PROLOGUE

"Ten thousand angels listen while I pray,"

Matt Stevens barely recognized his own voice, as he said those familiar words aloud, while the casket of the woman, who had become an unwelcome friend, was slowly lowered into the frozen Colorado ground.

Matt knew those words all by heart. In fact, he'd lost count of the number of times he'd heard that poem before this moment. It was, after all, Rachel Bowers' favorite poem. She had recited that poem to him so many times in the past. Rachel never got tired of hearing those simple words.

But today she wouldn't be there smiling as Matt said them aloud to the group of people gathered there to pay their final respects to a woman who touched everyone she met, including Matt's life.

"Ten thousand angels watch over me

through my days,"

Rachel Bowers had all but forced her way into his life, and into his heart, for that matter. And she'd almost accomplished the impossible. Rachel had almost convinced Matt to start living again.

Almost, until her death had taken her away.

"Ten thousand angels bring God's

smile on morning rays,

Ten thousand angels will take my

hand and keep me strong,

Ten thousand angels take me home

on that final day."

The sound of chunks of hard earth hitting the casket brought it all home to Matt once again. Just like that time, years, when he'd stood over his son's grave in this very cemetery. Just how final and lacking in dignity death really was.

This was it. This grave was to be Rachel's final resting place. There would be no future beyond this place. Just a few words said over a grave before that final sound.

In his heart, Matt believed all those things, but still he could almost hear Rachel arguing over every single one of them. She'd argued about eternity right up until she was faced with it.

But in spite of all Rachel's beliefs in a loving God who sent those angels she loved so much to guide His children home, none of those things had been true for her. Her final hours had been spent with only the shell of the man Matt had become to comfort her. Not even her granddaughter, the love of her life, had been there to ease those final moments.

Rachel had been wrong. There wasn't any such thing as God, or eternity for that matter. There was only this life. This moment. This end. And the final proof of all those things had been in an old woman dying alone.

The truth was, that poem, like all of Rachel's beliefs, were little more than faded words tucked away in a worn out book that had once belonged to a dead woman.

***

Kate Alexander stopped the Jeep outside of the cabin that her grandmother Rachel had rented in Silver Mountain, Colorado. Once again, she was fighting the nausea and weakness that had been with her for most of the trip.

Her grandmother's cabin was dark and lonely. Deserted. There wasn't any sign of the woman who had filled Kate's life with light for so many years.

Something about the dark cabin brought all the uneasiness back that Kate had fought so hard against since the beginning of this trip. She'd traveled thousands of miles, and had almost given up hope on every single one of those miles. The only thing that had kept her going through it all was the thought of seeing her grandmother again.

That was the only thing that mattered for so long that she couldn't remember ever caring about anything else. It was the only thing that mattered now. Kate wouldn't let herself consider that she had been wrong in making this trip in the first place.

Slowly, she got out of the Jeep and walked the half dozens steps up to the cabin's door. There wasn't a single sign of life inside that cabin, and no evidence that anyone was home, or had been for quite some time. Somehow, Kate knew even before she knocked that she wouldn't find her grandmother in there.

Rachel had once told her that the owner of the cabin, a man by the name of Matt Stevens, lived just a few miles further up the mountainside. Grandma Rachel had always talked about Matt as if he were a friend. Kate was hoping that he could tell her where her grandmother had gone.

But once she was back in the Jeep, Kate couldn't bring herself to leave. Her eyes took in all the little details of the last place Rachel Bowers had lived.

Why did it suddenly feel as if she were completely alone in the world? Was it possible that Rachel had simply picked up, moved again, and was somehow unable to tell her granddaughter of the move? Or had something happened to Rachel?

Her grandmother had always been the adventurous type. But Rachel was not the type of woman to simply disappear into thin air without finding some way to let Kate know where she was going.

Suddenly Kate wasn't sure that she had the strength to drive up that mountain and ask Matt Stevens that question. For some reason, she was afraid of what his answer might be. But there was no real choice here. Kate had to find out what had happened to her grandmother, because Rachel Bowers was the only thing that mattered to her anymore.