You know the old Trayton homestead on the north side of the lake?”
Everyone knew the place. The land had been tied up in a family estate for years, the dilapidated house boarded up, the barn falling down. There were No Trespassing signs posted all around the property, but Humphrey owned the land to the north and had always cut through the Trayton place to fish. Seemed that hadn’t changed.
“I noticed one of the barn doors had fallen off,” Humphrey had said on the phone, voice cracking. “I think you’d better come out here and take a look. It looks like there’s a car in there.”
Cash stepped from the rain into the cold darkness of the barn. The shape under the large faded canvas tarp was obviously a car. He could see one of the tires. It was flat.
He stood, listening to the rain falling through the hole in the roof patter on the tarp. Clearly the car had been there for a long time. Years.
Wind lifted one corner of the canvas and he saw the back bumper, the Montana State University parking sticker and part of the license plate, MT 6-431. The wind dropped the tattered edge of the tarp, but Cash had seen enough of the plate to know it was the one a statewide search hadn’t turned up seven years ago.
He’d been praying it wasn’t her car. Not the little red sports car she’d been anxiously waiting to be delivered.
“When I get my car, I’ll take you for a ride,” she’d said, flirting with him from the first time he’d met her.
How many times over the years since she’d disappeared had he heard those words echo in his head? “I’ll take you for a ride.”
He closed his eyes, taking in huge gulps of the rank-smelling barn air. Her car had been within five miles of Antelope Flats all these years? Right under their noses?
The search had centered around Bozeman, where she was last seen. Later, even when it had gone statewide, there wasn’t enough manpower to search every old barn or building. Especially in the remote southeastern part of the state.
He tried to breathe. She’d been almost within sight of town? So close all these years?
Cash opened his eyes, scrubbed at them with the heel of his hand, each breath a labor. He turned away and saw Humphrey’s huge bulk silhouetted in the barn door, the hood of his dark raincoat pulled up, his arms dangling loose at his sides.
“It’s her car, isn’t it?” Humphrey said from the doorway.
Cash didn’t answer, couldn’t. Swallowing back the bile that rose in his throat, he walked through the pouring rain to his patrol car for his camera.
He knew he should call for forensics and the state investigators to come down from Billings. He knew he should wait, do nothing, until they arrived. But he had to know if she was inside that car.
Rain pounded the barn roof and fell through the hole overhead, splattering loudly on top of the covered car as he stepped past Humphrey to aim the camera lens at the scene inside. He took photographs of the car from every angle and the inside of the barn before putting the camera back in the patrol car.
On the way to the barn again, he pulled the pair of latex gloves from his pocket and worked them on his shaking fingers. His nostrils filled with the mildewed odor of the barn as he stepped to one side of the car, picked up the edge of the tarp and pulled.
The heavy canvas slid from the car in a whoosh that echoed through the barn and sent a flock of pigeons flapping out of the rafters, startling him.
The expensive red sports car was discolored, the windows filmed over, too dirty to see inside except for about four inches where the driver’s side window had been lowered.
He stared at the car, his pulse thudding in his ears. It had been summer when she disappeared. She would have had the air-conditioning on. She wouldn’t have put the window down while she was driving. Not with her allergies.
The rain fell harder, drumming on the barn roof as several pigeons returned, wings fluttering overhead.
He walked around the car to the other side. The left front fender was dented and scraped, the headlight broken. He stepped closer, the cop in him determined to do this by the book. Kneeling, he took out the small plastic bag and, using his pocket knife, flaked off a piece of the blue paint that had stuck in the chrome of the headlight.
Straightening, he closed the plastic bag, put the knife and bag in his pocket and carefully tried the driver’s side door.
The door groaned open and he leaned down to look inside. The key was in the ignition, her sorority symbol key chain dangling from it along with the new house key—the key to the house she’d told everyone they would be living in after they were married.
The front seat was empty. He left the door open and tried the back. The rear seat was also empty. The car would have been brand new seven years ago. Which would explain why it was so clean inside.
He started to close the door when he saw something in the crack between the two front seats. He leaned in and picked up a beer cap from the brand she always drank. He started to straighten but noticed something else had fallen in the same space. A matchbook.
Cash held the matchbook up in the dim light. It was from the Dew Drop Inn, a bar in Bozeman, where she’d been attending Montana State University. Inside, three of the matches had been used. He closed the cover and put the matchbook into an evidence bag.
Shutting the back door, he stood for a moment knowing where he had to look next, the one place he’d been dreading.
He moved to the open driver’s side door and reached down beside the front seat for the lever that opened the trunk. He had to grip the top of the door for a moment, steadying himself as he saw the large dark stain on the light-colored carpet floor mat under the steering wheel.
The tarp had kept the inside of the car dry over the years, the inside fairly clean, so he knew the stain on the mat wasn’t from water. He knew dried blood when he saw it. The stain was large. Too large.
