Page 134 of The Widow and the Wanted

Then he returns to his notebook. The scratch of his pencil fills the room. I do not ask what he writes. I will not give him the pleasure of my fear sharpened into curiosity.

Everett writes another line, pauses, considers, then tears the page free with neat precision. He folds it once. Twice. His hands are clean again. Somehow that feels obscene.

“Hepburn,” he calls.

The deputy opens the door at once, as if he has been standing just beyond it. Perhaps he has.

Everett holds out the folded note. “Take this to Lucas Whipple at the Fort Gibson Register. Into his hand, and no one else’s.”

Hepburn takes it. “Yes, sir.”

“Remind him of our agreement.”

The deputy nods.

“Prominent placement,” Everett says. “Not tucked below freight notices or temperance lectures. If he wishes to enjoy continued access to Hollister advertising, he will treat the matter with the gravity it deserves.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Hepburn?”

The deputy stops with his hand on the door.

“If anyone asks where you have been, you were conveying a witness for her own safekeeping.”

Hepburn’s gaze flicks once to me. “Yes, sir.”

He leaves. The door shuts behind him.

Everett watches it a moment longer, then returns to the table. He pours coffee from the same pot the woman brought and helps himself to the beef. Not much. A controlled portion, cut into small pieces with his knife.

My gaze stays low, dull, obedient.

Everett has accounted for every man.

The deputy. The newspaperman. Boone. Okee. The men in the street who will swear to whatever story reaches them first.

He has counted the roads and locked the gate and set his little clock running.

But my face aches where he drove it into the plate. My lip throbs with every breath. Blood gathers under my tongue, warm and copper-bright, and somewhere beneath it I can still taste potato.

I lower my eyes to my lap like he has taught me something. Perhaps he has.

The roots sit in the corner, pale under their crust of mud.

Not a weapon any man in this room would think to take from me.

Not a knife.

Not a gun.

Not a thing that shines.

I fold my hands, swallow blood, and wait.

In the middle of the night, I wake with a dry mouth and a heart already racing.

For one foolish second I forget where I am. The darkness is absolute. No velvet curtains, no low murmur of the Gemini through the floorboards, no Boone muttering in his sleep or Okee’s steady breathing beside him. No scent of whiskey, soap, and smoke woven into the wallpaper. Only damp timber, lamp oil, mud, and beneath it all, that sharp green bitterness I have tried not to name since Everett removed the blindfold.