Nobody had noticed such a small inconvenience before.
When he passed her the chair, their fingers almost met. Rosamund pulled back so quickly that he placed it on the floor and stepped away, reading the sudden panic in her eyes with instinctive grace.
I have trouble with that, she admitted, her voice barely louder than the hum of the telegraph wires outside.
With me?
With not knowing whether I’m allowed to move away.
Gideon sat on a freight crate, leaving the space between them clear, offering her the dignity of distance.
You never need my permission.
She looked at his open hand resting on his knee, rough-skinned and scarred from years of hard labor across the territories. Then she told him that she could not remember ever taking a man’s hand simply because she wished to, offering a vulnerability she had guarded fiercely since her husband’s funeral.
He did not offer it.
He waited while she crossed the room, every step a deliberate choice against the caution of her past.
The following morning, the cattle agent returned with a district railroad official and an order to take Gideon away before the westbound cattle train arrived. The official wore a crisp wool suit that looked absurdly out of place against the dust of the loading platform, and his smile was as cold as the telegraph lines in winter.
Gideon stood beside her desk, ready to leave rather than cost her the station or drag her into his corporate war.
But Rosamund controlled the signal that admitted that train.
She moved the lever to stop, the heavy iron click echoing through the small room like a gunshot.
Then she asked the district inspector’s office to identify the man carrying the brass badge, sending a coded inquiry that cut past the local agent and went straight to the general superintendent’s private desk.
The reply began while the two men waited outside her window, their boots scraping impatiently against the wooden planks.
Before releasing the inspector, compare his badge number with the following.
Rosamund turned Gideon’s badge over as the next message began, her eyes tracing the numbers stamped into the reverse side. The characters matched the sequence clicking from the brass sounder, but the accompanying text made the blood freeze in her veins.
The telegraph instrument clattered furiously, spitting out words that transformed the modest relay station into a trap.
That badge was reported stolen six weeks ago from a dead man in Abilene, the ticker spelled out with relentless, mechanical precision. The real Gideon Rusk was found buried near the siding with a fractured skull. Whoever is standing in your station is the man who bought the stolen cattle manifest and killed the inspector to take his place.
Rosamund stared at the metal on her desk, the brass suddenly feeling as heavy and cold as a tombstone.
She looked up slowly to meet the gray eyes of the man who had mended her chair, her hand drifting toward the loaded revolver kept hidden beneath the ledger.
Gideon did not flinch, his expression shifting from gentle weariness to something calculating and lethal as he heard the telltale rhythm of the incoming message.
You are a remarkably observant telegrapher, Miss Keene, he said softly, his voice losing its tired drawl and hardening into something sharp and dangerous.
The men outside slammed their fists against the glass, shouting demands to open the door, but Rosamund didn’t look at them. She kept her eyes fixed on the man who had asked for her permission, realizing too late that the deadliest predators are the ones who know how to wait.