PART 2 — THE MOUNTAIN MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

The first thing Loretta noticed was that Boon never wasted a movement.

He didn’t rush.

He didn’t shout.

He didn’t even look irritated when three miners demanded their meals at once.

He simply moved.

Onions hit the cutting board. Potatoes went into the stew. Fresh coffee began brewing. Within minutes, the kitchen that had looked ready to collapse was running like a well-oiled machine.

“Two beef plates, three stews, one rabbit pie,” Boon said, reading the tickets.

Loretta blinked.

“How did you know which order belonged to which table?”

He didn’t look up.

“Because the man at table six has been shouting for twenty minutes, and the woman at table three hasn’t complained once.”

Loretta almost laughed.

Almost.

“You’re strange, Boon.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

He handed her a perfectly arranged plate.

“Send that one first.”

She did.

And for the first time that evening, nobody shouted through the service window.

By seven o’clock, the Copper Pot was packed.

By eight, every table was full.

And by half past eight, something happened that Loretta would remember for the rest of her life.

The miners started asking for the mountain man’s cooking.

“Hey, Loretta!” shouted a broad-shouldered fellow named Haskins. “Who made this stew?”

“I did,” Loretta answered.

Boon, standing behind her, said nothing.

Haskins pointed his spoon toward the kitchen.

“Well, tell him he knows what he’s doing!”

A few men laughed.

Loretta glanced at Boon.

He was already washing a pan.

For some reason, that bothered her.

Not because he wanted no praise.

But because he seemed determined to make himself invisible.

At nine o’clock, the front door slammed open.

Three men entered.

The first was Silas Crowe, owner of the Red Dog Mining Company.

He was a narrow-faced man with silver hair, expensive boots, and a habit of looking at working people as though they were stains on his property.

Behind him stood two hired guards.

The room quieted.

Silas removed his gloves.

“Evening, gentlemen.”

Nobody answered.

He approached Loretta’s counter.

“Miss Vale. We need to discuss your outstanding payments.”

Loretta wiped her hands on her apron.

“I paid the rent last Monday.”

“That was last month’s rent.”

“Which means I’m current.”

Silas smiled.

“Not according to my new accounts.”

He placed a folded paper on the counter.

Loretta opened it.

Her face went pale.

“Three hundred and twenty dollars? That’s impossible.”

“New charges. Property maintenance. Waste disposal. Commercial access fees.”

“You invented those.”

Silas leaned closer.

“Careful. A woman running a little eating house shouldn’t accuse respectable businessmen of dishonesty.”

Several miners shifted in their chairs.

Loretta’s hands тιԍнтened around the paper.

“What do you want?”

“Your building.”

The words landed like a stone.

Silas glanced around the crowded dining room.

“My company is expanding. This location would make an excellent supply depot. You have until tomorrow morning to settle the balance or vacate.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Eight o’clock.”

Loretta felt every pair of eyes on her.

She had spent three years keeping the Copper Pot alive.

Three years of unpaid repairs, sleepless nights, and mornings when she had counted every coin twice before buying flour.

She wasn’t going to lose it because a rich man had decided he wanted her land.

“You can’t do this,” she whispered.

Silas smiled.

“I already have.”

Then his eyes moved past her.

To Boon.

The mountain man had stopped washing the pan.

For the first time that evening, his expression changed.

Silas stared at him.

His smile disappeared.

“Well,” he murmured. “Look what the mountains dragged in.”

Boon said nothing.

Silas took one step closer.

“I heard you were ᴅᴇᴀᴅ.”

The entire kitchen seemed to lose its air.

Loretta looked between them.

“You know him?”

Silas ignored her.

“Still hiding behind that beard, Mercer?”

Boon slowly set the pan down.

“My name is Boon.”

“Is it?”

Silas chuckled.

“Funny. The last time I saw you, you were wearing a uniform and telling an entire crew what to do.”

