He reached for the watch, but Esmerelda’s hand got there first. It was almost as if she couldn’t bear the thought of his touch sullying the precious objects. Her pale fingers played over them with wrenching tenderness, sending a strange shiver through his soul. It seemed like a lifetime since anyone had touched him with such care.

“The watch and pen were our father’s,” she said softly. “The hair our mother’s.” She boldly met his gaze. “My brother’s things, Mr. Darling. All he owned in the world before he died.”

Billy squinted at the daguerreotype. No matter which angle he came at it, he couldn’t find any resemblance between the black-haired man with the plump cheeks and the mischievous twinkle in his dark eyes and his prim, stiffhecked sister.

“How old was your brother?”

“Nineteen.” Esmerelda traced a finger across the image, as if to caress her brother’s dimpled cheek. “Just a boy…”

She missed the incredulous look Billy slanted her. At thirteen he was already riding with Quantrill’s successor, Bloody Bill Anderson. At fourteen, he’d killed his first man and tasted his first woman—both on the same night, when his elated brothers had taken him to a whorehouse to celebrate the kill. Billy couldn’t remember what the whore looked like, but he could still remember the haunted look in the Yankee’s eyes as he’d stretched out a bloodstained hand to him in the heartbeat before he died.

Billy swept the daguerreotype out from under her hand and studied it through narrowed eyes before tossing it back down. “I’ve never seen this man before.”

“Oh, no? Then explain this.” Esmerelda whipped the paper from the table and presented it to him with a regal flourish.

Billy cocked one eyebrow at her before cautiously unfolding it. He hadn’t even reached the third paragraph before his lips began to twitch. The handwritten report related a tale more melodramatic than anything he’d ever found between the pages of a dime novel. A tragic account of a botched stage robbery, a virginal girl journeying to a Mexican convent to take her vows, a noble and naive young man who took a bullet in the heart rather than allow his traveling companion to be ravished by a gang of bloodthirsty outlaws. As he read the final paragraph, written in a prose so purple as to be nearly black, he turned away so Esmerelda wouldn’t see the tears that had began to fill his eyes.

To his keen shock, he felt the slight weight of her hand descend on his quivering shoulder. “There now, Mr. Darling. Perhaps your soul isn’t quite as jaded as you feared.” Her voice deepened to a smoky murmur, making him wonder what she would sound like at night with the lamps extinguished and nothing between them but skin and darkness. “Even for a villain such as yourself, God always offers a chance for repentance and redemption.”

Billy could no longer contain himself. A strangled whoop of laughter escaped him. As Esmerelda circled around to peer into his face, he swiped his streaming eyes, unable to hide the guffaws shaking his body. He had to wait until they subsided to chuckles before he could muster the strength to rattle the paper at her.

“Whoever wrote this piece of”—he cleared his throat before continuing—“tripe failed to do their research. I don’t rob stages for a living, ma’am. I apprehend stage robbers. Perhaps the subtlety eludes you, being from Boston and all, but there is a distinct difference.”

Esmerelda snatched the paper from his hand, a frown betraying her first trace of doubt. “I don’t understand. Mr. Snorton swore that—”

“Mr. Snorton?” Billy repeated. “You wouldn’t be referring to a Mr. Flavil Snorton, would you?" When she only pressed her lips together in mute defiance, he held a hand up to his breastbone. “Little man, about yea high with ears bigger than he is and a voice like a gelded grasshopper.”

Esmerelda’s lips slowly parted until her jaw hung slack. Billy gently nudged it back up with one finger, enabling her to whisper, “He told me he was the very best detective the Pinkertons could provide.”

Billy drew his hand back from the silky skin beneath her jaw, thinking he’d do well to keep it to himself. “He’s not a Pinkerton. Never was. He’s a card sharp, a confidence artist. Hell, Flavil Snorton is wanted in more states and territories than I am. I ran him in myself in Kansas City only last summer, which might explain why my name sprang so smoothly to his lips when he was looking for someone to blame for killing your brother.”

Esmerelda began to back away from him, her eyes growing wilder than an unbroken filly’s. “Why should I believe you? You claim Mr. Snorton is a confidence artist, but you’re nothing more than a man who’ll sell his gun to the highest bidder.”

“Did you go to the Pinkertons, or did Snorton come to you?”

