Lost Rodeo Memories

With a stalker in the shadows...

She needs a protector at her side.

After Melanie Graham awakens in the woods injured and with no memory of what happened, she quickly learns someone wants her dead. Now she must rely on deputy sheriff Luke Baxter to protect her. But while there’s a spark between Melanie and the handsome veteran, they can’t afford a distraction...because if Luke doesn’t stop the mystery assailant soon, it may be too late.

JENNA NIGHT comes from a family of Southern-born natural storytellers. Her parents were avid readers and the house was always filled with books. No wonder she grew up wanting to tell her own stories. She’s lived on both coasts, but currently resides in the Inland Northwest, where she’s astonished by the occasional glimpse of a moose, a herd of elk or a soaring eagle.

Also By Jenna Night

Last Stand Ranch

High Desert Hideaway

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Lost Rodeo Memories

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Lost Rodeo Memories

Jenna Night

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09692-8

LOST RODEO MEMORIES

© 2019 Virginia Niten

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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“Come on!” Luke grabbed Melanie’s arm and pulled her toward the trees on the side of the road where they could hide out of view.

“Maybe it’s someone who will help us!” she said excitedly.

“Maybe,” he said. Or maybe it was the shooter. Or an accomplice of the shooter. They had no proof that the assailant was acting alone.

Headlights rounded a twist in the road, washing Luke’s disabled truck in light, and then the vehicle stopped. It stayed on the road, engine idling.

After a few seconds it crept forward a little. And in the wash of the illumination from the headlights, the front of the rig became visible.

Beside him, he heard Melanie draw in a sharp breath.

“That truck looks familiar,” she whispered.

It looked familiar to Luke, too. He readied his gun, flicking off the safety, just in case. Then he pointed his flashlight toward the windshield of the truck and turned it on.

Dear Reader,

A new start in life can be a tricky thing.

Maybe it’s something you wanted and you’re excited, but also nervous.

Or maybe it’s something you never saw coming and you certainly didn’t ask for it.

Either way they’re an inevitable part of life.

Both Melanie and Luke were faced with changes in their lives, which meant they had to navigate unforeseen twists and turns in their paths. And then, to add to their stress, someone tried to kill Melanie! It’s amazing to me how often trouble shows up in bunches. When that happens to me, I try to handle the situation the way Melanie and Luke did. I try to take care of the practical challenges as best I can. And for the rest, I press on in faith.

I enjoy connecting with my readers. You can find me at my website, jennanight.com, on my Jenna Night Facebook page or you can follow me on Twitter, @night_jenna. My email address is Jenna@JennaNight.com. I’d love to hear from you. And I hope the new starts in your life lead you to greater faith, peace and love.

Jenna Night

But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil.

—2 Thessalonians 3:3

To my mom, Esther.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Introduction

Dear Reader

Bible Verse

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

ONE

“She’s alive!”

Melanie Graham wasn’t sure if she just heard someone yell something, or if she’d been asleep and dreaming. Feeling groggy, she lifted her heavy eyelids and found herself gazing at a dark night sky, dotted with spiky silver stars. Her view was silhouetted with pine-tree branches high overhead that shifted back and forth in the cool, swirling breeze.

That was odd.

When she’d gone to sleep last night, it was in a bed in a hotel room. Her lodgings were across the street from the Community Attractions Arena in Leopold, Wyoming. After three hectic days the Wild Ride Rodeo had come to an end. She’d carefully packaged up all the jewelry she had left in the sales booth she’d rented in the merchandise-and-concessions area—and there wasn’t much left over, as sales had been good—and then she’d gone to her hotel to relax and get a good night’s sleep. She distinctly remembered setting her alarm so she could wake up early and start the four-hundred-mile drive back home to Bowen, Idaho, just as the sun came up. So what was she doing lying on the ground?

“Ma’am, are you Melanie Graham?”

She shifted her gaze to look at the young man kneeling on the ground beside her. He was holding a flashlight and wearing a jacket with the words Event Security written across the front in big silvery reflective letters.

Apparently he’d been talking since she’d first opened her eyes, but his words hadn’t registered. The sound of them was like hearing someone speak on TV, in another room, when she wasn’t watching the program. It felt like what he was saying had nothing to do with her.

