His little sister.
Six years old when she disappeared.
Never found.
Elias could suddenly hear fire.
Screaming.
His mother calling Anna’s name.
He hadn’t heard those sounds outside his nightmares in twenty years.
The clerk pointed toward another line.
“Lawyer thought Anna Vance may have survived.”
Elias looked up.
“Why?”
“Said a girl matching her description was taken in by a family named Bell after the wagon attack.”
Elias stopped breathing.
Bell.
Ara Bell.
“No.”
The clerk continued.
“Would make her about thirty now.”
Elias staggered backward.
He remembered a tiny girl with dark braids.
A crooked front tooth.
A laugh that irritated him because she followed him everywhere.
Anna.
Little Annie.
He had been thirteen.
He had told her to stay inside the wagon.
She hadn’t listened.
When the attack began, Elias ran into the woods because his father ordered him to.
He returned the next morning.
His parents were dead.
The wagon burned.
Anna was gone.
For twenty-three years Elias had believed wolves, raiders, or winter had taken her.
For twenty-three years he had carried one thought.
I should have protected her.
Now his hand shook against the courthouse counter.
“Who else saw this?”
The clerk shrugged.
“The lawyer.”
“Caleb?”
The clerk thought.
“Mr. Dorne came asking questions about the Bell family before he married.”
Everything became clear.
Caleb hadn’t married Ara by accident.
He’d found her.
He knew who she was.
And if Ara and her children died, Caleb could claim her estate as surviving spouse.
Six thousand dollars in debt suddenly meant nothing.
The Vance timber and silver rights were worth a fortune.
Elias turned toward the door.
Then stopped.
There was still no proof Ara was Anna.
Only possibility.
Only age.
Only surname.
Only coincidence.
Then another memory returned.
His mother standing beside a washbasin.
Little Anna splashing water everywhere.
A mark behind the child’s right ear.
A pale birthmark shaped like a crescent moon.
Elias ran.
He reached the cabin after sunset.
Something was wrong.
The door hung open.
“ARA!”
No answer.
Elias jumped from Samson before the horse stopped moving.
Inside, Margaret Pike lay unconscious beside the hearth.
Blood marked her temple.
The cradle was empty.
Elias’s world narrowed to a single point.
Tracks.
Three horses.
Heading south.
He revived Margaret long enough to learn what happened.
“Caleb.”
She struggled to speak.
“Two men.”
“Ara?”
“Took her.”
“The babies?”
Margaret began crying.
“All of them.”
Elias stood.
Twenty-three years earlier someone had taken his sister into the wilderness.
Now it was happening again.
He would not fail twice.
The tracks led to an abandoned mining settlement called Mercy Ridge.
Elias rode through the night.
Snow began before dawn.
By sunrise he saw smoke rising from the old assay office.
He dismounted a quarter mile away.
Inside, Ara sat tied to a chair.
Hope and Grace lay inside a basket nearby.
Caleb paced in front of her.
“You could have made this easy.”
Ara stared at him.
“You knew.”
Caleb smiled.
“Knew what?”
“Who I was.”
His smile widened.
Ara felt sick.
“You never loved me.”
“I loved what you represented.”
He crouched.
“Do you know how much Vance land is worth?”
Ara said nothing.
“More than a woman like you could comprehend.”
He touched her cheek.
She turned away.
Caleb’s voice hardened.
