The fire cost Elias nearly eight thousand dollars.
Eight thousand.
I could not imagine possessing eight thousand dollars, much less watching it disappear into smoke.
Yet the morning after the blaze, Elias stood in the ruined storage yard and told every employee they would receive full wages.
One foreman stared at him.
“Even if the hotel opening gets delayed?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Until we reopen or you choose other employment.”
That earned loyalty no contract could purchase.
But it also made Elias vulnerable.
Cash reserves were already strained by construction.
Insurance investigators arrived from Denver.
Suppliers demanded reassurance.
Investors began asking questions.
And Charles Pembroke became extremely helpful.
Too helpful.
“My associates could provide temporary capital,” he said during a meeting.
“At what cost?” Elias asked.
“A larger ownership position.”
“Of course.”
Pembroke smiled.
“You need us.”
Elias’s face revealed nothing.
But I watched his fingers.
He tapped the desk once.
Something I had learned he did when angry.
I stood near the door taking inventory notes.
Pembroke looked at me.
“Does the kitchen supervisor need to attend?”
“Yes,” Elias said.
“Why?”
“Because she found evidence the fire was deliberately set.”
The room changed.
Pembroke did not.
Not visibly.
But his hand tightened around his walking stick.
“What evidence?”
“The fire marshal has it.”
A lie.
The cloth remained locked in Elias’s desk.
I understood immediately.
He was testing him.
Pembroke nodded.
“How troubling.”
Then he smiled at me.
“Miss Ward has become remarkably useful.”
I heard the warning beneath the compliment.
That night Papa noticed my distraction.
“You’re worried.”
“Hotel trouble.”
“Mercer trouble?”
“Same thing lately.”
Papa studied me.
“You care about him.”
I busied myself with dishes.
“He employs me.”
“Could employ half Colorado. Doesn’t make you stare at walls.”
“Papa.”
“All right.”
He paused.
“You know, your mother used to threaten me whenever I said something true.”
“I inherited good judgment.”
He grinned.
I loved him for that.
But when his smile faded, his face looked older than it had in Silver Pass.
The new medicine helped.
Nothing could undo the damage to his leg.
And I understood now that I could not build my life entirely around fear of losing him.
Papa understood too.
Maybe before I did.
“Don’t make yourself small because you think I need all of you,” he said.
I stopped washing.
He looked toward the fire.
“Your mother died young. I spent years thinking loving you meant keeping you close.”
His eyes returned to mine.
“I was wrong.”
My throat tightened.
“You aren’t getting rid of me.”
“Wouldn’t dare.”
He smiled.
“But you have more life than Birch Street.”
The next development arrived inside a flour barrel.
I was inspecting a delivery when my hand struck wood beneath the flour.
A false bottom.
I called Elias.
We pried it open.
Inside were envelopes.
Dozens.
Invoices.
Bank drafts.
Copies of supply orders.
At first they seemed ordinary.
Then I recognized numbers.
Three hundred pounds of sugar charged to the Imperial but delivered elsewhere.
Timber billed twice.
Coal shipments that never arrived.
Invoices authorized with initials.
C.P.
Charles Pembroke.
Elias sat at the kitchen table reading each page.
His expression grew colder.
“He’s been stealing from you,” I said.
“For months.”
“Why hide evidence here?”
“To move it.”
“Or destroy it.”
He nodded.
The fire suddenly made perfect sense.
Someone had hidden records before the blaze and failed to retrieve them.
“How much?” I asked.
“Possibly forty thousand.”
I sat down.
Forty thousand dollars.
“That could ruin the hotel?”
“It could damage far more than the hotel.”
Elias explained the structure of his businesses.
Pembroke managed investment accounts through Colorado Pacific Consortium.
C.P.C.
The letters on the kerosene rag.
I felt cold.
“You knew?”
“I suspected after the fire.”
“Why didn’t you arrest him?”
“Because I need to know who else is involved.”
That sounded dangerous.
“You intend to let him believe he is winning.”
“For now.”
I pushed the papers away.
“And if he decides I’m the reason he isn’t?”
Elias went still.
It was the first time I saw genuine fear on his face.
Not for himself.
For me.
“You should stop working at the hotel temporarily.”
I laughed once.
“No.”
“Nellie.”
“No.”
“You are not trained for this.”
“Neither was I trained to catch thieves in kitchens.”
“This is different.”
“Because you’re frightened?”
“Yes.”
The honesty silenced me.
He stepped closer.
“I can replace money. Buildings. Contracts.”
His voice lowered.
“I cannot replace people.”
Something passed between us.
Something we had been avoiding.
I looked away first.
“I’m not hiding.”
