Jill Elizabeth: Lone Survivor

A baby in need of protection—

A killer in pursuit.

Determined to connect with her last living family member, Karissa Landon tracks down her cousin—and finds the woman murdered and her baby boy in danger. Now she’s running for both their lives, and her only hope is a former firefighter. Hunter Raines is hiding secrets, but he’ll make it his mission to protect Karissa and her infant charge…at all costs.

JILL ELIZABETH NELSONwrites what she likes to read—faith-based tales of adventure seasoned with romance. Parts of the year find her and her husband on the international mission field. Other parts find them at home in rural Minnesota, surrounded by the woods and prairie and four grown children and young grandchildren. More about Jill and her books can be found at jillelizabethnelson.comor Facebook.com/jillelizabethnelson.author.

Also By Jill Elizabeth Nelson

Evidence of Murder

Witness to Murder

Calculated Revenge

Legacy of Lies

Betrayal on the Border

Frame-Up

Shake Down

Rocky Mountain Sabotage

Duty to Defend

Lone Survivor

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Lone Survivor

Jill Elizabeth Nelson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90085-4

LONE SURVIVOR

© 2020 Jill Elizabeth Nelson

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

Change of font size and line height

Change of background and font colours

Change of font

Change justification

Text to speech

“What’s going on?”

Karissa looked up at her protector.

Hunter’s bearded face had hardened into a fierce mask. “They’re burning the cabin. If anyone is alive in here, they expect us to run out where they can pick us off like tin ducks in a county fair target-shooting booth.”

Karissa sucked in a breath. “What are we going to do?”

“Not what they expect.” He tugged back a corner of the thin area rug they were squatting on, exposing a portion of a trap door.

“Of course! You have a cellar.”

Would the smoke penetrate the cellar? Or would the floorboards currently beneath her feet fall in on them, consuming them in flaming debris? Did she want to die in a hole like a rat?

Karissa met the stranger’s steel-gray gaze.

“Trust me,” he said, voice low and steady, like a rock of dependability...which didn’t match his appearance at all.

What choice did she have but to trust him?

Dear Reader,

I’m so glad you came along on this adventure with Karissa and Hunter and, of course, baby Kyle. Though everything came out well in the end for them, there were certainly sad times, scary times and hurtful times along the route. In a real sense, that’s life for all of us.

The truth is, we struggle with many problems and trials in this world. My hope and prayer for us all is that we walk in that “blessed hope” of Scripture that an eternity of joy in God’s presence awaits us. May we be able to express as Karissa did at the end of the story that death holds no terrors for us. Nor should anything this life can throw at us. The apostle Paul was adamant that nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” ( Romans 8:39).

We cling to promises like the verse above when doubts and temptations assail us and hurtful things happen. Even if we end up the last one in our family, as Karissa did, God is our heavenly family and will provide human connections to warm our hearts and lives. God is, indeed, a good, good Father.

I enjoy hearing from readers. You may contact me by email at jnelson@jillelizabethnelson.com or look me up on my website at jillelizabethnelson.com. I am also available to contact through my Facebook page: Facebook.com/jillelizabethnelson.author.

May your trust in the Lord grow deeper and richer as you read the stories God gives His writers for Love Inspired Suspense.

Blessings always,

Jill Elizabeth Nelson

A father of the fatherless...is God in his holy habitation.

—Psalm 68:5

To all those who struggle with the sense of being orphaned and alone in this world. You are not alone, and God will never abandon you.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Introduction

Dear Reader

Bible Verse

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

Karissa Landon gnawed her lower lip as she guided her compact sedan up the steep gravel driveway toward her cousin Nikki’s home in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. As excited as she’d been to reconnect with this long-lost relative—pretty much the last one on the bare branches of her family tree—now that she was at the moment of truth, her palms were sweating and her heart rate stuttered like she was about to undergo a particularly grueling job interview. Karissa and her cousin had both recently crossed the threshold of thirty years old, and it had been twenty-two years since they’d last seen each other. Would they like the adults the other had become?

Karissa and her twin sister, Anissa, had been inseparable with Nikki when their families lived next door to each other during their early grade school years, but after their families moved far apart, they’d gradually fallen out of touch. Now, this reunion meant a lot to Karissa—probably too much—which led to her arriving at her cousin’s place a good half hour earlier than their agreed-upon time. But with her parents and her twin sister gone from this world, she longed for connection with someone who shared her DNA.