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She left him with a book on his lap. Outside, Flat River was still wet from the storm. The men behind the threats remained free. Her family’s needs awaited across hundreds of miles.

For the first time since Josiah’s accident, Eden wasn’t going to answer a summons before she knew what was being asked of her.

Chapter Thirteen

Jesse lay in the back room, listening. The rain had slowed to a mist, and with every person who stepped into the clinic, a new version of the same truth arrived. Three men arrested at the south crossing. Stolen horses recovered, a map found.

The details changed with the telling, but the heart of it stayed the same: Rusk was gone.

So was the man with the silver tooth.

He listened as the town discovered a dozen ways to say what he already knew.

They had proof now. Good proof, from what Simon said. The kind that would let Whit and Marshal Davis send wires, question prisoners, and tie Rusk to stolen stock. The kind that mattered to lawmen and judges.

It did not change the fact Rusk was still breathing free air somewhere beyond Flat River.

It did not change the fact Jesse was still in bed.

He stared at the window. Rainwater slipped down the glass in crooked lines. Outside, wagon wheels hissed through mud. Someone had tied a horse too close to the clinic wall, and every so often the animal stamped hard enough for Jesse to feel it in his ribs.

He had tried to sleep after Eden left the room.

Sleep came in scraps. Each time he drifted, he saw silver teeth or high piano keys or Bass riding into rain with no promise of returning. Once he dreamed he stood in Miss Marcy’s hall with his right leg gone from under him, trying to shout, but no sound came. When he woke, Nate was checking his pulse.

Jesse had told him to stop looming.

Nate had told him to stop making it necessary.

That had been the height of their brotherly affection for the morning.

He could hear Nate and Whit talking low in the front room. Carolina was upstairs, finally resting after Nate’s campaign of orders, pleas, and threats to fetch Marmee. Bass was off to the Chapman ranch for Emily—though Jesse figured she’d send him back alone and stay put. Beau and Walter were with the recovered horses, and Simon was at the bank, Georgia in tow, apparently deciding ledgers needed wifely supervision.

The activity left the clinic strangely quiet. Too quiet.

Jesse shifted his left hand on the blanket and tried to lift his right one.

It moved. Barely.

The fingers curled. Slowly. Weakly. But they curled.

He stared at them and tried again.

His wrist trembled. The hand dragged an inch toward his middle.

Progress.

He hated that word, and he hated that it fit.

Sweat broke at his temple from the effort. He let the hand rest and looked toward the door.

No one had seen. Good.

Then the door opened. Of course.

Eden stepped inside carrying a folded towel and a cup of tea. Her gaze went first to his face, then to his right hand, then back up. She noticed too much. He had known her less than a week and he’d learned that already.

“You moved it,” she said.