by B. J Daniels
Praise for New York Times bestselling author B.J. Daniels
“You won’t be able to put it down.”
—New York Times bestselling author Jodi Thomas on Heartbreaker
“Daniels is a perennial favorite on the romantic suspense front, and I might go as far as to label her the cowboy whisperer.”
—BookPage on Luck of the Draw
“Daniels keeps readers baffled with a taut plot and ample red herrings, expertly weaving in the threads of the next story in the series as she introduces a strong group of primary and secondary characters.”
—Publishers Weekly on Stroke of Luck
“Daniels again turns in a taut, well-plotted, and suspenseful tale with plenty of red herrings. Readers will be in from the start and engaged until the end.”
—Library Journal on Stroke of Luck
“Readers who like their romance spiced with mystery can’t go wrong with Stroke of Luck by B.J. Daniels.”
—BookPage
“Daniels is an expert at combining layered characters, quirky small towns, steamy chemistry and added suspense.”
—RT Book Reviews on Hero’s Return
“B.J. Daniels has made Cowboy’s Legacy quite a nail-biting, page-turner of a story. Guaranteed to keep you on your toes.”
—Fresh Fiction
Also by New York Times bestselling author B.J. Daniels
A Buckhorn, Montana Novel
Out of the Storm
From the Shadows
Montana Justice
Restless Hearts
Heartbreaker
Heart of Gold
Sterling’s Montana
Stroke of Luck
Luck of the Draw
Just His Luck
The Montana Cahills
Renegade’s Pride
Outlaw’s Honor
Cowboy’s Legacy
Cowboy’s Reckoning
Hero’s Return
Rancher’s Dream
Wrangler’s Rescue
The Montana Hamiltons
Wild Horses
Lone Rider
Lucky Shot
Hard Rain
Into Dust
Honor Bound
Look for B.J. Daniels’s next novel available soon from HQN.
For additional books by B.J. Daniels, visit her website, www.bjdaniels.com.
From the Shadows
New York Times Bestselling Author
B.J. Daniels
I dedicate this book to my niece, Jennifer Pearson Weaver. As the characters in my books discover—things don’t always begin well. But as we know, it’s how the story ends that really counts. So glad that you and Charley have each other now. Here’s to many more happy endings!
Contents
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
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM AT THE CROSSROADS BY B.J. DANIELS
CHAPTER ONE
Friday
FINN LAY ON the dusty floor of the massive, old and allegedly haunted Crenshaw Hotel and extended his arm as far as it would go into the dark cubbyhole he’d discovered under the back stairs. A spiderweb latched on to his hand, startling him. He chuckled at how jumpy he was today as he shook the clinging strands from his fingers. He had more to worry about than a few cobwebs. Shifting to reach deeper, his fingers brushed over what appeared to be a notebook stuck in the very back.
Megan Broadhurst’s missing diary? Had he finally gotten lucky?
The air from the cubbyhole reeked of age and dust and added to the rancid smell of his own sweat. He should have been used to all of it by now. He’d spent the past few months searching this monstrous old relic by day. At night, he’d lain awake listening to its moans and groans, creaks and clanks, as if the place were mocking him. What are you really looking for? Justice? Or absolution?
What he hadn’t expected, though, was becoming invested in the history of the place and the people who’d owned it, especially the new owner—who would be arriving any day now to see the hotel demolished. Casey Crenshaw had inherited the structure after her grandmother’s recent death. Word was that she’d immediately put it up for sale to a buyer who planned to raze it.
Finn had been looking for a place to disappear when he’d heard about the hotel, which had been boarded up and empty for the past two years. He’d known it would be his last chance before the hotel was destroyed. It had felt like fate as he’d gotten off the bus in Buckhorn and pried his way into the Crenshaw. He’d been in awe of the infamous hotel because of its illustrious history even before he’d stepped inside and seen how beautiful and haunting it was.
He’d only become more fascinated when he’d stumbled across Anna Crenshaw’s journals. That was why he felt as if he already knew her granddaughter, Casey. He was looking forward to finally meeting her.
His fingers brushed over the notebook pages. He feared he would only push it farther back into the dark space or, worse, that its pages would tear before he could get good purchase. Carefully he eased the notebook out.
This was the first thing he’d found that had been so well hidden. He hoped that meant it was the diary that not even the county marshal and all his deputies had been able to find.
He coughed from the thick dust that floated into the air as he sat up, bringing the notebook with him as he got to his feet. As he did, he caught his reflection in the mirror on the wall and was startled by the man he saw. His dark hair was way too long, his beard scruffy.
Shaking his head, he had to smile. Most everyone in Buckhorn, Montana, thought he was homeless, and that was why he’d been holed up in the hotel for the past few months. He definitely looked the part.
