BARB HAN lives in north Texas with her very own hero-worthy husband, three beautiful children, a spunky golden retriever/standard poodle mix and too many books in her to-read pile. In her downtime, she plays video games and spends much of her time on or around a basketball court. She loves interacting with readers and is grateful for their support. You can reach her at www.barbhan.com.

MILLS & BOON

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My deepest thanks go to my editor, Allison Lyons, and agent, Jill Marsal. The chance to work with both of you is truly a gift.

There are three people in this world who always inspire me, bring me joy and laughter, and teach me to be the best person I can be. I love you, Brandon (Hook’em Horns), Jacob and Tori.

To my husband, John, because you are the best part of all of it.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

Chapter Seventeen

Extract

Chapter One

Difficult didn’t begin to cover the past year for Dylan Jacobs. Not only had he discovered that he was a father, but he’d learned the mother who’d kept the baby from him was terminally ill. He’d wanted to be angry with her on both counts, but his frustration had died on the vine with every step toward the hospital where she lay losing her grip on life. And once he’d looked into his daughter’s green eyes—a perfect reflection of his—he’d been wrapped around that little girl’s finger.

Falling in love with Maribel had been the easy part. She had rosy cherub cheeks, dark curls for days and a laugh brighter than the Texas sun. Caring for a two-year-old who’d just lost everything known to her, everything comfortable, had been harder than his tour in Afghanistan.

What a difference a year made.

Dylan squatted at the end of the hallway just out of sight, listening intently as the sounds of Maribel’s electric toothbrush hummed, then died. The pitter-patter of her bare feet on bamboo flooring in the hallway came next. She knew the drill, the same ritual they’d performed every morning since she’d come to live with him in Mason Ridge. She’d be on the lookout, ready to find Da-da.

Her giggle was like spring air, breathing life into everything around her. And he’d been on a certain path of destruction before she came into his life.

The tap-tap-tap of her footsteps stopped at the end of the hall. She’d expected to find him by now.

“Da-da.”

He rolled and landed with his back against the floor a few feet away, arms spread open.

She jumped, squealed and clapped all at once. A second later, she launched herself on top of him. “Da-da!”

Thanks to reflexes honed by the US Army, he caught her in time.

“Airplane, Da-da,” she said. Her r came out as a w.

Dylan extended his arms and made her fly. “Mrrrrrr, mrrrrrrr.”

A knock at the back door interrupted their playtime. It was probably for the best. Maribel shouldn’t be late to preschool again. Dylan didn’t think he could stomach another disapproving look from Mrs. Applebee. He might not be the most punctual guy when it came to dropping his daughter off at school, but no one could argue his love for the child. Not even stern-faced, disapproving Applebee. She might run a tight ship, but her heart was pure gold. More important, she loved Maribel.

He set his little girl on her feet next to him. “Daddy needs a favor. Go to your room, put on your shoes and grab your backpack.”

She planted her balled fist on her little hip and argued for a little more time as a plane.

The knock came louder this time. Dylan didn’t like the sense of urgency it carried. “When you get home from school today, I promise. Okay, Bel?”

She pursed her lips and narrowed her gaze.

“And we can have ice cream after,” he threw in to tip the scale in his favor. “You don’t want to miss your field trip to Dinosaur Park.”

“Ho-kay” came out on a sigh. She turned and bolted toward her room. Toddlers had one speed. It was full tilt.

Dylan popped to his feet in one swift motion and crossed to the kitchen, his muscles still warm from his early-morning push-ups. He liked to get his workout in before Maribel opened her eyes. When she was awake, his full attention was on her, had to be on her. Three-year-olds had no sense of danger.

Only a few people used his back door. He saw his friend Rebecca Hughes through the glass and motioned for her to come inside.

