Colin “Doc” Shaw has spent ten years carrying the final words of the man who died in his arms. Protect my sister.
Myra Ellis never knew her brother had asked Doc to watch over her. Now a deputy in Eagle River, she has built a life defined by courage, independence, and determination to uncover the truth—even when that truth lies hidden in her brother’s old field journal.
Someone betrayed Doc’s Ranger unit in Afghanistan.
And Mara has just found the evidence.
When Doc receives a photograph of Mara taken through a rifle scope, he heads for the Last Stand Tavern and comes face-to-face with the Rangers he left behind. He intends to keep Mara alive, expose the traitor, and disappear again.
But Mara doesn’t want a bodyguard, especially one who knows more about her brother’s death than he is willing to admit. Forced together as the danger closes in, the hardened combat medic and the stubborn deputy uncover a conspiracy that followed Doc home from the war—and a love neither of them was prepared to find.
Mara believes Doc is protecting her because of a promise he made fifteen years ago.
She doesn’t know that the promise he made to her brother isn’t keeping him in Eagle River; it’s the promise he made her that’s keeping him there.