Evelyn felt the floor dissolve beneath her boots. The cruel, cultured drawl was seared into her worst nightmares—the voice of the man she had knelt beside in that locked St. Louis study eight months ago, watching dark blood pool beneath his motionless chest.

“Get behind the desk, Rebecca!” Nathaniel shouted, his broad shoulders lunging forward to shield her and little Lily.

“Don’t move, Brooks!” Gabriel Cross roared, keeping his Pinkerton revolver trained squarely on the marshal’s chest. “You were in Blackstone’s pocket from the beginning! You set this whole trap!”

“You’re a fool, Cross!” Nathaniel spat back, his gray eyes blazing with desperate urgency. “I was an undercover US Marshal ᴀssigned to investigate the St. Louis Syndicate’s railroad embezzlement! That pH๏τograph was taken two days before Blackstone faked his own execution! I didn’t lure Rebecca here—I intercepted her stagecoach manifest in Kansas and redirected her to Red Creek because this territory was supposed to be outside their jurisdiction!”

“Papa!” little Lily sobbed, clinging to her father’s gun belt as tears tracked through the dust on her cheeks.

Gabriel’s hand trembled on the grip of his Colt. He looked at the pH๏τograph, then at the bloodstained ring in the box, and finally at Nathaniel’s resolute stance in front of the child.

“If Blackstone is alive…” Gabriel breathed, his jaw тιԍнтening, “then who was the corpse in the study?”

“The coroner who helped him steal two million dollars from the Missouri Rail Trust,” Nathaniel growled, stepping toward the window with his hand on his holster. “Blackstone put a bullet through the man’s head, dressed him in his own tailored suit, blew the man’s face off, and planted Rebecca’s prints on the gun before slipping into the night.”

Before Gabriel could lower his weapon, the glᴀss of the schoolhouse windows blew inward in a deafening rain of shards.

Rifle fire tore through the room, punching jagged holes into the chalkboard and sending books flying in plumes of paper and dust.

“Down!” Nathaniel bellowed, tackling Evelyn and Lily to the floorboards behind the heavy oak teacher’s desk.

Gabriel dropped behind the potbelly stove, drawing a second revolver as lead chewed through the clapboard siding.

Outside on the dusty main street, the afternoon sun beat down on four black-clad riders blocking the road. And sitting atop a magnificent gray gelding at the schoolhouse gate was Arthur Blackstone. A silk cravat masked his neck, but the jagged white scar slicing through his left cheek gleamed in the glare. In his gloved hands, he held a lever-action Winchester.

“Come now, Rebecca!” Blackstone called out, his laughter echoing over the screaming townsfolk scattering down the boardwalk. “Eight months playing the humble frontier schoolmarm? Did you really believe you could disappear with my personal journal?”

Evelyn’s breath hitched. She clutched the collar of her high-necked dress, feeling the faint outline of the thin iron key sewn into the inner lining of her corset.

“The journal…” Evelyn whispered, horror widening her eyes. “The night I found the body in the study… the safe was blown open. A small leather-bound book had fallen into my medical basket. I took it with me because I thought it was his private diary.”

“It wasn’t a diary, Rebecca,” Nathaniel murmured, his face grim as he unholstered his own heavy Colt .45. “It contains the names of every corrupt judge, senator, and federal commissioner on the Syndicate’s payroll from St. Louis to San Francisco. That’s why he staged his death. He needed the world to stop looking for him while he liquidated the stolen rail bonds—and you’re the only living person holding the cipher to unlock his Swiss deposit accounts.”

“Which means,” Gabriel Cross added darkly, reloading two spent chambers, “none of us leave this room alive.”

“Cross!” Nathaniel barked over another deafening volley of bullets tearing through the roof. “The old bell tower behind the school has an iron ladder leading into the ravine. You take Rebecca and Lily out through the crawlspace. I’ll draw their fire from the front porch.”

“No!” Evelyn cried, grabbing Nathaniel’s leather coat with both hands. Tears burned in her eyes. “Nathaniel, they’ll butcher you out there! You can’t face four men alone!”

Nathaniel turned, looking down at her with a fierce, heartbreaking tenderness. He reached out with a calloused thumb, gently wiping a tear from her cheek.

“I’ve spent eight months falling in love with a ghost, Rebecca,” he said softly. “I’m not letting him take you.”

He pressed a kiss to his daughter’s forehead. “Listen to Miss Evelyn, Lily. Be brave for Papa.”

“Time’s up, Marshal!” Blackstone’s voice boomed from the street. “Toss the girl and the key out front, or we put torches to the dry timber! Red Creek burns today!”

A lit bottle of kerosene sailed through the shattered front window, crashing against the floorboards near the door and instantly bursting into a sheet of roaring, orange flame.

Smoke began to choke the room.

Gabriel kicked open the floor hatch leading to the cellar. “Go! Now! Before the roof caves!”

Evelyn scooped Lily into her arms, backing toward the dark opening as flames licked up the pine walls. But just as Nathaniel kicked open the front double doors, raising his revolver to face Blackstone’s gunmen, a sudden, thunderous explosion rocked the town square from behind the riders.

Blackstone’s gray horse reared in terror.

Through the dense smoke drifting across the street, a heavily armored stagecoach came careening around the corner, flanked by a dozen federal marshals on black horses.

And standing atop the stagecoach with a Gatling gun aimed straight at Blackstone’s men was a gray-haired woman wearing a widow’s black veil.

Blackstone looked at the coach, his face draining of all color.

“Catherine?” Blackstone choked, his voice cracking with pure terror.

The woman threw back the veil, revealing the cold, unyielding face of Arthur Blackstone’s supposedly deceased first wife.

“Did you really think,” the woman called out over the roar of the flames, “that Rebecca was the only woman who wanted you ᴅᴇᴀᴅ?”