the man hadn’t noticed him or his old truck parked away from where the other reporters hung out by the ranch fence.
A news van came flying up behind Max. He moved to the middle of the road and ignored the driver blasting his horn. The driver was a hotshot newsman who looked down his nose at him. Let him eat some dust.
Meanwhile, Max could see the senator’s dust dissipating in the distance. Just a little farther.
He’d followed Buckmaster Hamilton several other times when he’d left about this time of day and headed in this direction. Max was betting the senator was going to the same place he had before. What had thrown him previously was that there hadn’t been any ranches or houses near the spot where he’d lost him.
Since then, Max had had plenty of time to explore the area. He had an idea where the senator was going. He moved over and let the news van pass him, knowing the van would never be able to catch up to Hamilton now. The newsman flipped him off as he went by.
Max smiled and slowed, turning at the next dirt road, and hoping his instincts paid off. Sometimes at night, with nothing to do, he would just drive back roads. He’d found this one quite by accident and had been surprised to end up on a tall rocky outcropping. The view had been incredible. He figured teenagers knew about the spot because he’d seen rock fire pits and a lot of smashed, empty beer cans.
Driving up the road, he stopped short of the top of the rocky hill. Getting out, he grabbed his camera case and, closing the door quietly, headed up to the pinnacle. He’d almost reached the top when he heard a vehicle on the narrow dirt road below him. He recognized the senator’s SUV as it came to a stop at the edge of the tree-lined creek.
He smiled to himself, pleased that he’d been right as Hamilton got out. Fifty-nine, the senator was a large, distinguished-looking 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
