Chapter 2 - The Ledger Nobody Was Supposed to See
Amos Pike entered Doctor Halpern's office like a man walking into property he already owned.
He was sixty-one, silver-haired, lean, and dressed in a black coat despite the heat. Walter followed two steps behind him with a swelling bruise beginning to form across his pride rather than his face.
Two ranch hands waited outside.
Amos looked at Iris.
Then Elias.
Then the folded paper in Elias's hand.
"Mr. Mercer," Amos said.
Elias didn't ask how the man knew his name.
That told Iris everything she needed to know about Elias.
He wasn't surprised easily.
"You've got me at a disadvantage," Elias said.
"Amos Pike."
"I gathered."
Amos smiled.
Not warmly.
"My son tells me you interfered in a private dispute."
"I watched him hit a woman."
"A misunderstanding."
Iris laughed once.
It hurt her ribs.
"Your family's full of misunderstandings."
Walter stepped forward.
"Watch your mouth."
Elias moved between them.
One motion.
Nothing dramatic.
But Walter stopped.
Amos noticed.
"You're new in town."
"Very."
"Then perhaps you don't understand how Red Creek handles its business."
Elias looked at the ledger page.
"I'm beginning to."
Amos's smile disappeared.
"That paper is stolen property."
"No," Iris said.
Everyone looked at her.
She sat straighter despite the pain.
"It belonged to my father."
Amos's jaw tightened almost invisibly.
That was enough.
Elias saw it too.
Iris continued.
"My father kept books for Pike Freight for eleven years."
Walter snorted.
"Your father was a drunk."
"My father didn't drink."
"Near the end he did."
"Near the end he was terrified."
Doctor Halpern returned with bandages and froze.
"Amos."
"Doctor."
"This is my office."
"And I'm conducting business."
"No. You're leaving."
Silence.
Iris stared at the doctor.
She had known Samuel Halpern since childhood.
He had delivered her.
Set her broken wrist when she fell from the bakery roof at twelve.
Treated her mother through the fever that eventually killed her.
But Iris had never seen him oppose Amos Pike.
Amos smiled faintly.
"Samuel, your loan comes due next month."
Doctor Halpern's hands trembled.
Then he placed the bandages on the table.
"You heard me."
Something shifted in the room.
Not power exactly.
The first crack in it.
Amos looked at Iris.
"Give me the paper."
"No."
Walter laughed.
Amos didn't.
"Iris, your father's debts were substantial."
"My father didn't owe you anything."
"He owed everyone."
"He died owing nothing except the truth."
Amos's eyes hardened.
Elias unfolded the sheet again.
"What's this list?"
Iris hesitated.
Five years earlier, her father, Nathan Bell, had been found dead beside the railway spur two miles outside town.
The official story said he had fallen from a freight wagon while drunk.
Nobody questioned it.
Except Iris.
She remembered his final month.
The locked doors.
The whispered warnings.
The way he jumped whenever a horse stopped outside the bakery.
And most of all, she remembered the sentence he'd said the night before he died.
If anything happens to me, don't believe the men who tell you it was an accident.
For five years Iris had searched.
She found nothing.
Until three days ago.
While repairing a loose floorboard in the bakery storeroom, she discovered a narrow cavity beneath an old flour bin.
Inside was a tin box.
The box contained six ledger pages.
She had hidden five.
She carried one because she planned to ask Walter why his signature appeared beside a payment made the day Nathan died.
That was why she confronted him.
Not sixty loaves.
The bread debt had simply given her an excuse.
Elias studied the numbers.
"What does 'deceased' mean?"
"I don't know."
"How many names?"
"Thirty-two across all the pages."
Amos's expression flickered.
Elias caught it.
"All?"
Amos turned toward Iris.
"You have more?"
Iris realized her mistake.
Walter moved first.
He grabbed her arm.
"Where?"
Elias caught Walter's wrist.
There was a sharp twist.
Walter gasped.
Elias never raised his voice.
"Take your hand off her."
"You break my wrist and—"
"Try me."
Walter released Iris.
Amos stared at Elias.
"I know what you were."
Iris looked at him.
Elias's expression remained blank.
Amos continued.
"Deputy United States Marshal. Kansas Territory. Three years."
Doctor Halpern looked surprised.
Iris did too.
Elias said, "Former."
"Dismissed."
"Resigned."
"After killing a man."
Elias's face changed.
Only slightly.
Amos smiled.
"There it is."
Iris watched Elias carefully.
"What happened?"
"Not now."
Amos turned back to her.
"This is the kind of man you've chosen to trust."
Iris wiped blood from her lip.
"I didn't choose him."
Elias glanced at her.
She added, "He just happened to be the only man in the street who acted human."
Doctor Halpern nearly smiled.
Amos didn't.
"You're making a mistake."
"I've made plenty."
"This one could cost you the bakery."
Iris froze.
Amos saw it.
"You missed two payments."
"My payments aren't due until winter."
"Terms change."
"They don't change because your son hit me."
"They change when the lender determines risk."
Elias folded the paper.
