beneath a coat hook, under her winter coat and scarf, about halfway down at waist height, was a log that was just a tiny bit crooked, sticking out a bit more than the others, and on it, the telltale pattern hammered in.
Dot, dash, dot, dot, dot, dot. Dot, dash, dot, dot, dot, dot.
“Lily!”
She ran over, tracing her fingers along the string of small iron nail heads. “That’s it,” she whispered.
He stepped forward and felt along the entire length. This log was at the juncture between the front door and the wall, and only about three feet long. “It’s been cut,” she said, looking at him, awestruck. “The face was carefully cut away. See the seam?” Lily bent, looking closer. “I never knew this was here.”
“Nobody would.”
His heart had turned into a wild animal, throwing itself against the confinement of his breastbone. The hammering pulse echoed the code of her name all the way down his arms. He ran his hand up her back, needing grounding. “Does the log come out?”
She curved her fingertips around it, looking for a good place to grip. When she rocked her hand forward and back, the front gave a little. Lily pried it harder, pulling down on the very upper lip where the curve met the seam just above, and with a quiet pop, the front came off, revealing a hollowed-out space inside.
Lily gasped, looking into the darkness before reaching in. “I don’t see any—oh.” She pulled her arm back, fingers clutching an old, wrinkled envelope. On the front, written in handwriting Leo recognized as her father’s, were the words:
For Lily,
To hell you ride.
And inside were a key and a single gold coin.
Chapter Thirty-Three
AT 8:43 THE next morning, Lily stood in front of Elk Ridge Bank—the current site of what was once the San Miguel Valley Bank—sucking in short, shallow breaths.
There was a plaque:
MAHR BUILDING
1892
SITE OF THE SAN MIGUEL VALLEY BANK
BUTCH CASSIDY’S FIRST BANK ROBBERY
JUNE 24, 1889
“It’s okay if it’s nothing,” she said robotically. “We don’t know whether he even found it.”
She’d said this before, about fifteen times on the drive from Hester, Utah, to Telluride, Colorado. She could say it a hundred times more, and Leo wouldn’t begrudge her for a second. Neither of them had slept a wink the night before; the anticipation and looping what-ifs were a grenade to both concentration and rest.
Hope was a dangerous drug, and Lily was standing at the precipice between two worlds: one that promised everything she ever wanted in life, and another where she’d have to figure out how to make the life she had into the life she wanted.
She squinted into the tinted glass. “What if they’re not open yet?”
“They opened at eight thirty,” he said.
He took a step closer behind her, wrapping his arms around her middle. He could feel the way her body fought every breath, forcing the air back out as soon as she inhaled. There was no room inside her for anything except this tension.
“Even if there’s nothing in there for you,” he said, lips pressed to the soft skin below her ear, “you don’t have to ever go back to the way it was before.”
She nodded, quickly, absently.
“I’m here now. You aren’t alone.”
She exhaled a little more and was finally able to pull in a deeper breath. “I know.”
“I love you. I’m not ever going to leave you.”
Lily leaned back into him. “Say it again.”
“I’m not leaving.” He kissed her neck again. “And I’ll stand here with you for a week if that’s what you need, but if you’re ready, all you have to do is open the door and walk inside.”
She reached forward, wrapping her hand around the brass bar and swinging the heavy glass door open. Refrigerated air hit them in a blast, a refreshing wall of cold. They both needed a bath and a square meal; Leo hadn’t realized the true depth of his dishevelment until he stood in the gleaming lobby in the same torn clothes he’d worn out of the hospital only nineteen hours ago.
And there was no covert entrance to be made: a Monday, and with the internet in everyone’s palm, the bank was quiet inside. It made it easy to spot the moment a man stood from a desk just beyond the bay of tellers, staring directly at them as he smoothed his tie down the front of his shirt.
He walked over leisurely, wearing a mysterious smile; the heel-toe click-clack of his dress shoes seemed to echo from all sides of the wide lobby.
In Leo’s grip, Lily’s hand grew sweaty, her fingers tightening around his, and he squeezed back reassuringly. “It’s okay,” he said under his breath.