Missing: Campbell Wildlife Preserve, #12

By D.M. Turner

The events in this novella immediately follow those in the short novel TOUGH CHOICES.

A Missing Child,
Unexpected Complications,
and a Father Behaving Suspiciously.

Private Investigator Max Johnson is contacted by the parents of a girl who has disappeared without a trace. Routine missing person case, or so he believes at first. It doesn't take long for him to realize there's more going on than the couple knows, or admits, and he's even more driven to find the promising young artist.

To complicate matters, Max is struggling in a way he can't begin to define or explain to himself, much less to his new wife, but he fears she might be the cause.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dawn M. Turner
• Release date: Jul 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393635291

D.M. Turner

Dawn lives in the high desert of Southern Arizona with her husband of over 20 years and a variety of furry and feathered critters. She enjoys photography, crochet, scrapbooking, spinning her own yarn from wool and alpaca, beading and jewelry-making, and lots of reading. When not doing those things, she writes romance, romantic-suspense, women's fiction under the name Dawn M. Turner, and medieval and urban fantasy with a Christian worldview under the name D.M. Turner. She took first place in the Contemporary Romance category, as well as winning the Grand Prize, in the 2011 Writers on the Storm Category Five Writing Contest.

Book preview

Missing

By D.M. Turner

Copyright 2017, 2020 by D.M. Turner

Cover designed by the author

Painting created using white wolf image by jimdeli of Adobe Stock

Wolf head image by Erni of Adobe Stock

Photograph of couple by rocketclips of Adobe Stock

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or any information retrieval or storage system without the prior written permission of the author.

BISAC: Fiction/Christian/Fantasy

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Chapter 1

Friday, June 29, 2018

Mesa, Arizona

Max, what’s wrong?

Startled from hostile thoughts about stop-and-go, cut-you-off-without-warning traffic around his truck, Max Johnson glanced sideways at his mate, Keesha. They’d been married three weeks and one day. Exactly two days longer than she’d been a werewolf like him. It still amazed him, that she’d made such a life-altering choice. Out of love for him. He turned back to the crush of vehicles stopped for a red light then refocused on her. What had she asked? What?

Her dark eyes narrowed. What’s wrong? You were growling.

I was? He blinked in surprise. Maybe the wolf inside had stirred more than he’d realized. He’d have to be more careful. Especially given their destination. Parents seeking a lost child weren’t likely to trust a scary man to locate and (hopefully) safely return said child. He had to be very careful around the Regulars.

Humans, he corrected silently. The pack second’s mate, Kelly, had proven to be a bad influence on the pack’s vocabulary. Fine and dandy for Ian, Brett, and some of the others who seldom had contact with humans to refer to them as Regulars. Max, on the other hand, might slip and use the word around clients or some such if he allowed the habit to develop. He spent most of his days interfacing with non-werewolf humans. Though, on some days lately, he wondered about the wisdom of it.

Max, are you listening to me? A frown lowered Keesha’s brows and etched mirror commas between them.

Yes. Maybe. Had she said something else after accusing him of growling?

The light’s green. She motioned forward, her scowl not lifting.

Max followed the car in front of him through the intersection at Power and Thomas.

I asked what unpleasantness you were thinking so hard about?

Uh.... Confusion rose in a tidal wave. Shouldn’t he be keeping track of the conversation better? When?

Silence fell for a couple of seconds, then she said softly, When you were growling.

Oh. It’s this traffic. I hate the Valley. He signaled and moved into the left-turn lane to make the turn into the Red Mountain Ranch subdivision. They’d have been there long before, but he’d overshot his intended turn off I-17 onto the 202 Loop to head east and ended up veering onto Route 60 instead. Miles out of his desired path. During Friday afternoon rush hour, no less. He’d never done such a thing. Ever. What’s wrong with me that I’m doing it now?

Truth be told, he hadn’t felt quite right in weeks. Restless. On edge. Easily distracted. Didn’t matter whether he was locked safely in the apartment he shared with his mate or running at the Preserve. It haunted him. He’d even found himself out-of-sorts at the Preserve during the full moon run with the pack two nights prior and come far too close to picking a fight with his best friend, Jeremy. Something else he’d never done. Ever since he’d gotten married.... No. That’s not it.

Max!

What? He glanced at her briefly then back at the street, driving slowly and checking signs to make sure he didn’t end up at the wrong house. Why not? It’d be the perfect way to round out this trip.

More turns brought him to a cul-de-sac. Dead end. Hopefully the right one. The woman he’d spoken to on the phone earlier had said the house was in one of those. He pulled a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and double-checked the address. Then he scrutinized the four houses clustered in the circle. There it is.

Max eased into the driveway and shut off the ignition. The air conditioner died. Heat immediately began to build inside the cab of the truck. Still, he hesitated and studied the house.

Nice place. For a cookie-cutter home. Meticulously well cared for, which he’d expected in a subdivision ruled by a homeowner’s association. It resembled a host of other homes, including those around it, that had sprung up in various parts of the Valley (the State, really) since the 90s. Light sandy brown, like so many others. Gravel and rock landscaping with sparse desert vegetation (meaning, lots of cacti that would bite if a person got too close). No mature trees, at least none of the larger varieties found at higher elevations.

I already miss Flagstaff. If that afternoon’s call hadn’t been about a missing child, he’d start the truck and go home. Blow off the meeting, no matter how out-of-character such an action was. But the case involved an innocent. A twelve-year-old girl. He couldn’t walk away. Not if there was any chance at all she still lived and he could find her. Max sighed, palmed the keys, and reached for the door handle.

Keesha’s hand on his arm stilled him.

He twisted slightly in his seat and glanced at her.

Concern darkened her already dark brown eyes. Are you alright?

Right as rain. He forced a smile. Or, perhaps more accurately, right as the dry desert heat.

Her scowl deepened.

She hated it when he used humor to deflect a serious conversation, but nothing else to do at that point. He hadn’t figured out what was wrong, so how could he possibly explain it to her? Besides.... We’ve got a missing child to worry about right now. Max pushed open the door before she could say anything further.

Heat surged against the bare skin of his face and forearms. He grimaced. Good grief. Over a hundred degrees, and the sun wouldn’t set for three hours or so yet. If he had to do any actual legwork.... Miserable. Another reason to be back in Flagstaff. It was a good twenty degrees cooler at home. Even more at the Preserve, which was at a higher elevation than Flagstaff.

He slammed the truck door, dropped the keys into a front