Run to the Black: A Search and Rescue Christian Romantic Suspense (Cascade Rescue Book 4)

He has spent his life running toward the fire. She has spent four years holding everything together. Neither knows how to let someone else carry the rope.

Marcus Ward knows something about carrying too much.

As a search-and-rescue coordinator, he’s spent years running toward disasters while keeping everyone else safe. He knows how to stay calm when everything is falling apart, how to make impossible decisions, and how to carry the weight when others can’t.

Then a massive wildfire tears through Central Oregon, sending Marcus to a remote horse ranch—and straight into the path of Ellie Tate.

Ellie has survived by being the strong one.

For four years, she’s run her family ranch alone, caring for twelve horses, keeping the bills paid, and carrying grief she refuses to share. She doesn’t need rescuing. She doesn’t ask for help. And she certainly doesn’t have room in her carefully controlled life for a man who sees straight through her.

When Marcus arrives at Ellie’s ranch, he finds twelve horses, a stubborn rancher, and a fire moving faster than anyone expected.

Ellie has a plan.

Marcus knows the plan won’t hold.

As the fire closes in, they have to work together to get the horses out before the roads disappear and the flames cut them off. But the rescue forces Ellie to confront the one thing she’s spent four years refusing to admit: sometimes being strong means knowing when to hand someone else the rope.

And Marcus has a lesson of his own to learn.

Because the fire isn’t the only thing threatening to burn through the walls they’ve both built. When the emergency is over and the smoke clears, there will be no disaster left to hide behind—and no excuse for either of them to keep pretending they don’t need each other.

Run to the Black is a clean Christian wildfire rescue romance featuring a steady search-and-rescue hero, a fiercely independent horse rancher, twelve horses, high-stakes wildfire evacuation, slow-burn romance, found family, small-town warmth, and a faith journey about grief, surrender, trust, and discovering that being held doesn’t make you weak.