A sound in the distance interrupted the tension his thoughts were sending through him. “What was that?” Scott asked softly, but he knew.

  “Sounds like an engine...” Dorian was backing up inside the cave as she spoke. Scott dropped to his stomach, sliding toward the edge of the small clearing of land in front of the cave. Hoping that the landscaping of desert brush would hide him from whoever might be driving down below, he peered into a vastness that angled downward for hundreds of yards.

  “What do you see?” Dorian’s voice had lowered, sounding strangely vulnerable to him.

  Was she hoping for rescue?

  As he sought out the source of the engine that was echoing in the canyon below, Scott found himself feeding on that supposed hope. He’d found his kidnapper, was on the brink of taking down the ring—everything was finally aligning...

  “Get down!” He spat the words, his thoughts interrupted by the sight of the sun glinting off metal.

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to Sierra’s Web! The nationally renowned firm of experts, college friends bound by tragedy, are all working on this one. This story has been germinating inside me for a couple of years. I saw it. I felt it. And finally, it came to life! Having been in there so long, it took a lot of me with it!

  As you run for your life, you’re getting my firsthand knowledge of sights and sounds in the mountain range that I look at every single day as I write. The Superstition Mountains, on the east side of the Phoenix Valley, are massive and hold lore and life and all kinds of magic. I’ve climbed to the top of the highest peak. I’ve been in the middle of the range with no cell service. I’ve visited a little town similar to the one in this book. I’ve stood at a mountain wall and tried to read centuries-old hieroglyphics. Right here in my Arizona mountains.

  And a reunion—I had one of those, too. With my very first boyfriend. The first boy I’d ever kissed. Almost thirty years after our last young kiss. He looked me up on the internet just eighteen months after I’d driven by his town without stopping. A detour I took while on book tour. Thinking about him. We’ve been married almost seventeen years and love is still our driver. And my message? Believe in happily-ever-after. And most critically, believe in love.

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  A HIGH-STAKES REUNION

  TARA TAYLOR QUINN

  A USA TODAY bestselling author of over one hundred novels in twenty languages, Tara Taylor Quinn has sold more than seven million copies. Known for her intense emotional fiction, Ms. Quinn’s novels have received critical acclaim in the UK and most recently from Harvard. She is the recipient of the Readers’ Choice Award and has appeared often on local and national TV, including CBS Sunday Morning.

  For TTQ offers, news and contests, visit www.tarataylorquinn.com!

  Books by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  Sierra’s Web

  Tracking His Secret Child

  Cold Case Sheriff

  The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Search

  On the Run with His Bodyguard

  Not Without Her Child

  A Firefighter’s Hidden Truth

  Last Chance Investigation

  Danger on the River

  Deadly Mountain Rescue

  A High-Stakes Reunion

  The Coltons of Owl Creek

  Colton Threat Unleashed

  The Coltons of New York

  Protecting Colton’s Baby

  Visit the Author Profile page

  at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  To Tim—I am so thankful for our reunion, and you. I loved you then, now and forever. Tara Lee Barney

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Excerpt from Close Range Cattleman by Amber Leigh Williams

  Chapter 1

  He was stealing his newborn! Dr. Dorian Lowell ignored the pounding of her heart as she raced through the darkness toward the gray-hooded, hunched over man hurrying from the small stucco birthing center. Her frantic steps silenced by the grass, she ran full tilt toward the old red truck parked in a corner of the lot. The two-hour-old boy needed constant medical attention. He’d die within hours without it.

  She’d seen Jeremy, the estranged father, pull in and head into the birthing center moments before. Had warned Security.

  He was almost at his truck, not running like she was, but moving at a good clip, head down, shielding the newborn he held in both arms, upright against his chest.

  If she screamed for help, it was unlikely anyone would hear her.

  If she ran for help, he’d get away.

  That baby’s only hope lay with Dorian rescuing him before his father got to the truck.

  Breath constricted by the panic tightening her chest, she crossed onto the pavement just steps away from the young, slim-framed man, hoping to reason with him. They’d all had a rough day, and he was overwrought.

  As soon as he heard her steps, he jerked, straightening, and pinned her with a glare that was menacing in the moonlight. His eyes. She didn’t recognize them. Two sharp pinpoints of warning...

  It wasn’t Jeremy! And in her peripheral vision, she noticed a second truck—Jeremy’s truck—parked down a couple of spaces in the lot.

  Too late to stop her forward motion, she upped her momentum toward the tiny baby boy the stranger held, her self-defense class of long ago taking over as she kneed the kidnapper, grabbing for the baby—not Jeremy’s baby—at the same time.

