The Detective’s Runaway Love (Preview)

Chapter One

Holt Ranch, Colorado

Early Spring, 1881

The morning light spilled in sharp slats across the wood-paneled walls of the Holt ranch house, illuminating dust motes that hung in the air like secrets waiting to be disturbed. Dorian stood at the threshold of Thaddeus Holt’s study, his boots still covered with frost from the predawn rounds. The ache in his shoulders from loading feed wasn’t half as heavy as the feeling settling in his gut.

Thaddeus didn’t look up from his seat behind the oversized desk, where a silver inkstand glinted beside a stack of correspondence. He didn’t need to. That glacial calm had a way of making the room colder than the frost still clinging to the windowpanes.

“I heard you left the south paddock half-finished,” Thaddeus said, voice low and deliberate. “Sloppy work, even for a hand.”

Dorian let the door click shut behind him. “Frost got the fence line early. I fixed what I could. Ground’s too hard to dig postholes till noon.”

Thaddeus finally raised his eyes, gray and sharp as splinters. “Excuses already, and the sun’s barely up.”

It started like most of their conversations, tight-lipped barbs tossed across a chasm years wide. But something in Thaddeus’s gaze today was different. Calculating. Expectant.

Dorian crossed the room, planting his hands on the desk’s edge. “You’ve got ten men working the south section, yet somehow, I’m the one you keep calling in here. Why?”

Thaddeus leaned back, lacing his fingers over his chest. “Because you’re not a damn ranch hand. You’re my son.”

The words landed flat between them. Dorian’s lip twitched, half a smirk, half a sneer. “Funny. Most fathers don’t threaten to turn their sons out with the hogs.”

Thaddeus’s eyes narrowed, but his voice never rose. “You’ve wasted every chance I gave you. Refused to learn the business. Turned your back on family loyalty.”

“Family loyalty?” Dorian’s voice sharpened. “You mean helping you bleed every ranch in the territory dry? Running off homesteaders who won’t sell? Bribing land agents, maybe paying off a marshal or two when it gets messy?”

Thaddeus stood, slow and deliberate. Taller than Dorian, though only by an inch, he used his presence like a blade. “Careful,” he said, smooth and icy. “You’re toeing the edge of something you won’t come back from.”

“I’ve been toeing it for years,” Dorian said, stepping back. “Difference is, now I’m ready to fall.”

A silence stretched between them, taut and dangerous.

Then Thaddeus dropped the mask.

“You walk away from this family, you’ll leave your mother at my mercy.” He moved to the window, brushing aside the curtain with one hand. “Evangaline’s softer than she lets on. Always has been. You think she’d manage without you protecting her?”

The threat wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

Dorian’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “If you so much as raise your voice to her…”

“You’ll what?” Thaddeus turned, eyebrow arched. “Run crying to the sheriff? You don’t have the stomach for war, Son. Never did. You’d rather clean stalls and write in that little leather journal of yours.”

Dorian said nothing. Words weren’t going to win this.

He turned and walked out of the study without another word. His boots thudded heavily against the oak floors as he moved down the hallway, heart thundering like hooves across dry plains.

Let Thaddeus believe he’d won. That Dorian would stew in anger, then crawl back the way he always did.

But this time was different. He wasn’t just toeing the edge anymore. He was ready to leap. He was going to get enough evidence that could nail his father for all his illegal dealings.

***

Later that evening, the ranch house settled into silence by sundown, the kind that only comes when even the help is wise enough to stay clear of the main floor. Dorian waited for the hush that followed supper, when Thaddeus left the books behind and locked himself away upstairs with a bottle of rye.

From the back stairwell, the floorboards creaked under his boots. He stepped slowly, trying not to make a sound. He’d walked this path countless nights before, night after night, but tonight felt different. His jaw still ached from clenching it all day. His mind raced, caught somewhere between fury and something worse…clarity.

The door to the study gave with a gentle push. He closed it behind him and didn’t light a lamp. He didn’t need one. Moonlight spilled through the half-curtained windows, drawing silver lines across the room’s hard edges.

The drawer had always been the one place Thaddeus kept locked. Dorian had tried to jimmy it open before, once as a teenager out of curiosity, once last spring out of suspicion. Neither time had worked. Tonight, he had a key. One he’d paid a price for.

Marta, the oldest of the kitchen girls, didn’t say a word when he slipped her the coins two days ago. She hadn’t given him Thaddeus’s key at all, just a wax copy pressed into brass. Dorian didn’t know how she’d managed it, and he didn’t care. Tonight, it would open the drawer.

Dorian knelt beside the desk, breath tight in his chest. The lock clicked open with a soft, reluctant sound.

Inside, the drawer held less than he expected. A leather ledger. Two folded letters bound in twine. And a cream-colored folder with the edges softened from years of handling.

He pulled the folder free.

A faint tremble moved through his hands as he opened it, though the rest of him stayed stone still. It wasn’t in fear, it was knowing. That whatever he found there, it would change everything.

And it did. But not as he expected. He had expected to find evidence of illegal dealings, but what he found left him more dumbfounded than when he started his quest.

Adoption papers.

His name was typed clearly at the top: Dorian Holt.

But further down, beneath the legalese and the agency stamp, there were two names that didn’t belong in any Holt family tree.

Clara Westbrook.

Leander Westbrook.

Dorian sat back on his heels. The room spun a little.

He stared at those names like they were strangers he should’ve known.

Clara. Leander. Not Thaddeus, and not Evangaline.

He blinked, the air going thinner in his lungs.

He’d always wondered why he didn’t look like either of them. Evangaline was delicate, ash-blond, and small-boned. Thaddeus, broad, cold-eyed, severe. Dorian had their height, but none of their features. His own hair was dark blond, sun-lightened at the edges from long days in the saddle. His eyes, hazel with green flecks, were nothing like Thaddeus’s cold gray or Evangaline’s pale blue ones. Square jaw, broad shoulders, the build of a working man. He had their size, but not their faces. Not their blood.

Now he knew why.

His chest felt too tight for his ribs. For a moment, he thought he might be sick right there on the rug. But then something steadied him.

The truth.

It wasn’t a wound; it was a release.

He stood slowly, folder clutched tight, and turned toward the staircase.

Evangaline’s room was lit by a single candle when he knocked and opened the door without waiting.

She sat at her writing desk, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, eyes swollen from crying he hadn’t seen. Her Bible lay closed on the table beside her. When she turned, her face froze. Then softened.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered. “Not tonight.”

Dorian didn’t speak. He crossed the room and laid the folder in front of her.

She stared at it for a moment before her hand rose to her mouth.

“I found it in his drawer,” he said quietly. “I had a right to know.”

Evangaline’s voice shook. “I wanted to tell you. So many times.”

“Why didn’t you?”

She stood slowly, eyes bright with tears. “Because I was afraid. Of Thaddeus. Of losing you. You were… the only thing I had after I lost my babies.”

Dorian swallowed, throat burning. “And him? The man who raised me like I was something he owned?”

She looked away. “He wanted a son. And when the orphanage said they had a baby boy… I thought maybe… maybe it was a gift from God. I didn’t ask where you came from. I just…” She broke off. “You were mine the moment I saw you.”

A long silence passed. Then she opened a drawer in the vanity beside her. Pulled out a small wooden box and handed it to him.

Inside was a simple silver charm on a faded leather cord.

“You had it when they placed you in my arms,” she whispered. “I thought… maybe one day, it would matter to you.”

Dorian touched the charm. It felt warm, even in the cool light of the room.

“Mo—” 

He almost called her Mother. But the word caught in his throat. She wasn’t his mother, not by blood.

“Evangaline,” he said softly, “I have to go. I need to find them. I need to know who I am.”

She nodded, tearful but resolute. “You were never his. Not really. I see that now. But you were always… mine too.”

He took her hands in his. “I’ll come back for you. When it’s safe.”

She smiled, sad and proud. “You make a life for yourself, Dorian. That’s all I ever wanted. A life that’s yours.”

They hugged tightly, neither ready to let go.

But they both knew, come morning, he’d be gone.

***

The dawn sky had only just begun to pale when Dorian reached the edge of the southern pasture, the land hushed beneath a bruised horizon. The cold morning air clung to his coat as he led his saddled horse toward the line of poplars that marked the boundary near Elias Harrow’s place.

Smoke curled faintly from the cabin’s crooked chimney. It was a modest home, a single room, stone hearth, cedar siding already grayed by wind and time. But the porch was swept clean, and the steps didn’t creak, which told Dorian someone still gave a damn about the little things.

He rapped his knuckles on the post by the door instead of barging in. It didn’t feel right waking a man with boots, not on a morning like this.

The door opened a crack, then all the way. Elias stood there, shirt half-buttoned and eyes still heavy with sleep.

“Damn, Dorian. Sun ain’t even up proper,” Elias muttered, squinting at him. “You come to arrest me or say goodbye?”

Dorian cracked a small smile. “Bit of both, maybe.”

Elias was one of the only hands on the ranch that Dorian trusted. He let out a soft whistle and stepped aside. “You’d better come in, then.”

The inside of the cabin was warm from the dying coals. A tin coffee pot sat on the iron stove, faintly hissing. Elias poured them both a cup; no words passed between them for a minute, just the scrape of the chair legs as they sat.

“I’m leaving,” Dorian said plainly. “Today.”

Elias didn’t blink. “Figured. You don’t pack like that unless you’re fixin’ to disappear.”

“I found something,” Dorian added. “Something in Thaddeus’s drawer. Adoption papers. My real parents, they’re out West. Name’s Westbrook.”

Elias leaned back slowly. “Hell,” he breathed.

“I’m not Holt blood, Eli. Never was.”

“You think that matters?” Elias asked.

“I don’t know,” Dorian admitted. “But it makes leaving easier.”

Elias studied him for a long moment. “You going after them?”

Dorian nodded. “I need to know who I am. I can’t live another day under that roof, pretending I belong there. I already bought a ticket to Holly Cross. That’s where the adoption was filed.”

“Smart. But you’ll need help. The kind with eyes and ears in the right places.”

“I was thinking the same,” Dorian said. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a folded letter. “I wrote to the Pinkerton Agency. Told them I need someone discreet, someone who can trace people without stirring up dust.”

Elias let out a soft whistle. “Now you’re thinking like your old man.”

Dorian frowned. “Thaddeus?”

“No. The better version of the man you’re trying to become.”

They both stood, the air between them suddenly charged with something deeper than old friendship…understanding. Dorian offered his hand. Elias took it, firm and sure.

“You ever run into trouble,” Elias said, “you write me. I don’t care where you are.”

Dorian nodded. “Same goes for you.”

Outside, the wind had picked up, tossing the prairie grass like waves across the hills. Dorian mounted his horse; the train station lay a few miles into town, and he had no time to spare.

Elias stepped onto the porch, mug still in hand. “You send me a wire when you get there. And Dorian?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t let that bastard rewrite who you are.”

Dorian turned in the saddle, eyes narrowing against the light. “I won’t.”

With a final nod, he kicked his horse into a slow canter and moved toward the rise. The town of Pine Ridge sat on the other side; its small depot tucked along the rails that stretched westward like a promise.

By midmorning, the station came into view, red-brick office, wooden platform, and the scent of coal hanging heavy in the breeze. He purchased his ticket under the name D. Westbrook, not Holt, and didn’t flinch when the clerk asked if he was traveling for business or pleasure.

“Both,” he replied.

He slipped the Pinkerton letter into the outgoing wire box before boarding. Inside, the train smelled of iron and wood polish. He found a window seat and kept his coat on; his letter tucked in his pocket like a tether to a truth he hadn’t even begun to unravel.

As the whistle blew and the locomotive lurched forward, Dorian looked out across the open plains. Each mile would put distance between him and the lies he’d grown up with, and closer to the people who might tell him who he was before Thaddeus Holt took that away.

In the reflection on the window, he didn’t see the Holt heir anymore. He saw a man chasing the truth. At thirty-one, he’d spent more than half his life working land he’d never truly call his own. But regardless, he wasn’t planning on turning back.

Chapter Two

The stagecoach rattled to a stop at the edge of Holly Cross with a wheezing hiss and a puff of dust. The last leg of the journey had taken her through winding canyons and long, lonely stretches of open plain, where the wind seemed to whisper secrets across the prairie. Maggie stepped down without waiting for the coachman to offer a hand.

She adjusted her hat low over her brow, tugged her dark coat tighter around her frame, and took a slow breath of the cool evening air. The town was quiet, too quiet for a place that once boasted a gold rush and a rowdy mining crowd. Lanterns flickered behind shuttered windows. Shops were closed. The church bell hadn’t rung since sundown. A dog barked once in the distance, then went still.

She walked with purpose down the main street, boots tapping steadily against the wood-planked sidewalks. Her satchel, slung across one shoulder, felt heavier than usual, its weight a mix of steel and paper, secrets and survival.

Something about the town set her teeth on edge. Maybe it was the way the shadows stretched long and narrow between buildings, or the way even the saloon kept its music low. She didn’t mind silence. In fact, she preferred it. But Holly Cross had the kind of silence that listened back.

Holly Cross was little more than a knot of buildings pressed against the wide sweep of the eastern Colorado plains, a day’s ride from Denver if the tracks held. Beyond its clapboard facades and muddy streets, the land broke into cattle trails and scattered homesteads, the Holt ranch lying miles east and the mountain ranges faint in the distance.

Three blocks from the inn, she felt it.

A presence. Subtle but undeniable. Footsteps just out of sync with her own.

Maggie didn’t turn around. She kept walking, her stride natural, not hurried. But she loosened the leather tie on her satchel flap and slipped one hand inside.

The footsteps quickened behind her.

She took a sudden left, ducking into a narrow side alley between the mercantile and the old mill office. It reeked of damp wood and garbage. Her boots hit puddles. She moved swiftly and silently, crouching behind a stack of crates.

The footsteps still followed; they weren’t careful steps. She heard the clumsy scuff of the boots on the brick. Drunk, most likely.

Maggie let them get close, close enough to make out the breathing of a man, uneven and sour with whiskey. Then she stepped out.

Her arm moved in a blur. She caught his wrist as he reached for her, twisted, and slammed him into the wall with one clean motion. The revolver she’d drawn from her satchel pressed cold against his gut.

“Try it,” she said quietly. “I dare you.”

The man groaned, trying to twist free, but she had his arm bent just right to send a message through the pain.

“Lady…” he slurred. “I…I wasn’t gonna…”

“Don’t lie to me!” she snapped. “I’ve seen the look in your eyes since the corner of Broad and Sycamore. You picked the wrong woman tonight.”

He sagged under her grip, too drunk or too pitiful to be a threat now. His face was dirt-smudged, barely thirty, eyes blinking stupidly in the lantern light.

Maggie let go, stepping back fast enough to keep her weapon steady. The man collapsed to his knees, groaning, and then fell flat onto his back with a grunt.

“Get out of my sight,” she said, her voice like ice.

He didn’t move.

Maggie stood over him a moment longer, debating. But calling the sheriff would mean questions. A name. A signature in a logbook. She wasn’t about to risk that, not when she’d just arrived under the name Violet DeLange.

She turned sharply and stepped back onto the main street. Her shoulders stayed squared, eyes scanning the windows above for any movement. None came. No one had seen. Or if they had, they were smart enough not to care.

A few blocks down, the sign for the Willoughby Inn creaked overhead, swaying gently in the breeze. Its letters were faded, its shutters peeling, but the warm glow from the lobby promised rest…and anonymity.

Maggie crossed the threshold without looking back.

The bell above the door gave a weary jingle as Maggie stepped into the lobby of the Willoughby Inn. The scent of beeswax polish and faded lavender hung in the air, a welcome contrast to the sour alley she’d just left behind. Inside, the lighting was soft and yellow, casting long shadows across lace curtains and a braided rug that had seen better decades.

