Daniel asked.

“For everybody.”

The sheriff looked toward Luke’s body.

“Somebody wants him blamed.”

Daniel understood.

Dead men could not deny anything.

That night, Daniel barred every door and window in the cabin.

Emily sat at the kitchen table.

Neither spoke for several minutes.

Finally she said, “You should send me away.”

Daniel looked up.

“If I leave, whoever wants the ranch may stop trying to kill you.”

“Or they’ll follow you.”

“I caused this.”

“No.”

“I came here because somebody paid me.”

Daniel stood.

“You stayed because you loved me.”

Emily stared.

It was the first time he had acknowledged that.

Daniel crossed the room.

“I’m still angry.”

“You should be.”

“I don’t know how long it will take me to forgive you.”

“I understand.”

“But I believe you didn’t know about the poison.”

Emily’s eyes filled.

Daniel continued.

“And I believe somebody is trying very hard to make me think you’re responsible.”

He placed his hands on the table.

“If someone wanted me dead, they could have shot me this afternoon.”

Emily frowned.

Daniel had been thinking about that for hours.

“They shot at you.”

Her face changed.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Then Daniel remembered the line in the final letter.

Then the ranch is yours.

Not ours.

Yours.

His expression hardened.

“Maybe I was never the final target.”

The answer waited inside Samuel Mercer’s old study.

Daniel had sealed the room after his father died and rarely entered.

That night he searched every drawer.

Emily searched the shelves.

Near midnight, she found something strange.

“Daniel.”

Behind a framed photograph was an envelope.

It had yellowed with age.

On the front, Samuel Mercer had written:

FOR DANIEL—IF CLARA EVER BRINGS A HALE BACK TO THIS VALLEY.

Daniel’s hands went numb.

Emily whispered, “Hale?”

He tore it open.

Inside was a deed.

Not a letter.

A deed dated thirty-one years earlier.

Samuel Mercer and Thomas Hale.

Joint owners.

Daniel looked at Emily.

“My father knew your father?”

“My father died when I was seven.”

“Where?”

Emily hesitated.

“In a fire.”

Daniel suddenly stopped breathing.

“Where?”

“A ranch outside Cheyenne.”

Daniel dropped the deed.

A memory moved through him.

Smoke.

Screaming horses.

A child.

Flames.

He gripped the desk.

Emily rushed toward him.

“What?”

Daniel stared at her left wrist.

There was a scar there.

A thin white crescent he had seen a hundred times.

He grabbed her hand.

“Where did you get this?”

“I don’t remember.”

Daniel’s voice changed.

“You were in the barn.”

Emily froze.

“What?”

He was no longer seeing the study.

He was twelve years old.

His father was dragging him away from a burning stable.