Synopsis

*** Ansel Adams, or Ance as those he knows tend to call him, is a bad man though he didn't consider that to be his fault. His father had been a bad man, his grandfather had been a bad man--hell as far as Ance knew he came from a long line of men were just a bitten rotten down at their core. Everyone that knew Ance knew he was a man who would never change, never give up his lifestyle, never settle down....Until Penelope Reynolds came sobbing into his life.

Ance hadn't given much thought to offering this rich man protection as he took a load of stolen goods to market until he realized that the banging sound coming from the crate was a tiny little blond with pigtails, freckles and a bad leg.

Suddenly he's struck with a choice. Save the girl and return her to her family or simply let life do what life does and chalk it up to bad luck for little Penelope--in the past the latter choice would have been easy, but not now.

*** Audrey Reynolds had never been so afraid in her life. Her daughter has been stolen. Her daughter is all she has left in the world since the murder of her husband five years earlier. Desperate to find Penelope, Audrey enlists the help of U.S. Marshall Rodger York who also happens to be the man who's been trying to marry her since the day after her husband had been placed under the ground.

They embark on a journey to find Penelope and Rodger has vowed to kill whoever took the girl away. But things go wrong and Audrey learns that the very man she went to for help might be the man responsible for every bad thing that's happened in the last five years......

Will Audrey find a way to survive but more importantly will she ever see her daughter alive again?