September 1882
Near Tucson, Arizona Territory

If she could just get her corset stays pulled tightly enough, Megan Kearney figured she had an awfully good chance of achieving her dreams.

They were pretty big dreams, she'd be the first to admit. But a girl raised in the lonely, sprawling territory of Arizona, with cactus wrens for playmates, a summertime cot beneath the stars for a cradle, and the hum of cicadas for a lullaby had to have something sweet to look forward to. For Megan, it was the chance to own her own dressmaker's shop in town. The chance to create beauty out of calico and lace and imagination. The chance to finally be safe and secure in a world of her own making.

After years of planning and saving, her opportunity had arrived-if she could only get into her best Sunday dress and get out there to meet it.

"Drat those bizcochitos of yours, Addie," she muttered, putting her hands to her waist. She stepped closer to the cast-off stagecoach strongbox she used as her bedroom's bureau and frowned into the looking glass propped atop it. "How am I supposed to make that dress fit now?"

Addie's gaze met hers in the mirror. "Don't ask me. I ain't the one who crammed all those goodies in your mouth."

"I couldn't help it. I was worried about this meeting." Sighing, Megan made herself stand up straighter. "Besides, you're the one who made the cookies. That's practically the same thing. They were so good, I was fairly compelled to eat them."

"That's a fine piece of logic." Grinning, Addie wrapped Megan's corset laces more securely around her capable, sturdy hands. "Why don't you try that on Mr. Webster, and see what he says about selling you his shop?"

"Don't be silly. It was difficult enough convincing him to deed me the alleyway rights and living space that go along with his mercantile. I hardly intend to discuss bizcochitos with a person like that."

"You go on talking that way, and you'll scare him off selling you the store altogether," Addie warned. "How many times have I got to tell you? Men don't like ladies who talk like a book."

Megan sighed. "I suppose you're right. A pretty dress probably is the best strategy."

"Ain't no supposin' about it. You listen to me, and I'll steer you right." Nodding, Addie took up the slack in the corset laces. "Now suck in your breath and quit your yappin', else you'll be walking into that fancy meetin' of yours wearing that old calico over there."

Megan eyed the faded pink dress draped tiredly over the coverlet on her bed. It looked worse than a station hand's britches after a day of drinking and carousing at the bullfights in the presidio. She'd never impress Mr. Jedediah Webster and his wife if she were wearing that old thing. She put a hand to her belly and breathed in as hard as she could.

"How's this?" she croaked, trying to peer over her shoulder. All she could see was Addie's gray-haired head, but judging by the way her curls waggled, she was getting ready for a vigorous tug.

"Perfect." Yank.

The rest of Megan's breath left her in a whoosh. Oh, well-the meeting would probably be a short one, anyway. Breathing deeply was only necessary if a body was asleep or getting ready to holler about something. She stuck both hands onto the cool, prickly adobe wall beside the looking glass and got ready for the next pull.

Yank. "Ouch!"

Why had she ever eaten all those bizcochitos? And what ever had possessed her to sew her new dress with an inch smaller waistline?

Vanity, she admitted to herself. Plain and simple. She wanted to impress the eastern-born, city-bred Websters with her seamstress' ability and sense of style. She knew they saw her as a desert country bumpkin-one whose nest egg of savings they were happy to take in exchange for their mercantile building, but a bumpkin, nonetheless. Everybody of consequence in town felt the same.

But not for long, Megan vowed as Addie tied up her stays and helped her button up her corset cover. She got on the rest of her underthings, then carefully lifted her new brown worsted gown from the bed. High-necked and shaped with room for an elaborate bustle, it was trimmed with black braid and jet buttons in the height of fashion.

Megan smoothed her cheek along the expensive fabric, smiling at the notion of having her own shop filled with similar fancy dresses, each one her own personal creation. Ladies would come from miles to own a dress like the ones she designed. A Megan Kearney original. After her dreams came true, she'd be as sophisticated as any easterner, and twice as successful.

She would've bet her entire nest egg savings on it, and planned to...just as soon as the Websters arrived.

~ ~ ~

He'd tracked criminals to sorrier, more decrepit places-but Gabriel Winter had never tailed one to anyplace more flat-out unusual than Kearney Station.

From his ridge-top vantage point behind a stand of September-dried creosote bushes, he raised his spyglass and looked over the station again. Amidst the scrub brush and cacti and mud that made up the central station yard, its flat-roofed, whitewashed adobe buildings clustered around each other for protection. A thorny ocotillo-rib fence wound between them, tall as the station hands working the grounds.

None were armed. To the left, one heavyset man led a pair of sorrel mares from the stables, and other hands carried equipment to and from a storage area nearby. Their voices carried to Gabriel's hiding place, borne on the same wind that carried the tang of mesquite woodsmoke across arroyo and flatland.

None of that was unusual. But the lengths of jade green, blue, and yellow fabric woven decoratively between the fence ribs like ladies' hair ribbons were. The borders of flowers painted above the doorways were. So were the potted cacti arranged along the archways of the Spanish-style zaguán that connected the main stage station with the outbuilding behind it. Most of all, so were the pennants. From holders beside the rough planked doorways, the bright-colored flags snapped in the sunrise breeze, surprising as jewels on a mule.

Definitely a woman's touch.

Gabriel lowered his spyglass and slid it shut, smiling in spite of himself. Beauty was hard to come by in the Territory-hard to come by in life. It had been too long since he'd admired anything for its form, instead of its substance. Instead of the facts it hid or revealed.

The pursuit of truth could do that to a man, he figured. Especially a man who lived in the world of hunter and hunted, lost and found. For a minute, those painted flowers and flourishes held his imagination like nothing had in longer than he could remember.

