Butterfly Ops Read online

  Butterfly Ops: Book 2

  Jen Doyle

  Contents

  Advance Uncorrected Proof / Not for Sale

  About the Author

  Butterfly Ops: Book 2

  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

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Books By Jen Doyle

  Butterfly Ops Trilogy

  The Calling It Series

  About the Author

  Advance Uncorrected Proof / Not for Sale

  Please note this is an advance uncorrected proof for reviewers; the text may change subject to further copy-editing and proofreading.

  * * *

  About This Book

  * * *

  Title: Butterfly Ops: Book Two

  Author: Jen Doyle

  ISBN: 9781641970792

  Tentative Publication Date: April 23, 2019

  Retail Price: $ 4.99

  Format: E-book; POD

  BISAC: FIC027120 / FIC009060 / FIC010000

  Pre-Order: https://www.jendoyleink.com/blog/2019/3/10/butterfly-ops-book-two-now-available-for-preorder

  * * *

  What's a superheroine to do when her super soldier ex turns up alive after more than fifteen years?

  * * *

  Lyndsey Daniels doesn't have much time to walk down memory lane before she and Ian Fox find themselves thrown together to investigate the mysterious deaths of ten young men in the Canadian wilderness. How do the hearts of such seemingly normal, healthy men just...stop?

  * * *

  With the hint of an evil spirit in the wind—and a whole lot of butterflies—there's no telling what Lyndsey and Ian are dealing with, including their own extensive baggage. Though sixteen years is a lot of life to live, there's one thing they can't deny: their attraction is as intense as ever. But is it just a spark that will burn itself out, or is it true love bringing them back together? When the force they're hunting turns its sights on them, the leap of faith required far exceeds the powers of either of them. But worrying about their future might be premature because one wrong move and they might not make it out alive.

  * * *

  In Book Two of the Butterfly Ops Trilogy, Lyndsey, Ian, and their respective teams fully delve into the mystery of why so many young, healthy men have died in Ontario’s Quetico Park. But for every new piece of information they reveal, the mystery only grows deeper. To complicate matters, alliances shift as new friends—or are they new enemies?—are made, and Lyndsey and Ian are forced to confront their past…and evil butterflies?

  * * *

  Book Two of three in an epic urban fantasy/love story

  * * *

  Note: this is Book Two in a serial trilogy. Book One was released in September 2018; Book Three will be released in May 2019. Book Two picks up where Book One leaves off and should be read in order. Book Two ends in a cliffhanger.

  * * *

  About the Butterfly Ops Trilogy

  * * *

  This book is the second in Jen Doyle’s serial trilogy, Butterfly Ops.

  * * *

  Book One is a second chance romance in which the main characters, formerly college sweethearts, reunite. (This book is available to NetGalley reviewers free of charge at https://claims.prolificworks.com/free/iUvWqBpQ.)

  * * *

  Book Two (this book), fully delves into the overriding mystery of the trilogy; this book ends on a cliffhanger.

  * * *

  Book Three picks up immediately after Book Two ends and presents the resolution of the mystery as well as an HEA for the hero and heroine. (Book Three will be available on NetGalley on April 2, 2019; tentative publication date is May 14, 2019.)

  * * *

  Book One provides background on the relationship but the mystery is fully presented in Books Two and Three. Books Two and Three should be read sequentially and do not stand alone.

  * * *

  Publicity Notes

  * * *

  Jen Doyle’s Calling It series (contemporary/small-town/baseball romance) won multiple awards pre-publication. Calling It, the first book in the series, was also the 2017 winner of Mid-Michigan RWA’s Best Banter contest. The hero of Called Out, the third book in the series, was nominated as a Harlequin Hero of the Year for 2017. Butterfly Ops, an epic love story, is Jen’s first in the paranormal/urban fantasy realm.

  * * *

  For interview/excerpt requests and media inquiries please contact the author by email: [email protected]

  About the Author

  A big believer in happily-ever-afters, Jen Doyle decided it was high time she started creating some. CALLING IT, her four-book baseball/contemporary romance/romantic comedy series, has been winning awards since its inception, the most recent being the 2017 Best Banter Contest for Calling It and a nomination for the 2017 Harlequin Hero of the Year for Called Out. Butterfly Ops: Book Two is the second installment of the BUTTERFLY OPS trilogy, an epic love story and her first in the paranormal realm.

  * * *

  Jen has an M.S. in Library and Information Science and, in addition to her work as a librarian, has worked as a conference and events planner as well as an administrator in both preschool and higher education environments (although some might say that there is very little difference between the two; Jen has no comment regarding whether she is one of the "some"). She is a member of the Romance Writers of America and is represented by Sarah E. Younger of the Nancy Yost Literary Agency.

