And someone intended to destroy it.
She turned toward Harlon.
“We have to go.”
He looked toward Felix.
“Tomorrow?”
The boy nodded weakly.
“Before noon.”
Harlon stared at the fire.
Outside, the mountains were still buried beneath snow.
The road would be dangerous.
The company had armed men.
And the house they needed to reach was about to disappear.
Then Amily spoke.
“I'm going.”
Harlon looked up.
She stood beside the table, her green eyes filled with determination.
“Those papers belong to my mother. I won't let Vale burn them.”
Harlon rose slowly.
He could have ordered her to stay.
Could have insisted that she wasn't strong enough.
Could have taken the key and gone alone.
But he remembered the way men had spoken to her all her life.
The assumption that her body made her incapable.
The expectation that she should remain grateful whenever somebody offered protection.
He wasn't going to become another man who took her choices away.
So he nodded.
“Then we'd better prepare.”
Amily exhaled.
Harlon glanced toward Felix.
“And first, we make certain this boy doesn't die before he can tell a deputy what he knows.”
Felix looked up.
His eyes filled.
“You're helping me?”
Harlon stared.
“You helped threaten my home and chase a woman through a blizzard.”
The boy lowered his head.
Harlon continued.
“I haven't forgotten.”
Felix swallowed.
“Then why?”
Harlon looked toward Amily.
Then back at him.
“Because leaving you in the snow wouldn't bring my brother back.”
For a long moment, Felix couldn't speak.
Then he began crying.
And Amily understood something new about the mountain man standing beside her.
His strength wasn't merely in his enormous shoulders or his ability to face armed men.
It was in the things he refused to become, even when grief gave him every excuse.
By morning, the storm had weakened to a steady snowfall.
Harlon was awake long before sunrise, preparing the horses and checking the narrow mountain trail through a telescope that had belonged to his father.
Amily joined him beside the window.
She wore a thick wool dress borrowed from a storage chest, a long brown coat, and the warmest boots Harlon could find. He had adjusted the laces and added thick wool stockings so she could move comfortably without rubbing her already injured feet.