Wyoming Christmas Ransom. Nicole Helm

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Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Extract

       About the Publisher

       Chapter One

      Gracie Delaney didn’t care for the nickname “Angel of Death,” but in Bent, Wyoming, it was something of the truth. If she came to a person’s door unannounced, they knew what was coming.

      The fact that she was young, maybe a little girl-next-door looking, no longer fooled people. As the coroner for Bent County, Gracie’s work was death.

      It wasn’t as bad as some people made it out to be. Considering her parents had died in a car crash when she’d been six, and she was the lone survivor of said crash, she’d been intimately acquainted with death her whole life.

      Funny, life was a lot harder than death. Death was easy, and it was final. The cause might occasionally be a mystery, but it was a mystery she always solved.

      Gracie blew out a breath as she parked her car in Will Cooper’s yard. Life, meanwhile, had a hundred mysteries she couldn’t figure out. Like why two years after she’d informed Will Cooper of his wife’s death, she still came to check in on him routinely.

      She’d informed a lot of people of their loved ones’ deaths over the course of two years, and while some reactions stuck with her, maybe a few even haunted her, only Will’s reaction had ever caused her to act outside a professional capacity.

      She supposed it was the fact he couldn’t accept his wife had simply skidded off the road and crashed into a tree. He insisted the detectives had missed or overlooked things. He’d become obsessed with proving foul play.

      Gracie had felt sorry for him and his inability to accept the truth. So, she’d let him have access to records she shouldn’t have let him have access to. She’d shown him, over and over again, how the only thing that had killed his wife was an icy road and a tree.

      Still he pushed into this theory that whoever his wife had been having an affair with had been the one to kill her.

      Gracie got out of the truck and stared at the ramshackle cabin Will currently lived in. He still owned the pretty little two-story he and his wife had shared in Bent proper, but rented it out to a family with kids. He claimed it was because up here he could do his metalwork without any neighbor complaint, but Gracie figured it was something more isolating than all that.

      He wasn’t a Bent native. He’d moved here after marrying Paula Carson and though he’d lived in town and been building a name for himself with his metalwork, Paula’s death had changed him. He’d isolated himself and since he had no family in Bent, no natives had been too worried about a stranger’s hermit behavior.

      Except Gracie. For all intents and purposes, she was his only link to the outside world.

      God, she wished she could help him.

      “You’re going to,” she said to herself. “Right here. Right now.” She’d been playing into his obsession for too long, and it had to stop. No more looks at old reports. No more trips to that road to study curves and angles. She’d still be his friend, but that was it. Like a drug dealer refusing to continue to deal an addict their drug of choice.

      Will was going to have to go cold turkey or solo. Her chest tightened and for the briefest second she considered retracing her steps. He’d go solo. She knew he would, and she didn’t want him to.

      She wanted to fix him. To help him. And yes, maybe she was a little inappropriately hung up on the guy, but that only factored into it a little.

      She shook that thought away and started for the cabin. No Christmas lights, not a hint that it was December and even rough-and-tumble Bent had brought out its Christmas decor. But not for Will. She wasn’t certain he celebrated anything anymore.

      She heard the faint strains of music and bypassed the cabin door, instead walking around the cabin to the back. He had the doors open on his shed, and inside he worked on a metal project.

      He’d once had a blacksmith shop down in town, something both local ranchers had used and tourists had gotten a kick out of. But he’d closed it after Paula’s death. In fact, he hadn’t worked for a year after, living off the rent from the house.

      Slowly over the past year he’d gotten back into metalwork. Little artistic projects he made custom for ranches, or occasionally sold to the antique store in town.

      Gracie had been hopeful it was a sign he’d give up obsessing over the mystery of Paula’s affair and death. Like so many times with him, her hopes had been dashed.

       And you are done being a silly, too-hopeful girl.

      She nodded to herself as she crossed the yard. He worked, mask over

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