Except, maybe it did. Whatever was happening right now wasn’t a dream. It was real.

A jolt of terror shot through her chest, and she sat up, screaming and trying to crawl backward, away from the man, even though she wasn’t sure why. The sudden movement made her head spin, throwing off her balance until she found herself pathetically crawling on her side, tearing her hands on exposed rock and pine cones and tree roots, but she didn’t care. From deep inside something screamed at her that she had to get away.

A second man stepped through the trees, into the small clearing. He was bigger than the event security guy. He, too, carried a flashlight. When he got closer, she could see the light shining on a badge, and that he wore the uniform of a Miles County, Idaho, deputy sheriff. The county where her home was located. It was one more thing that didn’t make sense.

Confusion made her head pound. And then she realized something else was making her head pound. It actually felt sore.

“Confirm, we’ve found Melanie Graham,” the deputy said in a deep voice into his collar mic. “Get emergency medical services moving toward my location.”

At the same time Melanie reached up to touch her sore, aching head. Her hair felt damp. Even before she looked at her fingertips in the glow of the two flashlights, she knew by the coppery scent that she’d touched blood.

What had happened to her?

Her body began to tremble. Her head started to spin even faster. She couldn’t catch her breath.

“Melanie.” She heard the deputy say her name, but she couldn’t stop staring at the blood on her fingers. Couldn’t stop trying to peer past the shrouded memories in her mind and figure it out. How did she get here?

“Melanie.” The deputy’s deep voice was louder now and it broke through her trance. She turned to him. He crouched beside her. Dark hair, dark eyes, the expression on his face focused and thoughtful, yet compassionate at the same time. “You’re safe,” he said.

Safe from what?

“I’m Lieutenant Luke Baxter,” he said. “I’m a deputy sheriff.” He reached out his hand, but didn’t actually touch her. He waited for her to make the first move.

Finally she took his hand. “What happened?” she asked, struggling to sit up.

“Wait,” he cautioned, while holding up his other hand in a staying gesture. “It would be better for you to wait until the medic checks you out before you start moving around too much.”

“What happened to me?” she repeated.

He lifted an eyebrow. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I don’t even know where I am.” Her voice caught and she could hear a sob rising up in her throat. She’d never felt so lost in her life.

The deputy squeezed her hand a little tighter. His touch, along with the feeling of calm and strength emanating from him, made her feel a little less panicked. “You’ve obviously sustained a substantial blow to your head,” he said. “That can leave anybody addled. We’ll get you to a doctor as soon as we can.”

She heard tree branches snapping, boots stomping on hard-packed dirt, and people talking, and then an emergency medical crew stepped through the trees and into the clearing.

“What’s the last thing you can remember?” the deputy asked.

Melanie got the impression he was in more of a hurry now. That he wanted to get all of the information he could from her before the paramedics transported her to the hospital.

She tried hard to think back, but the last thing she could remember was being in the hotel in Wyoming. A flare of panic threatened to push the sobs she’d been swallowing back up to the surface again. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She squeezed the deputy’s hand a little harder, because right now he seemed like the only certain thing in her life. The only anchor she could hold on to.

Which was crazy, because she’d only just met the man. But she didn’t want to face any more strangers right now. Didn’t want to feel any more bewildered and overwhelmed than she already did.

“Oh, dear Lord,” she began to pray softly, uncertain what she would say next. And immediately the thought came to her. I will be with you always.

She was never alone, even if she felt alone. How many times had she reminded herself of that over the last couple of years, as she’d pieced her life back together? Lots of times. Her lungs were tight with fear, but she managed to take a deep breath and blow it out. She loosened her grip on the deputy’s hand without actually letting go of him and answered the paramedic’s questions as best she could.

During pauses in her conversation with the medic, Melanie spoke to the deputy. “The last thing I remember is going to sleep in my hotel room in Wyoming.”

By his long silence she could guess he was trying to decide what he should say to her.

“I realize I must be back home in Miles County,” she said.

“Where do you live?”

