“I’ll be down in five and you can fill me in,” Cole said, dropping his blanket and moving toward his clothes on the floor.
“I’m going with you,” Elizabeth said. “And before you argue, he said you need all the guns you can get. You know I’m better than anyone else in the area. It’s going to be hard to find people to go out during this storm.”
She dropped her blanket and started putting on her clothes, not waiting for Cole to answer her. Whatever was happening was bad. She couldn’t imagine the marshal would come to them for any other reason.
“I wasn’t going to argue with you,” he said. “I was going to say hurry.”
Her smile was grim, but she was glad he believed in her enough to let her go. She’d lived a life unlike most. She was used to the harsh winters, but she was also used to the harshness of life. She’d dealt with having to put down animals to ease their suffering, but she’d also seen the atrocities of what men could do to one another. She’d dealt with thieves and rustlers. Her father had known the importance of teaching her how to protect what was hers.
Once they were dressed they went downstairs, ignoring Will once more and heading outside, where Marshal Calhoun was waiting for them. The wind cut like a blade and snow blasted them in the face like icy knives.
“This is madness, Calhoun,” Cole said loudly. “Nothing can be bad enough to venture out in this weather.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “The others are meeting us at your office.”
Elizabeth could only see a few feet in front of them, so it wasn’t until they were almost there that she saw the light on at the jail and the smattering of dark figures inside.
“After dinner,” Calhoun continued, “I walked across to the saloon for a drink. After an hour or so a man burst in. Jenkins, I think, was his name. Small, doughy fellow.”
“He’s an attorney. He and his wife settled here from back east.”
“He was white as the snow and shaking so bad it was hard to understand him, but we got some whiskey down him and he was able to get it out. Poor scoundrel. Said his wife never came home from running errands.”
“Oh, no,” Elizabeth said. “But I saw her at the bank as I was leaving. She was near the back of the line. Do you think she got lost in the blizzard? They’re not from here. It would be easy to get turned around.”
“Unfortunately, no,” Calhoun said. “Jenkins had talked to her just before she left for the bank, so he knew where to trace her steps. When he got to the bank, the door was locked, but all the lights were still on. The shades were pulled on the front windows, so he walked around to the back. That’s when he saw the carnage.”
“Spit it out, Calhoun,” Cole said as they stepped under the protective covering over the sidewalk. “What happened?”
“The Silver Creek Bandits are in Laurel Valley,” he said. “Every last person in that bank was murdered.”
Cole reached down and grabbed her hand, and Elizabeth felt the breath squeeze out of her lungs. Everyone. Murdered.
“That’s impossible,” she said. “I was there. Just as they were about to close.” And then she remembered the man who had walked in as she was leaving. She’d not let her gaze find him because she’d been so angry. But it had to be him.
“Then consider yourself lucky to be alive,” Calhoun said. “Did you see anyone who didn’t belong? Anyone on the street as you were leaving?”
“There was a man who was coming in as I was leaving, but he was by himself. I was so mad from the argument I’d just had with Miss Adelaide that I couldn’t see straight. I didn’t notice anyone on the street, but it was already snowing pretty hard by then. I just wanted to get away from there.”
She closed her eyes as Calhoun’s words sunk in, each one landing like a physical blow. They were gone. All of them. Dead. Murdered. The words didn’t seem real, couldn’t be real, because she’d just seen them. Less than two hours ago they’d been alive and breathing and complaining about the weather and the wait.
Leroy Henry with his round face and kind smile, who’d given her peppermints from his desk drawer when she was a little girl. Samuel Peabody, who was a coward and a fool but didn’t deserve to die cowering in his office. Mrs. Jenkins, who’d only been married six months and was probably standing in that line thinking about what to make her husband for supper. Isabelle Pert, barely nineteen years old, who worked at the mercantile and was saving money for her trousseau because Tommy Walsh was finally going to propose come spring.
Frank Daniels, the barber, who knew everyone’s secrets because people talked while he cut their hair, but who never repeated a word of gossip. Josiah Newton, the postmaster, who’d delivered a letter from her father to Cole the day before her father died—a letter she still didn’t know the contents of.
And Adelaide Murchison.
Adelaide, whose last moments on earth had been spent hearing hateful words. From her. Elizabeth’s stomach lurched, bile rising in her throat. She could still see Adelaide’s face, shocked and pale, as Elizabeth had told her she was the most un-Christian woman she’d ever seen. Could still hear her own voice ringing through the bank, loud enough for everyone to hear, saying Adelaide’s parents would roll in their graves.
And now Adelaide was dead. And Elizabeth’s words would be the last thing anyone remembered her saying to the woman. Not an apology. Not forgiveness. Not even common human decency. Just anger and self-righteousness and cruelty dressed up as justice.
“I told her—” Elizabeth’s voice cracked and she couldn’t continue. Her throat was too tight, her chest too compressed. She pressed a hand to her mouth, fighting the urge to be sick right there in the street.
She’d wished ill on Adelaide a hundred times, had fantasized about putting the woman in her place, had dreamed of seeing her taken down a peg or two. And now she was dead, and Elizabeth would give anything—anything—to take back those words, to have walked away in silence, to have been the bigger person her father had raised her to be.
“The tracks are still fresh,” Calhoun said, interrupting her thoughts. “But they’re fading quickly. This is the best shot we have to run them down.”
“Then let’s not waste any time,” Cole said. “Have the men saddle up.”
