Dust & Devotion

Maren Dunnmore has spent fourteen years being careful.

When her husband dies and leaves behind evidence of a massive land fraud scheme- sixteen pages of signed testimony naming forty-seven stolen homesteads - Maren takes it. She has one chance to deliver it to a federal commissioner in Portland, Oregon, before the October first hearing deadline closes the case forever.

Portland is two thousand miles away.

To survive the crossing, she strikes a deal with Cael Dunnmore - a former federal investigator carrying secrets of his own. A marriage of convenience. His protection for her passage west. A practical arrangement between two careful people.

Neither of them plans for what fifty days on the same wagon bench will do.

But someone has followed her onto the trail. A pale-eyed man named Fenwick appears at the rear of the wagon train - too quiet, too watchful, too deliberate to be anything other than exactly what he is. And when Cael finally reads the document she has been carrying in her boot, he turns to page nine and goes very still.

His name is on it.

When a rockslide seals the mountain pass and steals the last of their time, they split from the wagon train and ride hard into open country - alone, with the document between them and Fenwick somewhere ahead, twelve days prepared and waiting.

They reach Portland one day too late.

The hearing has already been held.

The window is closed.

Maren straightens her spine.

Who else has jurisdiction?