Chapter 13 - The Mine Below Millfield
Clara entered the tunnel carrying only a lantern.
Miriam and Gideon followed at a distance through a second shaft.
Edwin waited beside an underground stream.
Annie Rose sat on a crate with Sheriff Doyle behind her.
The child was frightened but alert.
She saw Clara and deliberately knocked her shoe into the water.
The current carried it toward a side passage.
Clara understood.
Annie Rose was showing her where Edwin had hidden something.
Edwin demanded Elias Bennett’s journal pages.
Clara held them over the lantern flame.
“Release her first.”
Doyle moved the child forward.
Clara handed over the pages.
Edwin read the first line and realized they were copies.
He struck the lantern from her hand.
Darkness fell.
Annie Rose bit Doyle’s wrist and ran.
Clara followed her song through the side passage.
They found an iron chest wedged behind a collapsed cart.
The ledger was inside.
It listed thirty-four stolen properties, twelve bribed officials, and payments to Dr. Pike, Sheriff Doyle, and Elias Bennett.
Clara’s heart stopped at her father’s name.
The payments continued for six years after Annie’s death.
Her father had not merely hidden James.
He had accepted Silas’s money.
Edwin cornered them near the chest.
“You wanted truth,” he said.
“There it is.”
Clara refused to believe the ledger told the whole story.
Edwin said Elias used the money to build Bennett’s Flower Shop.
Every board, every window, every flower Clara sold had been purchased with Thomas’s stolen life.
Doyle seized Annie Rose again.
Gideon emerged and shot the rifle from Doyle’s hands.
Miriam pulled the child to safety.
Edwin kicked the support brace beneath the tunnel roof.
Timbers cracked.
Rock began falling.
He escaped with the ledger while Clara and Gideon were trapped behind a collapse.
The underground stream rose quickly around them.
Gideon admitted there was only one exit, a shaft beneath South Creek.
It had been sealed for twenty years.
Clara heard Annie Rose crying on the other side of the rubble.
May you like
Then the water reached her waist.
