The Train Robber Left Her Handcuffed to Me

I was supposed to catch a train robber.

Instead, he used my own handcuffs to chain his sister to me and escaped with the key.

I'm Frances Mallory, detective for the Continental Protective Agency. After six months hunting Elias Rourke across the American West, I finally corner him aboard the Golden West Limited. He steals the express payroll, locks Beatrice Rourke to my wrist, and disappears into the desert.

Beatrice is a railroad telegraph operator with expensive manners, a filthy temper, and far too much experience picking locks for a woman who swears she left the Rourke family business behind.

Then a land auditor turns up dead, a packet of records disappears, and telegraph messages start arriving under dead men's names. Everyone is ready to blame Elias.

Beatrice is telling the truth about the murder.

She wants her brother alive. I want my suspect, the stolen money, and the killer who's started erasing witnesses. The fastest way to get all three is the one arrangement neither of us wants: work together.

The handcuffs come off. The problem gets worse.

One hotel room becomes one kiss, then one night neither of us intends to repeat. Then another. Soon the attraction is tangled up with stakeouts, coded wires, stolen hours in Pullman compartments, and the dangerous fact that Beatrice is becoming the one person I trust when the evidence stops making sense.

Now the killer is moving faster than the law and heading for another train. I know how to catch criminals. Beatrice knows how to make a wire lie. If we want to survive the last run west, we're going to have to trust each other with more than the case.

A maximum-heat 1888 sapphic Western romantic suspense with a female detective, a lock-picking telegraph operator, handcuffed forced proximity, a train-robbery murder mystery, explicit on-page heat, and a guaranteed HEA.