Chapter 6 - What Hollow Creek Was Really Hiding
The building went dark.
A voice echoed from downstairs.
Silas Hollis.
“You’ve always been stubborn, Mara.”
Garrick raised his gun.
Mercer grabbed his wrist.
“Not yet.”
“They know we’re here.”
“They don’t know where.”
Hollis’s voice continued.
“Bring me the Vance woman and the ledger. The rest may leave.”
Nola whispered, “Generous.”
Mara looked at her sharply.
“He needs you alive.”
“That comforts me enormously.”
“No. Listen. Your mother discovered something in the miners.”
“What?”
“Some survived arsenic exposure with almost no symptoms.”
Pike understood first.
“Genetic resistance.”
Mara nodded.
“Hollis became obsessed with it.”
Nola felt sick.
“He tested families.”
“Yes.”
“Children.”
“Yes.”
Garrick stared at Mara.
“Our children?”
Her face crumpled.
“Before I knew what he was doing.”
“What does that mean?”
“When Thomas was a baby, the town doctor took blood during an illness.”
“Pike?”
“No.”
“Hollis?”
“A physician from Denver.”
Pike whispered, “Dr. Weller.”
Mara nodded.
Garrick looked ready to destroy the room.
Mara grabbed his hands.
“I didn’t know.”
He looked at her.
All rage vanished.
“I know.”
Nola realized then why Hollis needed the Hale property.
Not only the mine.
The family.
The records.
Everything had been connected for years.
Mercer opened a maintenance hatch.
“There’s another exit.”
“Children first,” Nola said.
They returned to the basement.
The four sedated children were waking.
Nola helped one stand.
Pike carried the smallest despite his injured shoulder.
Garrick took another.
Mara led two.
Mercer stayed behind with the pistol.
They crawled into the drainage shaft.
Gunfire cracked behind them.
The children screamed.
“Keep moving!”
Nola shoved open the iron grate.
Cold night air hit them.
They emerged behind the church.
Horses waited.
Mercer had prepared them.
Garrick lifted two children onto a wagon hidden in the alley.
“Go to my ranch.”
Mara grabbed him.
“No. Hollis will expect that.”
“Then where?”
“The old Bell Ridge mine office.”
Nola remembered the map.
“Original records.”
Mara nodded.
“Hollis thinks I never reached them.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
They rode north.
By dawn, they reached Bell Ridge.
The mine office had collapsed years earlier.
Mara found a loose stone beneath the foundation.
Behind it was a metal box.
Garrick pried it open.
Inside were company ledgers.
Signed contracts.
Medical reports.
Death lists.
Payments to officials.
Nola stared at one page.
Elizabeth Vance.
Her mother.
Beside the name:
Subject family line—resistant.
Nola’s hands went numb.
“I was part of this.”
Mara touched her shoulder.
“Your mother protected you.”
“How?”
“She destroyed your blood samples.”
Nola looked at her.
“Hollis doesn’t want me because of documents.”
“No.”
“He wants my blood.”
“Yes.”
Garrick’s face hardened.
“He’ll never touch her.”
Nola looked at him.
There was no hesitation in his words.
No obligation.
Something deeper had grown between them despite everything.
And yet Mara stood only a few feet away.
Alive.
His wife.
The contradiction hurt all three of them.
Mara saw it.
Nola could tell.
But survival came first.
They brought the records to Sheriff Dalton.
At first, he refused to believe them.
Then Pike testified.
Mercer testified.
The rescued children testified.
And Mara Hale walked into town alive.
By noon, Hollow Creek was no longer asleep.
Men who had feared Hollis for years began speaking.
Widows came forward.
Miners showed scars.
Parents named missing children.
The sheriff sent riders to the territorial marshal.
Hollis vanished.
His house stood empty.
So did Mercy House.
But Garrick knew he had not gone far.
“He’ll come for the records,” Nola said.
Mara shook her head.
“No.”
“He’ll come for her.”
Everyone looked at Nola.
Garrick’s mouth became a hard line.
