I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” Jonah said as they walked together down the wharf toward the Haven.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said as she picked up her pace in order to shorten the time she had to spend with the infuriating Pinkerton detective.

“Even I have not interrogated a man of the cloth until he wept!”

“You’re being ridiculous. He did not weep,” she countered as she stepped around a fat orange cat preening in the evening sun. “And I was not interrogating. I was merely asking.”

His laughter chased her up the wharf. “Asking stopped about ten minutes in. When we get back to Galveston, I plan to send a telegram to the captain to let him know I have a candidate for the next open position at the agency.”

She whirled around to face him, and Jonah had to sidestep to keep from running into her. “All right,” she admitted. “I may have gotten a little overzealous in my questioning of the preacher, but you know I was right. He knows something and won’t tell us.”

“Cannot tell us,” Jonah corrected. “He is a preacher. He’s taken a vow, Madeline. It would go against his oath to give up a confidence.”

“Then there must be another way.” She looked down and then back up at Jonah, ignoring the way his silver eyes reflected the color of the water around them. “Why is that cat following you?”

Jonah looked down at the cat that was now threading itself around his ankles. “I have no idea,” he said, “but you are not going to change the subject. The purpose of our trip to Indianola was to find out all we could about Mrs. Smith’s granddaughter.”

“Which we did,” she reminded him. “Not only did Sheriff Simmons, Elmer, and Reverend Wyatt agree that Samuel Smith lived in Indianola, but they also sent us to the courthouse where deed records showed where his home used to be and death records indicated his date and cause of death.”

“I believe that was me who went to the courthouse,” he said as he ignored the fat orange cat. “You remained back at the church to torture the reverend.”

“Truly, you are so dramatic, Jonah.”

She turned and walked toward the steamship, not caring whether Jonah followed. Once on board, she found a porter and located her cabin. By the time she’d been settled inside and discovered that yet another hamper of food had appeared, she did not care whether the Pinkerton agent got on the ship or not.

Unfortunately, he did. This she discovered when he came pounding on her door a few minutes later.

“Have you opened your hamper?” he demanded.

“Come in, Jonah,” was her bland response.

He stepped inside and nodded to the hamper. “Go ahead. Open it.”

She did as he asked and then looked over at him. “All right, I opened it.”

“And what do you see?”

“Food,” she said. “Lots of food, actually. Much more than I could possibly want.”

The Pinkerton agent crossed the distance between them and looked down into the hamper. “That’s interesting,” he said.

“Why? What was in yours?”

He met her gaze, his expression serious as he pulled something out of his pocket and cradled it in his palm. “Nothing but this spent .45 caliber shell.”

“Oh,” she said. And then again, “Oh.”

Jonah stuffed the bullet back into his pocket. “It is the same caliber as the one I got out of the alley behind the boardinghouse and left with the sheriff.”

“I see.” Madeline sat in the nearest chair and tried to make sense of it all. Finally, she gave up. “What does all of this mean, Jonah?”

He sat beside her. “I don’t know. After we hit those dead ends at the boardinghouse, I thought for sure that those two shots, while coming too close for comfort, were just random shots. I know that’s what the sheriff believes.”

“Understandable considering there was no obvious culprit. And weapons do get discharged by accident.”

“They do, but nearly missing you?” He shook his head. “And more than once? No, accidental doesn’t add up.”

“But what does?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Having said that, there isn’t anything we can do about it until we get back to Galveston. In light of that, and in light of the fact I’m starving, I propose we divide the bounty in your hamper and have dinner.”

Much as she wanted him out of her cabin, it seemed simpler to agree. Let the Pinkerton agent have his supper and then perhaps he would leave her in peace.

“I also propose we use the table for our meal this time.” He paused in his rummaging through the contents of the hamper to give her a mischievous grin. “Unless you prefer another picnic.”

“You are truly impossible, Jonah Cahill,” she said as she grudgingly laughed.

“I thought I was dramatic,” he countered.

“You are both,” she said as she shook her head and joined him at the hamper.

“I am neither,” he said.

Madeline looked up into those impossible eyes, and her heart lurched. For a moment she let herself remember why she had fallen in love with this man. Then, just as quickly, she pushed all those reasons away.

“Then we shall agree to disagree,” she managed.

Hours later, when Jonah had long ago gone to his cabin and she was alone and trying to sleep in spite of the sounds of the steam engines, Madeline could only lie on her back and wish she was looking up at the stars.

Silly as it seemed, she needed to see those stars tonight. So she dressed quickly, braided her hair, and then hurried up onto the deck.

The noise of the steam engines was much louder here, so she moved as far away from them as she could. Up front with the wind blowing and the seas lightly chopping, she felt miles away from the cramped and dark cabin below the deck. And though the deck was full of men in the employ of Morgan’s Steamship Company going about their work, in this darkened corner she felt blissfully alone.

The moon had just passed its first quarter a few days ago, and the full moon would not come until next week. Thus, the silver moonlight that danced over the waves was muted and pale.

Madeline gripped the rail and let the salt breeze and sea spray wash over her face as she looked up into the night sky to count the constellations. Times like this always brought Papa to mind, for he was the source of her first interest in studying the stars.

Papa had an encyclopedic knowledge of the constellations and stars, and he could answer almost any question the young Madeline had posed. Later she took up the amateur study of astronomy as a way to learn even more about the fathomless creation the Lord placed overhead.

“The Lord, He makes plans that we do not always understand, you know.”

