by Linda Conrad
He couldn’t stay still so he had her in his arms with the next breath. “Wherever you are. Any place you want to go.” A drop of liquid regret escaped from the corner of his eye but he ignored it. “Chance, Texas…Nome, Alaska, or the moon. I’ll be there. But if you don’t want me—”
The idea of that almost took him to his knees but he managed to keep on talking. “I’m afraid I’ll become the world’s biggest stalker.”
He could feel her smiling against his cheek. “Don’t worry about that. I happen to know the sheriff.”
“Thank the Lord.” He covered her mouth then, letting all the desperation and need spill from him into her.
Here in his arms was everything. His whole world and all the love he would ever need. Always.
Epilogue
What a perfectly lovely day to be married on a hillside overlooking the site of their new home. The sky, a deep cobalt-blue without a cloud in sight, had been a terrific backdrop for their wedding. A dry, crackling breeze had kept the temperature under control, and Lacie’s three new brothers-in-law worked hard to keep the proceedings lighthearted and informal.
The four Chance brothers lifted a glass in toast to her. Such a good-looking family. Men, strong and tall and decent. She could only hope that any son of hers turned out half as well.
Nodding her head and smiling in appreciation of their good wishes, she felt her cheeks glowing pink. The acting sheriff of Chance County in a short ivory wedding dress and high heels. Who would’ve thought it?
Colt came to her side with a glass meant for her. “Hello, darlin’ wife. Or should I say, Mrs. Sheriff Chance?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to be known as the new Sheriff McCord.” The idea gave her chills. “Sheriff Chance or Sheriff McCord-Chance will do just fine.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “God, I love you.”
With a swing of his other arm, he indicated the place where the foundation for their new home had recently been poured. “Are you happy with how the house is coming along?” It was situated at the site where his mother’s old office had stood.
He looked so proud of himself. And content. For the first time in her memory of him, Colt seemed settled. She couldn’t help but think back to how he was as a kid, always ready to go. Jumping into things, either to protect her or finding justice for someone else.
She’d never believed he would be happy staying put. But she had always hoped. From now on it was her job to keep him busy saving others. Giving him lots of reasons to be happy he’d come back to Chance.
He’d made her life complete. And had given her what she’d wanted for as long as she could remember.
A real home.
*
After everyone had eaten their fill of barbecue, Colt watched Lacie playing with her new nieces and nephews. Her pretty ivory dress was about to be ruined for good. But she didn’t look like she cared at all. Someone had already spilled barbecue sauce on the hem anyway.
His brother Gage walked up and put a hand on his shoulder. “Do you smell it?”
“What?” He lifted his head and checked the breeze.
“Smoke.”
“From the barbecue pit? Sure.”
Gage shook his head and lifted his arm, pointing to the north. “Brush fire in Jim Abbott County. They’re afraid it’s about to spread to the cedar forests. They say they’ll be calling in Hotshot crews from all over the western U.S. at any moment.”
“We’ve been in a dry spell for a long time. Is Chance County in danger?” Colt knew Lacie would jump into action at the first sign of trouble. And he wanted the two of them to take their planned three-day honeymoon trip.
“It doesn’t look like it so far.” Gage turned to face him. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you how glad I am that you’re staying. I’ve missed you like crazy.”
Gage was only a year older and the two of them had been close as kids—before their mother died. Gage and his recently rediscovered wife and child had been gone on a family vacation for most of the past month. Getting reacquainted.
“I’m glad to be here.” Colt meant every bit of that sentiment. Chance County was home.
“I wanted to say that I appreciate you uncovering the truth about Mom and Dad.” Gage gave him an approving smile. “That’s one huge mystery solved.”
“And one more to go,” Colt added. “You’re still looking for Cami, aren’t you?”
“All the time. Now you’re back maybe you can give me a hand with that?”
“Definitely.” Colt meant that sentiment, too.
His eyes were finally opened to who he really was. A man who cherished his family. A man who had lost his compass somewhere along the line but had finally found his way back home.
*
Texas Lost and Found
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Fire exploded up the forty-foot cedar, snapping and cracking like a whip as it raced to chew off every living thing in its path.
Hotshot firefighter Nina Martinez struggled with the urge to hold still and ogle the magnificent flames—a firefighter’s worst nightmare. Dropping your guard during a blaze, for any reason, could get you killed.
A little while ago she’d gotten caught behind the fire lines while stamping out hot spots on orders from her superintendent. But when they’d first arrived on-site in Texas, her super gave his crew the coordinates to safety zones and added tricks to finding natural escape routes. No need for her to be overly concerned yet.
Drawing on her three years of training for the IHC, Interagency Hotshot Crews, she turned her back to the searing intensity and ran for the nearest black, an already burned-out safety zone. Digging in and repositioning the eighty-pound pack on her back, she fought her way past spark showers, choking smoke trails and a blizzard of ash. After a few solid minutes of climbing haze-choked hills she found an old cattle trail, a natural firebreak, and sprinted down it toward the clearer air.