“Everything okay with Shane?” Shane was the younger brother she’d recently located who had been abducted at seven years old. Dylan tried not to think about the fact that Shane had been only four years older than his Maribel when he’d been taken from Mason Ridge and the Hughes family all those years ago. Even so, a bolt of anger flashed through him quicker than a lightning rod and with the same explosive effect.

“He’s fine. I’m not here about him.” Didn’t those words leave a creepy-crawly feeling all over Dylan?

“What is it? Something going on with Brody?” She had reunited with her high school sweetheart, who was one of Dylan’s best friends, when the man responsible for kidnapping her and her brother as children had come back for her last month.

She shook her head. “It might not be anything. It’s just that Samantha stopped answering her cell phone four days ago. I have a bad feeling.”

“You call her father?” he asked.

“Store says he’s gone fishing,” she supplied. Samantha’s father owned the only hardware store in town.

“So you want me to look into it?” Since opening the doors to his security consulting firm last year, he’d taken the occasional missing-person case, none of which had involved a friend’s disappearance. He, Rebecca and Samantha had been part of a close-knit group of childhood friends. The group had broken up fifteen years ago when Rebecca and her brother, Shane, had been abducted.

For the past few weeks, everyone in town had been focused on the manhunt for the Mason Ridge Abductor after he’d returned to permanently quiet Rebecca. Her search for her brother had brought her too close to the truth. Thomas Kramer’s grip on the community had lasted fifteen years, but luck had finally smiled on the town and they’d gotten him. He wasn’t in prison, where he belonged, but he’d been killed in a car crash and that was just as good. Either way, he was no longer a threat.

Dylan thought about his word choice. Luck? There was a reason he didn’t have a rabbit’s foot tucked in his pocket. Hard work was reliable. Luck was for ladies in Vegas at the slot machines. Luck was for people who believed in things they couldn’t see. Luck was for pie-in-the-sky dreamers. Dylan was far too practical to fall into that trap. People created their own luck.

With a state-of-the-art computer, a strong network of contacts and skills honed through the military, Dylan didn’t have to rely on chance to help his clients.

Even so, he couldn’t shake the bad feeling he had about Rebecca’s visit.

Maribel bounded into the room, ran straight for Rebecca and wrapped tiny arms around her knees. “Auntie Becca!”

“Hey, baby girl.” Rebecca bent down to eye level and then kissed Maribel on the forehead.

The two had become fast friends. A tug Dylan didn’t want to acknowledge stirred his heart. Rebecca was fantastic, don’t get him wrong, but he suspected the bond had happened so quickly in part because Maribel missed her mother. He kept Lyndsey’s picture on Maribel’s nightstand. Maribel kissed the photograph every night before bed and then said good-night to her mother in heaven. It was important that Maribel knew just how much her mother had loved her. Even more important to Dylan was that Maribel knew her mother had wanted her.

On some level, he understood why Lyndsey had kept his daughter from him. He’d been partly to blame, having declared long ago that he never wanted kids or marriage. How many times had he told Lyndsey that parenthood was about the cruelest thing a person could do to a child? Too many.

His wild-child ways hadn’t helped any. He had no right to hold on to anger when it came to Lyndsey’s decision. She’d been trying to protect her baby.

Dylan never took for granted how very blessed he’d been from the day that little girl had come into his life. His only regret was that he hadn’t known sooner, that Lyndsey hadn’t realized how much being present in his child’s life would mean to him. Had he been that much of a jerk?

The short answer? Yes.

He had to have been. Lyndsey would’ve trusted him otherwise. He couldn’t blame her, either. How many times when they’d lain in bed in the mornings had he said their life was perfect the way it was? Dozens? Hundreds? He’d been so adamant that he’d almost convinced himself, too.

Down deep, he’d wanted a family of his own but he’d never have been able to admit that to himself. He’d always figured that he’d jack it up. History repeating itself and all that. Except the one thing Dylan knew above all was that he was nothing like his parents. He’d gone to great lengths to ensure it.