  Her blow was strong enough to make the hard-looking man loosen his grip for the split second she’d needed. With the blue bundle wrapped in one arm, she raised her other hand to the man’s face, ramming her palm into the base of his nose. She felt a crack as he backhanded her upside the head, and, dizzy, stumbling briefly, she ran.

  A shot rang out behind her.

  Swerving in between cars, she just kept running.

  * * *

  FBI Agent Scott Michaels broke all speed limits as he raced across a desert highway to the small birthing center in Las Sendas, Arizona, forty miles southeast of Phoenix. Every second counted when it meant the kidnapper had another second to get away from him.

  Six months of trying to track a series of newborn kidnappings, to find anything that linked them—other than the MO, a message board on the dark web and a hunch—and he might have just found his first real lead. The first kidnapping gone wrong.

  A mistake made.

  He had an eyewitness. A renowned physician who’d been leaving the facility late that night due to a complicated birth that had nearly killed both mother and child.

  A heroic doctor, from what he’d heard. The woman had single-handedly saved another newborn male child.

  There was already a BOLO out on the old red pickup she’d described with the California plate, and if there really was a God out there, someone would locate the vehicle.

  It could crack the case that had been haunting him for months.

  For a split second, just after Scott had turned onto the road that would lead him from the highway into the small town, he thought his non-prayer had been answered. At the first intersection, still on the outskirts of civilization, he saw a truck. Old. Beat up, just like the witness had described.

  But as he drew closer, his heart accepted what he’d expected to see. The truck, while old, was black, not red. And not only was the guy behind the wheel not exhibiting any evidence of being in a hurry, he was wearing a white shirt, not the gray hoodie the witness had described. And a cowboy hat, which he tilted toward Scott, waving him to pass through the intersection without stopping.

  Giving Scott a clear view of the Arizona plate. Not California like the doctor had reported.

  Still, didn’t mean someone else couldn’t find the red truck. A few minutes later, with adrenaline pumping hard, he pulled into the birthing center parking lot, which was ablaze with red flashing lights. Showing his badge, he was inside within a minute, and being directed to the room where the doctor was waiting for him.

  Each minute that passed was another opportunity for the kidnapper to get to another newborn.

  Because there’d be another baby stolen that night.

  The ring Scott’s gut told him was behind the kidnappings had an order to fill and had just lost the merchandise. He’d seen the sale pop up on the dark web that morning...

  Grim-faced and determined, he knocked on the door he’d been shown, and opened it before the feminine “Come in” had even been completed.

  Opened it and stood there...staring.

  “Dorian...” He couldn’t remember her last n
ame. It would have changed anyway.

  But he remembered her. Far too vividly.

  “Scott?” Open-mouthed, with a reddening bruise marking the left side of her face from the ear down the jaw, she stared at him. In wrinkled purple scrubs, with her red hair up in a bun, she didn’t look like she’d aged at all in the fourteen years since he’d had her in class.

  And...very briefly...in his arms.

  “You aren’t in the army,” she said.

  And she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  “I was. Trained in law enforcement, made rank of sergeant, but wanted to fight crime on a broader scale.” None of her business. Just as his plans in the past hadn’t been. But that hadn’t stopped him from sharing them with her. And then regretting having done so.

  “You saved a baby’s life tonight,” she blurted, blushing. He remembered that about her, too. The way her fair skin turned red anytime she said anything that made her uncomfortable. “Or rather, your training did. I used what you taught me.”

  He’d been waiting to deploy, had been filling the time teaching a summer self-defense class at the community college. And she’d been...engaged.

  To a guy who’d grown up with her, knowing her family.

  By then, he’d already learned a hard lesson about him being on the outside looking into that kind of life. So he’d paid careful attention to avoid pursuing the instant attraction he’d had for her. One that had seemed to be returned, and on a level beyond the physical.

  As if he really knew anything about living life on that level.

  The younger version of the successful doctor had been impressively alert during his class, and he witnessed the exact same focus and attention to detail, the same ability to remember things, as she answered his questions about the thwarted kidnapping. She was able to describe her kidnapper, not only the size and build that closely matched the father she’d first taken him for, but the shape of his jaw, and the soullessly evil look in his eyes. She was certain she’d never seen him before. She’d already talked to the police, had sat with a local officer who’d responded to the scene and was also a sketch artist, but Scott needed other details. The kind you couldn’t draw.

  “Did he speak?” he asked. “Did he have an accent? Sound educated?”

  “All I heard was a string of common swear words when I kneed him. No accent, but he slurred his s’s, like he had a tooth missing. And... I think he smokes. His voice had that raspy sound...”

  If he could form a mental picture, he’d have more of an idea of where to look first.

  “And he smelled like manure,” she said. “And maybe hay. You know...like a farm...”

