I pushed Rebecca behind me and stepped onto the porch.

The three riders stopped near the woodpile, their horses steaming in the bitter cold. The man in front wore a black buffalo coat and a flat-brimmed hat. His clothes were too fine for a miner, and the weapons at his belt suggested he had not come to ask polite questions.

“Hargrave?” he called.

“Depends who’s asking.”

“Mercer. We’re looking for a woman named Rebecca Hale.”

My hand remained close to my revolver.

“Never heard of her.”

Mercer smiled, but there was no warmth in it.

“Brown hair. Blue coat. Traveling with a leather case.”

“Sounds like a woman who has no business being on my mountain.”

His eyes shifted toward the cabin window.

“She stole property from a respectable businessman in St. Louis. We’re here to recover it.”

“Then you should have stayed in St. Louis.”

One of his companions moved a hand toward his holster.

Mercer’s smile disappeared.

“You don’t want this trouble, Hargrave.”

I stepped down from the porch, boots crunching in the snow.

“Funny. I don’t remember inviting trouble onto my land.”

For several seconds, neither of us moved.

Then Mercer tipped his hat.

“We’ll be seeing you.”

The riders turned downhill, disappearing into the storm as quietly as they had arrived.

I waited until their hoofbeats faded before returning inside.

Rebecca stood beside the table, gripping the back of a chair so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

“Who were they?” I asked.

“Men hired by Silas Crowe.”

“Who is Crowe?”

“My late husband’s business partner.”

I shut the door and dropped the heavy wooden bar into place.

“You have five minutes to tell me why three armed men have crossed half the country looking for you.”

She looked toward her battered leather case.

“My husband, Thomas, owned a freight company with Silas. For years, I believed they were honest men. Then Thomas discovered that Silas had been using their wagons to transport stolen silver and illegal weapons.”

“And your husband planned to expose him?”

She nodded.

“He intended to take the records to a federal marshal. Two days later, Thomas was found dead in an alley. A bullet in his back. They called it a robbery.”

Her voice faltered.

“Silas came to my house that same night. He held my hands and told me how sorry he was. He even offered to pay for the funeral.”

I watched her carefully.

“You believe he murdered Thomas.”

“I know he did.”

“How?”

“Because Thomas knew someone might come after him. Before he died, he gave me a ledger containing the names, payments, shipments, and locations connected to Silas’s operation. He told me to hide it and take it to a federal marshal if anything happened to him.”

My eyes moved to the case.

“It’s in there?”

“Yes.”

“So that’s what Mercer wants.”

She nodded again.

I let out a slow breath, trying to control the anger rising inside me.

“And the letters you sent me? You made yourself sound like a woman who had spent her entire life working on a farm.”

“I lied about that.”

“About that?”

“I am a widow. I know how to work hard. But I never lived on a farm.” She looked down. “After Thomas died, Silas had men watching my house. I couldn’t reach the marshal without being followed. I needed a way out that he wouldn’t expect.”

“So you answered my advertisement.”

“I chose you because your letters sounded like they came from a man who kept his word.”

“You used me.”

“Yes.”

Her answer was so quiet that it left me with nothing to throw back at her.

“You could have gotten me killed.”

“I know.”

“Then why marry me? Why not disappear alone?”

She lifted her eyes to mine.

“Because a woman traveling alone is easy to follow. A married woman leaving St. Louis for a remote homestead in Colorado is just another bride going to her new life.”

I turned away, jaw clenched.

I had every reason to be furious. She had concealed the truth, placed my life in danger, and brought a deadly conflict straight to my door.

Yet I remembered the way she had collapsed in my arms on the porch. I remembered her whispering that she had nowhere else to go.

And I remembered the terror in her eyes when she begged me not to send her back.

“You take the bed,” I said at last. “I’ll sleep in the chair.”

“Jonas—”

“We’ll leave for Georgetown when the storm breaks. We’ll find a lawman and put that ledger in his hands.”

She stared at me in disbelief.

“You still intend to help me?”

I looked at the wedding band on her finger.

“I gave Reverend Abbott my word.”

Gratitude crossed her face, followed by something I could not quite name. Perhaps she had hoped I would help because I believed her. Perhaps my answer, rooted in duty rather than affection, hurt her more than she wanted to admit.

Neither of us said another word.

That night, I awoke to the smell of burning pine pitch.

I was out of the chair before I was fully conscious.

Flames were crawling up the outside wall beside the window.

“Rebecca!”

She sprang from the bed as I seized a bucket. We threw water and snow against the logs, choking on smoke as the fire fought to spread beneath the eaves.

Then a gunshot split the darkness.

The window shattered.

Rebecca screamed as I dragged her to the floor. Another bullet punched through the wall above us.

“Stay down!”

I crawled toward the door, revolver in hand.

A voice carried through the storm.

“Last warning, Hargrave! Give us the woman and the ledger!”

Rebecca grabbed my sleeve.

“Jonas, don’t.”

I turned toward her.

She was terrified, but she wasn’t looking at the shattered window or the flames licking the wall.

She was looking at me.

“Please,” she whispered. “I won’t let them kill you because of me.”

For one brief moment, I understood something I had been too stubborn to see.

This woman had not come to Colorado looking for comfort, wealth, or an easy life. She had come because every road behind her led back to the men who had murdered her husband.

And now she believed she had brought those men to murder me, too.

I tightened my grip on the revolver.

“You’re my wife, Rebecca. Whatever else you kept from me, that part is not a lie.”

Before she could answer, a sound came from the rear of the cabin.

The unmistakable crunch of a boot on fresh snow.

Someone had circled behind us.

I moved toward the back door, keeping low. Rebecca clutched the leather case against her chest, her face pale in the flickering firelight.

Then the latch began to lift.

Slowly.

Silently.

I raised my revolver.

Outside, the wind howled through the pines. Inside, my new wife held the evidence that could bring a powerful criminal to justice.

And as the door began to open, I realized that before sunrise, one of us might have to make a sacrifice neither of us had planned for.

Because the men who had killed Thomas Crowe’s business partner were no longer content to steal a ledger.

They had come to erase every person who knew the truth.