  * * *

  Website: www.jendoyleink.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/jendoyleink

  READ HAPPY Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/138934496639814/

  Twitter: twitter.com/jendoyleink

  Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/jendoyleink/

  Bookbub: www.bookbub.com/authors/jen-doyle

  Amazon: amazon.com/author/jendoyle

  Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/jendoyle

  Butterfly Ops: Book 2

  * * *

  What's a superheroine to do when her super soldier ex turns up alive after more than fifteen years?

  * * *

  Lyndsey Daniels doesn't have much time to walk down memory lane before she and Ian Fox find themselves thrown together to investigate the mysterious deaths of ten young men in the Canadian wilderness. How do the hearts of such seemingly normal, healthy men just...stop?

  * * *

  With the hint of an evil spirit in the wind—and a whole lot of butterflies—there's no telling what Lyndsey and Ian are dealing with, including their own extensive baggage. Though sixteen years is a lot of life to live, there's one thing they can't deny: their attraction is as intense as ever. But is it just a spark that will burn itself out, or is it true love bringing them back together? When the force they're hunting turns its sights on them, the leap of faith required far exceeds the powers of either of them. But worrying about their future might be premature because one wrong move and they might not make it out alive.

  * * *

  In Book Two of the Butterfly Ops Trilogy, Lyndsey, Ian, and their respective teams fully delve into the myste
ry of why so many young, healthy men have died in Ontario’s Quetico Park. But for every new piece of information they reveal, the mystery only grows deeper. To complicate matters, alliances shift as new friends—or are they new enemies?—are made, and Lyndsey and Ian are forced to confront their past…and evil butterflies?

  * * *

  Note: this is Book Two in a serial trilogy. Book One was released in September 2018; Book Three will be released in May 2019. Book Two picks up where Book One leaves off and should be read in order. Book Two ends in a cliffhanger.

  * * *

  * * *

  [email protected]

  http://www.jendoyleink.com

  1

  “Ian’s alive?”

  Lyndsey probably shouldn’t have waited until the last possible minute to call her sister and tell her the news, but, well, she’d hoped that Morgan would be at work and all she’d need to do was leave her a message. She wasn’t entirely ready to have this conversation. But since they were all invited to dinner at Ian’s house tonight, it wasn’t like she could put it off any longer.

  Lyndsey leaned back against the brick wall of the building that supposedly held Ian’s office. She’d expected something a little bit more…official. This just looked like an old rundown warehouse in a part of the city that, although not far from downtown, had certainly seen better days. But, yes, this was where the GPS had hed her so this must be the place.

  “I know, right?” she said into the phone. And then she found herself laughing. Or giggling, rather, feeling almost like she did back in college, telling her then thirteen-year-old sister about her flirtation with Zachary. The exception being that there was no moral he’s-my-professor quandary involved, of course.

  Morgan wasted no time getting to the point. “And his mom wants us all to come to dinner?” ‘Us all,’ meaning Lyndsey, Morgan, and Morgan’s fiancé, Eddie. “That feels kind of serious, no?”

  “Serious-ish.” Because there was no way Lyndsey was about to let on exactly how serious it felt, not all of one week after seeing him again for the first time in fifteen years, during almost ten of which she’d thought he was dead. And not to Morgan, who still blamed Lyndsey for their break-up the first time around. Blame which, unfortunately, was not without cause, although Morgan did sometimes get ahead of herself while reading between the lines.

  Accurately, more often than not.

  “Oh, my God—you’re sleeping with him!” Morgan let out what could only be described as a yelp. “You have to tell me everything.”

  “I will.” Lyndsey pulled the phone away quickly to check the time. “I promise. I just can’t right now.”

  “Because you’re about to have mad, passionate sex with the boyfriend you thought was dead?”

  “Morgan!” It sounded so…lurid. Not nearly as romantic as Lyndsey had been thinking of it as being. “No.” Although she couldn’t deny that if the opportunity presented itself, she would take it without a second thought.

  “I could keep speculating,” Morgan was saying, “or you could just come out and tell me all the dirty deets.”

  “It’s not like I’m hiding anything…” Lyndsey said, knowing how absolutely unconvincing she sounded. “I texted you, like, a billion times.”

  Well, okay, maybe only five or six over the course of the last week. Still…

  “That’s what the texts were about?” Morgan exclaimed. “All you said was that you wanted to have dinner tonight. Which, um, I meant to say yes but I guess I got kind of caught up at work.”