“Nellie—”
“I spent thirty years being told I took up too much space. Now that I’ve finally found somewhere my eyes and brain are useful, I will not disappear because Charles Pembroke prefers me frightened.”
Elias stared at me.
Then slowly nodded.
“All right.”
“All right?”
“You win.”
“That was suspiciously easy.”
“Don’t become accustomed to it.”
He assigned two guards to the hotel anyway.
I pretended to be annoyed.
I was secretly grateful.
Three days later, Mrs. Dalloway arrived in Denver.
I was in the lobby when she entered.
Seeing her felt like hearing an old wound speak.
She looked exactly as she had in Silver Pass.
Perfect dress.
Perfect gloves.
Perfect disdain.
“Nellie Ward.”
“Mrs. Dalloway.”
Her gaze moved around the nearly finished hotel.
“How far you’ve climbed.”
“I use stairs.”
Her mouth tightened.
“I need Mr. Mercer.”
“He’s in a meeting.”
“I’ll wait.”
She sat.
Unlike Ada, she ordered nothing.
I nearly laughed at the irony.
Eventually she said, “You believe you’ve won something.”
I stopped arranging flowers.
“Do I?”
“Elias Mercer will tire of his experiment.”
“What experiment?”
“You.”
I should have ignored her.
But cruelty is clever.
It rarely attacks where you are strong.
It searches for the crack.
She found mine.
“Men like Mercer marry women who belong in drawing rooms,” she continued. “Thin women. Educated women. Women with families people respect.”
Heat climbed my neck.
“This conversation is inappropriate.”
“It’s practical.”
She leaned toward me.
“You mistake gratitude for affection.”
There it was.
The fear I had not admitted.
Elias cared about me because I helped Ada.
Because I helped the hotel.
Because I was useful.
But usefulness was not love.
And love—at least the kind women whispered about—had never seemed intended for someone shaped like me.
Mrs. Dalloway stood.
“When his crisis ends, so will your importance.”
She walked away.
I told myself her words meant nothing.
Then I avoided Elias for two days.
He noticed.
Of course he noticed.
He found me in the laundry room.
“Are you angry with me?”
“No.”
“Then why have our conversations suddenly become three words long?”
“I’m busy.”
“You have always been busy.”
I folded a sheet with unnecessary violence.
“Nellie.”
“What?”
He waited.
I hated that he could wait silently until lying became exhausting.
“Mrs. Dalloway visited.”
Understanding appeared.
“What did she say?”
“Nothing important.”
“Then why are you hiding in the laundry?”
“I am not hiding.”
“You are folding the same sheet for the third time.”
I dropped it.
“She said I’m an experiment.”
His face hardened.
“She has a habit of speaking about things she doesn’t understand.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Does she?”
“Yes.”
“People like you don’t marry people like me.”
The sentence escaped before I could stop it.
Silence.
Elias stared.
I wanted the floor to split open.
“I did not realize we were discussing marriage,” he said.
“We’re not.”
“Apparently we are.”
“I mean—”
I covered my face.
“This is awful.”
To my horror, Elias began smiling.
“Do not smile.”
“I’m trying not to.”
“I could resign.”
“That would be dramatic.”
“You seem to like drama.”
“I hired you after you publicly insulted a wealthy woman.”
“You have a point.”
He stepped closer.
The humor disappeared.
“Nellie, look at me.”
I did.
“Mrs. Dalloway does not know what I think.”
“Neither do I.”
“That is because I have been careful.”
“Why?”
“Because you work for me.”
I swallowed.
“And because I did not want gratitude to confuse either of us.”
My heartbeat quickened.
He continued.
“But since you have accidentally dragged marriage into a laundry room—”
“Oh, Lord.”
“—I should clarify something.”
He took my hand.
“You are not an experiment.”
My breath stopped.
“You are the first person in years who says exactly what she thinks to me. You challenge my decisions. You make my mother laugh. Your father cheats shamelessly at cards and somehow I enjoy losing to him.”
I smiled despite myself.
“And,” Elias said, quieter now, “when the storage building burned, the only thing that frightened me more than losing everything was realizing you were inside.”
His thumb moved across my knuckles.
Mrs. Dalloway’s voice faded from memory.
Then a window shattered.
Elias pushed me down.
A bullet struck the laundry wall.
Women screamed.
Guards rushed toward the courtyard.
Elias covered me with his body.
Another shot.
Then hoofbeats.
By the time we reached the window, the gunman was gone.
On the floor beneath the shattered glass lay a folded note.
Three words.
STOP COUNTING MONEY.
Elias read it.
Then looked at me.
Pembroke had moved beyond theft.
Beyond threats.
This was war.
And I had just become a target.