He ran a hand over his beard, hardly recognizing himself. For months he’d avoided mirrors, avoided looking himself in the eye. At one time, it had made sense coming here. He’d known the place was empty. It had been boarded up due to the elderly owner’s declining health and subsequent death.
But now new owner Casey Crenshaw was on her way. From what he’d heard, she couldn’t wait to not only get the hotel sold, but razed. That seemed odd—unless you’d spent some time here at night, he thought with a laugh. Did she think leveling it would get rid of the ghosts?
Last night, he’d stood at the window looking out at the small town of Buckhorn and wondering who was looking back at him. That feeling of being watched had never been stronger. But it was what had been watching him inside of the hotel that kept him up at night. After all, the Crenshaw wa
s famous for its ghosts—especially Megan’s.
So was it Megan’s ghost Casey Crenshaw wanted to get rid of? Or was destroying the hotel about covering up Megan’s murder?
He’d come here looking for answers, but now he wondered if he was really ready to know the truth about this place—let alone the new owner. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he bent down and shone his flashlight into the hole. There was nothing more in the space.
Rising, he considered the notebook. He felt like an archaeologist who’d dug for days to discover nothing. Just this morning, he’d been telling himself what a waste of time this had been. But time was something he had plenty of, wasn’t it?
He flipped open the notebook, hopeful, but was quickly disappointed. All there appeared to be were blank pages. Finn let out a curse. He was covered with dust and grime and had gone to all that trouble for nothing. He started to fling it away when his gaze caught on a page with scrawled words. He squinted to read the cramped handwriting.
I’m not a psychopath. I’m just sick. It’s not my fault that I kill them.
Finn felt his pulse jump. What the hell was this?
I shouldn’t write this down. I’m not supposed to tell anyone or they will put me away. But when I’m dead, no one will understand. They’ll blame me. It’s this hotel. There’s evil here, and sometimes it makes me do things I don’t want to do. I shouldn’t keep a list of their names, but I do anyway because they shouldn’t be forgotten.
I know other people don’t feel like this. But I can’t control it.
There is something wrong with me, and I have to hide it. She tells me to bury it deep so no one can ever know what I’ve done. But I can feel it building again, and it scares me.
I don’t want to do it again. Someone, please help me.
Please don’t make me do it again.
He examined the notebook, looking for a date, a name, anything else.
There was nothing. Just the one page, the writing becoming smaller and less legible toward the end. He told himself it could be nothing more than someone’s imagination on paper.
But he didn’t believe that. He could almost feel the author’s pain and his own because it confirmed what he’d come to suspect.
The Crenshaw Hotel had a killer—and Megan Broadhurst wasn’t the only victim.
CHAPTER TWO
THE SPRING SUN beat down on the compact convertible, but Casey Crenshaw refused to put the top up. For miles she’d let her hair blow back in a flame-red wave as she’d enjoyed the freedom and pretended she didn’t have a care in the world.
Once she’d hit the Montana border, though, the pretending got harder. She was going back to her grandmother’s hotel without her after all these years. And she couldn’t keep pretending that she wasn’t about to do something terrible to the town of Buckhorn to save herself.
As the massive, historic Crenshaw Hotel materialized on the horizon ahead, she let up on the gas. The hotel was just as it had been in her nightmares, ghost stories and all. Constructed of wood and native stone, it dominated the skyline. With seven stories, two wings and a tower, it was still the largest and tallest building in Buckhorn. It rose up against a backdrop of mountains and pines and Montana spring sky.
Casey felt that familiar jolt of mixed emotions, trepidation being the strongest. There’d been a time when she couldn’t wait to come here to spend the summer with her grandmother. She’d always been filled with excitement. Then, at sixteen, all that had changed. Megan Broadhurst had been murdered, and for the next ten years the Crenshaw Hotel was the last place on earth Casey wanted to be. It had meant not spending summers with her grandmother, something she deeply regretted. Especially now her grandmother was gone.
If Anna Crenshaw hadn’t died and left her the hotel and land, Casey wouldn’t be here now, she thought. But she’d promised her grandmother that she would return one last time to collect a few family items before the place was sold and demolished.
Casey concentrated on the feel of the sun baking her fair, freckled skin from the perfect blue sky overhead. But even her sunburn did little to distract her from the growing knot of dread roiling in her stomach. She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror and saw that her shoulders were as red as her hair. She would pay for not putting the top up miles ago. Even as a girl she’d always burned worse in Montana because of the altitude. Today would be no different, she thought as she slowed at the edge of town, turned onto the dirt road and drove into the huge, empty parking lot behind the hotel.
She purposely parked back here at the edge of the pines with the mountain looming over her and the hotel. The townspeople would find out soon enough that she was here. By now, most would have heard what she planned to do with the property. She could well imagine the uproar. Not that it would change anything. With luck, the hotel would be demolished by the end of the month.
