Bram laughed weakly. “Harrow wants the map before the Denver surveyor comes through. If that paper proves the vein crosses Holloway land, Harrow loses half his silver.”
Jonah looked at Mae.
“Where is the Bible?”
Mae’s face crumpled.
“In the wagon trunk,” she said. “At your cabin. I thought it safest there.”
Jonah tied Bram to a tree with a bandage tight enough to stop the bleeding and uncomfortable enough to discourage gratitude.
Then we rode hard for his cabin.
Too late.
The door hung open.
Inside, shelves had been torn down. Books lay ripped across the floor. The mattress was slit. Mae’s trunk sat empty.
Her Bible was gone.
For a moment, Mae looked older than I had ever seen her.
“My mother gave me that Bible,” she whispered.
I knelt beside her. “We’ll get it back.”
“How?”
Jonah stood in the wreckage of the only home he had allowed himself for seven years. His jaw was set. His eyes were terrible.
“Harrow won’t keep it in town,” he said. “Too many eyes. He’ll take it to the old ore house above Raven Pass. Men hide things there when they do not want questions.”
I stood. “Then we go there.”
“No.”
The word cracked through the cabin.
I turned.
Jonah shook his head. “Raven Pass is steep, exposed, and dangerous in the dark. Harrow will have men.”
“And the surveyor arrives in days,” I said. “If Harrow destroys that map tonight, what happens?”
He did not answer.
“He keeps the claim,” I said. “He keeps the lies. He keeps the town afraid. He keeps your brother’s name buried beneath yours.”
Jonah’s eyes flashed. “I will not risk you.”
“You do not get to protect me by deciding my courage belongs to you.”
He flinched.
I softened at once and stepped closer.
“I know you’re afraid. So am I. But that map is not just paper. It is truth. For Silas Rowe. For your brother. For Mae. For us.”
Mae lifted her chin from the chair.
“And for my Bible,” she said, “which I want back before some criminal sweats on the Book of Psalms.”
Jonah exhaled slowly.
Outside, thunder rolled over the ridge.
A storm was coming.
Harrow would count on that.
So would we.
We left Mae at the repaired cabin with a loaded shotgun across her lap and rode into the storm before full darkness fell. Rain turned the trail slick within minutes. Lightning opened the sky in white wounds. The horses climbed through pine and shale, Jonah in front, me close behind, both of us bent low against the weather.
Raven Pass deserved its name.
The ridge narrowed like a blade, one side rising sheer, the other dropping into blackness. Far above, near an abandoned ore chute, lamplight flickered inside a roofless stone building.
Jonah dismounted.
“Stay behind me.”
“I will stay beside you.”
“This is not the time.”
“It is exactly the time.”
He looked at me through the rain, and something like pride broke through his fear.
“Beside me, then.”
We approached on foot.
Voices carried through the storm.
Harrow’s voice was smooth and furious.
“Burn it.”
Harlen Pike protested, “The map may be worth more intact.”
“It is worth a rope around my neck if the surveyor sees it,” Harrow said. “Burn it.”
Through a gap in the stone wall, I saw four men: Victor Harrow, broad and sharp-eyed; Harlen Pike, hat dripping rain; Bram Lyle, pale with his wounded arm in a sling; and the third rider from the road.
On a crate between them lay Mae’s Bible.
Harrow opened it and shook loose a folded oilskin packet.
Jonah’s breath changed.
I touched his wrist.
Wait.
Harrow unfolded the map.
“Thomas Blackwood should have died before he drew this,” he said.
Jonah went rigid.
Harlen muttered, “Don’t say names.”
“Why not?” Harrow snapped. “His brother took the blame for everything.”
Bram laughed. “Mountain ghost won’t come down.”
Jonah stepped into the doorway.
“No,” he said. “But I will come up.”
The men spun.
For one heartbeat, even the storm seemed to hold its breath.
Then chaos broke open.
Harrow grabbed the map and ran toward the back exit. Bram raised a pistol. I fired first, not at him but at the lantern above his head. Glass shattered. Flame spilled. Men shouted. Jonah drove into the room like thunder, knocking the third rider down before the man could aim.
Harlen tried to flee past me. I swung the iron key from Mae’s trunk, clenched between my fingers, into his cheekbone with all the strength terror gave me. He fell hard, cursing.
Bram lunged for the burning map.
I threw myself forward and snatched the oilskin from the edge of the flame. Heat bit my palm. I cried out but held on.
“Mara!” Jonah shouted.
Harrow appeared behind him with a knife.
“No!”
Jonah turned too late.
The knife drove into his side.
Something inside me went silent.
I raised the pistol with both hands.
“Drop it.”
Harrow froze, knife dark in his grip.
My voice did not shake.
“I said drop it.”