Prologue

Columbus, Nebraska

July 1883

Harry’s boots scraped against the grit of the road, each step a leaden echo in the stillness of the night. The dim glow from the flickering street lamps barely pierced the darkness, casting long shadows that seemed to stretch out like fingers grasping at the tails of his coat.

It was too quiet.

When Calvin Hawkins had asked him to meet at his store at midnight, Harry had initially been annoyed.

“If you’re having a problem with vandals, how are they getting in?”

But, every question Harry asked, Hawkins refused to answer. Something about it wasn’t adding up, but the man refused to clarify anything he said, repeating the same thing until Harry agreed.

“Just be there, Sheriff,” he’d said, looking over each shoulder as customers milled behind him, scooping up cups full of beans and measuring out lengths of fabric. “I can’t keep having these vandals coming in, tearing my store apart. Mags and me have had a time of it, coming in every morning and cleaning it all up.”

Harry didn’t like it, but he agreed. It was one of the less appealing parts of the job, but it was his job all the same.

Now, he circled the shop, his unease building in the silence. There were no lights flickering in the windows, no sign anyone was here at all. No vandals, but no store owner either. He wanted to believe that the man had forgotten or fallen asleep in the warmth of his bed and missed their appointment—but a sense of foreboding clung to him as stubbornly as the dust on his boots. Columbus may not be much more than a dirt road cutting through a collection of farms, but he’d been sheriff long enough to know to trust his gut, and something here was amiss.

As Harry approached the dry goods store, the silence of the town grew more pronounced. Not even the regular creak of the wooden sign swaying above the entrance greeted him. He reached for the handle of the door, the metal cold and unwelcoming under his touch.

“Mr. Hawkins?” Harry’s voice broke through the oppressive quiet, making him want to keep talking, just to keep the silence at bay. There was no reply, no shuffle of feet or clearing of throat from the corners of the shop. Only the sound of his own breath disturbed the air. His eyes, sharp as the edge of a blade, scanned the interior but found no trace of chaos, no sign of the vandalism that supposedly demanded his immediate attention.

A growing irritation pricked at him. He’d left the warmth of his bed, with Beth snuggled in beside him and their little girl—so pink and new—and all for what? The store was locked up tight, everything neat and orderly and in its place. All was as it should be, and yet his stomach was drawn tight, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. It didn’t add up, and Harry Danvers wasn’t a man who took kindly to puzzles with missing pieces.

He muttered a curse under his breath, his patience fraying at the edges. A ruse? It certainly appeared so, and the notion did little to quell the unrest that had settled in his chest. The urgency that had pulled him from his family now seemed to be nothing more than a fool’s errand.

With a last sweeping glance over the shelves neatly lined with sacks of flour and sugar, tools hanging along the walls, unopened barrels of dried meat, and rolls of cloth, Harry turned on his heel. The store, with its eerie silence, held no answers—only questions that gnawed at the edges of his mind.

He backed away from the building, circling its perimeter one last time.

As he made it back to the front of the store, not another soul in sight, the inklings of certainty began to rise in his mind.

He quickened his stride, breaths sharp and shallow. Shadows loomed, stretching across his path. Each one seemed to whisper, “Hurry.”

The sudden certainty settled into his gut like a stone.

Home. He needed to get home.

His mind spun scenarios, questions pounding in rhythm with his racing heart. His palms dampened on the leather of his holster, ready for any threat that might spring from the darkness as he leapt astride his horse and turned him toward home.

“Yah!” he shouted, smacking his flank, and the horse took off, pounding down the dark, empty road.

Finally, he saw it—the outline of his house. But something felt wrong; a thick tension hung in the air, replacing the comforting glow of lamplight that should have greeted him.

Darkness and silence. Suffocating silence.

And then chaos erupted.

Men on horseback burst from the shadows, their figures stark against the dim light of the half-carved moon. Hooves thundered, striking the hard ground as they fled into the night. Desperation clawed at Harry’s throat—a primal feeling of total panic and a fear until now unknown to him locked behind gritted teeth.

Instinct took over. Muscle memory guided his hands as he drew his revolver, though his mind screamed this was no time for caution or doubt. He urged his horse forward, propelled by fear and fury.

