Kindle Edition Download to your Nook (eBook) Download from Apple iTunes (eBook) Download from Smashwords (eBook) Amazon Barnes & Noble.com Romance with a twist -- of mystery Backlist eBooks All Romance eBooks Category:  Mystery/Suspense Publisher: Five Star ISBN-10:  159414723X Pages: 360 Copyright: Dec 10, 2008 ISBN-13: 9781594147234 If someone asks single mother Frankie Castor to clear a room, she'll smile and find a vacuum cleaner. Ryan Harper uses a gun. Can they work together when their lives depend on it? Frankie’s returned to her childhood home in Montana to help care for her mother. Her biggest worries are balancing the budget and the upkeep of an aging home. When she offers a man a ride home from the hospital, she never imagines she’ll end up having to choose between her daughter’s life and matters of national security that could cost the lives of millions. Ryan returns to his family home to find a way to prove he didn’t leak vital information on a covert ops mission gone south. As he searches for the meaning of a file he’s kept hidden from the mission, he has no idea that international mercenaries have been searching for it—and him. When the mercenaries come after Ryan, he’s torn. Fighting for his country wars with fighting to rescue people he loves. Set against a Montana mountain backdrop, When Danger Calls is a story filled with action, adventure, and romance, where the stakes keep getting higher and higher.         Excerpt Chapter One Some cakewalk. A routine mission turned into a straight-to-video movie. To Ryan Harper, it smelled rotten—even more rotten than the garbage piled in the alleyway they’d trekked through to get here. Senses on alert, Ryan cast a furtive glance over his shoulder. Hair prickled on the back of his neck. Maybe it hadn’t been smart to insist on a solo mission. Still, after the last one, he couldn’t bear the thought of endangering anyone’s life but his own. He waited beside Alvarez, his contact, while the wizened man unlocked the warehouse door. Alvarez clicked on a light. Two feral cats yowled and hissed, then bolted outside. Ryan stepped into the hot, stuffy room. Grime covered the sealed windows, and the ammonia stench of cat piss filled his nostrils. Why didn’t any of his assignments include rooms with air conditioning? Instead, they sent him to a deserted neighborhood in Panama—one the jungle desperately wanted to reclaim. “Where are the files, Señor Alvarez?” “Here,” Alvarez said around the cigar stub that seemed permanently clamped between his teeth. He closed the door behind them. “I show you everything. You have the money?” “After I see the files.” Outside, a generator hummed. Three cats peered warily around upended tables and a maze of cardboard cartons. Avoiding broken glass, rubber tubing, and other assorted debris, he followed Alvarez across the room. A rusty gas stove stood at the far end next to a small refrigerator and a laminate-topped table. In a blur, the cats disappeared behind the stove. Opposite, two file cabinets flanked a beat-up wooden desk and a cracked vinyl armchair. Like an alien presence, a flat-screen computer monitor sat atop the desk. “Momento.” Alvarez reached under the desk, and Ryan immediately grabbed for his weapon. A button clicked and a hard drive whirred. Ryan exhaled. Maybe this was a cakewalk after all. The door slammed against the wall. Flash-bang grenades hit the floor. “Get down!” he shouted at Alvarez, who still fumbled with the computer. Covering his ears and squeezing his eyes shut, Ryan scrambled for cover behind the desk as the room filled with brilliant light and an ear-splitting report. Deaf and half-blind from the blast, Ryan pointed his Glock near the doorway. Gunfire sprayed the room. Alvarez gasped. Blood flowed from his chest. He turned and pressed a metal tube into Ryan’s hand. The ringing in his ears muffled the man’s words, but Ryan watched his lips. “Importante.” Alvarez clawed his way to the desktop. The computer exploded. Ryan’s body slammed backward. Alvarez sagged to the floor, half his face blown off. Shit. First Colombia, now this. Ryan jammed the tube into a pocket of his cargo pants. Blinking to clear his vision, he turned to engage his assailants. Three of them—one of him. Some fucking cakewalk. The desk and file cabinets provided cover, giving Ryan the advantage. He fired. Two shots to the body, one to the head. Repeat as needed. Two men down. The third guy, built like a grizzly, bared his teeth in a malicious grin. “You are mine, señor.” “Sorry. You’re not my type.” Ryan pulled the trigger twice. His assailant fell backward, his weapon firing in a broad arc. A searing pain ripped through Ryan’s shoulder. His arm jerked, and his gun clattered to the floor skittering between the file cabinets behind him. He fumbled for the knife strapped to his ankle. Blood, hot and sticky, ran down his arm, and his fingers slipped on the knife’s hilt. He scrambled backward to the file cabinets to retrieve his Glock. He groped for the pistol. The man on the floor struggled to his feet. Body armor. Crap. Ryan’s gun hand was all but useless. The angle sucked. Holding the Glock in his off hand, he took a head shot. The man twitched, swinging his arm. He went down. Ryan’s satisfaction shriveled when a grenade rolled across the room, stopping under the stove. “Fu—.” Ryan burst through the door and dove for cover outside. He grimaced with pain from landing on his knee as the warehouse exploded in flames behind him. He struggled to his feet and waited, heart pounding, between two abandoned cars until he was certain no one else followed. Still dazed, he moved into the jungle. When he didn’t check in on schedule, an extraction team would rendezvous according to plan three days from now. No sweat. Couldn’t be any worse than survival training hell.

