The smell reached Ethan before Charlotte saw the flames.
Kerosene.
His body froze.
For one terrible second, he was twenty-three again.
Warehouse doors locked.
Thomas screaming.
Smoke rolling across the ceiling.
Samuel Pike beating his fists bloody against a window.
Men dying behind him.
“Ethan.”
Charlotte’s voice cut through the memory.
He blinked.
She was beside him.
Not Thomas.
Not the warehouse.
Charlotte.
“Look at me.”
He did.
“They want you afraid.”
A bottle shattered against the outside wall.
Flame crawled across the logs.
Ethan’s breathing became ragged.
Charlotte gripped his face with both hands.
“You are not in that warehouse.”
Another bottle struck.
Fire climbed toward the roof.
“You are here.”
Ethan stared into her eyes.
“With me.”
Something steadied inside him.
He nodded.
“Cellar.”
“What?”
“There’s a root cellar under the floor.”
They moved fast.
Ethan gathered the journal and papers.
Charlotte filled blankets with food and ammunition.
Smoke seeped through cracks.
The attackers shouted outside.
“Cole! Send out the woman and maybe you live!”
Ethan looked toward the door.
Charlotte grabbed his arm.
“That is exactly the sort of heroic stupidity men use to ruin perfectly good escape plans.”
Despite everything, Ethan smiled.
“You have a better plan?”
“Yes. Survive.”
He opened a hidden floor panel beneath the table.
Cold air rose.
They descended into darkness.
The cellar connected to an old mining tunnel Ethan had discovered years earlier.
They crawled nearly two hundred yards before emerging behind a line of boulders uphill from the cabin.
From there, Charlotte watched flames engulf the place that had saved her life.
Ethan stood motionless.
His home.
Eighteen years.
Burning.
Charlotte slipped her hand into his.
This time he did not tremble.
“Can we reach the deputies?”
“Yes.”
They moved through trees while Harrow’s men searched the burning cabin.
Halfway down the ridge, one of the attackers spotted them.
“There!”
Gunfire exploded.
Ethan pushed Charlotte behind a fallen pine.
He fired twice.
One man dropped.
Another retreated.
Then horses approached from below.
Sheriff Ross and his deputies.
The attackers scattered.
Two were captured.
One escaped.
The cabin burned to its foundation.
By dawn, Ethan stood among smoking ruins.
Charlotte feared he might retreat into himself again.
Instead he picked up a blackened piece of wood.
“It’s strange.”
“What?”
“I thought losing this place would destroy me.”
“And?”
He dropped the wood.
“It was never the cabin keeping me alive.”
Charlotte looked at him.
“What was?”
Ethan met her gaze.
“Maybe I’m finally finding out.”
They returned to town.
The captured men talked quickly when Sheriff Ross threatened federal charges.
Harrow had arrived in Colorado two days earlier.
He was staying at a private rail lodge forty miles east.
Why had a wealthy Boston industrialist traveled across the country personally?
Because Charlotte Whitmore was worth more than money.
Her marriage contract included voting control over shares inherited from her mother.
Combined with Harrow’s holdings, they would allow him to take effective control of Whitmore Rail.
And more dangerously, Harrow had learned that someone was investigating the events of 1878.
He needed the journal destroyed.
Charlotte decided immediately.
“We go to Boston.”
Ethan frowned.
“Harrow’s between here and the eastern rail line.”
“Then we go around him.”
“Winter roads—”
“Ethan.”
“Yes?”
“I crossed a mountain in silk boots. I stitched a mountain lion wound. I have been shot at and nearly burned alive.”
She lifted her chin.
“I am going home.”
Ethan smiled.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Amos was recovering enough to travel.
Sheriff Ross arranged an escort to the nearest functioning rail station.
For four days, they rode south.
On the fifth, they boarded an eastbound train.
Charlotte had spent her life in private railway cars.
This time she traveled in an ordinary passenger coach beside Ethan Cole, who looked deeply uncomfortable with upholstery.
“You look frightened,” she teased.
“Too many people.”
“You faced a mountain lion.”
“The mountain lion didn’t ask where I bought my coat.”
Charlotte laughed.
Ethan looked at her.
He loved that sound.
The realization frightened him more than bullets.
That night they stood between railcars beneath a sky filled with stars.
“You could stay in the West,” Ethan said.
Charlotte turned.
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I’m saying after this is finished, you don’t have to return to Boston society.”
“And you don’t have to return to the mountain.”
Silence.
Charlotte stepped closer.
“What do you want, Ethan?”
No one had asked him that in decades.
“I don’t know.”
“That is a terrible answer.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Then begin smaller.”
She touched his hand.
“Do you want me to walk away?”
“No.”
His answer came instantly.
Charlotte smiled.
“Excellent. Progress.”
He kissed her beneath the stars.
For the first time, Ethan allowed himself to imagine tomorrow.
The dream lasted until Chicago.
Two men boarded the train.
Amos recognized one.
“Harrow’s security chief.”
They changed cars.
Too late.
Gunfire erupted near the baggage compartment.
Passengers screamed.
Ethan pushed Charlotte into a compartment.
“Stay here.”
“No.”
“Charlotte.”
“I have tolerated that command repeatedly. It has never worked.”
They moved together.
Amos pulled the emergency brake.
The train screamed against the rails.
One attacker lunged through the corridor.
Charlotte struck him with a brass lamp.
Ethan disarmed the second.
But during the struggle, someone stole the leather case containing Thomas’s papers.
Charlotte’s face fell.
“The journal.”
Ethan checked his coat.
Then smiled.
He produced the notebook.
“I learned something from you.”
“What?”
“Never trust expensive luggage.”
He had replaced the leather case contents with newspapers hours earlier.
The real journal remained safe.
By the time they reached Boston, word of Charlotte’s disappearance had become national news.
Newspapers reported that she had been kidnapped.
Nathaniel Harrow publicly offered a reward for her rescue.
Charlotte read the article twice.
Then laughed.
“He is claiming you abducted me.”
Ethan did not look amused.
“Harrow controls newspapers.”
“Then we give them a better story.”
They reached the Whitmore mansion after midnight.
Charlotte knocked.
Her father opened the door himself.
Charles Whitmore looked twenty years older than when she had fled.
“Charlotte?”
She stepped inside.
His arms went around her.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Then Charles saw Ethan.
Recognition erased the relief from his face.
“You.”
Ethan nodded.
“Charles.”
Charlotte closed the door.
“Father, before you have him arrested, you need to hear why Uncle Thomas really died.”
Charles Whitmore went perfectly still.