Shock registered briefly—Why here? Why them?—but was swiftly swallowed by the need to act. To protect. To reclaim what could still be saved. Harry’s life had distilled to this single moment of pursuit, where nothing else existed but the fierce drive to chase down the unknown and shield his family from harm’s cruel grasp.

He didn’t know how this would end, but he knew it would not end without him fighting with every last breath.

He looked to the house, so ominously dark, and back to the men riding away. For a moment, he was paralyzed with indecision—go inside and check on his family, or follow the men?

Two of the horses caught his attention, the shadows of the riders atop both of them strangely large and wide, and he made his decision without, in that moment, fully understanding why. Harry trusted his gut, and his gut told him to follow the men, so he did.

The men were making for the wide open plains to the east. He knew this land. There was little to nothing out that way.

Harry spurred his horse into a gallop, the cold night air whipping against his face. His heart thundered in his chest, echoing the hooves that punched the earth beneath them. The moon cast a ghostly glow over the fields, transforming the familiar terrain into an ethereal chase ground. Shadows melded with light, creating a disorienting tapestry as he urged his horse faster, muscles tensing with each bound.

The thudding of his pulse became a metronome for the chase, each beat urging him on, fueling the fire that seared through his veins. He leaned low over the horse’s mane, eyes fixed on the fleeing figures ahead—dark silhouettes framed by the soft silver glow of the moonlight. Over fences and through streams they raced, the landscape a blur, details smudged by speed and desperation.

Harry focused in on that shape, that odd shape that had caught his eye and made him decide to follow. He was gaining on those two horses now, benefited by being a smaller, lighter load on his horse while those two were burdened by more weight.

At first glance, it looked like a sack full of something. But as he narrowed the distance, his breath hitched; there was an unmistakable form to it, a gentle curve that didn’t belong to any object but could only be….

“Julia,” he gasped, horror slicing through the adrenaline.

It was not goods they had stolen, but something infinitely more precious—his newborn daughter, wrapped in her blanket, its tail flapping in the wind. Harry’s mind reeled, thoughts fracturing under the weight of the realization, yet his resolve crystallized. He would not falter, not now, not when every second determined the fate of his child.

He flattened his back, leaning as low into the horse’s neck as he could possibly go, urging him faster, faster; his hooves pounded the earth, breaths erupting in ragged snorts as they closed in on the horses. Harry’s fingers clenched the reins, knuckles white with the strain of his grip, and then the shape of the other horse became clear—Beth, gripped to the side of one of the outlaws. Her long brown hair whipped in the wind behind her.

A guttural cry tore from Harry’s throat, disbelief and dread tangling into a sharp knot within his chest. Questions pelted his thoughts like hailstones yet vanished as quickly against the shield of his resolve. He had to save them; there would be time to find answers later.

He drew his weapon, the cold metal a familiar weight against his palm.

“Come on,” he whispered to himself, to his horse, to anyone who was listening.

With a glance skyward, he angled the barrel upward and squeezed the trigger. The gunshot split the night, a sharp crack that echoed like a thunderclap over the plains. Harry held his breath, the aftermath of the blast ringing in his ears, waiting for the reaction.

The outlaws jolted at the sound, their formation scattering like crows flushed from a field. The two horses holding his wife and daughter fell further behind, removed from the pack. Harry watched, unblinking, as the chaos unfolded, his hands shaking not from the recoil but from the high stakes of this deadly game. There was no time to second guess, no room for error. Only action, only the fierce drive to protect his family at all costs.

“Please,” he uttered, a silent plea lost amidst the fury of galloping hooves and the stirring dust. It was a risk he’d taken, but in that perilous moment, it was all he had.

He shot again.

The outlaws veered off course, their previously tight ranks now a disjointed mess. Horses reared and bucked, spooked by the shattering of the night quiet, and their riders struggled to regain control. Desperation clawed at Harry’s chest, his gaze darting between the silhouettes of his wife and daughter.

“Beth!” His voice was a hoarse whisper, drowned out by the sound of hoofbeats.

The outlaws were shouting now, their commands to one another curt and laced with panic. He saw an opportunity in their confusion, a flickering chance to act.

There was one answering call from the slowest horse ahead, and all of a sudden, everything slowed down, as if time crawled nearly to a stop.