Tearing past dry cactus and mesquite not yet aflame but heating fast, she had to shift direction to miss a huge rattler in her path. After that scare, she hesitated at the top of a mesa, checking coordinates for the best course for rejoining her crew. But as she gazed to the east, she spotted a ranch house directly below her that lay in the current route of the now reigniting blaze.
Giving the house a thorough once-over with her binoculars, she tried to determine if the place had been evacuated. Thankfully it looked deserted. But as she slowly swiveled her head to find a different heading, two people standing close to a barn came into view. The male and female appeared to be having an argument and not paying any attention to the spreading smoke and flames.
Keeping them in her sights, she started downhill, prepared to give them a lecture about evacuating when told to do so. When she reached their position, there wouldn’t be a lot of time left to move them out of harm’s way.
She used her radio to raise her team, asking for ground evacuation support for the civilians. Her super was not happy about her situation and said to keep moving in and out of those coordinates as fast as possible. The fire was spreading from the west toward her position. But he agreed to spare someone to help with the evacuation if it came soon. The fire was moving fast.
Crackling fire echoed at her back, while swirling winds showered her with stinging embers. It was difficult not pausing to dig at hot spots. Her training wanted to overrule her conscious mind. But the two civilians had to be first priority.
She closed in while continuing to keep watch on the couple, but all of a sudden a shovel appeared in the man’s hand. Before Nina could yell, he used it to bash at the woman’s head. The female dropped to her knee
s.
“Hey!” Nina screamed at the top of her lungs. “Stop.”
Ignoring the steep decline, she picked up her speed and raced toward the couple. “Put it down!”
The man hit the woman once again and the force of his blow laid her out on the ground. Only then did he look up toward the noises Nina was making. By that time she’d closed the distance to where he stood to a few yards. His gaze locked with hers and the deep anger in the man’s eyes nearly caused her steps to falter.
But concern for the woman kept her going. Without pausing, Nina reached into her pack for a fusee, preparing to use it if necessary in her own defense against the man. But after she fisted her hand and took a few more steps in his direction, he finally turned and disappeared around the side of the barn.
Closing in on where the woman lay, still and unmoving, it was apparent to Nina that the female was already beyond help. The pool of blood surrounding her head seemed like more than any human could lose and still survive.
Nina’s stomach rolled as she swiveled and made an effort to chase the man down. After turning the corner of the barn, she expected to see a car or truck pulling away. Instead, she found an open field full of boulders and mesquite.
She spent a moment wondering what direction the murderer had gone when a bellowing roar, sounding just like a freight train, captured her attention. The winds howled, switching direction, and at that moment a sight she’d only heard about greeted her disbelieving eyes.
A fire tornado developed within half a mile of her current position and headed straight at her.
Too late to get out of its way. Within seconds the whirl was fifty feet tall and moving fast.
After dragging her face shroud across her nose and mouth, she grabbed her portable fire shelter by its handles and shook it out. Protecting her lungs and airways was the most important lesson to remember. Another lesson that could keep her alive was to strip off her pack. She pitched her gear as far away as possible, relying on years of training to do things by rote.
She tried to put as much distance between herself and the fire devil as possible in the few seconds remaining. How she prayed to find a good spot to hunker down as she leaped a few more yards away from the barn and into the boulder field. But the intensive heat soon became unbearable. No time left.
Diving for an indentation next to a huge boulder, Nina pulled the shelter over her body and curled up in a fetal position inside it. Facedown, she buried her nose and mouth in the air pocket at the base of the rock.
The ferocious shriek from above roared in her ears as the whole world narrowed down to her tiny space between the shelter’s walls. The tiny space that might just save her life.
She should have known something like this would happen in Texas. For years she’d stayed away, only thinking about the godforsaken place in her nightmares. If her team hadn’t been called in to give the Texas firefighters added backup during the worst firestorms in the state’s history, she never would have set foot inside the Texas state lines.
But wherever the team was sent, she went, too.
Mind pictures of the little bit she remembered of Texas from her early childhood came unbidden as she closed her ears to the wailing firestorm outside her shelter. Horses and saddles. The smell of hay. Kind eyes and soft hands. A woman calling her Cami, love. A male voice cooing, Easy, little girl.
That was always as far into the dream as she ever got before the memories disintegrated and turned to ash. Warm eyes turned cold as ice. Soft hands turned hard as steel.
Pulling herself out of that particular pit of depression, she tried turning her thoughts to something far more pleasant. Her Hotshot unit team. The only reason she’d agreed to this temporary deployment in Texas in the first place.
Her crew: Superintendent Ralston, the strongest man she’d ever met; her fellow firefighters Mad Mike, Geek and Alabama. And Doc, real name Josh White, the crew’s medic with the sensual bedroom eyes.
As the walls of her shelter overheated, she allowed herself the luxury of concentrating on mind pictures of Doc and his sexy eyes—something she usually wanted to stop. Lustful thoughts of him had already invaded far too many of her daydreams during fire season. But she would never have let him get an inkling of how often she thought of him.
