**MIDNIGHT. OLD MILL.**
Clara’s heart hammered.
The camera seemed to follow her without interruption as she gathered the money, closed the stall, moved through the fading market, and climbed the narrow stairs to the room she rented above Mrs. Hale’s laundry.
Inside, she locked the door.
Her room contained little: a bed, a washbasin, two dresses, a stove, and a wooden chest that held everything she had left of her childhood.
Clara dragged the chest into the open and lifted the lid.
At the bottom lay a folded gray coat.
Her father’s coat.
She pulled it free and searched the brass buttons.
Every button bore the circle and lightning bolt.
One was missing.
Her knees weakened.
For twenty years, Clara had believed the missing button was lost the night her father disappeared.
Now it had returned in the hand of a stranger.
She sat on the floor, clutching the coat.
A memory rose inside her.
Her father kneeling before her.
Rain rattling the window.
His hands holding her shoulders.
“If I do not come back, Clara, trust no one who tells you they know what happened.”
“Not even Sheriff Rusk?”
A long silence.
“Especially not him.”
Clara’s pulse stumbled.
She had buried that memory beneath years of grief. As a child, she had convinced herself she misunderstood.
But now the warning returned with terrible clarity.
At eleven thirty, Clara slipped out through the laundry’s back door wearing a dark cloak.
Moonlight stretched across Red Creek. The saloon still glowed, but the rest of town had gone quiet. She moved through alleys, crossed the dry creek bed, and followed the abandoned road north.
The old mill stood beyond a field of dead grass.
Its wheel had not turned in fifteen years.
One side of the building leaned toward the river as though exhausted by its own secrets.
Clara approached cautiously.
The door stood open.
Inside, a lantern burned.
The stranger waited beside a broken grinding stone.
He had removed his hat.
Without it, he looked younger, though the scar above his eyebrow appeared more severe.
“You came,” he said.
“You knew I would.”
He glanced at the button in her hand.
“I hoped.”
Clara stepped closer.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Caleb Vale.”
“How did you get this?”
Caleb’s expression changed.
“Your father gave it to me.”
The words struck her harder than a slap.
“That is impossible.”
“No.”