And yet he couldn’t help but think he’d failed Lyndsey. Because of his stubborn streak, she’d gone through her pregnancy alone. Then she’d had a baby by herself. To top it off, she’d spent the first two years of Maribel’s life without any help from him.

He could give himself the cop-out all day long that he’d have done better by Lyndsey if he’d known. Still didn’t ease the sting of feeling as if he’d let her down in the worst possible way when she needed him. And then, before he could make any of it right, she’d died.

At least she hadn’t done that alone—he’d made certain. He’d maintained a bedside vigil during her last days. She’d been in a coma and couldn’t speak. The only thing she could do was squeeze his hand when he apologized for letting her down.

Dylan sighed sharply. Those memories had been packed away and stowed deep. So why were they resurfacing?

And how ridiculous did his point of view seem to him now? His life wouldn’t be complete without that little rug rat. Maturity was on his side. But he never would have turned Maribel away. Lyndsey couldn’t have known. She’d believed the wilder side of Dylan.

He turned to Rebecca. “I need to run Maribel to school and then I’ll make a few calls. You want to stick around and wait? Coffee’s fresh.”

“I wish I could stay. We’ve got a colt that’s in trouble and Brody has his hands full. I better get back and help with the other horses.” She’d moved in with Brody after rekindling their romance, and they’d be announcing a wedding date any day now. Together they made a great team running his horse rehabilitation center, and the work looked to agree with her. Or maybe it was just the fact that she’d found someone who could make her happy.

Dylan had more pressing matters to think about than the complications having another female in his life would bring. His three-foot-tall angel kept him on the brink of exhaustion.

“I can take Maribel to school if you want. It’s on my way home,” she offered.

Dylan figured that was Rebecca’s way of saying she hoped he’d get started looking for Samantha right away.

Maribel was already jumping up and down, clapping her hands.

He nodded to Rebecca, even though he’d miss being the one to take his little girl to school. His part-time nanny, Ms. Anderson, usually picked up Maribel in the afternoons. She cooked suppers and stayed as long as Dylan needed her around. Said she enjoyed keeping busy after being widowed at the young age of sixty. When he’d hired her, she’d volunteered to come in first thing in the mornings, too, but Dylan had refused. He couldn’t give up being the one to wake Maribel. His daughter might’ve come out of nowhere a year ago, but she was here to stay, in his home and in his heart. Dylan couldn’t imagine his life any other way.

Between Ms. Anderson, Mrs. Applebee and Maribel, Dylan had plenty of estrogen in his life.

Having his own business allowed him to work from home a lot of the time and set his own schedule for the most part. But there were occasions when he had to be away overnight. He appreciated Ms. Anderson’s flexibility.

“I’ll call the headmaster and give up my volunteer spot on the field trip.”

“I’d hate for you to do that,” Rebecca said.

“I have a few other things to do today anyway. And I’m pretty sure Applebee could use a break from me. There’s a wait list for these trips. This’ll give another parent a shot.”

Maribel frowned.

“Hey, I worked the past two. It’s good to share with the other parents so they can spend the day with their kids.” He took a knee. “Give Daddy big hugs.”

Maribel hesitated, then ran to him and he caught her as she tripped on her last step, scooping her into his arms, kissing her forehead.

With any luck, he’d be done in time to tuck his precious little girl into bed. Losing her mother had not been easy on her last year, and part of the reason he desperately wanted to make his security consulting enterprise work was so that he could be around and she could grow up surrounded by people who loved her. Dylan couldn’t bring back her mother, but he’d vowed their Bel would always know she’d been wanted and loved. Unlike Dylan, whose parents had dumped him with his grandmother at six months old because the responsibility of caring for a baby had proved too much for the free-spirited hipsters. They’d split up a year later and had rarely visited. No birthday cards. No high school graduation appearance. No showing at his daughter’s christening.

Dylan’s child would never know that brand of rejection.

She turned toward Rebecca and launched herself again.

