Read Chapter 24: The Turn

The warehouse stank of blood and rat piss. Doc lay on the makeshift cot, his face the color of old newspaper, and something in Walter's chest went cold when he saw Roy step through the side door like he owned the place.

Roy had the document in his hand—the original, the one that proved DeVries had murdered a hundred banks and buried the men who ran them.

"You," Jack said, stepping forward. "You ran. You left us to bleed."

"I came back," Roy said, calm as a preacher. "I came back because I know what we have to do. And because I know something about Walter Crane that changes everything."

Sal moved from the shadows. Her hand rested on the holster at her hip. "What are you talking about?"

Roy smiled. It was the smile of a man who had just found the last piece of a puzzle. He turned to Walter, and his eyes were almost kind.

"You want to know why Walter lost his job at the bank? Not because of the panic. Not because of DeVries. Because he was embezzling. They caught him with his hand in the till and ran him out before the auditors could make it official. That's why he lost everything. That's why he hates DeVries—not for justice. For getting caught."

The words hit Walter like a physical blow. His mouth opened, but nothing came out for a long, terrible second.

"That's a lie."

"Is it?" Roy pulled a folded paper from his coat and held it up. "I've been doing my homework. You were a suspect in the First National audit of 1929. Two thousand dollars unaccounted for. They fired you quietly to avoid the scandal."

Walter's mind raced. The audit of '29. The discrepancy. He remembered it—a clerk who had made an error, a ledger that didn't balance. His supervisor had blamed him, and the board had accepted the explanation without question. He hadn't embezzled. He had been careless. He had trusted his numbers and been burned for it.

But looking at the paper in Roy's hand, he knew it had been doctored. He knew Roy had manufactured it.

"You wrote that," Walter said, his voice shaking. "You don't have anything from First National. You're fabricating—"

"Am I?" Roy turned to Jack. "You remember how he talked about the bank. How he complained about the way they treated him. How he said he'd been framed. A guilty man always says he's been framed."

Jack's hand moved toward his gun. His eyes were hard, unreadable.

"Jack," Walter said, "you know me. You've watched me bleed for this crew. You watched me pull Doc out of that bank with my own hands—"

"Doc was shot because of you," Roy said. "Because you wanted the document. Because you wanted revenge for a crime you actually committed."

The crew looked at him. Sal's face was stone. Jack's finger tapped against his holster.

"Think about it," Roy pressed. "Why does he care so much about exposing DeVries? A moral man? A man who was fired for embezzlement and wants to burn the whole system down to feel clean again. He doesn't want justice. He wants to watch it all burn."

Doc stirred on the cot. His eyes opened, glassy with fever.

"That's wrong," Doc rasped. "Roy hired me. Roy hired me to forge the fraud links."

The warehouse went silent.

Roy's smile didn't flicker, but something behind it went dark. "Doc, you're delirious. You've lost blood. You don't know what you're saying."

"I know what I'm saying," Doc said, each word a labor. "He came to me in St. Louis. Paid me to plant evidence. To make it look like the banks were solvent. He said he was protecting them. I didn't know what he was really doing until it was too late."

Jack turned to Roy. "What's he talking about?"

"Delirium," Roy repeated. "I told you. He's dying. He'll say anything to—"

"Arthur Phelps," Doc said. "The examiner. Roy set him up. Framed him for taking a bribe. He was asking questions about the pattern of failures. Roy couldn't let him keep asking."

Walter watched Roy's face. For the first time, he saw something crack—a flicker of calculation, of weighing options. Roy's hand moved toward his own holster.

"Doc," Roy said, "you should have died in that bank."

He pulled the gun and fired.

The shot was thunder in the small space. Doc's body convulsed on the cot, a red bloom spreading across his chest. Walter was moving before he knew it, but Roy had already turned the gun on him.

"Don't," Roy said. "Don't be a hero, Walter. You're the embezzler. You're the reason we're here. And I'm the only one who can get us out."

Doc's breathing was a wet rattle. Walter dropped to his knees beside the cot. Doc's hand found his, squeezed weakly.

"The examiner," Doc whispered. "Phelps. He knows. He knows everything."

His eyes went glassy. His hand went slack.

Roy was already moving toward the door, the document clutched against his chest. "Jack, Sal—you've seen enough. He's a liability. We take the document and we go. Walter stays."

Jack looked at Walter. Then at Roy. Then at Doc's body.

His hand stayed on his holster.

"Nobody moves," Jack said.

Roy laughed, cold and hollow. "You'll come around. I've got the document. I've got the names. You think Walter can get you to Washington with nothing but a carbon copy of a forged document? He's nobody. He's nothing. I'll be in St. Louis by morning."

He was gone before anyone could stop him.

Walter knelt in the blood, holding Doc's cooling hand, the sound of Roy's car engine fading into the dawn. Somewhere in his pocket, the carbon copy burned against his chest—a paper that proved everything, and meant nothing at all.