“What?”
She looked at Caleb.
“Eight months?”
“Yes.”
“He never said your name.”
“He said he had discovered financial records connected to land fraud in Texas and Colorado.”
“He asked whether I knew a Mercer family near San Angelo.”
“I wrote back.”
“What did he say?”
Caleb reached inside his coat again.
Another letter.
Her father’s handwriting.
Abigail took it.
Mr. Mercer,
I believe the same financial network that claimed your family’s land is currently operating through Cedar Hollow Bank. I am not yet prepared to accuse any local man without proof.
I have located records tying Western Range Holdings to a Colorado intermediary.
If I am correct, several local foreclosures may be fraudulent.
I ask you not to come into town yet.
People notice you.
Let me gather enough that noticing will no longer matter.
T. Turner
Abigail’s knees weakened.
She sat heavily on the bench.
“My father knew.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you receive this?”
“Five months ago.”
“And then?”
“One more letter.”
Caleb handed it over.
Shorter.
Mr. Mercer,
I found the name.
If anything happens to me, there is a second ledger where no banker would look because bankers rarely knead dough.
Do not trust Bell.
T.T.
Abigail stopped breathing.
The church bell outside rang once.
She did not hear it.
“Bell.”
Caleb nodded.
“Horace Bell.”
Her father had died behind the bakery counter.
Chest pain.
Sudden.
He had complained of dizziness for two days.
Bell had visited the bakery the morning before.
Abigail remembered.
A private conversation in the storeroom.
Her father angry afterward.
She had asked what happened.
“Business.”
That was all he said.
Abigail stood so fast the bench scraped.
“We need to go to the bakery.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Abigail.”
“My father wrote that there’s a ledger.”
“I know.”
“Bell holds the mortgage on the bakery.”
“I know.”
“He arranged this marriage.”
Caleb nodded.
Something colder than grief moved through her.
“He didn’t find you a wife.”
“No.”
“He found a way to send me away.”
“That’s what I think.”
“Black Ridge is twenty miles from town.”
“Yes.”
“If I married you today, I’d be gone by sunset.”
“Yes.”
Abigail stared at the church wall.
Outside waited every person who had come to laugh.
Bell was almost certainly among them.
Waiting to watch his plan work.
Abigail looked at Caleb.
“You said you’d pay my train fare.”
“Yes.”
“What if I don’t leave?”
His eyes changed.
“What if I marry you?”
“Then we find the ledger.”
“And Bell?”
“We learn what your father knew.”
Abigail stepped closer.