Page 118 of The Widow and the Wanted

For one dangerous moment, I let myself want the impossible: no Hollister, no reward, no dead women in the snow, no town full of men ready to sell us for coin. Only this room, this bed, the three of us breathing as if the world might be kind enough to leave us be.

I touch Boone’s jaw, drawing his attention back to me. “One hill at a time, my love.”

He swallows. Nods once.

Lula shifts against my chest. Her hair tickles beneath my chin as she gathers herself. I feel the change in her body before she speaks, the way softness gives way to purpose.

“I hate to spoil a tender moment,” she says, voice quieter now, “but I learned some things tonight.”

Boone’s arm tightens over both of us.

“Everett?” I ask.

She nods. And just like that, the world comes back in.

Lula tells us everything with the sheet still clutched around her shoulders.

“He confirmed what Mother already suspected. Apparently she is something of an information broker out here,” Lula says. “Anyone of consequence in Fort Gibson is a member of the Gemini. Everett uses this place like a meeting room for dealings not suited to Hollister’s company office. Mother told me he had met with a newspaper man to investigate Dr. Bowering. His study. The expedition. He learned we would be documenting everything we saw—dated stumps, damaged flora, evidence of cutting.”

A massacre for cut trees and disputed boundaries? Such claims are carried out every day in these parts. It is certainly no trouble a company as rich as Hollister could not fix.

“And she believes those notes were grounds for murder?” I ask.

Lula shakes her head, a worried wrinkle forming between her brows. “Not the notes alone. Fraud. Mother read through her ledgers. Two years ago, she put Everett in contact with a mapmaker willing to falsify documents. Boundaries, leases, claims—whatever Hollister required. Mother wrote down enough from their conversations to know he would be meeting with railroad men.”

Boone raises his head and stills.

Lula swallows. “Promising them cleared timber and passage through land Hollister did not own. Millions in contracts. Contracts that would vanish the moment anyone learned their maps were false.”

“No government surveyors,” Boone says.

“No,” Lula replies softly. She picks her chemise off the floor as if this solemn moment demands decency. She glides it over her head, head and arms reappearing at once, followed by a flip of her long hair. “Scientists. Women. A professor. Notebooks full of research. Proof they were cutting where they had no right to cut.”

The room seems to tilt. Boone lets out a nasty little chuckle, though there is no humor in it. He drags a hand over his face. “Weren’t ever any surveyors to run off, and they knew it.”

We’ve killed enough men to know there is not a meaningful difference. Surveyors. Scientists. Were it not for those women around the campfire, we’d have done our part to clear that camp and gladly returned alongside those other bastards to collect the rest of our pay. Yet somehow it's the dishonesty that feels like the most grievous offense. Despite what polite society would believe, there is honor among thieves, and if men like us have any code, it's to live and die free.

Asking men to kill under false pretenses? It removes all choice from the matter. Deny my choice, deny my freedom. There came a time in my life when such had become an offense punishable by death, and not a thing has happened since that has changed that policy.

“In the end they burned it all,” Boone says, dark. “Destroyed any chance of the truth comin’ out.”

The flames return. The screams. They said it then, didn’t they?

“Christ,” I realize aloud. “The notebooks. They were shouting ‘Burn the notebooks.’”

A strange look passes over her face.

“What?” I ask.

She rises so fast her chemise slips half off one shoulder.

Boone sits forward.

“My God.” She crosses the room at once, dropping to her knees beside her valise. “My notebook.”

Her fingers shake as she works the latches. Glass clinks inside—vials and tins knocked together in her haste. She throws back the lid, pushes aside folded linen, packets of herbs, a jar wrapped in stockings, until she finds the worn leather book beneath it all.

She pulls it free like it might burn her.