Read Chapter 18: Aftermath of the Storm

The storm broke before dawn, not with a slow easing but a hard, sudden silence that woke Maeve from a shallow sleep. The wind had simply stopped, and the world outside the line shack lay white and still, buried under three feet of fresh snow.

Eli was already at the door, buckling his belt, his breath fogging in the cold air. He looked at her with the same intensity he'd worn all night, the same guarded openness that had settled between them after his confession.

"You ready to walk into whatever's waiting?" he asked.

Maeve pulled on her coat and checked the small pistol she'd kept hidden in her boot. "I've been walking toward it for weeks," she said. "Might as well get there."

---

The walk back to Gold Creek took four hours through drifts that reached their knees. The town appeared as a huddle of gray roofs against the white hills, chimneys smoking, dogs barking at the snow. Normal. Almost too normal.

They came in from the east, past the livery, and Maeve saw it first. The front door of the boarding house hung crooked, one hinge torn loose, the wood splintered around the lock.

She broke into a run, Eli right behind her.

The parlor was a wreck. Chairs overturned, the sideboard drawers pulled out and dumped, her mother's china shattered against the hearth. The stairs bore muddy boot prints going up and coming back down. She took the steps two at a time, her heart hammering.

Her room. The door stood open.

The mattress was slashed, feathers drifting in the cold draft from the broken window. Her wardrobe gaped empty, clothes strewn across the floor. She went to the floorboard where she kept the deed, the one she'd taken from the dying miner. The board was pried up, the space beneath it bare.

She stood there, breathing hard, and felt something cold settle in her chest that was not the winter air.

"Maeve." Eli's voice came from downstairs, tight. "You need to see this."

She found him in the kitchen, standing at the table. A knife was driven into the wood, pinning a scrap of paper. He pulled the blade free and handed it to her without reading it.

The handwriting was neat, deliberate, nothing hurried:

*Bring the deed to the burnt stable at sundown. Come alone, or the boy disappears for good.*

Maeve read it twice. Then she folded it carefully, precisely, and tucked it into her pocket. "Jed's not here," she said, though she already knew it. "His room is empty. His things are gone."

Eli watched her face. "You think he took the deed."

"I think he was paid to take it." Her voice came out flat, the way it did when she was beyond anger and into something colder. "I've trusted that boy since he was twelve years old. Fed him, clothed him, gave him a place when his father drank himself into the ground." She pressed her fingers to her temples. "And Price got to him anyway."

"Or he was never yours to trust," Eli said quietly.

The words hung in the air. She wanted to argue, but the evidence was spread across her ruined parlor and slashed mattress. The note wanted the deed—but Price already had the deed she'd hidden. Which meant Price knew exactly where to look. Someone had told him.

"It's the only explanation that fits," she admitted. "Jed knew where I kept it. He helped me nail that floorboard back down when I first hid it."

"How much do you think Price paid him?"

"Jed's not a bad boy, Eli. He's just weak. He's always been weak." She walked to the window, staring out at the white street. "Price saw that the moment he laid eyes on him. Saw someone who wanted more than a boarder's life, who thought he deserved better than honest work."

The anger was creeping back in, and she let it come. It was better than the cold.

"Price is going to kill him," she said. "Whether Jed delivers the deed or not. A boy who knows too much and can be bought is a liability, and Price is too careful to leave liabilities alive."

"Maeve."

She turned. Eli had moved closer, his face serious in the gray light. "You know what Price's note is, don't you?"

"It's a trap."

"It's the trap," he corrected. "The one he's been building since the moment you took that compass. He's not getting rid of you because you know too much—he's getting rid of you because you're too stubborn to scare."

She almost smiled at that. "And when did you get so good at knowing him?"

"I know men like him. I've hunted them. They build their houses on the bones of people like you, and they don't expect the bones to bite back." He turned to the door. "I'll go talk to Barnes. See if he's seen anything."

"Barnes is compromised."

"Barnes is compromised," Eli agreed, "but he's also a coward who will do anything to keep his position. And that means he knows where Price keeps people he wants kept quiet."

---

Maeve didn't watch him go. She had her own errand.

The Gold Nugget Saloon stank of stale beer and coal smoke, even at ten in the morning. A few hardcases nursed morning whiskies at the bar, and the piano sat silent under a dustcloth. She ignored them all and walked to the back corner, where a man with a waxed mustache and a purple velvet waistcoat was dealing solitaire.

"Sully," she said, sliding into the chair across from him.

He didn't look up. "Maeve O'Donnell. Heard you had a rough night."

"I need information."

"That's business for bankers, not gamblers." He turned a card. "Want to play a hand?"

"I want to know where Price keeps people he wants hidden."

Sully's hands paused over the cards. He looked at her then, his eyes flat and unreadable. "That's a dangerous question."

"That's a dangerous answer." She pulled a small leather pouch from inside her coat and set it on the table. It landed with a heavy, satisfying chunk. "Three hundred dollars. My savings, every penny I've got. I'll add the hotel silver to sweeten the pot."

Sully stared at the pouch. Then he chuckled, low and humorless. "You always did know how to make a man an offer he can't refuse."

"Will you take it?"

He swept the pouch off the table and into his vest pocket in one smooth motion. "Price keeps a warehouse south of town, off the main road. He calls it a supply depot, but the windows are boarded and there's always a man on the door." He leaned in. "They say you can hear things through those walls. Men, mostly. Sometimes their noise stops, but they don't come out."

Maeve's blood turned to ice. "Who told you?"

"Men who've been inside. Drunk enough to talk, not drunk enough to be believed." He picked up his cards again. "If you're going to be a fool, be a smart fool. There's a drainage culvert runs behind the building. Too narrow for a grown man to fit through regular, but a woman with a narrow frame—"

"I'm not going to crawl through a drainage pipe."

"Then you're going to walk in the front door, and that's the difference between a rescue and a funeral." He dealt another hand. "Your boy. The one who cooks for you. He's in there too."

The words landed like a punch. "Jed is in the warehouse?"

"That's what I hear. Price doesn't leave loose ends unattended." Sully's mouth twitched. "You paid for the location of the warehouse, not the condition of its occupants."

She was already standing, her chair scraping back against the saloon floor. "When did they bring him in?"

"Last night, after the storm slowed. Two men, dragging him through the back alleys. He was babbling about a deed, said he'd done what they asked. They didn't seem pleased."

Maeve turned and walked out into the cold, her mind spinning through what she knew, what she suspected, and what she feared.

Jed was in the warehouse, which meant Price had his deed and his witness, and Eli's brother was trapped somewhere in the same web. The pieces were coming together even as the holes in her plan yawned wide.

She was halfway down the street when Eli emerged from the marshal's office, his face grim. He saw her and crossed to meet her.

"Barnes didn't say much," he reported. "But he's jumpy, running scared. He told me to 'stay out of it' before I even asked a question." His eyes searched her face. "You found something."

"Price has a warehouse south of town. It's where he keeps people." She swallowed. "Sully says Jed's in there. He entered last night. Not walking."

Eli's jaw tightened. "That's where they'd hold Silas too. If he's alive, that's where he'll be."

"He's alive," Maeve said fiercely. She wasn't sure why she believed it—grief and hope made a heady combination—but she said it anyway, like a vow. "Silas is alive, and we're getting him out."

"And Jed?"

She hesitated. The boy had betrayed her, sold her secrets for Price's silver, left her door hanging off its hinges. And still the image of him as a scrawny twelve-year-old, hungry and proud and too afraid to ask for help, rose in her mind.

"We get what we came for," she said at last. "And we don't leave anyone behind."