  Bingo. Standing, he thanked her, looked her in the eye, and when he started to linger there, to smile his gratitude, he caught himself and immediately reached for his wallet, looking inside for one of his cards. Handing it to her, he told her to call him immediately if she thought of anything else, and, with a last directive to take care of herself, to follow police orders for her own protection, he turned to the door. He needed to get out of the small space.

  Away from reminders of the things he wouldn’t ever again let himself want.

  But he looked back. Saw her watching him.

  As if, for a second, she was remembering, too...

  He refused to go back. Looked at her and said, “It looks like you might have a black eye by tomorrow.” In a few more minutes it would already be tomorrow.

  And he had an urgent job to do.

  Find the kidnapper.

  For three reasons now.

  To save the babies yet to be taken. To find the ones who’d already been sold. And to make the fiend pay for that bruise filling up the side of Dorian’s face.

  * * *

  What kind of weird fate brought Scott Michaels to investigate a thwarted kidnapping in Arizona? All the years Dorian and Sierra’s Web—the firm of experts she and her friends had started—had been working with law enforcement, and he suddenly shows up at a crime scene?

  It had to be some kind of warning sent by fate, issued to validate the choices she’d made so long ago. Reminding her why she’d made them.

  With so many of the Sierra’s Web partner experts finding love and settling down—with her own kidnapping the previous year still challenging her—maybe she’d been experiencing some weakening in her resolve to stay single.

  Distracted by her initial reaction to seeing the man again, Dorian instinctively put on her professional face as Chief Ramsey came in to tell her that he would assign someone to escort her to wherever she was going as soon as she was ready.

  “That’s not necessary,” she told him, emphatically certain of that fact. The bruise to her head, while painful when touched, and ugly looking, had been superficial as she’d had the advantage of being the aggressor in the second that the blow had been thrown. She’d been cut, right at the edge of her jaw, the result of the kidnapper’s gloved hand jamming her earring into her skin, but overall, she was fine.

  And she absolutely did not need one of Las Sendas’ already overtasked police officers to follow her the two miles between the birthing center and the room that had been rented for her in the lovely old historic hotel downtown. All the Las Sendas law enforcers had been called in to work the attempted kidnapping, and they all needed to continue doing so.

  She’d never forgive herself if they lost the guy because they’d pulled someone off the case to babysit her.

  “This is the kind of thing Sierra’s Web handles every day,” she said, collecting the bag she’d dropped as she’d come out of the employee entrance at the side of the building and had seen the kidnapper leaving with the baby. “You’ve already seen how we work. Glen, our forensics and science guy, will probably be at the hotel by the time I get there. I’ll be right back here in the morning, checking in on the patient I was here to assist with, and will be hanging around in Las Sendas as long as my partners think I can be of help to find the kidnapper.”

  “Still, this guy doesn’t know you can’t positively ID him,” the chief said, but Dorian could tell the man was eager to keep his officers on the kidnapper’s trail, as he should be. Major crime didn’t happen in Las Sendas, which was one of the reasons the small town had been chosen to house the prototype birthing center.

  “It’s more likely he’s going to be getting as far away from here as he can, rather than hanging around for me,” she reminded him, to assuage any guilt he might be harboring, as he walked her out to her car. After twelve years of being the medical expert on cases with her partners, many of them criminal cases, she knew the drill.

  A thorough glance around the busy parking lot convinced them both that she was fine to walk to her vehicle. She saw him already heading to his squad car as she pulled out of the parking lot, shakier than she’d wanted the chief to know but eager to get to Glen.

  Hudson Warner, Sierra’s Web technical expert, was up and already working on the dark web site Scott Michaels had mentioned.

  After giving Glen whatever he needed, Dorian was going to take a hot bath and put the night behind her. Or at least sit up with her newly-purchased-in-the-past-year handgun at her side for protection and watch old sitcoms until the sun rose.

  She’d been abducted off a hiking trail sixteen months ago because she’d been unprepared. She was not going to let the fiend who’d taken her rob her of peace of mind.

  Make her afraid to live her life.

  When the idea of living life brought thoughts of Scott Michaels to mind as she drove, she allowed them to distract her. The self-defense instructor, former army sergeant turned FBI agent, had no idea that he’d brought a completely different moment to a horrible night. Seeing him again...she had no idea how she felt about that.

  Had mixed emotions to the point of being slightly sick to her stomach.

  She’d hurt a man she’d loved because of Scott. Had first started to lose her ability to trust herself because of him.

  And yet...still got warm inside, just seeing his face again.

  Her whole life, Dorian had been wise beyond her years, able to see clearly and make successful decisions, to remain practical in times of crisis, to be an asset to her family and those around her. She’d chosen her best friend, a man she’d known since she was born, to be her life’s partner.