“That's unusual.”
“What is?”
“You've always been cooperative.”
“I've also always been tired.”
Crowe laughed.
“I heard there may be a woman and four children on your property.”
“There are.”
The sheriff's expression hardened.
“They're wanted.”
“For what?”
“Murder.”
Elias stared at him.
“Whose murder?”
“A county investigator.”
“Name?”
“Samuel Avery.”
Behind Elias, June stopped breathing.
Crowe noticed.
His eyes shifted.
“You know the name.”
Elias remained between the sheriff and the interior.
“I know a lot of names.”
“Let me inside.”
“No.”
Crowe's hand moved toward his belt.
Elias's hand moved toward his revolver.
For several seconds, neither moved.
Then Crowe smiled again.
“You're making a mistake.”
“Probably.”
“You've been struggling financially.”
“That isn't your business.”
“It will be when the bank takes this property.”
Elias's eyes narrowed.
“You seem unusually interested in my mortgage.”
Crowe's expression remained calm.
“Small towns talk.”
“So do frightened men.”
The sheriff's jaw tightened.
Then he looked past Elias again.
“June.”
She stepped forward.
Crowe raised his gun.
Elias slammed the door.
A shot cracked through the wood.
The children screamed.
Elias pushed the table against the entrance.
“Back room!”
June grabbed the children.
Another shot shattered the window.
Elias fired toward the porch.
The riders scattered.
“There's more than four,” June whispered.
“How many?”
“Six.”
Elias looked at the children.
Then at the back door.
The farmhouse had become a trap.
They needed another way out.
He remembered the old root cellar beneath the kitchen.
He had not used it in years.
“Follow me.”
He lifted the trapdoor.
Cold air rushed upward.
A narrow tunnel disappeared beneath the house.
June stared.
“Where does that go?”
“To the old smokehouse.”
“How far?”
“About forty yards.”
“Will it hold?”
Elias looked at the rotting beams.
“I wouldn't bet my life on it.”
June nodded.
“Then we don't have much choice.”
They descended.
Elias went first.
June followed with Lily.
The others crawled behind them.
Above, boots thundered across the floor.
Someone kicked the front door.
“Elias!”
The sheriff shouted.
“You can't hide them forever!”
Elias kept moving.
Then he heard another sound.
Wood cracking.
The farmhouse was being broken apart.
They reached the smokehouse.
Elias pushed open the hidden door.
Snow poured inside.
They crawled out one by one.
The barn stood nearby.
Elias pointed.
“Inside.”
June hesitated.
“We came from there.”
“And they'll expect us to run farther.”
He pulled the barn door open.
They slipped inside.
Elias moved behind the hay bales.
Then he stopped.
A thought struck him.
The key.
He looked at June.
“Where is your father's key?”
She handed it to him.
Elias stared at it.
Then at the floor.
The brass key had an unusual symbol engraved on one side.
A circle.
Three lines.
And a tiny star.
He knew that symbol.
It was carved into an old stone marker at the northern edge of his property.
A marker his grandfather had always told him never to disturb.
Elias suddenly understood.
“The key isn't for a door.”
June whispered,
“Then what is it for?”
“A box.”
They waited until the shooting stopped.
Dawn was still more than an hour away.
The barn was silent except for the children's breathing.
Elias told them to remain hidden.
He and June slipped outside.
The snow was now waist-deep in places.
They crossed the field toward the northern ridge.
The stone marker stood beneath a dead oak tree.
Elias had seen it his entire life.
He had never questioned it.
His grandfather had always called it an old boundary stone.
Elias brushed snow away.
There it was.
The same symbol.
He inserted the key.
Nothing happened.
He turned it left.
Still nothing.
June whispered,
“Try right.”
Elias did.
A click sounded beneath the earth.
The stone shifted.
A narrow compartment opened.
Inside was a metal box.
Elias pulled it out.
The lock was already broken.
Inside were documents.
Dozens of them.
Maps.
Letters.
Receipts.
Photographs.
And a leather journal.
Elias opened the first page.
His grandfather's handwriting.
October 3, 1978.
If anyone finds this, it means Harrow has returned.
Elias's heart began pounding.
He read.
The journal described the discovery of the mineral deposit.
It also described something else.
The original land grant.
Mercer Ridge had never been sold.
Not completely.
A portion had been transferred illegally decades earlier.
The northern and eastern sections remained protected under an old conservation agreement.
No private company could mine them without the approval of every surviving heir.
Elias turned the page.
There was a list of names.
His father's name.
His mother's.
Then another.
Margaret Mercer.
Elias stopped.
Margaret was his grandmother.
Beside her name was a second name.
Clara.
His younger sister.
Elias stared.
He had never had a sister.
At least, he had never known about one.
June touched his shoulder.
“What is it?”
He turned the page.
A letter had been folded inside.
His grandfather had written: