Chapter 1

The town of Red Creek had never noticed Ellen Harper.

That was the way she had learned to live.

She walked with her eyes lowered, hands folded at her waist, her dresses plain and practical. The shopkeepers greeted her politely but briefly, as if she were part of the furniture—present, harmless, forgettable. Ellen did not mind. Shyness had wrapped itself around her since childhood, a quiet shell that kept the world at a safe distance.

Before her sister died.

Mary Harper had been everything Ellen was not—warm, laughing, fearless. She sang while hanging laundry and argued with men twice her size if she thought them wrong. When the gang rode into Red Creek, the sun was still high, and the street was busy enough that no one expected blood.

They came in laughing, five of them, horses lathered, boots dusty, guns worn low and loose. One dragged a rope behind his saddle for no reason at all. Another fired a shot into the air just to watch people flinch.

Mary stepped aside to let them pass outside the mercantile. One of the men leaned down in his saddle and said something crude, smiling as the others laughed. Mary ignored him and kept walking.

That offended him.

He spurred his horse forward, blocking her path, then reached down and yanked her by the arm hard enough to spin her around. Ellen watched from the doorway across the street, a sack of flour slipping from her hands, white dust blooming at her feet like smoke.