Daniel read it.
Three hundred dollars returned.
Dated eighteen months earlier.
His anger faltered.
Only slightly.
Emily continued.
“The letters kept coming even after I stopped answering.”
“What did they say?”
“At first they begged.
Then they threatened to tell you.”
Daniel’s eyes lifted.
“I should have told you anyway.”
“Yes.”
“I know.”
For a moment Emily looked smaller than Daniel had ever seen her.
“I was ashamed.”
He stared at the fire.
“And today?”
Emily went completely still.
Daniel noticed.
“What happened today?”
She did not answer.
“Emily.”
Her hands began trembling.
“There was another letter.”
“Where?”
“In my wedding bouquet.”
Daniel slowly turned.
Emily reached into the trunk for one final envelope.
Unlike the others, this one was not cream-colored.
It was black.
She handed it to him.
Daniel unfolded the paper.
There was only one sentence.
You have delivered Daniel Mercer exactly where we wanted him.
Tonight, finish what you began.
Beneath the sentence was a drawing.
A tiny blue bottle.
Daniel looked at Emily.
She pointed toward the trunk.
“There was something else beneath my clothes.”
Daniel crossed the room.
Inside the bottom corner of the trunk sat a small cobalt bottle sealed with wax.
He reached for it.
“Don’t.”
Emily grabbed his wrist.
It was the first time she had touched him since confessing.
“I think it’s poison.”
Daniel looked from her hand to the bottle.
“Why?”
Emily reached beneath the bottle and lifted another folded paper.
Daniel opened it.
This message was longer.
Twenty drops in his whiskey.
He will become tired within minutes.
Before sunrise, Daniel Mercer will be dead.
The doctor will call it heart failure.
Daniel’s face became utterly still.
At the bottom were four additional words.
Then the ranch is yours.
Emily whispered, “That’s why I was crying.”
Daniel stared at the letter.
She continued.
“I thought if I told you, you would believe I had planned everything.”
“Did you?”
Emily looked straight at him.
“No.”
Something in the certainty of that answer reached him despite the betrayal.
Daniel picked up the blue bottle carefully using a handkerchief.
Then he walked toward the bedroom door.
“Where are you going?”
“To get Doctor Bennett.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Daniel glanced back.
“Because if somebody expected me dead by sunrise, I want to know why.”
Doctor Miriam Bennett arrived forty minutes later carrying a leather bag and enough irritation to frighten most grown men.
She was sixty-three, sharp-eyed, gray-haired, and had delivered half the people in Mercer Valley.
She examined the bottle beneath the bright light of the kitchen lantern.
Then her face changed.
“Where did you get this?”
Daniel showed her the letter.
Miriam removed the stopper, smelled the liquid, and immediately resealed it.
