Whatever they discovered needed to be documented carefully.
As they rode, Elias noticed that Two Feathers remained near the rear of the group.
The older warrior rarely spoke.
Once, their eyes met.
Two Feathers looked away first.
It was such a small movement that Elias Whitlock might not have noticed it a week earlier. But everything about the older warrior had changed since the truth came out. He no longer moved with the easy confidence of a man who believed his past was safely buried. His shoulders were tense, his voice quieter, and whenever Elias looked at him, he seemed to be expecting anger.
Elias had plenty of that.
Twenty years of it, in fact.
For twenty years, he had believed his father abandoned him. For twenty years, he had carried a broken gold watch and wondered what he had done to make a grown man ride away and never return.
Now he knew Thomas Whitlock had tried to come home.
He knew his father had been shot while carrying documents that could protect the Apache community's riverland.
And he knew the man riding behind him had helped lead the killers to him.
Ren rode beside Elias, watching him carefully.
The Arizona morning was clear and bright. Sunlight washed across the enormous red sandstone cliffs, and the narrow trail wound between scattered juniper trees and pale rock formations. Far below, the river moved through a ribbon of cottonwoods.
Elias had scarcely spoken since leaving camp.
Ren understood why.
She had spent five years living beneath a veil because her father believed hiding her would keep dangerous men away. She knew what it meant to discover that someone else's fear had shaped her life without her consent.
But Elias's grief was different.
His father had been taken from him.
And the man responsible was riding only a few yards behind them.
Ren reached across the narrow space between their horses.
"Elias."
He looked toward her.
She offered her hand.
He hesitated, then took it.
Her fingers closed around his.
"You don't have to forgive him," she said quietly.
Elias swallowed.
"I wasn't planning to."
"I know."
She glanced toward Two Feathers.
"But we still need the truth."
Elias nodded.
"And those children."
Ren's expression hardened.
"Especially those children."
Two Feathers had admitted that Silas Crane was holding his sister's two children, aged nine and twelve, at a supply storehouse near the road to the military post. The contractor had threatened their lives to force Two Feathers into helping arrange Ren's kidnapping.
That did not erase the older warrior's earlier betrayal.
But it meant two frightened children were still depending upon the adults around them to act.
Elias looked toward the eastern ridge.
"Then we find what my father left behind."
He squeezed Ren's hand.
"And after that, we bring those children home."
The spring lay beneath a formation known locally as Split Rock.