Harriet Klausner
Posted October 27, 2008, 3:46 PM EST: Following his second failed black ops mission in which people died and he is injured, Blackthorne agent Ryan Harper is put on medical leave. He knows that everyone at the private security firm assumes he turned rogue, but he believes someone inside caused the two failures; they were set up and he plans to bring that person down as a little girl who died in the first fiasco haunts him. Thus Ryan retrieved the container he was sent to obtain, but tells his boss otherwise so he can learn why something allegedly minor caused deaths.

Ryan returns to his hometown of Broken Bow, Montana to stay with his Pop on the ranch. He meets Gladys a waitress at the Three Elks and is attracted to her. Ryan later learns she is an elementary school art teacher Frankie Castor, a single mom to precocious six year old Molly. Frankie worries about her mom who has suffered two injuries since starting a relationship with Bob Dwyer. As Ryan and Frankie fall in love, he comes to the rescue of her, Molly, and Molly¿s ¿friend¿ Mr. Snuggles even as someone wants what he possesses from his last mission; that person is willing to harm his loved ones something that is unacceptable to Ryan.

This is an exciting romantic suspense that grips readers from the onset when Ryan¿s cakewalk mission turns ugly and never slows down as his work arrives at Big Sky Country. The cast is very strong especially the lead couple and their immediate family. Although major coincidence twice involving land takes somewhat away from this fine thriller, fans will appreciate Ryan¿s reactions WHEN DANGER CALLS.

Harriet Klausner

Gumshoe Reviews
When Danger Calls by Terry Odell
Review by Gayle Surrette
Five Star (ME) Hardcover ISBN/ITEM#: 9781594147234
Date: 10 December 2008 List Price $25.95 Amazon US / Amazon UK

Links: Author's Website / Show Official Info / ShareThis

When Danger Calls by Terry Odell has been called a romance, a mystery with a romance, and a thriller with a bit of romance. I call it one heck of a wild read that will keep you turning the pages to see what happens next. Yes, there's a romance. But, there are also several mysteries to be solved.

The story opens as Ryan Harper is on a mission to pick up some information from an informant in South America. Everything goes wrong and Ryan barely gets out alive. He'll recover from the infection, but the broken leg and the damage to his career will be a long time in healing. This is the second mission in a row that has failed and in both cases he was the only survivor. He steps away and returns to Broken Bow, Montana to stay in his brother's cabin and nurse his wounds.

Frankie Castor has returned to Broken Bow to help her mother at the request of her sister. Her mother's health hasn't been good. Frankie quit her job and moved with her five-year-old daughter, Molly. She managed to get a long-term substitute teaching position and a part time waitress job at a bar out of town -- the Three Elks.

Ryan goes to the bar to brood and use the wifi connection. He's become a challenge to the waitresses as he seems to have no interest in them. Frankie agrees to try to make him smile. This initial meeting would be the first and last except that Broken Bow isn't that big and they've both got lives that are going to keep bringing them together. In the hands of a lesser writer all of these coincidences that continue to bring Ryan and Frankie together would get to be a bit much. But the writing is such that you find yourself just going with it for the sake of the story -- and when you do stop to examine these incidences, you sort of hope you'd do the same.

Frankie's problems revolve around her mother, her mother's boyfriend, some suspicious accidents, missing jewels and money, finding child care, and other worries of single parents. Ryan's concerns are more about national security and whether the company he works for has a leak that is compromising operatives and missions. His biggest concern is can he figure out what's going on before someone actually succeeds in killing him -- working on the assumption that two tries have failed.

So, it's a romance with mystery and thriller action. Two very different people, but with very similar beliefs, values, and a lot of common sense somehow manage to help each other survive through some very difficult and scary circumstances.