Lucky Shot. B.J. Daniels
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man with thick salt-and-pepper hair. No one had been surprised when he’d thrown his hat in to the ring for the presidency. The Montana rancher was well liked and moderate enough that he had friends on both sides of the aisle.
The senator exited his vehicle and walked down to the water and paced as if waiting impatiently for someone. Max was betting that someone was Sarah Hamilton, the wife who’d only recently come back from the dead. As he watched the senator, he reminded himself that he could be spying on the next president of the United States. That was, if nothing happened to derail the man’s run for the top political seat.
Five minutes later a pickup truck came down the road from the other direction and began to slow to a stop. Max took a photo of the dust trail the truck had left across the canyon and up into the pines of the foothills. It wouldn’t be easy, but maybe he could track down where that pickup had come from—and find Sarah Hamilton’s hideout.
Excited now, he was betting it all on who would climb out of that truck. It had to be the senator’s first wife, the woman who’d left behind six daughters, the youngest twins and only a few months old, to plunge her vehicle into the icy Yellowstone River.
When her body was never found, Buckmaster Hamilton had had her declared dead and had also apparently buried her memory before marrying Angelina Broadwater fifteen years ago. Needless to say, Sarah’s return had caused an uproar even before everyone found out about her memory loss.
There wasn’t a reporter worth his salt who didn’t want her story, which had forced her underground. Even the man she’d been staying with, a rancher named Russell Murdock, refused to say where she was hiding.
As the pickup came to a full stop, Max had his camera ready. Everything about this clandestine meeting in the middle of nowhere told him it was going to be worth the hours he’d spent driving these back roads.
With the telephoto lens, he snapped a shot of the driver behind the wheel, recognizing him as Russell Murdock. Russell, who was about Sarah Johnson Hamilton’s age, had been the one who’d found her. The story was that she’d stumbled out into the road a few miles out of Beartooth in the middle of nowhere with no memory of where she’d been the past twenty-two years.
Max quickly focused on the other side of the truck as the passenger side door opened. A blonde woman in her fifties stepped out and he knew he’d hit pay dirt.
Sarah Johnson Hamilton? The only other photos he’d seen of her were from her high school yearbook and her 1993 driver’s license mug shot. Strangely enough, there were no photos of her from college that he’d been able to find. Obviously, she’d changed in the years since those photographs were taken. But he told himself this had to be her.
He snapped a half dozen pictures of her as she headed down to the creek. The senator looked up, frowning as she approached him. Snap. Snap. Snap. He took several shots of the two of them. Even through the viewfinder he could read their body language and see the tension between them.
Max wondered what it would be like to think that no time had passed, only to return home to find your children all grown and your husband married to someone else.
The woman looked around as if worried that she was being watched. She glanced in his direction. Although dozens of yards away, Max froze. After a moment, she turned back to the man she’d obviously come here to meet.
What had driven her to leave behind her husband, six daughters, money and a huge ranch? That was the question everyone was asking. That, and why had she returned now—right when Hamilton was making a run for the White House with his current wife, Angelina?
The media had jumped on the lovers’ triangle angle. But that was getting old. Everyone was looking for another angle, something more. He wished he could hear what was being said, but they were too far away and talking too softly. He watched them, snapping photos, intrigued by the way they were acting. Not like strangers. They’d known each other too well for that. He could almost feel the chemistry between them. Good or bad, he couldn’t quite tell.
Hamilton might have remarried, but there were definitely some old feelings still between these two. Max could see it even through the viewfinder. He couldn’t wait to get the photos on to his computer so he could get a good look at them. Maybe the tabloids were right, and the current wife, Angelina Broadwater Hamilton, did have something to worry about.
Everyone wanted to know the real story.
Everyone but Max Monroe. Right now he couldn’t care less about why Sarah was back, where she’d been or if she’d end up getting her man back. He was too pleased with himself. If he was right and this woman was indeed Sarah Hamilton, what he had in his camera was money in the bank.
KAT HAMILTON DUCKED into a small café on the main street of Bozeman, Montana. She waited by the door as she watched for the tall, dark man she’d seen following her. Her heart was pounding even though she tried to assure herself it was probably just a reporter. The press had been dogging her and her sisters ever since her mother had turned up and her father had announced he was running for president.
“Would you like a seat or are you waiting for someone?”
Kat jumped at the sound of the waitress’s voice behind her. She turned to see an older woman with a menu and an impatient expression. She shook her head and looked back to the street. The man who’d been following her hadn’t walked by. Had she just imagined that he’d been tailing her?
“No, thank you, I’ve changed my mind,” Kat said and pulled open the door. Stepping outside, she scanned the street. Maybe she was just being paranoid. But all her instincts told her that wasn’t the case.
When she’d spoken with her older sister, Ainsley had also complained that there’d been a man following her. Ainsley had taken a job scouting movie set locations in Montana for film companies. Apparently, Ainsley’s shadow had been tracking her from town to town.
The thought gave Kat the creeps. She did everything possible to blend into her surroundings. The last thing she’d ever wanted was this. Her father’s political career had never been this much of a problem—until it became clear he was looking at the presidency. The fact that he had six daughters he’d raised alone for years before marrying Angelina Broadwater had made the press interested in them.
Kat searched the street. She had decided that if she caught him following her again today, she was going to confront him. The thought terrified her. The last time she’d confronted a man... She pushed the thought away as she had in the years since, telling herself she was stronger now.
Just when she was starting to doubt her own sanity, she spotted him.
There, across Main. He’d been standing in front of the bank, looking in this direction, but when she’d seen him, he’d quickly stepped behind a group of women coming out of the quilt store and had now disappeared around the corner.
She hadn’t imagined it. The man was following her. So why didn’t he try to corner her like all the other reporters who’d gotten in to her face demanding answers? As if she had any answers. She didn’t know any more about her mother than the general public since she’d been eight when her mother had allegedly died. She’d been a difficult child—at least that’s what she’d been told. So her memories of Sarah, as she now thought of her, were clouded.
Kat considered confronting him. There was too much traffic this time of day to get across Main since it was the main highway through town. She waited until there was a break in the traffic and ran across the street, telling herself she would be safe in public, but he was gone. Had she really been ready to confront him? She could feel herself trembling at the thought. For years, she’d told herself she’d put the past behind her, but at moments like this, she knew it was a lie.
More than likely, the man had been following her, hoping she’d get together with her mother. She and three of her sisters had met with their mother when she’d first returned. Since then, she’d talked with Sarah a couple of times on the phone,