One of the outlaws, a hulking shadow atop his mount, reached for Beth with a clumsy grip. Harry’s breath hitched, time narrowing to a single, dreadful beat. They shoved her—his Beth—her body thrown sideways with a violence that seemed to slow the very air around her. She tumbled from the horse, her body moving too quickly, too quickly toward the hard earth.

“Beth!” Now his cry tore from him, raw and unbidden.

He spurred his horse forward, but his mind was already there, cradling her before she even touched the ground. The thud when she landed was a hollow sound, a nightmare made real, but before he could reach her, the other horse carrying Julia had slowed, the outlaw crying out as he did, but his words were nonsense in the panic filling Harry’s head.

No, not Julia.

He couldn’t breathe, but still he flew ahead, gaining more quickly now that the man had slowed.

“Stop!” he cried. “Don’t!”

The outlaw looked back, his face awash in fear, and pulled his horse to a stop. He looked at the gun in Harry’s hand and, holding the blanket, lowered it so that the baby, so small, so impossibly small, rolled down until she landed, naked and screaming, in the mud below. She fell with a thump and was silent.

“Julia!” he bellowed again.

He kicked hard, propelling his horse into a reckless dash that ate up the ground between them with hungry strides.

Time seemed to fracture, seconds splintering as he grew closer. Finally, he reached her, sliding off his horse until he landed beside her and pulled her into his arms. The contact jolted through him, a current of relief so sharp it was almost pain.

“Julia?” he said, his hands shaking as he stroked her face.

A wail pierced the quiet, small but fierce; Julia’s cry was strong. She was alive, her fragile body trembling against his chest as he drew her close, examining her for signs of injury. Miraculously, she appeared unhurt.

Harry cradled his daughter, feeling her warmth seep into his chilled bones, her tiny heartbeat a defiant drum against his own racing pulse.

With every breath, Harry fought to steady himself, to push back the fear that clawed at the edges of his consciousness. There was no time for tears, not yet; there was only the weight of his daughter in his arms and the heavy knowledge of what must come next.

Harry’s boots scuffed the ground as he moved toward Beth, the dust rising and then settling back down with a silence that mocked the chaos of moments ago. The cry of his daughter nestled in the crook of his arm was now a soft whimper, her mouth nuzzling his chest, seeking milk.

He knelt beside the still form of his wife, the motion awkward as he cradled Julia close. Full of uncertainty, he reached a hand toward her, her long brown hair splayed like dark tendrils against the moonlit earth. Her eyes, once wide and bright and full of life, were closed, her face still—too still.

“Please,” Harry whispered, his voice strained and cracking. He reached out a trembling hand and brushed a stray ringlet from her forehead.

The world seemed to tilt as he realized what he was seeing, as he struggled to come to terms with this new reality.

Just a few hours ago, he had been in bed with her, the two of them holding each other, safe and close, the baby sleeping peacefully just feet away. And now—now—

“Baby,” he said, the word a shard of glass in his throat, “I’m here. I’m here.”

But the words fell flat, swallowed by the vast emptiness of the plains stretching unbroken around them.

In the silence that followed, the gentle rise and fall of Julia’s breathing against him was the only sign that time had not stopped—that somewhere, life stubbornly persisted. But here, beside the lifeless form of his wife, Harry’s world narrowed to a point of grief so acute it threatened to cleave him in two.

It was impossible to come to terms with her like this, not his loud, fierce wife, the woman so full of love and life it made everything around her bright, now still and silent. Her body was limp, and as he held her to his chest, he could imagine for just a moment that she was simply asleep as he dropped his face into her sweet-smelling hair.

Tears blurred his eyes as they began to fall.

She was gone.

He had failed her.

He held his wife and daughter together in his arms for one last time as he cried, alone in the dark. The weight of her absence settled over him, cold and unyielding, the darkness closing in with the stealth of a thief coming to claim his final prize.

Chapter One

Chambers, Nebraska

September 1886

May leafed through the pages, a small smile on her face as she noted the neat rows and columns of money in and out of the ranch, the amount left over after all their bills were paid up, and the circled total at the bottom.

“You get the same total as me?” Willa asked from her seat across from her.

