"We can deal with that when it happens. Right now, I need to change clothes, borrow a horse and ride out to the line cabin."

"It's pouring down rain," Cane said.

"No problem. I packed a raincoat!"

She'd also packed five thousand dollars in large bills, with which she was going to appeal to Joe to release Mallory. It was a calculated risk. He might grab her and the money, and kill her with Mallory. But she was willing to take the chance that he wouldn't. He was a basic sort of person. He needed money and he was angry that he'd been double-crossed. But he still needed money and he might bargain for it. The sheriff was closing in. He'd need to get out quickly. He wouldn't know that Morie had already spoken to the sheriff, who was another friend of Uncle Danny's, and outlined her plan. He would have two government agents in the woods overlooking the line cabin, woodsmen as good or better than Joe Bascomb. She couldn't tell the brothers that, in case they let something slip. So she kept her counsel.

Darby was upset when she had him saddle the horse for her.

"You can't do this," he protested as she loaded a small pouch, along with a bag of biscuits and a thermos of coffee that Mavie, protesting, too, had made for her to take along. "You can't let her do it!" he raged at the two brothers standing grimly nearby.

"Yes, they can, Darby," Morie told him gently. "I won't let Joe kill Mallory. No matter what I have to do to save him."

"It's not right."

She smiled. "Yes, it is. You just send up a prayer or two for me, okay?"

"Dozens," he promised grimly. "I wish I'd known who you were at the start. I'd never have let you go riding fence in the first place."

"If you hadn't, I wouldn't have gotten to know Joe Bascomb and I wouldn't have a prayer of convincing him to release Mallory. Things work the way they're supposed to. There's a plan, and a purpose, to everything," she said, shocking herself because she remembered saying that to Joe.

She mounted up gracefully and turned the gelding. Rain was peppering down over her slicker and wide-brimmed hat. It was getting dark, too, but she wouldn't let that deter her. She had a flashlight in her pack. "Try not to worry. I'll call you as soon as I know anything." She had a cell phone in the pocket of her slicker. She patted it.

"If we don't hear from you in an hour, we're coming in," Tank said quietly.

She nodded. "Fair enough."

She turned the horse again and galloped off toward the line cabin. All she had was hope. But hope was the very last thing anyone ever lost.

MORIE PULLED UP AT THE line cabin and dismounted. She took the biscuits and thermos and money out of her saddlebag, along with her flashlight.

She noticed movement at the curtain. She'd guessed right. Joe was in that cabin. She wondered if he had Mallory there, and prayed that he did. If he'd already killed Mallory, her life would be worth nothing.

She went up the steps and opened the door. She looked down the barrel of a loaded shotgun.

"What are you doing here?" Joe Bascomb demanded hotly.

She felt sick at her stomach, and she was scared to death. But she didn't dare show it. She only smiled. "Brought you something."

He blinked. The gun wavered. "Brought me something?"

She nodded.

He hesitated. She glanced around the single room. Mallory wasn't there. Her heart sank. What if he was already dead?

The shotgun barrel lowered. "What did you bring?" he asked.

"Is Mallory Kirk alive?" she asked.

He drew in a long, worried breath. He stared at her.

"Is he alive?" she asked again, more unsteadily.

He put on the safety and laid the shotgun across the long, rough wooden table. "Yes," he said after an eternity of seconds.

She let out the breath she'd been holding. "Where is he?"

"Tied up against a tree, some distance from here," he said curtly. "Where he won't be found. He's roughed up-he fought me when I tried to take him from here. But he ain't dead. Yet," he added menacingly. "Why are you here? How did you know where to find me?"

"I didn't," she replied. "I was hoping you might come back here. It's where we met, remember?"

He blinked. "Yeah."

She put the leather pouch and the bags on the table. She opened the bag and produced two freshly buttered biscuits with strawberry preserves on them, along with a thermos of hot coffee. She presented them to him.

"Mavie's biscuits." His voice almost broke. He took one and bit into it and groaned with pleasure. He sipped coffee with the same expression. "Living in the wild, you miss some things so bad!" he exclaimed. He looked at her and winced. "Dangerous, you coming out here! Why did they let you?"

"They couldn't stop me," she said simply. She looked him in the eye. "I love Mallory Kirk."

That made him uncomfortable. He averted his eyes. "He ain't nothing to look at."

"It's what's inside him that makes him the man he is," she replied. "He's honest and hardworking and he never lies."

He laughed coldly. "That Bruner woman said she loved me," he said coldly. "I met her after my wife died. She wanted me to make her some keys. She said that man I killed owed her a ton of money and it was in his house in a box. She told him lies about his girlfriend to make him hit her. She knew the woman would call me for help, because I was close by."

"Good heavens," Morie exclaimed.

"So I got her out of the room and tried to make him tell me about the money in the box, but he fought me and I had to kill him. Gelly said it was all right...she had a way to make even more money," he said in a faraway tone. "She told me about the jeweled egg, but I already knew because Tank had showed it to me once. I didn't realize how much it was worth. So she took Mallory's keys and asked me to make her duplicates, to get into the Kirks' house and that curio cabinet. She put them back and Mallory thought he'd misplaced them. I had to sneak into the smith's shop at night and risk capture to do it for her. She said she'd get that egg and sell it and then we'd have money to run away. She got a cowboy to help her. Then she goes and sells the stuff to a fence and gets arrested, and I don't get a dime, because Mallory Kirk called in a private detective and he blew the lid off the case!"

"My father called the detective," she said matter-of-factly. "I was blamed for the theft of the egg in the first place."

"You were?" he exclaimed.

She nodded. "By Gelly. And Bates, the cowboy who planted it in my bag."

"I hate that," he said slowly. "I never meant to hurt you. You been kind to me. Most people don't care."

"I'm sorry for you, I really am," she told him. "But killing Mallory won't solve any problems. It will just guarantee you the death penalty."

He laughed again, a cold, chilling sound, and his eyes were opaque. "I won't go back. I killed that man deliberately," he said, his eyes suddenly as cold as his voice. "He wouldn't tell me where the money was. I was going to have money to take Gelly places and buy her nice things. She said she loved me more than anybody in the world. Nobody loved me since my wife died...."

Her heart stilled in her chest. She'd never known that Joe was involved with the woman. She would have bet that the Kirks didn't know, either.

"Did you know that she had a record?" she asked. "She was arrested twice and charged with theft, but she managed to get out of going to trial. She won't be that lucky this time."

"She said she had another way to get money, since this one fell through," he muttered. "She was going to claim that Mallory got her pregnant." He shook his head, while Morie stood frozen in place. "But after I kidnapped him, he told me he taped the conversation she had with him when she said it would be a lie but she could make people believe her. Can you believe she'd be that stupid?!"