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My heart hammered in excitement at the prospect. “EP, has Dr. Harrison talked about your discharge yet? Your stats are looking great.”

EP’s expression fell, and he looked down at his lap, his brown hair falling over his eyes. “Yeah, he mentioned it.”

I set the chart down. “What’s with the long face?”

“I heard back from Justine,” he said. His longtime girlfriend, a nurse he’d met during the war, lived in California, and they’d planned on her moving to Baker as soon as she could sell her house.

Something in his tone tempered my excitement. “And?” I pressed.

“She isn’t moving,” he said, his skin now pale. “At least not here. She’s moving in with some new guy she met . . . her dentist or something.”

My heart sank. Though I wouldn’t have told him, this Justine hadn’t felt like the right woman for him anyway. I didn’t trust a woman who wouldn’t be by her beau’s side when he was sick and ailing for months in a hospital.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I don’t have anywhere to live—we were going to buy a house together.”

I tapped my toe on the ground. “Come to Birkstrom for a while. Warren Hayes, Eddie Moore, Lucky Wright—we’ve been working on restoring the old cabins behind the ranch house and we have space. That is, if you don’t mind working around horses and pitching in on the farm work.”

His eyes lit up. “You mean it, Eva?”

I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Once you get your potassium numbers down. Listen to Dr. Harrison and do what he recommends.”

He nodded, and I went about the rest of my work for the next several hours.

Warren wouldn’t mind the additional soldier. He wanted as many bodies as possible to defend against Victor and his threats.

The rest of my shift hurried by, and I returned to my car in the dark of the early morning. At two a.m., not a lot stirred outside the hospital doors.

I fired up the truck and drove through the quiet, dimly lit Main Street. Exhaustion swirled with the anticipation of EP joining the rest of the crew at Birkstrom. Warren had another soldier, John Bennett, also arriving soon.

The addition of so many people had filled something inside me that I hadn’t quite realized was hollow. It soothed the ache of Gramps being gone, the stables feeling empty. Now Birkstrom felt like the buzzing hive of activity it had once been.

As I left the heart of Baker and the streetlamps faded away, the road was illuminated only by the headlights of my truck. Then a shimmer of something in the rearview mirror caught my eye.

The moon was faint and obscured by clouds, but as I watched the mirror, I saw it plainly now. My heart raced and my hands gripped the wheel. I paused at a stop sign before turning onto the highway.

A black sedan followed me from a distance with its headlights off.

This had to be Victor’s thugs again.

They were keeping their distance, at least four car lengths behind me. But I didn’t want them following me to Birkstrom if today was the day they planned some sort of action. There were too many people I cared about there.

I quickly turned left instead of right, returning to downtown Baker. The car followed.

Though there weren’t many people awake at this hour, I knew one place to find the person I could always rely on.

The driver in the vehicle behind me seemed to recognize where I was headed. Their lights turned on, and they accelerated as I saw the gleaming white building and arched windows of the Geiser Grand ahead of me. Just a few hundred yards more and I would be safe.

But in an instant, the sedan smashed into my truck and sent me spinning.

Warren

A rapid knock at my hotel door had me bounding out of bed and quickly checking the clock on the nightstand. A little after two in the morning.

I’d been on edge all night, ever since Eva had insisted on going in for her hospital shift. That worry left me tossing, turning, or pacing.

I pulled my pants on as I rushed to the door, wearing the plain white shirt I’d been sleeping in. I grabbed my handgun, held it at my side. Opening the door, I was surprised to see Betty in a thick robe and her hair wrapped in a net and curlers. I slipped my gun into my waistline.

“Captain,” she said in a hushed tone. “Come with me.”