“Shhh.” He pressed a finger to his lips. His gaze was fixed intently on two men carrying large bags over their shoulders and who seemed to be sneaking down a back stairwell of a large building.
Bellamy nudged his horse back a step into the shadows of the alley, motioning her to do the same.
She moved next to him and waited. What were those men doing? Something nefarious?
Bellamy dismounted and draped the reins of his horse over an iron stair rail. “I’m going to get a little closer,” he whispered, “and try to see what’s going on. Wait here.”
He crept around a barrel, then ducked behind another one.
Not wanting to be left behind, she slid down from her horse, then hurried to catch up with Bellamy.
When she reached him, he was already creeping down the same back stairway the men had traversed only momentsago. As he approached the lower entrance door, he tried the handle, and it opened easily.
His frown deepened. “How in the blazes?”
He peeked inside, then entered.
She caught the door before it closed and slipped in after him.
He drew up short and scowled at her. “I asked you to wait for me.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Aye, I did.”
“You didn’task. Youorderedit.”
Their whispers echoed in the dark hallway, which was lit only by scant light filtering in through the glass window in the door at the opposite end. The dim lighting allowed them to see that no one else was there, that whoever Bellamy had followed had disappeared.
“Zaira.” His voice was firm. “I wanted you to be staying with the horses, so I did.”
She waved a hand of dismissal. “Where are we, and what are we doing here?”
“This is the lower level of the bank.”
“The bank?” She glanced at the door they’d just entered. “Why would the bank leave their back door open like that?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” He scanned the hallway. “The two men who entered didn’t look like bank workers.”
A chill raced up her spine. “If they weren’t bank workers, who were they?”
“Men who probably shouldn’t be here.”
She dropped her voice to an even lower whisper. “Do you think they’re hiding in a room and waiting to leave after thebank closes?” Everyone in St. Louis knew about the robberies that had happened in the spring. While there hadn’t been any recently, maybe the criminals were getting back to their thieving now that the cholera was starting to decrease in intensity.
Bellamy crossed to the closest door and turned the handle, and the door opened. He glanced at her and hesitated, as if he was calculating the danger. What if the men he’d seen enter were hiding behind one of the doors and had weapons?
At approaching voices from the opposite side of the inner door with the glass window, Bellamy’s eyes widened. With his knife unsheathed and in hand, he pushed open the door of the room beside them, surveyed the inside, then reached for her. “Come on.”
She didn’t hesitate even a second. She hurried after him, and he quickly closed the door behind her, darkness enveloping them.
A second later, the door down the hallway squealed open, and the voices grew louder. “I unlocked the first room on the left,” came a harsh whisper. “I told you to wait there.”
The first room on the left? Was that where she and Bellamy were?
She bumped up against a tall chest of drawers, and her hand brushed a stack of papers on top. A damp mustiness filled the air, as though the room was seldom used, perhaps to store bank archives—old documents, papers, and files.
Beside her, Bellamy grasped her arm to steady her.