“Then she leaves.”
Nola looked at him.
“We already discussed your habit of deciding for me.”
“This is different.”
“It isn’t.”
“Nola.”
“No.”
Mara surprised them both.
“She’s right.”
Garrick stared at his wife.
“Mara—”
“If she runs, Hollis follows.”
Nola nodded.
“So we choose where he finds me.”
They created a trap.
Word spread that Nola was leaving Hollow Creek at sunset with the records.
A freight wagon waited at the south road.
Inside, hidden beneath canvas, sat Garrick, Mercer, Sheriff Dalton, and two deputies.
Nola drove.
Mara stayed with the children at the ranch.
Pike remained in town.
The road curved through Cottonwood Pass.
Nola heard riders before she saw them.
Four men emerged.
Then Hollis.
He rode beside her.
“Miss Vance.”
“Mr. Hollis.”
“You’ve caused difficulty.”
“So have you.”
“Give me the box.”
“No.”
His smile disappeared.
“Your mother made the same mistake.”
Nola’s heart pounded.
“You killed her.”
“I corrected a problem.”
The confession came easily.
Arrogance made him careless.
Nola glanced toward the wagon.
The sheriff had heard it.
“Did you kill Mara too?”
“I tried.”
“And poisoned Elsie?”
“Hale needed motivation to sell.”
Nola felt hatred rise.
But she kept her voice steady.
“You experimented on children.”
“I advanced medicine.”
“No.”
She looked him in the eye.
“You tortured people because you thought poor families didn’t matter.”
Hollis drew his gun.
“And nobody will remember them.”
The canvas flew back.
“Drop it!” Sheriff Dalton shouted.
Gunfire erupted.
Hollis’s horse reared.
Nola threw herself from the seat.
Garrick fired.
Mercer tackled one rider.
Dalton wounded another.
Hollis ran into the trees.
Garrick followed.
Nola followed Garrick.
The chase ended at the edge of Bell Ridge.
Hollis stood above the old mine opening.
Gun aimed at Nola.
“Stop.”
Garrick froze.
Hollis grabbed Nola and pulled her against him.
“Drop the gun.”
Garrick did.
Hollis smiled.
“You always were easy to control through women.”
Garrick’s face changed.
Nola saw the moment.
He understood what had happened to Mara.
Hollis had exploited love.
Again and again.
“Let her go.”
“You couldn’t save your wife.”
Garrick whispered, “She saved herself.”
Hollis glanced toward him.
That was enough.
Nola drove her heel down onto his boot.
He loosened his grip.
Garrick lunged.
The men crashed to the ground.
A gun slid toward the mine opening.
Hollis reached it first.
He raised it.
A shot fired.
Nola screamed.
Hollis fell.
Mercer stood twenty feet away, smoke curling from his revolver.
For a second nobody moved.
Then the earth beneath Hollis cracked.
His body slid backward.
He grabbed the ledge.
Garrick approached.
Hollis stared up.
“Help me.”
Garrick looked at the man who had stolen two years of his wife’s life.
Poisoned his daughter.
Murdered Nola’s mother.
Destroyed families.
Then Garrick reached down.
Nola understood.
He would not become Hollis.
Before his hand reached him, the ledge broke.
Hollis disappeared into the darkness of the mine.
The sound of falling stone echoed for several seconds.
Then silence.
Garrick turned toward Nola.
Blood ran from a cut above his eye.
She rushed to him.
“You’re hurt.”
“So are you.”
“I’m fine.”
He touched her cheek.
For one dangerous moment, everything else vanished.
Then hoofbeats came from the road.
Thomas.
He rode too fast.
Too recklessly.
“Papa!”
Garrick turned.
Thomas nearly fell from the saddle.
“It’s Mama.”
Garrick’s face drained.
“What happened?”
Thomas could barely breathe.
“She opened the locked room under the barn.”
Nola went cold.
“What locked room?”
Thomas looked at her.
“She found letters.”
“Whose?”
May you like
The boy swallowed.
“Yours.”