Papa’s words, and yet as she felt the roll of the waves beneath her feet they became her words as well. Then came the verse from 2 Samuel that she had committed to memory so long ago, she had lost the number of years since she’d first learned it:

“For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God respect any person: yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him.”

How easy it was to stand here on this vessel headed for Galveston and forget that there were higher purposes and bigger plans than her simple goal of finding the facts behind the myth of Lafitte the pirate.

Jonah was right in saying she had gone too far in questioning the reverend. And while she was not ready to admit she had made him cry, she did cringe when she thought of the relentless way she went about her questioning of him.

Even as she was uncomfortable thinking about the conversation, Madeline knew she would do it the same way if the same situation arose. The facts were the facts, and facts were meant to be discovered.

This was why she excelled as a reporter. It would be why she excelled at completing this investigation.

Something bumped against her leg, and she jolted. A plaintive yowl arose over the sound of the waves.

Madeline looked down to see a fat orange tabby cat that looked very much like the one that had been sunning itself on the dock at Indianola. “What are you doing here, little fellow?” she murmured as she knelt down to scratch the feline behind its ear.

“First you torture a preacher in his own church, and now you bring contraband aboard an oceangoing vessel. Where will it all end?”

Madeline looked up to see Jonah walking toward her, a broad smile on his face. She rose and swiped the backs of her hands on her skirt as the Pinkerton detective came to stand beside her at the rail.

“Hello, Madeline,” he said as he slid her a sideways look. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“Not when the skies are this beautiful,” she said as she looked back up into the heavens.

“When I was a boy, I would wait until my parents and sister were asleep then I would climb up to the roof and lie on my back to look at the stars. One morning I woke up with the sun shining on my face and the entire household in an uproar because I was missing from my bed.”

“You never told me this story, Jonah,” she said as she imagined her former fiancé as a child.

He paused to chuckle. “After doling out the punishment I deserved, my father bought me a book on astronomy and made me promise not to fall off the roof.”

Madeline smiled. “And did you keep that promise, or is that why you are so hardheaded?”

Jonah laughed again. “I did keep that promise, except for one memorable occasion that involved a bee.”

She thought of the bee that had caused her downfall—literally—while trying to decide how to best escape the palm tree and joined him in his laughter. “Bees are devious creatures sometimes,” she said.

“As are some females.” At her scowl, Jonah held up both hands as if attempting to fend her off. “I am making a joke, Madeline.”

“I know,” she said slowly as her smile faded. “Neither of us took our jobs expecting to work with each other.”

He reached down to pet the cat that was now weaving around his ankles. “I am beginning to wonder what her real reason is in hiring both of us.”

“I doubt you’ll ever get that information out of her.”

Jonah stood to return to his place beside her. “Much as I hate to admit it, you have been a decent partner on this trip, Madeline. You were shot at—twice—and you never once acted like it scared you.”

“Oh, I was terrified,” she admitted. “But I have learned that being afraid isn’t a bad thing. Acting afraid, now that’s another thing altogether.”

“For a nosy reporter, you’ve got some good advice,” he said as he slid her a grin.

“And for an irritating Pinkerton detective, you’ve got some good sense.”

“Touché,” he said with a grin.

They fell into a companionable silence until the watch bell rang and Madeline jumped. Jonah placed his hand atop hers to steady her, and instantly that connection tossed her back in time to a place where neither of them distrusted the other.

Where all they wanted was a future together.

For just this moment, that possibility did not seem as though it was a lifetime ago. Then Jonah lifted his hand.

“We ought to get out of their way and get some sleep,” he told her.

“I suppose.” Madeline took one last long look at the heavens and then followed Jonah back to the corridor below deck. “Good night, Jonah,” she said as she stepped inside.

“Good night, Madeline,” she heard him say as he opened his door down the hall. Just as she was shutting her door, she heard him add, “Oh come on in, then.”

Peering out into the corridor, she spied the fat orange cat’s tail as it slipped into Jonah’s room just before the door closed. “Contraband indeed,” she whispered with a smile as she bolted her door and climbed into bed fully dressed and ready to sleep.

That night she didn’t dream of digging holes and filling them. Instead, she dreamed of falling stars and fat orange cats.

And of Jonah Cahill.

The next afternoon, Jonah banished the thought of Madeline Latour standing in the moonlight beneath the stars and focused on the stack of telegrams and mail that had arrived in his absence. Unfortunately, that thought kept occurring, along with the feel of her hand beneath his.

“There you are,” his sister called from the doorway before joining him at his desk. “I thought you might want to see this.”

Jonah sat back and pushed away all thoughts of the nosy reporter. “What is it?”

She plopped a copy of the Galveston Daily News on his desk, sending the letters and telegrams flying in all directions. The fat orange cat that had followed him home from the docks yesterday, now aptly named Stowaway, chased after them.

“Hey watch out,” he said as he leaned down to retrieve the captain’s letter before Stowaway destroyed it.

Then he saw the headline: LOCAL HOME HIDES POSSIBLE TREASURE.

Jonah dropped the letter and snatched up the newspaper to read the article, which was thankfully brief and buried in the middle of the third page under an ad for Labadie’s Ten Cent Table. There was no byline, but he had a good idea of who might have written it.

Reaching for his hat, Jonah left the mess and his sister behind in the library and headed off to visit the first of the two possible suspects, that idiot Townsend. He found Townsend hurrying out of the Daily News building at 113 and 115 Market Street.

Madeline was walking by the reporter’s side.