The first gunshot shattered the cabin window.

Rowan pushed Eliza toward the bedroom.

“Get below the floor!”

“But—”

“Now!”

She dropped beside the bed and pulled the iron ring hidden beneath the rug.

A wooden hatch opened.

Cold air rose from the darkness.

Eliza descended into the narrow tunnel just as another bullet struck the cabin wall.

Above her, Rowan shouted something at the riders.

Then came a crash.

A struggle.

Silence.

Eliza waited in the darkness, clutching her injured hand.

Minutes passed.

Finally, footsteps approached the hatch.

“Eliza?”

Rowan.

She emerged to find the cabin wrecked.

Two windows were broken. Furniture lay overturned. Blood stained Rowan’s sleeve.

Caleb and his companions were gone.

“They’ll come back,” Rowan said.

“Why did he mention other children?”

Rowan looked away.

“Because your mother didn’t disappear while traveling.”

He opened a wooden chest and removed a weathered leather journal.

“She was trying to expose something.”

The journal contained names, dates, and descriptions of children taken from poor families across Colorado Territory.

Some had been declared orphaned.

Others had supposedly died during outbreaks of fever.

But beside several names, Margaret had written the same word.

SOLD.

Eliza’s stomach tightened.

“What is this?”

“Your mother worked as a bookkeeper for a charitable institution in Denver. She discovered that children were being transferred to wealthy families under false records.”

“Adoptions?”

“Some were. Others were little more than transactions. The children were given new names, and their families were told they were gone forever.”

Eliza turned the pages.

Then she saw a familiar name.

Caleb Mercer.

Her husband.

Except the entry was dated seventeen years earlier.

Caleb would have been only fifteen.

Beside his name was another.

Thomas Vale.

Her mother’s younger brother.

Eliza stared at the writing.

“Uncle Thomas?”

Rowan nodded.

“He was one of the men arranging the transfers.”

Eliza remembered Thomas as a generous businessman who had helped raise her after Margaret vanished.

He had introduced her to Caleb.

He had arranged their marriage.

He had even insisted that Caleb was the only man capable of protecting her.

Suddenly, every kindness seemed different.

“Caleb married me because of this?”

“That’s what I believe.”

“But why wait until now?”

Rowan opened the journal to its final page.

There, beneath Margaret’s handwriting, was a drawing of a mountain valley.

At its center stood a small chapel.

Underneath were five words:

THE CHILDREN ARE STILL THERE.

Eliza looked up.

“Still where?”

Rowan hesitated.

“Your mother believed the children were being hidden at a settlement called Mercy Hollow.”

“Then we have to go.”

“That place burned down sixteen years ago.”

Eliza felt hope slipping away.

But something inside the journal caught her attention.

A folded piece of paper had been sewn into the binding.

She carefully pulled it free.

It was a birth certificate.

Her birth certificate.

Except it didn’t say Eliza Mercer.

It said:

Eleanor Margaret Vale.

And beneath her name were two more.

Amelia Rose Vale.

Benjamin Thomas Vale.

All three had been born on the same day.

Eliza’s hands began shaking.

Three children.

Three names.

Three identical birth dates.

She looked at Rowan.

“I had a brother and sister?”

Rowan closed his eyes.

“Yes.”

“Where are they?”

For the first time since meeting him, the mountain man looked frightened.

“That’s the part your mother never told me.”

A noise came from outside.

Not hoofbeats.

A small bell.

Rowan went to the window.

An elderly woman stood in the snow holding a lantern.

She wore a dark cloak and carried a wooden box.

When Rowan opened the door, the woman spoke only one sentence.

“Margaret Vale is alive.”

Then she collapsed onto the porch.

Part 3: Click here