The anticipation of battle had always made Cole more aware of his surroundings, sharpening his senses until he could hear the rasp of breath, smell the tang of fear and sweat, feel the subtle shift of air that meant someone was moving. He became focused and able to shut out the noise around him—the voices, the chaos, the fear—until there was nothing but the mission, the target, the goal. It was a skill he’d honed during the war, a necessary distance between himself and the horror of what he was about to do.
But this was the first time he’d ever ridden into battle with Elizabeth at his side, and he found himself wondering if he’d be able to maintain that focus when part of his mind would be tracking her every move, anticipating danger before it reached her, calculating distances and angles and how fast he could get to her if things went wrong.
He’d fought alongside men he’d liked, men he’d respected, even men he’d called friends. He’d seen them fall, had held them as they died, had written letters to their families explaining how bravely they’d fought. And while each death had carved a piece out of his soul, he’d been able to compartmentalize, to keep fighting, to do what needed to be done.
But Elizabeth was different. Elizabeth was everything. The thought of her in danger made his hands shake and his chest tight. If he lost her—no. He couldn’t let himself think that way. Couldn’t let fear paralyze him when he needed to be sharp and clear headed.
This was between him and Riley. He knew it and Calhoun knew it. Heck, Calhoun had probably known the Silver Creek Bandits were in the area before he’d even arrived, had probably been tracking them for weeks and following their trail straight to Laurel Valley. Marshals weren’t stupid and they had instincts honed by years of hunting dangerous men. Cole had known this day would come. He hadn’t known about Riley and what he’d been doing—that sickening revelation was still sitting like a stone in his gut—but he’d known his brother would find him some day. They were two sides of the same coin, drawn together by blood and fate and some cosmic sense of inevitability.
“Get what you need from inside,” he told Elizabeth. “You know where the rifles are. And I’ve got a couple of extra furs you can layer up with. Every second we waste those tracks are disappearing.”
Elizabeth nodded and went inside, and Cole headed with the other men to the side of the building where the horses had been brought around. They were all men who knew the right end of a gun, including the gunsmith, who’d provided many of the weapons they were using on short notice. The blacksmith had also rigged up an iron rod at the back of each saddle and a lantern hung from the hook at the top. They’d need every bit of help they could get. They were all familiar with the territory, but it would still be easy to get lost in the snow that had been falling.
Elizabeth came out with a rifle in each hand and a fur poncho thrown over her coat. A fur-lined cap was pulled down over her ears. She tossed him an extra fur poncho and cap, and then strapped her rifle on to the back of her saddle, the leather worn smooth from years of use, before tossing him the other rifle so he could do the same.
His horse, Goliath, was the grandsire of the horse he’d ridden in battle. He was pure onyx, with three white marks across his forehead, and his coat was thick and used to Idaho winters. Goliath snorted out a breath that misted in the cold air and stamped his hoof, sensing the excitement in the other horses, as Cole mounted him.
He moved to the head of the group, and there was an eerie quiet as white swirled around them and the horses’ steps were silenced by the snow. It was a short ride to the bank, and Calhoun came up beside him as he motioned for the others to stop. The lights were still on, as Jenkins had said, and Cole could only imagine what waited for them inside. But they couldn’t tend to the dead yet. Not when their killers were still on the loose.
“The tracks start around here,” Calhoun said, motioning his horse, a bay gelding with a white streak like lightning down its side. “I can see at least three sets of footprints and horses, but could be more if they were following in each other’s paths.”
“There’s five,” Cole said with certainty, dismounting from Goliath and crouching down beside the tracks.
He stared at the impressions in the snow and blocked out everything around him—the wind, the cold, the murmur of voices, the presence of the men waiting for his assessment. He let it all fade until there was nothing but the story written in the snow, just as the Sioux had taught him during those long months in Montana Territory.
His friend Running Bear had told him: You cannot track what you do not understand. You must become the deer to find the deer. You must think as the wolf thinks to know where the wolf will go. At the time, Cole had thought it was mystical nonsense. But Running Bear had been patient, showing him how to read not just the obvious signs but the subtle ones—the depth of a print that told you how fast someone was moving, the spray of snow that indicated urgency, the spacing that revealed whether they were tired or fresh.
He had to become one with the prey to find the prey, and that’s exactly what his brother was now—prey. Nothing more, nothing less. Not family. Not the boy he’d shared a room with, fought with, protected. Just prey.
Five distinct sets of tracks, each with its own characteristics. Two were deep and heavy—large men, probably carrying extra weight in gold or weapons. One was lighter, quicker—someone young or small. And two were measured and deliberate—experienced riders who knew how to move efficiently. The horses’ hoofprints told their own story: One was favoring its left foreleg slightly, another had shoes that were wearing unevenly, a third was a big animal, probably seventeen hands or more.
The footprints they’d left were deep, and if he had to hazard a guess, Riley had timed the robbery with the storm, hoping that their tracks would be completely covered before the bodies were found.
And they almost had been. In another hour, they’d have been left with nothing. But the storm hadn’t quite made it to its full potential yet.
“Stay armed and vigilant,” Cole called out to the others. “They’ll have found a place for shelter. They can’t have gotten too far. Not with it getting dark and with the snow. We don’t want to lose any more tonight. If something feels off then tell me. If something seems out of place, speak up. We know this area better than these scoundrels, and they’ve taken the lives of our own. We bring every one of them in. Dead or alive.”
There was a chorus of angry grunts, and they set off, going as quickly as they could without compromising the tracks. Riley was smart. It wasn’t past him to circle back around and let them follow the tracks until they walked into an ambush.
Half an hour later, he got a sickening feeling in his gut. Riley hadn’t circled around to try and outsmart them. He’d had a plan. He knew exactly where he was going.
“Cole,” Elizabeth said, riding up close beside him. “What’s going on? We’re getting too close…”
“I know,” he interrupted. He could see the fear in her eyes. The fear that everything they’d worked for, her legacy, and their children’s legacy would be gone. He was afraid she might be right.
Chapter Five
He smelled the smoke before they reached their ranch—acrid and wrong, cutting through the clean bite of snow and wind with the stench of burning wood and something else, something that made his gut clench. Not just a cooking fire or a controlled burn. This was destruction.
And he had to pull on Elizabeth’s reins to keep her from charging ahead to her death, his hand closing over the leather with enough force to make Goliath sidestep nervously. She fought him for a moment, her body straining forward in the saddle, every line of her screaming the need to get home, to see what was burning, to save what could be saved.
“Let me go!” Her voice was raw, desperate in a way he’d never heard before.
“Elizabeth, stop.” He kept his grip firm, his own horse pressed close to hers to block her path. “You go charging in there blind and you’ll be dead before you hit the ground. Is that what you want?”
She turned on him then, and the look in her eyes nearly broke him. Terror and fury mixed together, tears freezing on her lashes. “That’s my home, Cole. Everything I have—everything my father built, everything his father built?—”
“I know.” The words came out rougher than he intended, his own fear making him sharp. “Believe me, I know. But we do this smart or we don’t do it at all.”
