A tragic boy.
A deaf rancher.
Half-mad Gideon Rook.
But Gideon’s horse had not simply thrown him.
Silas Ashford’s bullet had struck stone beside the road, and the ricochet had entered a nine-year-old child’s ear.
Rosalie’s voice became barely audible.
“Then you operated on him to hide what you’d done.”
Silas’s face twisted.
“It was an accident.”
“The shooting was.”
She held up the medical record.
“The lie wasn’t.”
Silas looked toward Gideon.
“His family would have destroyed me.”
“So you destroyed him first.”
“I had a wife!
A child coming!
A career!”
Rosalie stared at him.
She had been that child.
Eleanor had been pregnant with Rosalie when Gideon was injured.
Silas pointed at Gideon.
“He lived, didn’t he?
Look at him.
Richest rancher north of Coldwater.
Land.
Cattle.
Men working for him.
Don’t pretend his life was ruined.”
Gideon could not hear the words.
But he saw Silas