The sight made May’s heart twang. That was her seat, the soft, worn leather across the wide oak desk her grandaddy had built and used all his life, then passed down to his son. Pa had always said it would be hers one day, but she felt certain he had never imagined her in his seat so quickly. Once, it had been her across from him, checking the balances and totals. Whenever she would look up, announcing a total, his eyes would crinkle in pride. He was always especially proud when she caught one of his mistakes.

“May?” Willa prompted, and May forced herself back to the present, shaking away the specter of her pa’s smiles.

“Let me see.” She scanned the rows, pleased to see they matched up, and silently thanked God for her best friend. She couldn’t imagine what she would have done these past few weeks without her. She shot a smile at Willa. “Perfect.”

Willa sighed dramatically, slumping into the seat and swiping a hand across her brow. “What a relief. If I have to do one more sum, my brain will light on fire and burn to ash.”

“How realistic.” May rolled her eyes.

Salt and pepper, her parents had called the two of them. Best friends since birth, but with hardly a similarity to find between them, physical or otherwise. May was tall, her hair dark brown, always carefully curled and styled and shining, not a strand out of place. Willa was small and compact, her hair blonde and wild; she claimed it was untamable, but May was sure she just didn’t have the patience to try to tame it.

Something in May’s expression must have caught Willa’s attention, and she narrowed her pale blue eyes. “What are you thinking?” Her eyes softened. “Are you all right?”

May had no time to wallow in nostalgia. She shook her head, handing the pages back and neatening the ones in front of her in a stack, knocking them briskly into shape and then sliding them into the top drawer. “Thank you for your help, but we should—”

The door to the office opened, slamming against the far wall and making the two jump.

“What the hell, May?” Edward strode through the door with all the ease and confidence of a man who was welcome and exactly where he was supposed to be.

May was a woman with strong opinions, and like anyone with strong opinions, there were a few things she hated. Being interrupted was easily the first. Lower on the list, but not by much, was her cousin.

“Excuse me?” She stood from her father’s desk, hands flat against the smooth wood. “What are you doing here?”

“I just had to hear from a farmer, in town, that my aunt and uncle are dead!”

May and Willa exchanged quick glances.

“As much as I appreciate your condolences,” May began dryly, “I am taking this time to gather myself and decide how best to move forward without them.”

Edward was never one to falter in the face of a polite rebuke. “There’s only one path forward for you and for this ranch.” He pointed at himself, his thumbs jabbing into his overcoat. “Which is why I ought to have been sent for right away.”

He dropped into the seat beside Willa, who straightened, pushing her unruly hair behind her ears and looking from cousin to cousin.

“I’m not sure what you mean.” May lied. She knew exactly why he was here and couldn’t stop herself from inwardly cursing the fool who had been trading her family’s tragedy like petty gossip.

Edward smirked, the round cheeks of his face squishing his eyes distastefully. “May, you are a young woman left with no family. You are vulnerable.” His words came out triumphantly, as if nothing had given him more pleasure than this situation. Likely, nothing had. “You need a man to take charge.” On the arms of the chair, his hands—soft, weak hands, she knew—gripped and let go.

Her stomach started to churn.

Her mind flashed to the few childhood memories she shared with the man across from her. His family had visited the ranch often, until it became clear to her parents that something was wrong with the boy. She remembered him begging to watch the cattle and horses get branded, talking about the smell of burning flesh afterward like it was perfume. Her mother catching him spitting a mouthful of chewed tobacco into the casserole prepared for the hired workers was the final straw and the end to their visits.

May had never been so relieved.

But there were no parents here to protect her from his cruelty now, and her heartbeat quickened at the thought of having this man as her husband. She would rather be at the mercy of horse thieves and bandits, would rather spend the rest of her life a spinster and die alone, than suffer that fate.

Edward smiled and clapped his hands against his knees, standing once more. “So, it’s settled. You’ll marry me. I’ll ride into town now and get a priest to carry it out. I’ll get this ranch running like it should. I’m sure you’ve done your best, but what can a lady know about men’s business?”

May flushed in anger. “Nothing is settled. The only place you’re going is home.”

He rounded the desk. He was a large man, not muscled, not strong, but tall and wide, his hands easily able to wrap around her arm, which he did now. He lowered his voice to a growl and leaned close. She could smell the stale tobacco on his breath but forced herself not to shrink away from him, holding his gaze with one of iron. “What are you going to do to stop me?”

