Chapter 5 - The Name on the Missing Page
Mrs. Agnes Finch.
Eliza read it again.
Silas took the page.
His face drained.
“No.”
Mrs. Finch had served Black Ridge for eighteen years.
Before that, she had occasionally helped the Calloways during harvest.
She knew Eliza's father.
She knew the house.
She knew the kitchen.
Silas looked physically ill.
Voss was still breathing.
“Why?” Eliza asked him.
He whispered, “Ask her.”
Then he lost consciousness.
The marshals arrived.
The shooter escaped.
Voss survived the night.
Eliza and Silas returned to Black Ridge before dawn.
Mrs. Finch was in the kitchen.
She looked at their faces.
Then at the page in Silas's hand.
Her shoulders dropped.
“I wondered when you'd find that.”
Silas's voice was barely recognizable.
“Tell me it's false.”
“I can't.”
Eliza's anger exploded.
“You poisoned my father?”
“No.”
“Your name is there!”
“I took Bell's money.”
“Why?”
Mrs. Finch sat.
“Because Bell believed I would poison him.”
Silence.
“I took the money,” she continued. “Then I went to Nathaniel Voss. We replaced Bell's powder with something harmless.”
Eliza remembered.
Her father had recovered.
“The poisoning failed.”
“Yes.”
“Then Pike killed him.”
Mrs. Finch closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you tell anyone?”
“Because I was trying to learn who else Bell had paid.”
She had become an informant.
For years.
The money recorded beside her name had funded families Bell forced from their homes.
Silas looked furious.
“You should have told me.”
“You were twenty-three and angry enough to challenge Bell in the street.”
“I had a right.”
“And you'd be dead.”
The same pattern.
Secrets kept in the name of protection.
Eliza was tired of them.
“No more.”
Everyone looked at her.
“No more deciding what someone can bear. No more secrets because truth is dangerous. Truth was dangerous anyway.”
Mrs. Finch nodded.
“You're right.”
Investigator Shaw agreed.
They would move openly.
The next day, federal marshals seized Bell's office.
Harlan arrested two deputies.
Voss gave a sworn statement.
Thomas Vale authenticated the survey.
Bell disappeared.
Wade Pike disappeared with him.
For three days, Red Wash waited.
Then posters appeared accusing Eliza of seducing Silas into stealing Bell's property.
The old ridicule returned in a new form.
Now she was not pathetic.
She was manipulative.
Eliza read one poster in the general store window.
Silas ripped it down.
She stopped him.
“No.”
“What?”
“Leave it.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to remember what they become when a woman they mocked stops being ashamed.”
The shopkeeper lowered his eyes.
Eliza turned to the people inside.
“You laughed when they tied me.”
Nobody answered.
“You believed I deserved humiliation because my body made it easy for you to believe I was desperate for any man who'd take me.”
A woman near the counter looked away.
“Eliza—”
“No. Look at me.”
The woman did.
“I was never ashamed of being large until this town taught me I should be. I spent years apologizing for taking up space.”
Eliza looked around.
“I'm done apologizing.”
She walked out.
Silas followed.
Outside, he said, “That was terrifying.”
“Good.”
“I may be in love with you.”
Eliza stopped.
Silas looked almost annoyed with himself.
She stared.
“That is a terrible way to tell someone.”
“I hadn't planned to.”
“Clearly.”
“I can take it back.”
“No.”
Silas waited.
Eliza stepped closer.
“I don't know what I feel yet.”
“All right.”
“But don't take it back.”
“All right.”
He smiled.
This time she kissed him.
Briefly.
Then longer.
When they separated, Silas looked stunned.
Eliza enjoyed that immensely.
Their happiness lasted approximately forty seconds.
A rider came racing down the street.
“Mercer!”
One of Silas's ranch hands.
“Black Ridge.”
Silas turned.
“What?”
“Mrs. Finch is gone.”
They rode hard.
The house showed signs of struggle.
A broken cup.
Blood near the back door.
A note pinned to the table.
BRING THE SURVEY TO THE SILVER CUT. MIDNIGHT. ONE COPY. COME ALONE, MERCER, OR THE OLD WOMAN DIES.
Silas read it twice.
Eliza said, “We're not giving Bell the survey.”
“No.”
“And you're not going alone.”
“Eliza—”
She raised one finger.
He stopped.
“Good.”
They created a copy.
Shaw organized marshals around the Silver Cut, an abandoned mining entrance north of the spring.
At eleven forty-five, Silas approached carrying the tube.
Eliza hid above the cut with Harlan.
Bell appeared.
Pike held Mrs. Finch.
Her hands were tied.
Bell looked exhausted but still arrogant.
“Throw it.”
Silas held up the tube.
“Release her.”
Bell laughed.
“You're negotiating?”
“Yes.”
“You paid twenty-seven hundred dollars for a woman everyone else considered worthless. I don't trust your judgment.”
Silas's expression changed.
Eliza knew that look.
Bell did not.
Silas said, “That's because you've never understood value.”
Pike pressed a gun against Mrs. Finch.
Silas threw the tube.
Bell opened it.
He realized instantly.
“Copy.”
Marshals emerged.
“Federal officers!”
Gunfire erupted.
Pike shoved Mrs. Finch aside.
Silas tackled Bell.
Harlan fired toward Pike.
Eliza ran down to Mrs. Finch.
Then Pike appeared behind her.
His gun pressed against Eliza's back.
“Drop them!”
Everything stopped.
Pike dragged Eliza toward the mine.
Silas slowly lowered his weapon.
“Eliza.”
Pike smiled.
“Seems I finally found something Mercer values more than land.”
Eliza looked at Silas.
Then at the unstable timber supports inside the old mine.
Her father had taught her about mines.
Never disturb a cracked support.
Never strike loose rock.
And never step beneath a ceiling marked with white quartz dust.
Pike was standing directly beneath it.
Eliza smiled.
Pike frowned.
“What?”
She kicked the rotten support.
The timber cracked.
May you like
Silas shouted her name.
And the mountain came down.
