They warned her about the bandits, but Mary Anne didn’t listen. She was engaged, she said; her fiancée was moving to Crossroads, and even if Crossroads was crawling with bandits, she didn’t have much of a choice. Sheriff Beau Richmond asked her to marry him; Mary Anne said yes; and that, as far as Mary Anne knew, was the end of it.

It might have been the end to Mary Anne’s entire story, too – decades married to a man whom she liked well enough, she guessed, stop asking, please – if the bandit hadn’t stopped the train.

Chance Sequoyah is a very special bandit. Sure, she’ll take the usual things: money, necklaces, watches. But she plans on taking something else, too: Mary Anne Watkins.