Corvin’s eyes burned.
“Everyone made choices for me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Corvin pointed at him.
“You decided I was better without a father.
She decided I was better without the truth.”
His voice shook.
“And now three hundred warriors arrive at my ranch because apparently I’m standing on top of buried evidence no one bothered to mention for three decades!”
Nalin stood.
“Corvin.”
He turned on her.
“And you knew!”
“Not everything.”
“You knew enough.”
She flinched.
That stopped him.
Corvin closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“No,” Nalin said quietly.
“You are right to be angry.”
Elias reached beneath his shirt.
He removed a leather pouch.
Inside was a folded scrap of paper.
He handed it to Corvin.
It was almost falling apart.
On it, written in childish letters, were three words.
COME HOME DAD
Corvin remembered writing them.
He had given the note to a traveling preacher months after his father vanished.
Apparently the preacher had found Elias.
Corvin sat down.
For a long time, nobody spoke.
Then Elias said:
“Samuel Gann is alive.”
Corvin looked up.
“What?”
“Those bones weren’t his.”
“Where is he?”
Elias’s expression darkened.
“I don’t know.”
Nalin stepped closer.
“He is the reason I was south.”
Corvin looked at her.
“I learned someone had reopened contact with Blackstone using Samuel’s old cipher.”
“Maybe he was forced.”
“Maybe.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
Nalin shook her head.
“No.”
Elias whispered:
“Neither do I.”
They rode back the next morning.
Corvin wanted the hidden ledgers found immediately.
Elias insisted on coming.
By afternoon the second day, smoke appeared on the horizon.
Corvin’s stomach dropped.
His ranch.
They drove the horses hard.
But when they reached the valley, the buildings still stood.
The smoke came from a wagon burning near the southern trail.
A body lay beside it.
One of the Apache scouts.
Dead.
An arrow pinned a paper to the wagon.
Corvin removed it.
Three words had been written across the page.
LEAVE IT BURIED.
Elias went pale.
“He knows we’re searching.”
They reached the ranch near sundown.
The warriors guarding it had found nothing beneath the cabin.
Nothing under the barn.
Nothing near the well.
But they had found something behind the porch.
A trapdoor.
Corvin stared.
“I’ve lived here twelve years.”
Nalin raised an eyebrow.
“You do not clean beneath your porch?”
“I didn’t realize housekeeping involved excavation.”
They opened the trapdoor.
A narrow crawlspace led beneath the house.
Corvin entered with a lantern.
Dust coated everything.
At the far wall, beneath packed earth, he found a metal box.
His heart pounded.
They carried it outside.
Elias knelt.
“This is it.”
Corvin broke the rusted lock.
Inside were ledgers.
Letters.
Receipts.
Maps.
Blackstone’s empire, written in ink.
Nalin lifted one document.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
She handed it to Elias.
He read.
Then looked at Corvin with horror.
“What?”
Elias whispered:
“This isn’t thirty years old.”
Corvin took the paper.
The date was three months earlier.
A list of ranches.
Settlements.
Transport routes.
Beside each were monetary values.
Corvin understood slowly.
“This never stopped.”
“No,” Elias said.
“They’re still doing it.”
Nalin found another paper.