Simply picturing those eyes, green as spring grass and so full of expression, could make her melt with unfulfilled longing. Even in the middle of heavy training. Luckily, thoughts of his rip-cord-lean body, all muscle and strength, usually came into her mind during slow times and instead of the nightmares, despite the fact that their relationship was nothing more than a nodding acquaintance.
Her imaginative thoughts now brought a frisson of awareness shooting through her. Being in the middle of a fire tornado was anything but normal, but those feelings for Josh were as familiar as breathing. She gave up trying to get him out of her mind now and focused on the memory of his eyes, ignoring as best she could the extreme heat and gas-filled haze filtering in through her fire shelter’s walls.
Tightening her grip on the shelter’s handles, she refused to consider her situation dire. Don’t think about it. Thoughts of the sexy doctor Josh White were as good a way as any to spend her last seconds on earth.
Within moments, Nina found herself letting go and giving in to the impending doom. Instead of fighting to remain conscious as trained, she closed her eyes and fell into the deep, black abyss—with a picture of Josh the last thing on her mind.
*
Finally.
Josh “Doc” White clicked off his radio and circled the scorched barnyard one more time, studying wind direction. The fire tornado had moved on a while ago and then dissipated. In the meantime he’d just been given permission to land his helicopter in advance of the mop-up crews. His California superintendent needed him to check for any survivors.
Like everyone else on the Hotshot team, he’d heard both Nina’s first call for help with evacuating civilians and her last mayday call in advance of a fire tornado. But unlike everyone else, while scouting Nina’s last known coordinates from above, he’d observed a charred skeleton lying next to the cremated remains of a barn.
But it couldn’t be her. He refused to acknowledge the possibility that she might be beyond his help.
Already tense and bursting with adrenaline, Josh chose an adequate spot to put down. Landing a medical helo in the changing currents of fire-driven winds wasn’t the easiest task he’d ever undertaken. But he’d learned to make similar maneuvers years ago as a medic on the wind-whipped slopes of Afghanistan. Today his battle with the winds didn’t give him that much trouble.
Grabbing up his medic’s kit, he was out of the helo long before the rotors stopped spinning. Please don’t let it be her.
On rubbery legs, he darted across smoldering beams and yards of ashy rubble toward the spot he’d seen from the air. When he came close enough for his first clear view of the remains, he caught himself before sucking in smoky air in horror. The skeleton was female.
Oh, God, no. He held his breath and vowed to keep his mind focused on the task instead of on the possibilities.
After kneeling for a quick inspection, he discovered to his relief that the female’s remains were the wrong height for Nina. Exhaling, he also noted the fact that the female skeleton on the ground had been murdered. Fire hadn’t killed her. Some kind of heavy weapon had been used to cave in her skull. That had gotten the job done long before the body burned.
Relief mixed with anxiety. Where was Nina? Had she been a witness to a murder? Or had she been another victim?
If Nina had escaped both a murderer and the fire tornado, she would’ve already radioed in to their crew. So what happened to her? With nothing to be done for this victim, Josh stood and looked around. There could be two more skeletons somewhere nearby. A murderer and Nina.
Shaking his head to get rid of the thought, he tried to imagine what Nina, an extremely well-trained Hotshot, would’ve done in the emergency. Presuming of course that she wa
sn’t being chased by a murderer. Run for the open should have been her first response.
He checked the charred ground for traces of the fire’s origins and noted the direction of the firestorm’s ascent and which direction it had taken. Signs pointed the tornado’s track straight into the field where blackened boulders and charcoaled tree stumps now stood as testament to the tornado’s destruction.
Josh had only taken a few steps into the field when he found the burned-out shell of a Hotshot pack. Thankfully there wasn’t a body nearby. Swallowing hard, he kept going, checking every inch of the field for any trace of Nina.
Within a few yards he finally spotted the sight he’d prayed to find. On the far side of an enormous bolder, stuffed into a small space at the base, lay a fire shelter—still smoldering but intact.
He was beside it without remembering how he got there.
“Nina?” Donning his fire gloves, he ripped at the shelter’s fire-retardant material. “Nina, answer me.”
Pushing aside the shelter’s walls, he dragged her clear and pulled her into his arms. She wasn’t responding. Quickly checking her vital signs, he found a pulse, weak and thready. She was still alive. But unconscious.
Thank God. Josh placed his portable ventilator over her nose and mouth. She would survive this. He would see to it.
He noticed a couple of burn spots on her limbs, but they wouldn’t kill her. It was smoke inhalation that could end her life.
Only moments after locating her and jumping into action, he loaded her into his waiting helo and strapped them both in. Being extracareful of her skin and of not jostling the ventilator, he lifted into the still-hazy sky.
Nina Martinez was too tough to succumb to a fire devil like this. He’d dedicated his life to saving others and he made a vow that the strong, vibrant woman would not be an exception.