Behind the counter stood a woman in her late forties with salt-and-pepper hair gathered into a no-nonsense bun. She looked up from her ledger, eyes sharp but not unkind.

“Well, you look half-frozen and more than a little road-weary,” the woman said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Welcome to Willoughby’s. Checking in?”

Maggie nodded, brushing the dust from her coat. “Yes, ma’am. One room, just for the night, for now.”

The innkeeper nodded and reached for a brass key hanging on a hook board behind her. “Name?”

“Violet DeLange,” Maggie said smoothly, her voice steady. She didn’t miss the way the woman’s eyebrows twitched up ever so slightly. False names were a gamble, but Maggie had learned to wear them like gloves, temporary but convincing.

The woman didn’t ask questions, just jotted the name into the ledger with practiced grace.

“Room four. Second floor, end of the hall. Breakfast is at six, if you’re the type. Coffee’s hot by five,” she added, handing over the key. “Name’s Daisy. I run the place, such as it is.”

Maggie took the key with a small nod. “Thank you, Daisy.”

As she turned to go, Daisy reached under the counter and produced a small envelope, cream paper, no return address, sealed with wax bearing a familiar emblem, the spade and eye of the Pinkerton Agency.

“This came for you earlier today,” Daisy said, her tone carefully neutral. “Said it was urgent.”

Maggie paused. Her fingers closed around the envelope, slow and deliberate.

No one should’ve known she’d be here, not yet.

“Did the messenger say anything else?” she asked.

“Just that it was private. And to hand it directly to Miss DeLange.” Daisy paused, eyeing her over the rim of her spectacles. “That’d be you, I reckon?”

“It would.” Maggie tucked the envelope into her coat pocket. “I appreciate your discretion.”

Daisy gave a little shrug, her eyes flicking to the register before returning to Maggie. “We get all kinds through here, Miss DeLange. I’ve learned not to ask questions unless I want the answers.”

A good woman, Maggie decided. Observant, maybe too much for comfort, but trustworthy enough. The kind of person who would mind her business so long as other people minded theirs.

Maggie climbed the stairs, her boots quiet on the worn carpet runner. Room four was just as Daisy had promised, modest, clean, and dimly lit by a single oil lamp on the nightstand. She set her satchel down with care, turned the lock on the door, and wedged a chair beneath the knob for good measure.

Only then did she pull the envelope back out.

She broke the wax seal with her thumb, unfolding the contents with a tension she didn’t show on her face.

Miss Talbot, 

Client has arrived in Holly Cross. Assignment is active. Exercise caution around local law enforcement. Further contact to follow.

Neither a name nor a return signature. Just the terse, clipped cadence she’d come to expect from the Agency.

Maggie let out a breath, not quite a sigh, and dropped the letter on the nightstand.

It was another client and another job. Exactly what she didn’t want.

Her hand drifted to her temple, massaging the knot forming just above her brow. She had come here for one reason: to track Jedediah Crowe. And the Agency knew that. They also knew she wouldn’t refuse an assignment outright. Not when her funds were drying up and the trail on Crowe was starting to stretch thin.

Still, she didn’t like being blindsided. Most saw only a slip of a girl, twenty-seven and unwed. But Maggie knew better. She carried more miles in her bones than most men twice her age.

She moved across the room, pulled the revolver from her satchel, and slid it beneath her pillow with practiced ease. The metal was cool against her fingers, a familiar comfort in a world full of shifting loyalties and blurred allegiances.

Then she crossed to the window and peeled back the curtain just enough to peer into the street below. Nothing but shadows and silence. But Maggie had learned never to trust a sleeping town. The real danger always crept behind stillness.

She let the curtain fall and stepped back, already weighing the possibilities in her mind.

Tomorrow, she’d need to figure out who the client was. Whether he was useful, or a liability.

And all the while, Crowe was still out there. Watching and waiting.