  Which was why Lyndsey had had to finally make the phone call. Although, probably better to have this part of the conversation before they were sitting around the table with Ian and his family. “Oh, good. I was worried you might have something else going on. I think he’s really looking forward to seeing you and meeting Eddie.”

  “Oh, my God,” Morgan said again.

  “I know,” Lyndsey whispered, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. “It’s…surreal.”

  There were a few moments of silence before Morgan said, “Define ‘it’ exactly.”

  Well that was the whole question, wasn’t it? They’d talked outright about a future together. But Lyndsey wasn’t in any way confident this was a sure thing; in fact, she felt even less sure of where they stood now than she had when he hadn’t called her for two whole days before they’d headed up to Ottawa on Monday.

  “I don’t know. It’s evolving.” A clock somewhere struck the time, reminding Lyndsey she actually had somewhere to be. “But I’m going to be working with him for the next few weeks. I’m actually about to go into a meeting with him and his team.”

  “Wait, his team? His whole team is here?” Morgan asked. “In Boston?”

  “He lives here. On Beacon Hill. Right across the river from you. He’s lived there for, like, ten years.”

  “He does not.” Morgan still sounded about as in shock as Lyndsey had been that day she ran into Ian on the street the week before. “And you’re going to be working with him? I thought you had that tattoo serial killer thing. With the dragon lady from Canada.”

  “She’s not a dragon lady,” Lyndsey snapped, because, well, that might have been how she’d described Monica Cain, her client on this job, even though she’d run into a dragon or two over the course of the last fifteen years and they had nothing on Monica. And, also, she might have been just a little bit unhappy about having to go into the woods for a week or two. Camping was not her thing. “And it’s not a tattooed serial killer—it’s bodies showing up in the woods with weird symbols on them.”

  Ten of them. With four more men missing. So, camping fan or not, into the woods she was going.

  With Ian’s team.

  Which also was the source, perhaps, of a little bit of stress, since the last time she’d been around Ian and his friends they’d been trying to kill her. But that had been a whole lifetime—and some colossal misunderstandings—ago. They were in a much better place now; Lyndsey was staking her life on it.

  Morgan was quiet for a minute before saying, “This is either Fate telling you you were meant to be together all this time or, well, playing the biggest joke ever.”

  Yes. Door number two was what Lyndsey was afraid of. She told Morgan about how they’d actually run into each other—first the literal running into each other on the street around the corner from the coffee shop, and then the inevitable running into each other at the meeting that followed.

  “No. Way.”

  “Crazy, I know.” Lyndsey was still having a hard time believing it herself.

  “So what happened to The Wife? Ian realized he was meant to be with you all along and dropped her like a hot potato?” Morgan asked, having been around—and a little too impressionable a teenager—when Ian had come back to California all those years ago only one year after he’d left Lyndsey. A year in which he’d managed to meet another woman and marry her. But, no. He hadn’t dropped his wife. It was more like: having slept around with and staked his fair share of vampires, his meeting and marrying Abby had been the real deal; the woman of his dreams.

  Not that Lyndsey was bitter. It was still a bit of a sore spot, however, enough so that she had yet to truly bring it up with Ian.

  Whatever. It wasn’t like it had thrown her into an existential crisis or anything.

  “Abby. She died. Eight years ago.”

  And, not only was he still desperately in love with her, as far as Lyndsey could tell, but so was everyone else. Hell, even Tobias and Tommy—two of the guys she currently worked with at ZSJ Security Solutions—were captivated based on their background research alone. Despite the fact that the woman was a corpse.

  Although Lyndsey wasn’t going to mention any of that.

  “Oh,” Morgan said. “Well that was completely inconsiderate of me, wasn’t it?”

  “Kind of,” Lyndsey answered, glad it was Morgan who’d said it and not her even though her own thoughts had been so much worse.

  “So… Dinner,” Morga
n said. “With Ian’s mom?”

  She sounded…eager. It reminded Lyndsey of how much Morgan had loved Ian, one of the few stable men in her life given their father’s general lack of involvement. It also reminded Lyndsey of how furious Morgan had been when Ian left, telling Lyndsey that she’d driven him away. Just like you always do, she’d said at the time. It had been years before she’d forgiven Lyndsey.

  “And his dad,” Lyndsey said. “And kids.”

  This time Morgan practically screamed. “His kids? He has kids? How old are they? I bet he’s like the best dad ever.”

  As Lyndsey gave the rundown—“Nine- and eleven-year-old boys; fourteen-year-old twin girls”— she couldn’t help but think that, yes, even with her limited experience she could tell how great of a dad he was. Amazing. And she was so in over her head that…