She nodded.
“I have something else.”
From beneath a folded curtain she produced a small leather notebook.
“I found it behind the drawer of his writing desk.”
Daniel opened it.
Each page contained a date and a payment to a person identified only by an initial.
The last entry was from the previous night.
It referred to the records room and a sum paid to S.R.
Daniel looked at Catherine.
“Silas.”
“I believe so.”
“Keep the book away from the house.”
“How?”
Daniel thought of the minister and Sarah’s farmhouse.
He could not reveal every refuge to Catherine.
He wrote an address for the minister’s meetinghouse, folded it, and asked her to send the book with a household delivery.
“If Richard asks, you know nothing about the fire,” he said.
Catherine nodded, then shook her head.
“I have spent years knowing nothing.”
“Knowing the truth does not mean putting it in his hands.”
She accepted the correction.
The fire had destroyed one room, but it had exposed another link in the scheme.
Daniel understood that the colonel was beginning to fear his own records.
Fear made powerful men careless.
It also made them dangerous.
Chapter 20: The First Crossing
The plan to remove Mercy and the others from the mill began with a delivery of flour.
Avery arranged for two sacks to be carried to the meetinghouse on the same day that Silas expected a supply wagon at the mill.
Jonah drove the church wagon, wearing a plain coat and an old hat that made him look like dozens of farm laborers along the western road.
Isaiah had repaired its wheels so they made no distinctive squeak.
Daniel worked inside the mill as an assigned carpenter and watched for a gap in the guard’s routine.
He discovered that the watchman left his post each afternoon to carry water to the horses.
The absence lasted only minutes.
That was enough to open the trapdoor, but not enough to move three exhausted people up the narrow stairs.
Daniel therefore made a second opening.
Using the old drawing from his father, he removed a rotten panel beneath the waterwheel and exposed the passage he had glimpsed during his first visit.
He worked in small increments over several days, hiding new cuts beneath loose planks.
The passage led to a streambed where brush covered the exit.
On the morning of the rescue Daniel pretended to replace a broken support beam.
