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When Jessica Munroe takes on the healing of a horribly wounded man at the insistence of Standing Bear, chief of the Choctaws, she knows he’s been brutalized by the same madman that ended the life of her husband. She can only imagine the horror he was subjected to.
Marshall Kaed Turner has endured a lot of pain in his time, most of it physical, but this time topped it all. But left in the hands of a gentle angel by the tribe that had been his family since he was nine, he finds himself falling in love with this healer. Remembering the chief’s admonition that Jessica will be taken to marry one of his braves if no white man claims her, Kaed asks her to bind herself to him. Though he knows he’s not fit to be any woman’s husband, he desperately wants this woman.
Giving herself to a man again isn’t something Jessica ever thought she’d do until she met Kaed Turner. But now that she has, he’s leaving her, joining his brethren to seek some sort of rough justice and revenge against an evil villain of a man. Jessica knows Andrew Fallon will torture and maim and exact vengeance on any one he comes in contact with. Little does she realize that she is now within that villain’s sight and he will stop at nothing to make her pay for Kaed’s survival.
Cheryl Pierson has written a romantic suspense thriller set in the Old West with a villain as brutal and sadistic as they come. While the romance between Jessica and Kaed flowers, the suspense of finding Fallon before he can hurt again holds the reader and won’t let go. His grisly, heinous acts are baldly depicted and, given some of his victims are children, the horror is all too real. Ms. Pierson is at her best when she is writing about the camaraderie of the U.S. Marshals who track this menace, confident as they are in their abilities but smart enough to know the odds. And the odds aren’t in their favor. A gritty, gripping tale about the worst and best of the Old West.
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