Read Chapter 6: A Deal With the Devil

The bank sat at the end of Main Street like a stone fist, all granite columns and iron bars. Eli dismounted and looped the reins around the hitching post, feeling the weight of John's watch in his pocket like a hot coal.

He'd buried John once. Now he'd buried him twice—an empty grave, a hollow ritual. The stolen body was somewhere in this town, maybe under Cross's feet, maybe rotting in a cellar as a warning to anyone who dared dig too deep.

Eli pushed through the bank's oak doors before his nerve could cool. The interior smelled of polish and paper and the particular mustiness of money held too long. A few patrons stood at the teller cages. Behind the main counter, a man with a waxed mustache counted coins with the mechanical precision of someone who'd done it ten thousand times.

Mary wasn't hard to spot. She sat at a desk near the back, sorting correspondence, a thin woman in her thirties with iron-gray hair pulled so tight it seemed to stretch the skin around her eyes. Her fingers moved through letters like she was reading them by touch alone.

Eli walked past the teller line and made for her desk.

"Help you, sir?" The mustached teller's voice cut across the room. "You'll need to conduct business at the counter."

"Just here to see about a loan," Eli said, not slowing.

Mary looked up as he approached. Her eyes were flat and watchful, the eyes of someone who'd learned to see trouble coming and stand very still until it passed.

"Mr.—?"

"Stone," he said. "Eli Stone. I was told you might be able to help me with some account paperwork."

Something flickered in her face. Recognition, maybe, or wariness. The mustached teller was still watching, so Mary stood and smoothed her skirt with deliberate calm.

"Of course. Please, follow me to the private office."

She led him through a side door into a cramped room with a single window and a filing cabinet that took up most of the wall. She closed the door behind them and didn't sit.

"You're the man who was here last night," she said. It wasn't a question. "Moreau told me someone had come asking about Cross's box. He looked like a man who'd seen a ghost."

"Moreau talks too much."

"He talks when he's scared. And he's very scared of you, Mr. Stone." She tilted her head. "That makes you either very dangerous or very foolish. I haven't decided which."

"Both, probably." Eli pulled the watch from his pocket and set it on her desk. Her eyes went to the engraving, and something tightened in her face. "You recognize this."

"Calvin Cross's monogram. He wears it at social functions, makes a point of showing it off." She looked up at Eli. "Where did you get this?"

"It belonged to my partner. Cross killed him twenty years ago and took it as a trophy."

Mary stared at him for a long moment, then let out a low breath and sat down in her chair, suddenly looking older than her years.

"Well," she said. "You're not foolish."

"You know what Cross is."

"I know what he is. I've worked in this bank for eleven years, Mr. Stone. I've seen the accounts. The claims that were never legally filed. The deeds that appeared out of nowhere with Cross's name on them. The men who had gold one week and nothing the next, who came in to close their accounts and looked like they'd been gutted."

"And you did nothing."

"I did what I could survive doing." Her voice was sharp. "Do you know what happens to people who cross Calvin Cross? They disappear. Their families disappear. One clerk tried to report him to the territorial marshal three years ago. The marshal's office received a letter apologizing for the misunderstanding, in the clerk's own handwriting, before they could even open an investigation. The clerk's body was found in the river two weeks later."

Eli said nothing. He just watched her, waiting.

Mary's hands were trembling slightly, but her voice stayed steady. "Why are you here, Mr. Stone? Not for a loan, I suspect."

"I need to get close to Cross. I need to know where he keeps his records—the real ones, the ones that would destroy him if they ever saw daylight."

Mary laughed—a bitter, humorless sound. "You think the coffin box was the only place he keeps his sins? That was a trophy case, not a vault. Cross has a ledger—a full account of every claim he's stolen, every man he's had buried. He keeps it in his mansion, in a study he doesn't let anyone enter except his housekeeper and his lawyer."

"How do you know about it?"

"Because I helped his lawyer draft the correspondence about it." Mary's jaw tightened. "I know because Calvin Cross made me a party to his crimes. I've typed letters threatening widows. I've filed false property claims in the names of dead men. I've built his empire one lie at a time because I had no choice."

"Everyone has a choice."

"Do they?" Mary leaned forward, her eyes suddenly fierce. "My brother is a simple man, Mr. Stone. He was a miner on the ridge, just like your partner. Three years ago, Cross bought his claim for pennies—a legal sale, signed and witnessed. But there was a second claim, an over-lap, and Cross used it to hang the murder of one of his enforcers on my brother. He said he'd destroy the evidence if my brother stayed quiet and I kept working for him. And then he kept a page from the ledger, one page, with my brother's name on it, listing the murder as 'arranged by proxy' to make it look like my brother acted alone."

Eli studied her. "You want that page destroyed."

"I want my brother free." Her voice cracked, then steadied. "He's not a prisoner. He's not chained in a cell. But he's bound to this town because Cross owns the deed to his house and his land, and every time my brother tries to leave, Cross reminds him what happens to men who try to run."

Eli thought of John's empty grave. Of Jonas's last words, choked with blood. Of twenty years of running and the weight of a guilt that never got lighter.

He set the watch back in his pocket.

"I'm going to destroy Calvin Cross," he said. "I'm going to take everything he has and leave him with nothing, the way he left my partners with nothing but holes in the ground."

Mary looked at him for a long time. Then she nodded slowly.

"There's a way," she said. "Cross is hosting a reception for the territorial judge next week. He's been trying to get a legal recognition of his claim over Deadman's Ridge, to finally wipe out any competing interests. He's invited everyone who matters in the territory. If you had a deed proving ownership of part of that ridge, something that cast doubt on his claims, he'd have to meet with you."

"I don't have a deed."

"No. But I know a man who can forge one." Mary's voice dropped. "He's done work for Cross before—the less legal filings. I can get you a deed in your name, claiming the southern half of the ridge where your partners' dig was. It won't survive a true title search, but it might be enough to get you in the door."

Eli was quiet for a moment. "And in exchange?"

"Ian's page." Mary met his eyes. "The ledger page with my brother's name. You get into Cross's study and you burn it. Every page you want gone, you can take. But that one—that one is mine, and it doesn't leave with you. You destroy it in front of me."

"How do I know you'll keep your word?"

"You don't." She unclasped a thin gold bracelet from her wrist and held it out. "But this was our mother's. I'm giving it to you as collateral. If I betray you, sell it. It's worth enough to get you out of the territory."

Eli looked at the bracelet, then at Mary's face. She wasn't lying. He'd spent twenty years reading men's eyes over card tables and whiskey glasses, and every instinct he had told him this woman meant exactly what she said.

He took the bracelet and slipped it into his pocket alongside John's watch.

"Tonight," she said. "After the bank closes. There's a toolshed behind the livery—the one with the red door. I'll have the deed for you there, and a map of Cross's mansion."

"You'll get your page."

She smiled then, a thin, dangerous line of teeth. "I know. Because if you don't, I'll make sure Calvin Cross knows exactly who you are and what you've already taken from his vault box. I'll deliver you to him on a platter, Mr. Stone."

Eli studied her for a long moment. "You'd do that to your own brother?"

"No." She stood and smoothed her skirt again, all business. "But I'd do it to you. Don't mistake my desperation for weakness. I've spent eleven years surviving a monster. I can survive one more man with a grudge."

She opened the office door and gestured him through.

Eli walked out of the bank into the harsh afternoon light, feeling the weight of two women's chains in his pockets—John's watch and Mary's bracelet, both made of gold, both strung around someone's neck.

The sun was high over Goldvein, and Calvin Cross's shadow fell long across everything.