B.J. Daniels - Double Play - Ambushed! / High-Caliber Cowboy

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

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

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.

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

B.J. Daniels

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.