“Hold on there.” He caught her under her arms and pulled her back toward him. He helped secure her backpack before another round of hugs came.

Maribel stopped at the door and turned, smiling, one hand holding on to Auntie Becca’s, the other waving back at him. “Bye-bye, Da-da!”

“Have a good day at school. Learn everything you can.”

“So I can be smarter than you,” she squealed. Those adorable r’s rolling out like w’s. The pediatrician had assured him she’d sort it out in the next year or so. He knew he should work harder on pronunciation with her but it was so darn cute the way she said her words. Because he’d missed out on the first two years of her life, a selfish part of him didn’t want her growing up any faster than she had to.

“That’s right.” Dylan watched Rebecca buckle Maribel into the spare car seat she’d pulled from her trunk. He stood at the window until the blue sedan disappeared down the drive.

His laptop was already booted up, so he snagged another cup of coffee and seated himself at the breakfast bar. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Maribel needed a female influence in her life even if he couldn’t imagine having time to find one. Relationships were complicated. They required communication and commitment. The only thing Dylan was devoted to at the moment was finishing his cup of coffee.

When he put his full attention to the case, it took about an hour of digging to find that Samantha had withdrawn five thousand dollars in cash from her bank four days ago. The withdrawal was timed perfectly to her disappearance. His trouble radar jumped up a few notches. She might’ve been forced to pull out the money, murdered and then dumped somewhere. No. Forget it. He couldn’t allow himself to believe she’d been killed and that he’d be looking for a body. There were other possibilities. Maybe she’d decided to pack up and take a vacation. Everyone was burned out from recent events.

A quick call to her employer shot down that prospect. Samantha hadn’t been to work in a week.

The probability foul play wasn’t involved shrank by the nanosecond.

Dylan scanned online news outlets for crimes with unidentified females on the date she withdrew money.

He came up short and sighed with relief.

There were dozens of hospitals in Dallas, even more counting the suburbs. He narrowed his search down to a five-mile radius of where she lived and worked. The number shrank to five. He called each one looking for a Jane Doe, relieved when he didn’t find her.

Next he reached out to the city morgue, which was not a call he wanted to make.

Relief flooded him at receiving the word that no Jane Does had been received in the past week.

Having exhausted obvious answers, he had to consider other possibilities. The first one that popped into his mind said she could be on the run. But from what?

This was Samantha he was thinking about. Nothing in her background suggested she had criminal inclinations. He’d known her personally for more than half his life. Wouldn’t there have been signs along the way? Lies told here and there?

Of course, the tight-knit group of twelve-year-olds had disbanded after Shane’s disappearance, but they’d all gone to the same high school, traveled in loosely the same circles. Didn’t he know her?

She came from a large middle-class family, the youngest of four kids. Her dad had been in sales, so she’d moved around most of her young life. He’d cashed out their life savings and rented space on the town square to open a hardware store after her mother had died. Samantha had settled in Mason Ridge in fifth grade, just a year before the tragedy. She’d been a good student. She’d played volleyball at Mason Ridge High School well enough to earn a scholarship to a small university in Arkansas. And that had been when he’d lost touch with her.

Her brothers had spread out, going to different colleges and then settling in separate cities. Last Dylan had heard, they had families of their own. The trouble came with her mom’s side. Several uncles had rap sheets longer than the menu at Chili’s. But Samantha never spoke about them, and Dylan figured the family had cut ties long ago.

He tried her cell. The call went straight to voice mail.

The idea one of her distant relatives could’ve gotten her into trouble didn’t sit well. No way would she get involved with them.

Dylan made a phone call to a technical-guru friend he’d used from time to time to hack into databases and phones. If a device had a firewall, Jorge could sneak past it unseen and get out with the same ability. He was the freakin’ Houdini of hackers.

Jorge picked up on the second ring. Not surprising for a man who was at his computer 24/7. “What can I do you for?”

“I got a missing person. Need to find out who she was speaking to in the days surrounding her disappearance.”

