"Your father suspected Mercer."
"Yes."
"And Black Pine is in those notes."
"Yes."
"So, this isn't just about the Whitaker ranch."
"No."
She pulled the earlier receipts toward them.
"The missing cattle in your books. The altered freight. Father's notes."
Nathan leaned over the table.
Hannah placed Mercer's name beside each one.
The pattern became visible.
Not proof yet, but enough to make the back of her neck go cold.
Nathan read the pages again.
"Could Mercer know you have these?"
"Peter might."
"You think your brother tried the window?"
Hannah hesitated.
"No."
Nathan looked at her.
"I think Peter knows enough to be afraid."
That was different.
Nathan understood.
He sat back.
"Then Mercer may know, too."
The room suddenly felt smaller.
Hannah gathered the old papers carefully.
"We need copies."
"Copies?"
"If someone tries again and gets the originals, we're finished."
Nathan nodded.
"I'll have Ben ride to Pine Hollow tomorrow. Keller keeps blank ledger paper."
"No."
Nathan looked up.
"I'll do it."
"Hannah, they're my records and somebody broke into my house for them."
She held his gaze.
Nathan's voice stayed quiet.
"I'm not telling you not to go."
She waited.
"I'm telling you, you're not going alone."
Hannah's first answer rose automatically.
"I don't need protection."
She nearly said it, then stopped.
Nathan was not trying to take the papers from her.
He was not telling her what to do.
He was simply putting himself beside the problem.
The way he had put himself beside the trunk on the mountain road.
Hannah looked down at the unfinished letter.
"All right."
Nathan nodded once.
That night, long after the dishes were washed, they worked at the table together.
Hannah copied figures.
Nathan read dates aloud from the older ledgers.
His voice was slow, careful.
Every so often, their hands reached for the same paper, and one of them stopped before touching the other.
Neither commented.
Near midnight, Hannah folded her father's letter and returned it to the trunk.
Nathan closed the lid.
This time, when he tested the lock, he did not ask what the proof meant.
He already knew.
It meant somebody had seen Hannah's worth before it was too late to matter on paper, and somebody else was afraid of what those same papers could prove.
By the following Saturday, Pine Hollow had begun filling with ranchers.
The winter stockman's meeting happened every year in the upstairs room of Keller's Hotel, though Nathan said most years it amounted to men arguing over grazing boundaries, freight prices, and who owed whom for a bull that had crossed the wrong fence.
This year felt different.
Hannah knew it before they even reached town.
Three wagons stood outside the livery.
Saddled horses lined the hitching rail in front of the hotel.
Men in heavy coats moved along the boardwalk in small groups, lowering their voices whenever Nathan passed.
Nathan noticed, too.
He said nothing.
Hannah sat beside him in the wagon with a leather document case resting across her knees.
Inside were copied receipts, cattle tallies, freight records, and several pages from her father's notes.
The originals remained locked at Black Pine.
"You don't have to come upstairs," Nathan said as he tied the reins.
Hannah looked at him.
"You brought me here because I reconstructed the accounts."
"Yes."
"And now you're suggesting I stay downstairs."
"No."
"It sounded remarkably like it."
Nathan frowned.
"I meant if you don't want 40 men staring at you."
Hannah gathered her skirt and stepped down before he could offer a hand.