"Extortion."
Amos sighed.
"You left the service, Mercer. Don't pretend you still have authority."
"I don't need a badge to recognize extortion."
Amos leaned close enough that only Elias and Iris could hear.
"You don't know this town."
Elias met his gaze.
"No."
Then he looked toward the street.
"But I know fear."
Amos followed his eyes.
Several townspeople were gathered outside.
Watching through the windows.
The same people who had watched Iris bleed.
Only now they weren't looking away.
Henry Cole stood in front.
Beside him was Mrs. Talbot from the hotel.
Then Samuel Reed from the feed store.
More were gathering.
Amos noticed them.
His face remained calm.
But his fingers tightened around his cane.
He turned to Walter.
"We're leaving."
Walter stared.
"Father—"
"Now."
At the door, Amos stopped.
He looked at Iris.
"You have until sundown."
"For what?"
"Return what belongs to me."
"And if I don't?"
Amos smiled.
"You'll learn why everyone else does."
Then he left.
Walter followed.
The ranch hands moved with them.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Doctor Halpern wrapped Iris's ribs.
Elias remained near the window.
"You're not staying alone tonight."
Iris laughed.
"You're giving orders now?"
"No."
"Sounded like one."
"It was advice."
"I've lived alone six years."
"You also confronted Walter Pike with evidence tying his family to thirty-two dead people."
Iris looked down.
"When you say it like that, it sounds foolish."
"It was foolish."
She glared at him.
He looked back.
Then, unexpectedly, he smiled.
"Brave too."
Iris hated how quickly that warmed her.
She looked away.
"Where are the other pages?"
"Safe."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning safe."
Elias sighed.
"Iris."
"You've known me twenty minutes."
"Thirty."
"Then definitely no."
Doctor Halpern finished the bandage.
"He's right."
Iris stared at him.
"Not you too."
"Amos doesn't make idle threats."
"That's why people keep giving him everything."
Doctor Halpern stopped.
Iris immediately regretted the sharpness.
"I'm sorry."
"No," he said quietly. "You're right."
That silenced her.
Outside, the townspeople had begun dispersing.
But something had changed.
Elias picked up his satchel.
"You have somewhere secure?"
"The bakery."
"That's the first place they'll search."
"My house."
"Second."
"The church?"
"Maybe."
Iris stared.
"You really were a marshal."
"For long enough."
"What happened?"
His eyes went distant.
"Later."
She sensed the subject wasn't merely unpleasant.
It was wounded.
So she let it go.
For now.
They left through the rear door.
Elias refused to carry her again unless necessary, which Iris appreciated. He let her lean on his arm as they crossed the alley behind the doctor's office.
Every step hurt.
But she kept moving.
The Bell Bakery stood two streets away, a narrow brick-front shop squeezed between the dressmaker and a shuttered photography studio.
Iris unlocked the rear entrance.
Inside, everything smelled like flour, cinnamon, and home.
Elias stopped.
"You're a baker?"
"I inherited it."
"From your father?"
"My mother."
She limped into the kitchen.
The morning's bread still cooled on racks.
Elias looked at twenty loaves.
"Sixty loaves?"
"Walter's men eat a lot."
"I can believe that."
She almost laughed.
Then she saw it.
The flour bin had moved.
Iris stopped.
Elias immediately noticed.
"What?"
She pointed.
"That."
He drew his revolver.
Iris's stomach dropped.
The storeroom door stood slightly open.
She had closed it that morning.
Elias raised one finger to his lips.
He approached slowly.
Opened the door.
Empty.
The tin box was gone.
Iris rushed past him.
"No."
She dropped to her knees beside the loose floorboard.
Empty.
All five remaining pages were missing.
Elias crouched.
"Did anyone know?"
"No."
"Think."
"No one."
He examined the floor.
Boot marks crossed the flour dust.
Fresh.
Then he spotted something caught beneath the edge of the bin.
A strip of black cloth.
Iris picked it up.
She knew the fabric.
Everyone in Red Creek did.
It came from the mourning bands worn at funerals.
Elias looked at her.
"Whose funeral?"
Iris's skin turned cold.
"There hasn't been one this week."
She unfolded the cloth.
Something had been sewn onto the inside.
A tiny white label.
Two initials.
N.B.
Nathan Bell.
Her father's initials.
Iris stared.
"This belonged to him."
"You're certain?"
"I sewed it myself."
Elias's expression changed.
"Your father was buried with this?"
"Yes."
They looked at each other.
Neither needed to say what that meant.
Someone had taken it from Nathan Bell's grave.
Then a knock came from the bakery's front door.
Three slow knocks.
Iris froze.
The bakery was closed.
Elias motioned for her to stay back.
The knock came again.
Three times.
Then a man's voice spoke through the door.
"Iris Bell?"
She recognized the voice.
Her heart stopped.
It belonged to the cemetery caretaker.
"Iris, you need to come with me."
She stepped closer.
"Why?"
A pause.
May you like
Then the caretaker whispered through the wood.
"Someone opened your father's grave."
