Read Chapter 11: The Foreman's Fear

The adit mouth gaped black against the canyon wall, and Eli stood at its lip with the foreman's shovel still leaning where he'd dropped it. The man with the scarred cheek had scurried off the moment Calvin dismissed them, but Eli had marked the direction—a shack perched on the canyon's north rim, half-hidden behind a stand of dying pines.

Eli found him there an hour later, packing a burlap sack with a tin plate and a worn pair of boots.

"You're leaving," Eli said, stepping through the unlatched door.

The foreman spun, knife in hand, then relaxed a fraction when he recognized Eli. "You shouldn't be here, Mr. Stone."

"Barnes, isn't it?"

The man's jaw tightened. "Foreman Barnes, yes. And I'd appreciate you not using my given name like we're old friends."

Eli closed the door behind him. The shack was sparse—a cot, a woodstove, a nail on the wall where a coat used to hang. "That skeleton in the adit. You knew it was there."

Barnes's hand drifted toward the sack again. "I knew there was something in that cut. We dug that section three years back. Hit a void, and I saw—" He stopped, swallowing.

"Saw what?"

"A boot. Just a boot, sticking out of the rubble. I told Cross. He said fill it back in, don't speak of it again." Barnes's scarred cheek twitched. "I did what I was told. A man in my position does what he's told."

"You're an ex-con."

Barnes's eyes went hard. "You been asking around about me?"

"Calvin Cross owns people. That's his currency. I wanted to know how he bought you."

The foreman laughed, a dry, bitter sound. "Bought me? No, Mr. Stone. He didn't buy me. He *found* me. Fresh out of Yuma, no prospects, no family. He gave me a job when no one else would touch a man with a manslaughter charge." Barnes's voice dropped. "He reminds me of that. Every day. Reminds me that I owe him. That my life is his because he decided to be merciful."

Eli studied the man's face. The fear there wasn't the fear of a guilty man. It was the fear of a man who knew too much and had too little power to protect himself.

"You know about the ledger," Eli said. "The one he keeps in his study."

Barnes went still. The sack slipped from his fingers.

"That's not a question," Eli pressed. "You've seen it."

"I've seen enough to know I don't want to see more." Barnes moved to the window, peering out at the canyon below. "Cross keeps things. Things he can use against people. Not just paper—objects. Photographs. Letters. Little pieces of other people's lives that he's collected to make sure they never forget who holds their strings."

"Where does he keep them?"

Barnes turned. His face had gone pale beneath the scar. "There's a room in the mansion. Not the study—deeper. Behind the wine cellar, there's a false wall. He thinks no one knows about it. But I helped build it, see. I was the one who hammered the nails."

"Show me."

"I can't." Barnes shook his head violently. "If he finds out I told you—"

"He's not going to find out."

"You don't understand what he does to people who betray him." Barnes's voice cracked. "There was a man, two years back. Worked the stamp mill. He thought he could skim a little off the top, sell a few ounces on the side. Cross didn't fire him. Didn't even confront him. He just—" Barnes held up his hand, trembling. "Went and had dinner at the man's house. Ate his food, played with his children. Then he left a note on the man's nightstand, telling him he knew everything, and that if he ever tried it again, he'd make those children orphans."

"Sounds like a man who deserves what's coming to him."

Barnes laughed again, but there was no mirth in it. "You think you're going to be the one to bring him down? You're a stranger with a forged deed. You're a fly circling a spider's web."

"Then help me cut the web."

For a long moment, Barnes stood frozen, his eyes darting between Eli and the door. Then he reached into his shirt and pulled out a folded piece of paper, yellowed and creased with sweat.

"I built that vault," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I know every angle. Figured I might need to find it myself someday, if things went bad." He pressed the paper into Eli's hand. "That's the way in. Not through the study—that's a trap. Through the cellar. There's a loose stone in the third arch. Behind it, a lever."

Eli unfolded the paper. Crude lines, hastily drawn. A corridor, a staircase, a mark beside a stone arch. "Why are you helping me?"

Barnes opened his mouth to answer, but the sound of hoofbeats cut through the still air. Both men turned to the window. Three riders were coming up the canyon road, moving fast, dust trailing behind them like a banner.

"Christ," Barnes breathed. "He knows."

"How could he know?"

Barnes grabbed his sack and made for the rear window. "He always knows. There's no winning against him. He's got eyes everywhere, informants in every saloon and boarding house in this town. You're a fool if you think—"

The shack's door exploded inward. Two men in Cross's colors filled the frame, pistols drawn. Eli moved instinctively, reaching for the revolver at his hip, but Barnes shoved him toward the back wall.

"Run!" Barnes shouted. "Take the paper and run!"

Eli's hand closed on the windowsill. He was through it before he registered what was happening, landing hard in the scrub grass and rolling to his feet. Behind him, Barnes's voice rose in protest, then cut off with a sickening crack.

Eli didn't stop running. He crashed through the undergrowth, boots sliding on loose shale, until he reached the cover of a dense pine grove. There he stopped, chest heaving, and looked back.

The three riders were dragging Barnes out of the shack. The foreman's face was bloodied, his arm bent at an unnatural angle. They threw him across a saddle like a sack of grain and rode east, toward the Cross mansion, a low silhouette against the late afternoon sky.

Eli's hand closed around the paper still clutched in his fist. He unfolded it again, reading the hurried marks in the fading light. There, beneath the arch and the cellar entrance, was another mark he hadn't noticed before—a circle with a cross through it, and a single word written in pencil.

*Vault*.

But there was something else. Something that made his blood run cold. In the corner of the page, half-faded, almost invisible against the yellowed paper, was a date. And beneath that date, a name.

*John Reed*.

Barnes had known John. Had known where his body was buried. And he'd carried this map for years, waiting for someone to give it to.

Eli folded the paper carefully and tucked it into his boot, alongside the forged deed. The foreman was gone, taken by Cross's men, but he'd left Eli the way in. The question was whether he'd left it before he was caught, or because he was caught.

The wind shifted, carrying the faint sound of a bell from the town below. The judge's hearing was tomorrow. And now Eli had two keys to Calvin Cross's kingdom—the deed, and the vault.

He had to hope one of them was real.