“Like us.”
“Like us.”
Owen had heard of an abandoned freight depot north of the valley, old rail property no one used anymore. Men had been seen there at night. Wagons too.
Gideon planned to ride out alone.
Clara refused.
They argued in low voices until even the walls seemed tired of them.
“You are not coming,” he said.
“If you vanish, who tells anyone where to look?”
“If we both vanish, who protects the children?”
“Owen knows where we’re going. If we aren’t back by dawn, he comes.”
Gideon stared at her.
“You make a habit of not backing down.”
“I make a habit of surviving men who tell me what I can’t do.”
That ended the argument.
They rode out after midnight beneath a hard white moon.
The freight depot sat in a hollow between low hills, abandoned by appearance but not by fact. Fresh wheel tracks marked the snow. A new lock hung on the warehouse door.
Gideon broke it with a rock.
Inside, by lantern light, they found feed sacks, shipping crates, account ledgers, and a desk full of correspondence.
Clara searched the papers while Gideon examined the grain.
Then she found the letters.
Adeline’s handwriting.
Elegant. Controlled. Damning.
She wrote to Malcolm Voss about pressure points among valley ranchers, about which families had debts, which wives were ill, which barns were poorly guarded, which men might sell under sufficient distress.
The Ward ranch was named directly.
So was Clara.
The housekeeper is a useful disruption, one letter read. If she remains, Ward becomes emotionally irrational. Accelerate pressure.
Clara felt sick.
Gideon read over her shoulder, his jaw hardening line by line.
“This is enough,” he said. “This ends it.”
The warehouse door opened.
Three men entered with rifles.
Behind them came Malcolm Voss, dressed in a fine black coat, smiling like a man who had never feared consequences.
“Mr. Ward,” he said. “Miss Bell. How unfortunate.”
Gideon moved in front of Clara.
Voss glanced at the letters.
“I’ll take those.”
“No.”
Three rifles lifted.
Voss sighed.
“Please don’t confuse courage with leverage. You are trespassing. Armed. Stealing private documents. If violence occurs here, the story will not favor you.”
Clara’s fingers closed around the papers.
Voss smiled at her.
“You have caused a remarkable amount of inconvenience for a temporary woman.”
Gideon’s hand twitched toward his gun.
Clara whispered, “Don’t.”
He looked at her, furious and helpless.
Then he handed over the letters.
Voss accepted them.
“Wise. Now go home. Sell while I am still offering money. Refuse, and the misfortunes around your ranch will become less avoidable.”
They rode back near dawn with no papers and no proof.
Gideon was silent most of the way.
At the ranch, Owen Fletcher waited with a rifle across his lap.
“You found something?”
“Yes,” Gideon said. “Then lost it.”
Clara stepped down from her horse, stiff with cold and exhaustion.
“Not all of it.”
Both men looked at her.