“In Bowen.” The biggest city in the county. Which didn’t mean it actually was a big city. Some people probably wouldn’t call it a city at all.

They were interrupted while one of the medics talked to her, shined a pen light in her eyes several times and felt around for any apparent broken bones. Her head still pounded, but at least the dizziness had subsided.

“You aren’t far from town,” Luke said while the medic called in to the county hospital’s emergency room, with an update on Melanie and a request for further directions. “You’re in the woods just south of the county fairgrounds.”

“Oh, that’s a weird coincidence,” she said. “I’m going to have a booth there, where I’ll sell my jewelry during the rodeo in a couple of weeks.”

“Tonight was the last night,” Luke said.

“Of the rodeo? How can that be? It’s two weeks in the future.”

“It ran this past week, as scheduled.”

So she’d lost two weeks of her life? That wasn’t possible. Panic started to raise its ugly head again. She could feel her heartbeat speeding up. Her face getting warmer.

“How did you know to come out here, into the woods, looking for me?” she asked, not certain she wanted to hear the answer.

Once again he took his time in answering. Probably concerned any information he gave her might traumatize her even more.

“Please tell me,” she said as calmly as she could. “I have a pretty vivid imagination. And sometimes that isn’t a good thing.”

He tilted his head slightly. “You had an assistant working your booth with you.”

“I always do that. So I can take a break without having to lock everything up.” And then a terrible thought crossed her mind. “Peter Altman. Is he all right?” She held her breath while waiting for the answer.

Melanie rented space to sell her handmade jewelry, as well as antiques and small pieces of restored furniture, in The Mercantile, downtown. Peter was a year out of high school, looking to work as many hours as he could to save money for college. The owner of The Mercantile had recommended Peter, and it had worked out great.

Luke nodded. “The rodeo was over. Many of the vendors had already cleared out. You’d packed up your inventory and were ready to leave when you gave Peter permission to grab something to eat.”

“A lot of the food sellers will give away leftover cooked food rather than throw it in the trash, when they’re closing up.” Melanie was trying to picture what Luke was telling her. And trying to guess what he would say happened next. Maybe even remember what happened next. But she couldn’t.

“Peter was surprised when he came back and you weren’t in your truck, waiting for him. And worried. He tried to call you on your phone, but you didn’t answer. Then he started literally calling out for you, all around the exhibition hall, where you’d been located, and then outside.

“He got event security out searching for you. And then one of the searchers heard gunshots from this direction. Several people called in, reporting they’d heard gunfire, and I got here as quickly as I could.”

Melanie stared at him, trying to take in everything he was telling her. None of it seemed the slightest bit familiar. Moving slowly and feeling a little bit queasy, she once again reached her hand up to her head. “Have I been shot?”

Luke looked to the medic who’d been taking her initial assessment.

“Melanie, we need to roll you onto this backboard,” the medic said in response. “Once we get you checked out at the hospital, we’ll have all the facts.”

“I can probably walk,” she said.

“No, we don’t want you to do that,” he responded. “We don’t want you walking until we know the extent of your injuries.”

She turned to Luke as he slowly let go of her hand. “I need to get to work on finding out exactly what happened to you,” he said. “But first I have to ask, do you have any enemies? Anyone you think could have done this?”

“No.”

“Has anyone ever threatened to harm you? Kill you?”

“No.”

His questions seemed ridiculous. But then the seriousness of his line of reasoning began to sink in. Was it really possible someone had wanted to kill her? Why?

And if so she had no idea who that person might be. Which meant they could walk right up to her and try to kill her again. And the next time she might not be able to get away.

* * *

“Is this all you have for security footage of the parking lot?” Luke asked impatiently. “It’s not much help.”

“That’s all there is, Lieutenant.” Don Chastain, the chief of event security for the fairgrounds, rubbed his hand over the sprinkling of gray stubble on his chin. They were standing in his office.

“Luke, you’ve responded to calls here before,” Don added. “You know our biggest problem is geniuses trying to break into the exhibition halls or the main office, in the middle of the night, because they apparently think we store chests full of gold in there.” He shook his head. “Normally we just deal with your garden-variety foolishness. And drunk and disorderly, of course. We’ve never had to worry about people getting shot at before.”

