Welcome to the second book in my Rangers of Big Bend series! This is one of those stories that grabbed me by the throat and demanded to be written. I started with the image of Emma standing next to an empty crib and the book unfolded from there.
Emma is a woman facing every mother’s worst nightmare—her baby has been taken. Desperate to find her daughter, she’s forced to turn to a stranger for help.
Matt isn’t sure what to think about Emma. But when he realizes she’s telling the truth about her baby’s kidnapping, he’s determined to do whatever he can to help her.
Emma and Matt are complicated people, with their fair share of past heartbreaks. I enjoyed getting to know them both, and discovering how they put loss and betrayal behind them to move forward in their lives. I hope you’ll like their story, too.
Happy reading!
Lara
This one is for Erin, the sister of my heart.
Contents
Emma Foster opened her eyes in the darkness, filled with the sudden knowledge that something was terribly wrong. She listened hard, straining her ears for any noise that was out of place. Nothing sounded amiss—the refrigerator hummed quietly in the kitchen; the ceiling fan ticked softly over her head. But despite the absence of obvious issues, the house didn’t feel right.
She slipped out of bed, stepping lightly to avoid making too much noise. She’d had a devil of a time getting Christina to sleep tonight—her normally cheerful and good-natured ten-month-old daughter was teething and grumpy with it, which made for long nights. The baby had finally surrendered to exhaustion about an hour ago, and Emma had slipped off to her own bed for a few stolen moments of sleep. Everything had seemed fine at the time, but now she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.
She headed for the front door, knowing that it was locked but needing to check it again for her own peace of mind. Sure enough, the dead bolt was secure, just as she’d left it earlier in the evening. The windows were all shut, the blinds lowered into place. There was no sign of any trouble, nothing to explain the sense of dread that weighed on her.
Moments like this made her miss Chris all the more. He wouldn’t have hesitated to wake up with her, to double-check all the locks and peek into the closets and under the beds until she was certain they were safe. He’d been a perfect boyfriend and fiancé—Emma had no doubt he would have been a wonderful husband to her and a fantastic father to their little girl.
For the millionth time, she cursed the driver who had decided sending a text message was more important than paying attention to the road. Chris had stopped at a red light when he’d been hit from behind and pushed into cross traffic, where he’d been hit again by a bus and a garbage truck. Chris had died at the scene before the firemen could even get him out of the mangled wreck of his car.
Emma hadn’t known she was pregnant at the time. She’d been so busy working and wrapping up the plans for their wedding that she’d assumed the fatigue and upset stomach were due to stress. After the accident, she’d been so consumed with grief she hadn’t paid attention to her symptoms. It had been her mother who put two and two together and suggested she take a pregnancy test.
She could still remember the feeling of shock that had washed over her when she’d realized the test was positive. She and Chris had talked about starting a family soon after they got married, but Emma had figured that dream died along with him. Finding out she was pregnant with Chris’s baby had eased her grief a bit and had