“Give me the details.” His voice was all business.

Dylan relayed information like her phone number slowly into the receiver.

Jorge repeated the digits.

Dylan confirmed.

“Got it. Hold on a sec.” The sound of fingers tapping across a keyboard came through the line.

“I can’t get a location for you, but I can see who she’s been talking to. I see your number on here. You have a relationship with this girl?” Jorge asked.

“She’s a friend.”

“I heard about all that mess going on in your neck of the woods. Glad they caught the dude. Gives a whole new meaning to being burned, though.” His jokes were crass but Dylan got it. While women sat down with glasses of wine and talked about emotions until they felt better, men joked. Dylan wasn’t arguing one style over the other. It was just a guy’s way of trying to get his arms around the stuff he didn’t have a good handle on. “I’ll send you an email with a list of the numbers, but there’s something weird. She received several calls from a burn phone in the days prior to her vanishing act.”

“None after?” Why would someone call her using a pay-as-you-go phone? Dylan didn’t like any of this news. It took him down the path he didn’t want to be true.

“Nope.”

“What’s the number?” Dylan searched for a pen and paper.

“I’ll send it in the report. Won’t do you any good calling it, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“The line’s been disabled.”

“Which means you can’t trace it?”

“Nope. Did your friend get herself into some kind of trouble?”

“Looks like it,” Dylan said. Several more scenarios ran through his mind. None he liked. He thanked Jorge and closed the call.

Dylan spent the rest of the morning tracking down Samantha’s landlord in Dallas, who agreed to check out her place. Her car was gone from the parking garage of her condo. A few drawers had been left open in her bedroom, and her bathroom counter was empty. Experience had taught Dylan that women didn’t go anywhere without their makeup bags.

Mail sat on the counter untouched. Other than a few necessary supplies, very little was missing from her condo. When she’d decided to take off, she hadn’t brought much with her. A quick escape suggested someone on the run, just as he feared she might be. But again the question came up. Running from what? Or whom?

Was she dating someone? Dylan should’ve asked that question first. A woman’s biggest threat in life was a man close to her—a boyfriend or spouse. Dylan’s fists curled and released at the thought of any man hurting a woman. The notion hit him even harder now that he had a daughter. Let any guy try to hurt his Bel...

Anger roared through him like buckshot, exploding in every direction. He didn’t need to go there about his child. Samantha deserved his focus.

The next trick would be to locate her. He kept his hunt inside Texas, figuring she’d stick with what she knew. Austin was her favorite city, or at least it used to be. He’d lost touch with her after high school. Taking a chance on his hunch, he decided to start his search in the live-music capital of the world, guessing she’d go somewhere familiar.

Once he narrowed the hunt there, finding her would be easy. Apartments had managers who followed rules, so an offer of cash to pay up a few months’ rent would draw too much unwanted attention. She would most likely rent a house something near campus, so she could easily get around by throwing on a hoodie and shorts to blend in with students.

A quick internet search revealed there were 387 houses for rent in the city of Austin. Twenty-three when narrowed down to places on or near campus. Dylan put his resources to work finding out which ones had been pulled from the market the day Samantha disappeared. Two. With a fifty-fifty chance of success, Dylan gambled on the house nearest campus and checked the tenant. No dice. The place had been rented by four people. He hit the jackpot on the second.

He made a quick call to Ms. Anderson to let her know he had to leave town, and then located his duffel. The hope of being home by Maribel’s bedtime fizzled as he stuffed a pair of jeans in the bag. He packed a sandwich to eat on the drive—roughly four hours one way, depending on traffic on I-35—left a note for Ms. Anderson to read Goodnight Moon to his daughter after tucking her into bed and locked the door behind him.