She tried not to think about that or the impact the developer’s proposed truck stop, motel, gift shop and restaurant would have on the tiny Western town miles from anywhere. Or how it would change the character of Buckhorn, which sat on a two-lane highway that sliced across Montana and was tucked into picturesque, evergreen-covered mountains.
Heart pounding, she concentrated on just breathing in the pine-scented air. She’d forgotten how amazing it smelled. Or how blue the sapphire sky was. It was hard to forget how chilly the spring could be. Most of all, she desperately wanted to remember the good times here with her grandmother instead of the nightmarish days before she left here planning never to return.
She’d always loved this time of year before dozens of tourists filled the streets to buy cowboy boots and hats, curios and maps, photos and artwork of mountains and streams, everyone wanting to take home a little piece of Montana.
Bessie Walker’s bakery would be selling freshly made cakes and pies, turnovers and giant cookies that melted in your mouth. Earl Ray Coffield would always be the first to try whatever Bessie brought out of the oven. Axel Mullen would be behind the counter at the general store, his wife, Vi, back in the small post office slipping mail into the wall of metal boxes.
Soon the town would be packed with motor homes, trucks and trailers, camper vans parked in front of Vi’s antiques barn and Dave’s bar at the other end of town. There would be tourists on benches along the main drag—which was the highway that passed through town. Families would be eating ice cream looking up at the mountains as their kids took selfies and texted friends how bored they were.
For a few short months, the town would be alive as the tourists lapped up that old Wild West feeling. Once the snow began to fall, though, Buckhorn would become a near ghost town. Most businesses would be boarded up for the winter, the owners hightailing it south to warmer climes, leaving only a few hearty souls behind in the frozen north.
Not that Casey would see the change of seasons. Once she completed the sale of the hotel and property and picked up the things from her grandmother’s list, she would be gone before the summer tourist season even set in. She’d never see her grandmother’s huge hotel and outbuildings destroyed. Just as she would never see the truck stop complete with rows of gas pumps or the crowded convenience store with its tacky gift shop and tasteless restaurant. She would never see what it did to the town her grandmother had loved.
“Forgive me, Grandma,” she whispered as she squinted up at the sprawling structure Anna had given her life to.
In its day, the Crenshaw had been a grand hotel with beautiful detailing inside and out. The hotel had hosted presidents, kings and queens and movie stars. There used to be a stable out back that took guests on horseback rides up into the mountains and a huge outdoor swimming pool fueled by a hot spring. It was said that the water could cure anything.
The stables and horses were gone, along with the large pool. Only a few old maintenance buildings remained in the trees at the foot of the mountains.
She blinked an
d saw the hotel as it was now, its doors and windows on the lower level boarded up, weeds growing high all around it, a look of abandonment in its dust-coated upper windows. Her grandmother had always called the hotel her Old Girl, and now she looked sad and empty after being closed for the past two years. Anna had planned to return as soon as she was feeling better. Her grandmother had never suspected the day she left would be the last time she would ever see her Old Girl.
Casey felt her sun-scorched skin begin to tighten uncomfortably. With a sigh, she put the top up on the convertible, climbed out and opened the trunk. She hadn’t needed much in the line of clothing since she wasn’t staying long.
Pulling out her rolling suitcase, she stopped to look up at the tower high above the hotel’s center structure. It had been her grandmother’s favorite spot because of the view. Casey felt her eyes fill at the memory of the two of them curled up in the plush chairs up there. Her grandmother often read to her when she was very young. Later, Anna would always know where to find Casey if she disappeared for very long. She’d be up in the tower with a book, completely lost in another world.
Every June, her mother shipped her off, saying Casey was much better off in Montana than spending the summer with a paid nanny in San Francisco. Her mother was a partner in a large law firm and put in eighty hours a week. Casey seldom saw her, so she much preferred going to Buckhorn. Grandma Anna was always delighted to see her and taught her the hotel business from the ground up.
As she stared at the tower, the sun seemed to wink off the dirty glass of the windows as if the place had been waiting for her return.
She shivered in the heat and hesitated. Was she really up to staying here alone? She considered going to the Sleepy Pine, the only motel in town, two blocks away on the other side of the highway. But she wasn’t ready to face any of the locals yet. Then again, who would want to spend any time alone in an abandoned, allegedly haunted hotel? Certainly no sane person, she thought.
It was only temporary, she reminded herself. Once she signed the buy–sell agreement and fulfilled one of the promises she’d made to her grandmother, she’d be gone and so would the hotel and the bad memories along with even the good ones. Her grandmother used to tell her how strong she was. Well, she didn’t feel it right now. But it would take all of her strength to get through this, let alone to destroy this once-magnificent hotel, ghosts and all.