The quiet of the room settled in like a second skin. Maggie sat on the edge of the narrow bed, still in her boots, coat draped over the chair by the door. She listened to the creaks in the walls, the distant hoot of an owl outside, the ticking of the old wind-up clock on the bureau.

It was the kind of silence that begged for distraction.

She leaned forward and slid her satchel across the quilt. From the hidden compartment beneath the false lining, she pulled out a worn leather bundle tied in twine. She laid it gently on the bed and untied it, revealing a dozen folded papers, maps, and sketched profiles, each one annotated in her tidy, angular hand.

There was no need to read the names. She knew every word by heart.

Jedediah Crowe.

The man who had murdered her father with a bullet to the spine and no more remorse than a butcher swatting a fly. He’d vanished after that, like smoke through a field of grass. Slippery, ruthless, and untouchable.

But not forever.

Maggie flattened the map first. It was creased from use, the ink faded in places. Small Xs marked towns across Colorado Territory, places she’d visited, questioned, probed. Some had yielded whispers. Others, silence. But the pieces were coming together.

Near the bottom of the bundle lay her father’s old notebook. She opened it slowly, fingers brushing the edge of the first page, where his handwriting greeted her like a long-lost voice.

People remember different things, but paper remembers the truth.

He’d written that the winter before he died. Back when they used to sit by the fire with strong coffee and the scent of gun oil lingering in the air. He’d never wanted her in this life, tracking men like Crowe, dodging bullets and lies. But when they buried him, she’d made a vow.

To finish what he started. And to make sure Crowe never did it again.

She turned to a page where her own notes had taken over. Witness names. A partial ledger from a burned saloon. A receipt for a cargo shipment traced back to an outlaw ring. Every line inked in patience, forged in grief.

Crowe was close. Closer than he’d ever been. But then came tonight’s letter, another job. Another damn client.

Maggie rubbed her temples. She couldn’t afford to refuse the assignment, not with money running low and rooms like this costing two dollars a night. The Agency was smart that way. They knew how to hold a leash without ever pulling it.

She rose and crossed to the mirror above the washstand. A cracked sliver ran through the glass like a lightning bolt. In it, she saw a woman with dark hair pinned tight, eyes sharper than most men’s knives, face smudged with fatigue but alert. Always alert.

“You’re not here to play nursemaid to some fool client,” she murmured to her reflection. “You’re here for Crowe.”

Still, she knew how this would go. She’d do the job. Keep the client alive. Find out why the sheriff warranted a warning. But all the while, she’d keep her ears open and her boots light.

Crowe had a way of moving just ahead of the law, like a shadow ducking past lamplight. She’d track him to hell and back if she had to. And when she found him, when she saw those soulless eyes again, he’d understand what justice looked like in the hands of a daughter who never forgot.

Maggie moved back to the bed, carefully refolded her documents, and returned them to the satchel. She untied the laces of her boots and slipped them off, placing them neatly beside the door.

Her revolver stayed beneath the pillow. Some habits weren’t worth breaking. As she slid beneath the covers, the mattress groaned beneath her weight. She lay still for a long moment, staring at the ceiling. The wooden beams above were worn and faded, like everything else in Holly Cross. But she knew the town held answers. Answers worth chasing.

She closed her eyes only when the sounds outside lulled back to quiet. Tomorrow, she’d learn who the client was. But tonight, she’d let vengeance sleep beside her.

Chapter Three

Dorian woke to the muted sounds of a waking town, the distant creak of wagon wheels on frost-hardened dirt, the clang of a blacksmith’s hammer echoing down the main street. The thin curtains in his rented room let in slivers of cold light, striping the worn pine floorboards. For a moment, he lay still, the weight of the past week pressing down like a lead blanket.

Five days in Holly Cross, and he was no closer to finding the truth than when he stepped off the train.

He pushed himself up, rubbing the stiffness from his neck. Habit made him check the small stack of possessions on the bedside table before anything else. Revolver, loaded, hammer down. Wallet, thinner than he liked. The folded adoption papers, edges softening from too much handling. He traced the faint ink of the names Leander and Clara Westbrook, his fingertips lingering there. He’d read those names so many times they felt almost familiar, like they might leap from the page if he stared long enough.