* * *

DYLAN LEANED AGAINST a tree six houses down from Samantha’s. He’d driven his small sedan rather than his SUV in order to better navigate Austin traffic. Based on his research, a UT shuttle should be passing by in ten minutes to pick up college kids and deliver them to campus. With others hanging around waiting on transportation, he had a better chance of going unnoticed. With his six-foot-two-inch muscular frame, he looked as if he should be in athletic housing. Camo pants and the burned-orange UT shirt he’d bought at the gas station on the way into town should help camouflage him. Duffel slung over his shoulder, he did his best to blend in.

If Samantha was in trouble or being held hostage, he didn’t want to tip off her captor. He had to consider the possibility that she wasn’t acting on her own free will. Dylan planned to take nothing for granted.

His pulse kicked up a notch when she came into view, walking toward the front door of her rental alone. With a long and lean body like hers, she could easily be confused for a student athlete. Her high school years spent playing volleyball had paid off, especially with those legs.

He slipped on eyeglasses specially fitted with binocular lenses. Her smoky-brown hair cut in long shiny layers with bangs that skimmed along her brows brought out a deeply erotic shade of wide-set almond-shaped blue eyes. They stood out against her oval face. Samantha had always been beautiful. At least that much had stayed the same. She’d been smart, too. Her beauty had caught his attention. Her sharp wit and sense of humor had kept it. He hoped that she hadn’t gone and done something stupid. Surely someone back home would’ve noticed if she’d changed.

Sometimes good girls were drawn to men who were bad for them. So far, there was no sign of a boyfriend. Good. He told himself it would be easier to help her with fewer people involved, and he didn’t like the idea she’d be on the run with a man.

She glanced around, looking more nervous than afraid. Her long fluid layers of brown hair framed an almost too beautiful face and highlighted a graceful, swan-like neck.

Ignoring the rapid increase in his heartbeat at seeing her, he bowed his head and focused on the newspaper he held, pretending to be studying it as he kept her in his peripheral.

She unlocked the door, glanced left to right once more and then slipped inside.

Paranoid?

Dylan had half a mind to stomp over and demand to know what was going on. That would be a mistake. The simple fact was that he didn’t know what he’d be walking into and didn’t want to tip his hand. He slipped off the glasses and then slid them inside his duffel as the shuttle arrived. The crowd around him thinned, forming a line to get on the bus. He stood back, allowing others to crowd in front of him.

At the last second, he spun around, ducked his head and made a beeline toward her place. Moving around the side of the house, he crouched below the windows, careful to avoid being cut by overgrown holly bushes lining his path. He walked the perimeter, peeking inside windows through cracks in the closed blinds. From what he could tell so far, she was alone.

The back door was locked. It took all of three seconds to change that with his bump key. He slowly opened the door, moved inside the kitchen and listened. He already knew the layout of the house. Using the Department of Defense satellite, he’d homed in on the address and taken pictures of everything inside and out, to the level of detail of her furniture arrangement. Memorizing every inch of the space, every crevice, was a habit formed during his military days. There were two bedrooms and a kitchen in back, all of which had doors that led to a dining room. The master bedroom was off the living room. The place was set up like a maze.

Telltale clicks on a keyboard said she was on her laptop. The dining room was set up as a study room with tables pushed against the walls instead of a table and chairs.

Not risking chance, Dylan palmed his Glock, using it to lead the way.

“What are you doing here, Samantha?” He lowered his weapon when he was sure the place was clear.

Samantha jumped to her feet, the shock of seeing him evident on her face. It took her a moment before she was able to answer. “Me? I could ask you the same thing, Dylan.” The accusation in Samantha’s voice fired at him as though he stood in front of an execution squad. A mix of panic and fear crossed her features as she sat ramrod straight. Her gaze froze on his gun.

Her fearful expression tugged at his heart.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He surveyed the area. “Is there anyone else here?”

“Not that I know of.” Her gaze darted to the front door and then back.

“What does that mean?”

“Did anyone follow you?” The suspicion in her eyes hit him harder than a shot of tequila for breakfast, with a similar burn in his chest.

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