PART 2 — THE MAN WHO BOUGHT HER FREEDOM KNEW THE SECRET HER HUSBAND DIED TRYING TO HIDE

The porch roof came crashing down with a deafening roar.

Eliza screamed and threw herself into the frozen yard.

Wood splintered behind her. Dust filled the air, swallowing the very steps where she had been sitting only seconds earlier.

For several moments, she could do nothing but stare at the wreckage.

Then she tried to stand.

Her knees buckled.

Before she could fall, pounding hooves thundered across the yard.

“Eliza!”

Ronan Blackwood came charging back toward the farmhouse.

He leaped from his stallion before the animal had fully stopped and rushed to her side.

“Are you hurt?”

“I—I don’t think so.”

He caught her by the shoulders, examining her face and arms.

“Can you move your fingers?”

She nodded.

“Your head? Your back?”

“I’m all right, Mr. Blackwood. I think.”

Ronan released a breath he seemed to have been holding since he saw the collapsed porch.

Then he turned toward the wreckage.

Something in his expression changed.

He knelt beside the largest beam, brushing away splinters and fallen shingles.

Eliza watched him nervously.

“What is it?”

He ran his thumb along a section of wood beneath the broken end.

“This beam didn’t simply rot through.”

Her stomach tightened.

“What are you saying?”

Ronan examined the timber again.

“Someone cut halfway through it.”

The world seemed to tilt beneath Eliza’s feet.

“But why would anyone do that?”

Ronan didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he moved around the side of the house, studying the muddy ground beneath her bedroom window.

There, pressed into the soft earth, were several fresh bootprints.

They were too large to belong to Eliza.

And they weren’t Ronan’s.

He crouched, examining the sharp edges of the impressions.

“Someone was here recently.”

Eliza wrapped her arms around herself.

“I haven’t seen anyone.”

“Did you hear anything last night?”

She shook her head.

“I was asleep. Or trying to be.”

Ronan rose slowly, his gray eyes sweeping the tree line.

“From now on, you don’t go anywhere alone until we know who’s responsible.”

Eliza stiffened.

“You don’t get to order me around just because you offered me marriage.”

For a moment, Ronan looked surprised.

Then he nodded.

“You’re right. I don’t.”

His voice softened.

“But someone may have tried to bring that roof down on your head. I won’t pretend that’s nothing.”

Eliza looked toward the broken porch.

Had someone truly intended to kill her?

And if so, why?

She had no money worth stealing. No valuable livestock. No powerful relatives who might have enemies.

She was just a widow struggling to survive.

Or at least, that was what she had always believed.

Ronan walked back to the beam and examined the cut more carefully.

“The person who did this knew where to weaken it. One more hard gust, and it would’ve collapsed while you were sitting beneath it.”

Eliza felt sick.

“Someone was watching me.”

“Yes.”

“Someone who knew I’d be sitting there.”

Ronan turned toward her.

“That’s what worries me.”

A cold wind swept through the yard.

Eliza glanced at the road leading toward town.

“I should tell Sheriff Mercer.”

“We will. But first, I need to ask you something.”

She looked back at him.

“Did your husband have enemies?”

Her fingers immediately closed around the wedding ring beneath her dress.

“Thomas?”

“Anyone who held a grudge against him? Anyone he argued with? Anyone who might have wanted to frighten you after he died?”

Eliza’s expression changed.

For two years, she had avoided thinking too deeply about the final months of her husband’s life.

Thomas had become withdrawn during that time. He rode into town more frequently, sometimes returning after dark with an expression she couldn’t understand.

Once, she had asked whether something was troubling him.

He had kissed her forehead and told her not to worry.

Three weeks later, he was dead.

The official explanation had been simple: a fall from his horse on a rocky trail.

But Thomas had been an experienced rider.

He had known every inch of the land around Misery Hollow.

Eliza had questioned the circumstances once, only to be told that grief was making her imagine things.

Eventually, she had stopped asking.

Now, standing beside a deliberately weakened roof, she wondered whether she had been wrong to remain silent.

“Thomas had been worried about something,” she admitted.

Ronan’s expression sharpened.

“What kind of something?”

“I don’t know. He never told me. He kept a small ledger in his desk, and sometimes he would spend hours studying it after supper.”

“Do you still have it?”

Eliza nodded slowly.

“In the bedroom. I kept everything that belonged to him.”

Ronan glanced toward the damaged house.

“Then we need to retrieve it before anyone else gets the chance.”

They entered through the kitchen door, avoiding the broken porch.

Inside, the farmhouse looked smaller than ever. A thin layer of dust covered the table, and the fire had nearly burned out. Eliza led Ronan to the bedroom, where Thomas’s old writing desk stood beneath the window.

She pulled open the top drawer.

Empty.

Her breath caught.

“No.”

She searched the drawer again, then checked the lower compartments.

Nothing.

“The ledger was here,” she whispered. “I’m certain of it.”

Ronan examined the desk.

The lock had been forced. Fresh scratches marked the wood around the keyhole.

Someone had broken into the house.

Someone had taken Thomas’s ledger.

And someone had tried to make the damage look like an accident.

Eliza gripped the edge of the desk.

“Why would anyone care about an old account book?”

Ronan looked at her.

“Because it may contain something they don’t want you to discover.”

She stared at him, her heart hammering.

“Something about Thomas?”

“Possibly.”

“Something about his death?”

Ronan did not answer.

He didn’t need to.

Eliza felt two years of carefully buried grief rise inside her, tangled with anger and fear.

All this time, she had believed that the worst thing that could happen to her was losing her husband.

Now she wondered whether someone had taken him from her.

And whether they had been waiting for her to discover the truth.

Ronan moved toward the window and studied the muddy footprints outside.

“We’re going into town,” he said. “You’ll tell Sheriff Mercer about the roof, the break-in, and the missing ledger.”

Eliza nodded, though her legs still felt weak.

As she reached for her coat, something caught her eye.

A small piece of paper lay beneath the broken desk drawer.

It must have slipped behind the wood when someone searched the room.

Eliza picked it up.

The paper contained only one line, written in Thomas’s familiar handwriting.

If anything happens to me, trust no one who offers you an easy way out.

Her fingers began to tremble.

She read it again.

Then she looked at Ronan.

He stood perfectly still, his face unreadable.

“Mr. Blackwood,” she whispered, “what if this has nothing to do with you?”

“Then we’ll prove it.”

“And what if the person who did this is someone I know?”

He took a slow breath.

“Then we’ll find out why.”

Eliza folded the note and slipped it into her pocket beside Thomas’s ring.

Outside, the wind swept across the prairie, carrying the distant sound of a horse moving somewhere beyond the trees.

Ronan reached for his rifle.

Eliza froze.

Through the window, she saw a rider emerge from the distant ridge.

The stranger stopped at the edge of her property, watching the damaged house.

Then he raised one hand.

Not in greeting.

In warning.

Ronan stepped in front of Eliza, his gaze fixed on the distant figure.

The rider turned his horse and disappeared into the trees.

For several seconds, neither of them moved.

Then Ronan spoke in a voice so low it sent a chill through her.

“Eliza, I don’t think your husband’s death was an accident.”

She looked down at Thomas’s final message.

For two years, she had mourned a man she believed fate had taken from her.

Now she was beginning to fear that someone had deliberately stolen him away.

And whoever that person was, they had just discovered that she might finally be close to learning the truth.