The paper slipped from her fingers.
“No.”
Jonas caught it.
Hannah backed against the wall.
Daniel’s wagon had overturned in a ravine.
The sheriff had called it an accident.
A broken wheel.
A dead horse.
A husband who never came home.
She covered her mouth.
Luke understood first.
His face went pale.
“You mean Papa…”
Hannah turned toward him.
Her son was twelve.
Too young to know murder.
Too old to protect from truth.
“Your father didn’t die in an accident.”
Luke’s face collapsed.
Jonas crossed the room and caught the boy when his legs gave way.
For the first time since arriving at Whitlock Ranch, Luke cried like a child.
Not quietly.
Not politely.
He clung to Jonas’s shirt and sobbed.
Elsie joined him.
Then Ben.
Then May.
Hannah stood in the center of the room listening to her children lose their father for the second time.
And something inside her hardened.
She wiped her tears.
Picked up Daniel’s affidavit.
“We’re going to the sheriff.”
Jonas looked at her.
“Voss has influence.”
“Then we’ll go around his influence.”
“Hannah—”
“No.”
Her eyes burned.
“For two years I believed drought ruined us. I believed Daniel’s death ruined us. I believed survival meant bowing my head and asking men like Clarence Voss whether my children were too expensive to feed.”
She lifted the papers.
“I’m finished asking.”
Voss struck first.
Before dawn, flames rose from the hay barn.
Jonas heard the horses screaming.
The ranch exploded into motion.
Luke rang the bell.
Hannah organized buckets.
Jonas and two ranch hands cut the frightened horses loose.
Then Ben shouted.
“May!”
Hannah turned.
May was nowhere beside her.
The child had run back toward the house for her rabbit.
A burning beam collapsed near the porch.
Hannah screamed.
Jonas did not hesitate.
He disappeared through the smoke.
Seconds passed.
Ten.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Then Jonas came staggering out carrying May beneath one arm and the cloth rabbit beneath the other.
His sleeve was burning.
Luke tackled him into the dirt and smothered the flames.
Hannah dropped beside them.
May was coughing but alive.
Jonas’s forearm was badly burned.
“You fool,” Hannah whispered.
He looked at her.
“Which part?”
“You went back for a rabbit.”
“Technically, I went back for May.”
May weakly lifted one finger.
“And Bunny.”
Jonas grimaced.
“And Bunny.”
Hannah laughed and cried at the same time.
Then Jonas’s expression changed.
He stared beyond her.
Hoofprints cut across the dry ground behind the barn.
A rider had approached from the north road.
And dropped something.
A silver match case.
Engraved with two initials.
C.V.
The sheriff could ignore rumors.
He could ignore accusations.
He could not ignore Daniel’s affidavit, the bribery accounts, Voss’s match case, and a frightened ranch hand who finally admitted seeing Voss’s foreman riding near Whitlock Ranch before the fire.