Then Tom McMarlin crawled up beside him from the other end of the ridge, and Gabriel's mind snapped back to the task at hand.

Tracking his quarry.

"Doesn't look too damned prosperous, does it?" McMarlin muttered, parting a portion of the creosote barrier to squint toward the station. "If old man Kearney really did nab that loot, I'd say he's already pulled foot from here and hied out for greener pastures."

"Maybe." Gabriel rolled onto his back and slugged some water from his canteen. He wished it was coffee. Almost a week spent reading reconnaissance reports on the train between Chicago and Tucson had prepared him for the case-but not for the dew-damp, cold, rocky soil he'd spent sunrise on. Beneath his traveling clothes, he felt chilled to the bone.

Frowning, he wiped his mouth and screwed on the canteen cap. "But as usual, McMarlin, you're only seeing the outside."

"What the hell else am I supposed to see? We're on the blasted outside." He scratched a match into flame and lit a cheroot, blowing a plume of smoke toward the station. "And that place looks one step away from dilapidation, geegaws or no."

"It's old. Not falling apart." Gabriel handed over the spyglass. "See how the whitewash looks thicker in spots? It's been redone, year after year. The roofs look solid. The grounds are cleared so the stage gets through faster-it doesn't stay that way without work."

McMarlin grunted and snapped the glass shut. "So? It ain't like their stables don't stink."

"Actually, they don't. Not like they would without so many hands keeping things mucked out. And all those men aren't working for free."

"No, they're working for a crook."

"Alleged crook."

"Alleged, my ass, you damned stickler," McMarlin said, grinning around a mouthful of cigar. "You think Joseph Kearney is as guilty as I do, or you wouldn't be here."

Gabriel grinned back at him. After years of working Pinkerton cases together, Tom McMarlin was like an older brother to him-and knew him about as well.

"Maybe. Point is, this place is more prosperous than it looks. More prosperous than you thought at first sight." He sat up and stuffed his canteen and spyglass into his worn saddlebag. Then he passed his hand over his face and looked at McMarlin again. "You're not looking deep enough on this case-or I wouldn't have to be here."

McMarlin grimaced, grinding his cheroot into the rocks. He left the stub where it lay. "Is that what Pinkerton told you?"

"It's what I know."

A simple stagecoach robbery like this one should have been solved within days. McMarlin should've already had wanted posters up and a solid mark on his suspect's trail. Hell, he should've had the damned knuck in custody already. Instead, Gabriel suspected he'd spent half his assignment time whoring in Tucson and the rest of it with a bottle of whiskey in hand. McMarlin belly-crawled back down the ridge side opposite the stage station.

"You don't know your head from a horse's behind. No matter what old man Pinkerton thinks."

Gabriel almost smiled. Truth be told, part of him wanted to shuck the damned 'no-fail' reputation Allan Pinkerton had bestowed on him after his first few successful cases. Winter brings in the right man at the right time. What started as praise had become an obligation, one harder to uphold for the thirty-two year old man he'd become than the cocky, twenty year old kid who'd earned it.

"You just keep dogging my steps, McMarlin." Grinning, he snatched up the discarded cigar stub-evidence they didn't need to leave behind of their presence there-and then followed his partner belly-first down the slope. "Maybe someday you'll get a legend of your own."

McMarlin snorted, bending to brush the dust from his fancy suit pants. Then he straightened and adjusted his tie. "I already got me a legend, with them painted ladies down on Maiden Lane. That's all the reputation I want, boy-o."

"Keep on like you are, then," Gabriel said, hefting his saddle bag over his shoulder for the trek to the arroyo bank where he'd picketed his horse. He scanned the ridge one last time to make sure their presence there wouldn't be detected later. "That's the only reputation you'll have."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

Damn. "Nothing."

He turned toward the valley behind them, where a hazy strip of green showed the location of the arroyo, and started walking. McMarlin's hand stopped him within two steps.

"S'there something I ought to know, boy-o?"

Gabriel looked at him, seeing for the first time in a long time the differences between them. McMarlin was getting on in years. Gray lightened his sandy, close-clipped hair and beard, and the paunch beneath his expensive suit only showed how little field work he did these days. Typically, he'd dressed like a banker, armed himself like an outlaw...and gotten so comfortable in his place with the agency, he'd forgotten it could all vanish in an instant.

William Pinkerton, head agent in Chicago, was close as kicking to giving McMarlin some enforced time off. The letter proving it was in Gabriel's saddlebag, wrapped in oilcloth along with the rest of the papers documenting the road agent they'd been hired to bring in. Officially, McMarlin was free to leave, and Gabriel was the head man on the case.

But standing beneath an Arizona Territory sun with the man who'd taught him all he knew about bringing in Pinkerton's most-wanted, the last thing he wanted to do was tell him that.

"Dammit, McMarlin, I can't stand here jawing all morning," Gabriel said instead. "It's a half hour past sunup already."

"You still figuring on finding Kearney at the station?"

He jerked his head toward the cluster of buildings behind them, and Gabriel's gaze followed the motion. A stagecoach rattled in as they watched, spewing dust in its wake, and was quickly met by several of the station hands. Their Spanish-accented speech drifted toward the ridge, but the words were too faint to make out.

"I always start at the beginning. And that's it." He glanced at McMarlin. "You got a better idea?"

"Hell, yes," he answered with a good-natured grin, pulling a flask from his coat pocket. "Me and Old Orchard here'll watch your back while you're gone. Better head out, boy-o."

"Don't get too cozy," Gabriel said, going to retrieve his horse. "This won't take long."

The chase was on.