Close Range Christmas by Nicole Helm (ebook reader for laptop TXT) 📗

“He told me once that Army Ranger training was all about learning to survive when the odds were against you. If he was injured, he wouldn’t give up. He’d try to get to help. Or, if that wasn’t possible, he’d wait for help to come to him.” She tried to fight back the image of Dane hurt and alone in the wilderness, waiting for more than two days now for someone to find him.

“We’ll do our best to search for him,” Beck said. “But we have a dozen officers covering more than a hundred and thirty thousand acres of territory, when you consider the park and the surrounding public lands. Did he say where he intended to hike?”

“No.” The word was almost a whisper. One man in that vast territory would be so easy to miss.

“We’ll start by searching all the trailheads and parking lots for his vehicle. If we find it, that can help narrow the search. And we might be able to borrow a Park Service plane. We can talk to campers and hikers, see if any of them spotted him or—”

A knock on the door interrupted him. “Come in,” he called.

The woman who had greeted Cara when she’d entered the Ranger Brigade headquarters eased into the room. She glanced at Cara then addressed Officer Beck. “We just had a call from Mike Griffen at park headquarters. Hikers off Dragon Point spotted a vehicle wrecked in the canyon. He wants someone to go with him to check it out and, since everyone else is away right now...”

Beck stood and, heart in her throat, Cara also rose. “Tell Mike I’ll meet him at the overlook,” he said.

“What kind of vehicle?” Cara asked.

Beck and the woman stared at her. “He said it was a late-model Ford pickup,” the woman said. “The hikers couldn’t get close, but they took pictures, and they said it didn’t look like it had been there long.”

Cara swayed but held steady. Dane might still be all right, trapped in the truck, but alive. She closed her eyes and said a brief prayer.

When she opened them again, the woman had left and Beck was staring at her. He put a hand lightly on her shoulder. “You need to stay here,” he said, his voice gentle.

“A late-model Ford truck,” she said. “It could be Dane.”

“All the more reason for you to stay here.”

“Oh no, I’m coming with you.” She slung her purse over her shoulder and clutched her car keys. “Just try and stop me.”

Copyright © 2020 by Cynthia Myers

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ISBN-13: 9781488067716

Close Range Christmas

Copyright © 2020 by Nicole Helm

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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