“Let go of her!” Willa cried, coming around the desk. He shoved her back easily, knocking her against the back wall, not taking his eyes of May. “You can’t do that!”

“Sure I can. I’m a man, and you’re a woman with no people. I’ll do exactly what I want to do.” His smile was hard. “Who’s going to stop me?”

May’s brain was racing, desperate to find something, anything she could say to stop him.

Willa got there first.

“She’s already married, so you had better take your hands off of her before her husband walks in and sees you mistreating her.” Her voice was hard as steel.

May and Edward both froze and turned their gazes to her. Willa was still on the floor where she’d fallen, her skirts a tangle around her, but her eyes were blazing with fury and a righteous determination, not even a flicker of the lie to be seen in her face.

Edward whipped back to face May. “Is this true?” he demanded.

She swallowed hard.

Another thing May hated? Liars. But she had no other choice.

She straightened her shoulders and dropped her eyes to his hand. “It’s true, and she’s right. My husband can be quick to anger.”

Edward shrank before her eyes, dropping his hand and taking two quick steps back from her. Her skin shone with his perspiration where his hand had clenched it, and she rubbed it against her apron, grimacing.

White-faced, he looked around the room, as if her husband would crawl out from beneath the desk. “Where is he, then?”

May looked at Willa. She had started this lie, after all.

“Hm?” Willa asked innocently, reaching out a hand for May to help her off the floor. May pulled her up.

“I asked where he is. This man of yours.”

“He’s away,” May said.

“Buying horses,” Willa added. “You had probably scoot before he returns. Wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea.”

May could see the gears turning in Edward’s head, could see him struggling to decide whether the risk was worth calling her on her bluff. His cowardice won out; she could have guessed.

His small eyes darted between them and then around the room. “I’ll be back in a month,” he said sharply. “We’ll meet this husband of yours then. Married or not, I have a legal right to this ranch now that Uncle Joseph and Aunt Caroline are gone.” He paused and then added as an afterthought, “Rest in peace.” He briefly took his hat from his head and pressed it against his chest before replacing it and making for the door. “I will be back, and I will be wanting what’s mine. And if this man thinks to keep me out, he had better be ready because I’m coming back with help.”

Neither of the women took a breath until they heard his boots clomp through the front door, slamming it behind him, same as the way he’d come in.

They came together as soon as it was safe, clutching one another’s forearms and looking each other over.

“Did he hurt you?”

“Are you all right?”

Their words overlapped, their worry palpable. After ensuring neither was harmed, they both sank into the side-by-side chairs, still holding hands.

There was no time for relief.

“What am I going to do?” May asked. “Willa, what in the world am I going to do?”

Willa’s face was round, soft, her dimples famous in their little town. Her face was made for smiling, for humor, for sweet-natured mischief. May could only think of one other time her friend’s face had looked this serious.

“We’re going to have to get you a husband. You heard him. We both saw how serious he was. He’s not going to let up, May. He comes back, and you’re here alone?” She shook her head. “You’ll be in danger. No. The only thing we can do now is get you married to a man who is not Edward.”

May threw up her hands in exasperation. “How am I supposed to find a husband in two weeks?” she demanded. “There isn’t a man my age in this town who isn’t married already.”

She knew this because it was a subject her mother had bemoaned regularly. She had worried so much for her daughter’s future; May wished now that she could have told her to save all that worrying. The things her mother had feared, the lack of marriageable men in their area being just one of many, seemed minute compared to the worries May faced now without them.

“You’ll have to put out an advertisement,” Willa mused. “In the paper. Not one locally, though; imagine if Edward saw it.”

May was shaking her head, but Willa was already standing, rounding the edges of the big desk and pulling a clean sheet of paper from the stack, dotting the tip of a pencil against her tongue.

“Willa—” she began, exasperated.

Willa was writing furiously.

“Willa! Setting aside the fact that I don’t want to marry a man I don’t know, how on earth am I supposed to get all of this done within a month’s time?”

“That’s exactly why we don’t have a moment to waste,” Willa said without looking up.

May threw her hands up in exasperation.

“Here,” Willa said a moment later. “Read this.”

May scanned the sheet. Then she lifted her eyes to meet her best friend’s, feeling a smile beginning to grow on her face. For the first time, she felt a flash of hope.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s take it now. You’re right; I have no time to spare.”