The room was plain but serviceable, a bed with an iron frame, a washstand with a chipped porcelain basin, and a single chair. It wasn’t comfort he needed. Just a place where no one asked questions.

He dressed quickly, pulling on a clean shirt and dark trousers, then shrugged into his coat. Before leaving, he slipped the papers into the inner pocket where they always rode close to his chest. Out there in the world, he was Jacob Bernard, a name borrowed for safety’s sake. It was an extra layer between him and Thaddeus, should his father send someone sniffing around.

Downstairs, the inn’s lobby smelled faintly of wood polish and last night’s coal fire. The receptionist, a thin man with a drooping mustache, looked up from his ledger.

“Morning, Mr. Bernard,” he said, sliding a sealed envelope across the counter. “This came for you earlier.”

The paper felt cool in Dorian’s hand. The handwriting was neat, no wasted flourishes. He broke the seal with his thumb and read the single line inside.

Train station. Two o’clock. Contact will wear a dark green coat and carry a single rose.

That was all, no name, no other details. Typical of the Pinkertons; he’d seen one of their curt little notes once before, slipped into Thaddeus’s correspondence years back. They never wrote more than they had to.

He tucked the note away and gave the man a polite nod. “Thank you.”

The dining room was only half-full when he stepped in. Morning light streamed through tall windows, catching in the dust motes that drifted lazily above the tables. He took a seat near the wall, where he could see both the door and most of the room. Old habits.

The waitress brought him coffee without being asked. “Bacon and eggs?”

“That’ll do,” he said, his voice still rough from sleep.

While he waited, he let his eyes wander. The patrons were a mix of locals and travelers, men in worn work shirts, a merchant couple with a pile of sample cases at their feet, a pair of ranch hands talking low over their plates. The air carried the smell of frying bacon and fresh bread.

He should’ve been thinking about the meeting this afternoon, about what questions to ask, but instead his thoughts drifted, uninvited, to the fact that he’d been alone for a long time. Not just without family, but without anyone whose company felt like a place to rest. Somewhere deep down, he knew that kind of connection was dangerous. Distractions got people hurt. But the human part of him, stubborn, foolish, couldn’t quite forget what it felt like to want one anyway.

His plate arrived, steam curling up in the cold air. He reached for the coffee, letting the warmth seep into his hands.

If the Pinkerton contact could help him find Leander and Clara, maybe, just maybe, he’d finally start to fit somewhere. Maybe not a place like Holly Cross, but somewhere that didn’t feel like borrowed ground.

He took his first bite, forcing his thoughts back to the day ahead. There was no use chasing what wasn’t in front of him yet. He had a lead, a meeting, and, if he was lucky, one step closer to the truth.

Still, he couldn’t shake the faint, restless feeling that the day would hold more than he expected.

The scrape of a chair startled him before the voices did.

At first, it was just background noise, low conversation, the clink of cutlery, but then a woman’s voice cut through the air, firm and unyielding.

“You think it’s all right to raise a hand to her?”

It wasn’t shouted, but it carried. Every word was clean-edged, like it had been honed long before it reached the man across from her.

Dorian’s gaze shifted to the far corner of the room. A tall, broad-shouldered fellow sat hunched in his chair, avoiding the eyes of the woman standing before him. The man’s cheeks were ruddy, his hands restless on the table. Across from him, a pale, nervous-looking woman sat with her eyes fixed on her plate.

“I saw the bruise,” the standing woman continued, her voice still level but sharp enough to make the room hold its breath. “You lay a hand on her again, and you’ll answer for it.”

Dorian was already on his feet before he realized it. Old instincts, the kind you don’t argue with, had him halfway across the floor, boots muted on the carpet runner. The muscles in his shoulders tightened, preparing for trouble.

But then the woman’s gaze flicked toward him, and her expression didn’t change at all. “I don’t need help,” she said, not unkindly but with the weight of someone who meant it.

Something in her tone halted him mid-step. Not just confidence, control. She wasn’t bluffing.

