“He followed me.”
Clara looked at Caleb.
“What?”
Caleb’s jaw tightened.
“I knew he would.”
“You used me as bait?”
“I needed him away from town.”
Clara stared at him in disbelief.
Outside, more riders arrived.
At least six.
The old mill groaned in the wind as Caleb moved toward a side window.
“You said there was proof.”
“There is.”
“Then why lure him here?”
“Because the ledgers are copies.”
Clara’s eyes narrowed.
“Where are the originals?”
Caleb looked at her.
“In the sack of pies.”
The answer was so unexpected that for a second she could not speak.
“What?”
“Each pie contained a sealed packet beneath the bottom crust. Your father designed the plan years ago. Rusk watches every stranger entering town, every hotel room, every parcel, every saddlebag. But no one searches pastries sold in daylight.”
Clara remembered Caleb carrying the sack through the crowded street.
“Where did you take them?”
“To six different people.”
“Who?”
“The circuit judge. A federal marshal. Two newspaper editors. The territorial governor. And the final pie went to Father Daniel at the church.”
Outside, Rusk shouted, “Last chance!”
Caleb leaned closer.
“By sunrise, every road out of Red Creek will be blocked. By noon, federal officers will arrive.”
Clara’s anger sharpened.
“You could have told me.”
“I could not risk your reaction.”
“My reaction?”
“Rusk has spent twenty years believing you know nothing. I needed him to see surprise on your face.”
Clara slapped him.
The sound cracked through the darkness.
Caleb accepted it without flinching.
“You deserved to know,” he said. “But the plan depended on you not knowing.”
Another bullet struck the stone.
Dust sprayed across them.
Caleb took Clara’s hand and pulled her toward a trapdoor.
“There is a tunnel beneath the mill.”
They dropped into darkness as the front doors burst open.
The camera of the imagined scene plunged with them, following their descent through rotting beams and earth, then rushed forward as they crawled through the narrow tunnel beneath the mill.
Above, boots thundered.
Rusk shouted orders.
Caleb pushed open a hatch at the tunnel’s end.
Moonlight spilled across the riverbank.
They emerged behind a wall of reeds.