Silas shrugged.
“Prove it.”
“There’s a body outside.”
“Bodies prove death.
Not murder.”
“You sent the telegram about my mother.”
Something flickered in Silas’s eyes.
That was enough.
Eli stepped forward.
Jonas pressed a gun against his ribs.
Silas leaned back.
“Your mother was troublesome.”
Eli’s vision narrowed.
“Where is she?”
“Dead.”
Ada inhaled.
Eli’s hand clenched.
“How?”
Silas smiled.
“You’ve ridden halfway across the West carrying grief like a saddlebag, and suddenly you want details?”
Eli lunged.
Jonas struck him across the jaw with the revolver.
He fell.
Ada screamed.
Silas stood.
“Enough.”
Blood filled Eli’s mouth.
He pushed himself up.
Silas walked around the desk.
“Ruth Marsh discovered a business arrangement she didn’t understand.”
“You mean murder.”
“I mean opportunity.”
Silas looked at Ada.
“Your father had no stomach for it either.”
Ada’s voice was ice.
“So you killed him.”
“He forced my hand.”
“And Ruth?”
Silas hesitated.
Barely.
But Ada saw it.
Eli did too.
Silas had lied.
“You don’t know,” Ada whispered.
Silas’s expression changed.
“You don’t know whether Ruth died.”
Silas slapped her.
Eli surged upward.
Jonas struck him again.
This time Eli stayed on one knee.
Ada touched blood at the corner of her mouth.
Then she looked at Silas.
And smiled.
It was the first real smile Eli had ever seen from her.
Silas frowned.
“What?”
“You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Hit people when you’re frightened.”
Silas’s face darkened.
Ada continued.
“My father wrote that in his journal.”
Silence.
Silas stared.
“What journal?”
Ada’s smile widened.
“The one I mailed to the territorial judge six weeks ago.”
For the first time, Silas Crowe looked afraid.
Jonas turned toward him.
“You said there wasn’t anything.”
“There isn’t.”
Ada laughed softly.
“There is now.”
Silas seized her.
“Where is the ledger?”
“You tell me.”
“You copied it.”
“I copied pages you left carelessly.”
“You lying—”
A sound came from downstairs.
Horses.
Several.
Silas looked toward the window.
Ada did not.
She already knew.
A man shouted from outside.
“United States marshal!”
Jonas swore.
Silas grabbed Ada and pulled his revolver.
Eli moved.
Everything happened at once.
Jonas fired.
The bullet shattered the window.
Eli drove his shoulder into Jonas’s stomach.
They crashed against the wall.
Ada twisted free.
Silas grabbed her hair.
She seized the oil lamp from the desk and smashed it against his arm.
Flame spilled across the floor.
Silas screamed.
Curtains caught.
Smoke rose instantly.
Jonas struck Eli.
Eli hit him back.
A second gunshot exploded downstairs.
Men shouted.
Silas ran toward a cabinet.
He pulled loose a wooden panel.
Inside sat a thick leather ledger.
Ada saw it.
“So that’s where you kept it.”
Silas looked at the growing flames.
Then at the book.
Then at Ada.
“If I burn this, you have nothing.”
Ada stood in the smoke.
“No.”
Silas paused.
Ada’s eyes shone.
“You still don’t understand.”
“What?”
“I stopped needing that ledger three years ago.”
Silas stared.
“I copied every page.”
His face collapsed.
“Where?”
Ada smiled.
“In the flour shipments.”
Silas’s mouth opened.
Every month, sacks left Crestfall for a bakery in Helena.
Inside the folded invoices, Ada had hidden copied pages.
Names.
Dates.
Amounts.
Descriptions.
Everything.
The baker was Nathaniel Bell’s brother.