He stopped, giving her a single nod, and stepped back toward his table. If she noticed the way his eyes lingered a fraction longer than necessary, she didn’t let on.

She was striking, though not in a way that could be summed up with one neat word. Her coat was a dark green that made her eyes—he couldn’t tell if they were blue or gray from here—look sharper somehow. Auburn-brown hair was pinned in a style that spoke of practicality more than vanity, yet a loose strand curved against her cheek in a way that felt unplanned. She had the posture of someone who’d learned to take up exactly as much space as she intended to and no more.

She leaned down, murmured something to the seated woman, and then turned on her heel. As she passed through the doorway, the light from the front windows caught the edge of her profile, a moment’s silhouette, before she was gone.

For a long moment, Dorian stayed where he was, the rest of the dining room sliding back into motion around him.

It was foolish to let curiosity take root. He’d come to Holly Cross for one reason only. Yet her voice, steady as a church bell, and the way she’d handled the situation without so much as glancing at him again…it stayed with him.

He forced his attention back to his plate, though the eggs had gone cold. Across the room, the big man shifted uncomfortably in his seat, muttered something to his companion, and slouched down like he wanted to vanish.

Maybe that was why the moment stuck, because the whole thing had shifted the air in the room. Or maybe because, for the briefest instant, he’d felt like the stranger in the green coat had looked straight through him, like she’d already weighed and measured him before deciding he wasn’t needed.

He sipped his coffee, letting the bitterness clear his head. Focus on the work, he told himself. He had a meeting to prepare for, questions to line up, and a past that wouldn’t unbury itself.

Still, when he left the dining room a short while later, his eyes flicked toward the doorway where she’d disappeared, half-expecting, half-hoping she’d be there again.

She wasn’t.

***

The horse farm sat on a rise just beyond the edge of town, the kind of place where the scent of hay scented the air before the fences came into view. Dorian had wandered there from the inn, the dirt road crunching under his boots, passing weathered hitching posts and the occasional fence in need of mending. The place had a tired charm, an old white barn with its paint peeling in sun-faded streaks, paddocks dotted with horses whose coats shone despite the dust.

He’d barely reached the main gate when a commotion burst from the far side of the yard. A gate had swung open, and three bay geldings were making a break for it, their hooves kicking up dirt like gun smoke. Two ranch hands scrambled after them, shouting, but the horses weren’t in the mood to be caught.

Dorian didn’t think, he just moved. He cut across the yard, timing his stride to intercept the lead horse. With a low whistle and an angled stance, he slowed his pace until the animal’s ears flicked toward him. A quick grab at the halter and a firm, steady pull brought the horse to a snorting stop. The other two hesitated just long enough for the ranch hands to close in.

One of them, a broad fellow with a sunburned neck, laughed and clapped Dorian on the shoulder. “Reckon you’ve done that before.”

“A time or two,” Dorian replied, handing over the reins.

The foreman appeared a moment later, taking in the scene with a nod. “You looking for work?”

Dorian allowed himself a small smile. “That obvious?”

The man chuckled. “Could use another hand. Pay’s fair, and we’ve got a bunkhouse.”

It wasn’t part of the plan, nothing here was, but having steady work and a place to stay might stretch his funds enough to keep him in Holly Cross longer. He agreed, and within the hour, he was shown to a small room off the barn, furnished with a narrow bed, a trunk, and a single window looking out over the pasture.

***

By the time the sun began its slow descent, he was standing on the platform, scanning the small crowd. The Pinkerton Agency’s note had been clear: dark green coat, single rose in hand. He felt foolish glancing at every passerby, but the instructions had been too specific to ignore.

A freight train rumbled past on the far track, drowning out the murmur of voices. Then, through the shifting figures, he saw her.

The green coat came into view first, then the rose, held casually at her side, like it was more of an  afterthought than a signal. The rest of her was exactly as he remembered from the inn: poised, self-assured, eyes that seemed to notice more than they revealed.

For half a heartbeat, he almost didn’t believe it. Of all the faces the Agency could have sent him, it had to be hers.