Her brow furrowed. “I went to the Pinkertons when Bartholomew first disappeared. But they turned me away because I didn’t have enough money to hire them. Two months later Mr. Snorton showed up on my doorstep. He informed me that the Pinkertons had been secretly working on the case all along and if I could just raise enough cash to finance his journey west…” She blinked up at him as if emerging from a blinding fog. “I closed my school and collected all my accounts. I sold my mother’s pianoforte. I gave him everything except the pittance I believed I would need to fetch Bartholomew home when he was finally found.”

“And in return he mailed you your brother’s belongings in a nice tidy package all tied up with brown paper and string. Case closed.”

As Esmerelda sank down on the bed, clutching her stomach, Billy almost regretted his ruthlessness. He could remember only too well how it felt to be sickened by your own naïveté.

Her chin began to quiver, giving him a brief moment of panic. But instead of bursting into tears, she clenched her teeth against a spasm of rage. “Why that wretched little man. That miserable, pathetic…”

Billy’s ears perked up. Was there a chance the saintly Miss Fine might actually resort to swearing?

“…jug-eared dwarf!” she finished, leaving him vaguely disappointed. “Oh, dear God,” she whispered, gazing up at him with dawning horror. “I almost shot and killed an innocent man.”

Billy propped one boot on the bedstead, practicing his most lascivious grin. “I may be many things, Miss Fine, but innocent isn’t one of them.” Gratified by the return of color to her cheeks, he shrugged. “If you’d have killed me, you could have just marched into the U.S. marshal’s office in Santa Fe, collected your reward, and been back on your merry way to Boston, believing your brother’s death avenged.”

“My brother’s death…?” she echoed hoarsely.

She bounded to her feet, forcing him to stumble backward or be trampled beneath her dainty kid boots. As she paced the length of the room, he winced in anticipation. But she whipped around a scant inch before her head could slam into the sloping ceiling. Her eyes sparkled with elation. “Don’t you see? My brother may not be dead after all!”

Billy hated himself for dousing her hopes, but knew it would be cruder to kindle them. “You shouldn’t set your heart on that, ma’am. You do still have his belongings.”

Esmerelda carelessly swept the trinkets back into the envelope. “But what do they really prove? That he was robbed by one of Snorton’s accomplices? That he might have run out of money and sold his valuables to buy food or supplies? What if he’s out there somewhere? Lost and alone?” Her expansive gesture seemed to imply that every inch of territory west of St. Louis was nothing but a vast wasteland. She cocked her head to the side, giving him a speculative look that made the hair on his nape tingle with apprehension, just as it did before an Indian attack or a particularly ill turn in the weather. “Sheriff McGuire said you were the best tracker in the Territory. If anyone can help me find him, you can.”

Billy couldn’t have been any more flabbergasted had she proposed marriage. He splayed an open hand on his chest. “Me? You want to hire me? Just a couple of hours ago you wanted to kill me.”

Her cheek dimpled in a coaxing smile. “Ah, but that was nothing more than a regrettable misunderstanding, Mr. Darling.”

For the first time, his name sounded like an endearment falling from her lips instead of an epithet. He didn’t much care for its effect on him.

He shoved the plate of beefsteak across the table at her. “I think you’d best eat something, ma’am. Hunger must be making you loco.”

She shoved it right back at him. “I’ve lost my appetite. And my brother. You have brothers, Mr. Darling. How would you feel if one of them disappeared without a trace?”

“Lucky,” he replied shortly. Whenever one of his brothers went missing, he never had to look any farther than the nearest jail, whorehouse, or saloon.

A door slammed in the next room. Esmerelda shot the wall a nervous glance, but Billy ignored it. Dorothea must have an early customer, probably one of those strapping Zimmerman boys from the lumber mill. They’d been known to indulge more than just their appetite for bratwurst and strudel during their afternoon break.

“Didn’t you just tell me you were destitute?” he asked. “How do you intend to pay me for my services?”

“How much do you cost?”

“More than you’ve got.”

A deep-throated groan interrupted them, followed by a feminine squeal of delight and the rhythmic squeak of a rusty iron bedframe.

Esmerelda slowly turned to gape at the faded cabbage roses on the wallpaper, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. A haze of pink crept up the delicate curve of her jaw.

She suddenly seemed to be having great difficulty meeting his eyes. And breathing. Her hand fluttered at the air. “Would it be possible for us to go somewhere else to negotiate our transaction? This hardly seems to be the appropriate place.”