Biting back his impatience Luke once again watched the shadowy, low-quality video of the parking lot. Just in case he’d missed something the other three times he’d watched it.

He hadn’t. The single fixed camera was focused on a section of the parking lot, far from the spot where Melanie Graham was seen standing beside the cab of her pickup truck, prior to the attack. The images didn’t show anything notable. Just people walking to their vehicles and leaving.

All right, that was a dead end. Time to try something different. Luke turned to the rail-thin eighteen-year-old kid standing a couple of feet away from him. Technically being eighteen made the guy a man. But dressed in an oversize green-and-white plaid flannel shirt and sharply creased blue jeans, sporting a big silver belt buckle, he really did look like a six-foot-tall boy.

“Peter, did you see anybody walking up to Ms. Graham when you left to get something to eat?”

“No, sir.”

“Any odd behavior on her part? Did she seem worried or nervous?”

Peter shook his head.

Luke was hoping to get some kind of lead quickly. Right now one team of deputies was searching through the woods, trying to pick up any trail of a fleeing perpetrator. A second team, together with two forensic specialists, was combing the area where Melanie Graham had been found.

Once Melanie had been driven away in the ambulance, Luke had gone looking for Peter. So far he was the closest thing Luke had to a witness. But the kid was understandably shaken up. Hoping he’d be able to offer some useful information once he’d calmed down, Luke had asked him to hang around for a bit.

“I guess the guy got away with all Ms. Graham’s money,” Peter said, shaking his head sadly.

“It wasn’t a robbery,” Luke said. Or if it was meant to be a robbery, it wasn’t successful. Melanie’s purse had been recovered from her truck, complete with her wallet, phone and about forty dollars in cash. He’d seen it for himself, and he’d tucked the purse beside her, on the backboard, after she’d been loaded into the ambulance.

“So, I guess that means you found the lockbox?” Peter asked, raising his eyebrows hopefully.

“What lockbox?”

“A blue metal box she had on the front seat of the truck.”

Luke had looked through the truck and arranged for both the truck and trailer to be securely stored at the fairgrounds until Melanie could have someone come get them. The trailer had been closed up, with padlocks threaded through the door latches, and there was no sign that anyone had tried to break into it.

“What did she keep in the lockbox?” Luke asked. “Money? Her receipts for the day’s sales?”

“Yes,” Peter said. “She also put some of her more expensive jewelry in there. The things she made out of gold. There’s not very much of that. Most of it is silver.”

If the thief tried to pawn the stolen jewelry, that would give them the start of a lead on who they were looking for.

Maybe what happened to Melanie Graham tonight was a simple strong-arm robbery, but it seemed odd. There were several other vendors who would have pulled in a lot more money, particularly the food-and-drink sellers, who typically dealt in cash.

There was that small window of opportunity when Peter went to get food and Melanie was left alone, but who would have known she’d have cash and be by herself at that exact moment?

So, what might have happened? Somebody walked by at just the right time, saw their opportunity and tried to rob her? She grabbed the box and ran, and they chased her and then shot at her? For an unknown amount of money? With witnesses around?

That was hard to believe. But anything was possible. And he really wanted to catch whoever had done this.

Luke had spent a few years in the military. He’d been injured several times. Been knocked unconscious twice. He knew what it was like to open your eyes and be disoriented. It was a hollow, lonely feeling. He’d recognized that lost feeling in her eyes. He’d been relatively fortunate with his own injuries, and his disorientation hadn’t lasted for long. He hoped the same was true for her.

He pulled out his phone and punched in the number for a deputy working the crime scene in the woods. “Any chance you’ve found a blue metal lockbox?” he asked when the deputy answered.

“No. Are we looking for one?”

“Apparently there was one in the cab of her truck, but it’s gone now.”

“I’ll pass the word to keep an eye out for it.”

“What have you found so far?” Luke asked.

“Bullet casings. Partial footprints. A tree branch with blood on it and a few strands of hair. It was lying on the ground, near the spot where Ms. Graham was found. Of course we’re going to check to see if the blood and hair are a match for her or if they belong to someone else.”