“Rusk raised me.”
“He kept you close so your father would stay away.”
Caleb spread the maps across the crate.
“Silas Whitmore spent twenty years gathering proof. These ledgers contain names, payments, false deeds, and confessions. Enough to hang half the most powerful men in three territories.”
Clara’s hands trembled.
“Why bring them here?”
“Because your father left instructions.”
Caleb pulled out a sealed envelope bearing Clara’s name.
She reached for it.
A gunshot exploded outside.
The lantern glass shattered.
Darkness swallowed the mill.
Caleb seized Clara and pulled her behind the grinding stone as another bullet tore through the wall.
“Stay down.”
Boots pounded across the porch.
A voice called from outside.
“Caleb Vale! Send the woman out!”
Clara recognized it immediately.
Sheriff Rusk.
Her stomach turned cold.
Caleb drew his revolver.
“He followed you.”
“No. I checked.”
“He did not follow you.”
Rusk’s voice drifted through the wall again.
“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.”