A miner near the window lowered his fork.

“Wait. Mercer?”

Silas turned toward the room.

“Perhaps some of you remember the name. Elias Mercer. The finest mining engineer the northern territories ever had.”

Loretta stared.

The man sleeping in her pantry?

An engineer?

Silas continued.

“Until he caused an accident that buried fourteen men underground.”

A murmur swept through the room.

Loretta looked at Boon.

His jaw was тιԍнт.

“Is that true?” she asked.

He didn’t answer.

Silas gave a satisfied nod.

“That’s what I thought.”

Then he leaned toward Loretta.

“My advice? Get rid of him. Men like Mercer bring trouble wherever they go.”

He turned to leave.

But Boon’s voice stopped him.

“How much?”

Silas looked over his shoulder.

“How much what?”

“The miners’ families.”

Silas’s face hardened.

“What are you talking about?”

“The compensation money. How much did you pay the families after the accident?”

Nobody moved.

Silas slowly turned around.

“That is none of your business.”

Boon took a step forward.

“Fourteen men went underground. Their families were promised money. How much did they receive?”

Silas’s guards moved closer.

“Watch your mouth,” one warned.

Boon didn’t even glance at him.

Silas straightened his coat.

“You’re still confused, Mercer. You were responsible for that disaster. You don’t get to question anyone.”

Then he walked out.

The door slammed behind him.

For several seconds, the Copper Pot remained silent.

Finally, Haskins spoke.

“Is that story true?”

Boon picked up the pan again.

“Your coffee is getting cold.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” Boon said quietly. “It isn’t.”

After the last customer left, Loretta locked the front door.

She found Boon stacking firewood near the pantry.

His coat was back on.

The canvas sack sat beside his boots.

“You’re leaving,” she said.

“Seems like the sensible thing.”

“Because Silas Crowe told me to throw you out?”

“Because he knows where I am now.”

Loretta folded her arms.

“Then perhaps you should tell me why.”

Boon looked toward the dark windows.

For a long moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer.

Then he reached into his coat and pulled out a small, worn pH๏τograph.

It showed fourteen men standing outside a mine entrance.

They were dirty, smiling, and standing shoulder to shoulder.

On the back, someone had written a date.

Three years earlier.

“That was my crew,” Boon said.

Loretta studied the faces.

“What happened?”

“Silas ordered us to open a new tunnel. I told him the ground wasn’t stable. The support beams were too old, and the northern wall was shifting.”

“And he ignored you?”

“He ordered us to keep working.”

Boon’s fingers тιԍнтened around the pH๏τograph.

“Two days later, the tunnel collapsed.”

Loretta swallowed.

“Fourteen men?”

“Fourteen.”

“Were you underground?”

“I was the last one out.”

He paused.

“I could hear them calling for help. We worked through the night, but the second collapse took away the pᴀssage we’d been using.”

His voice remained steady, but his eyes had gone distant.

“I never forgot their voices.”

Loretta sat down.

“Why did Silas blame you?”

“Because the company needed someone to blame. And because I had signed the safety report.”

“But you warned him.”

“I did.”

“Then why didn’t you show the report?”

Boon looked at her.

“Because it disappeared.”

Loretta felt a chill.

“Who took it?”

“Silas.”

He folded the pH๏τograph and returned it to his pocket.

“I spent three years trying to find the original records. Every time I got close, someone moved them. Then I heard Silas was planning to close the old mine and sell the land.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s something underneath that mountain he doesn’t want anyone to find.”

Before Loretta could ask another question, a noise came from the front porch.

Three sharp knocks.

Both of them turned.

Loretta approached the door.

“Who’s there?”

A boy’s voice answered.

“Miss Vale? It’s me. Tommy.”

She opened the door.

Tommy Briggs, the thirteen-year-old son of one of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ miners, stood outside in the cold.

His face was pale.

His coat was ʙuттoned incorrectly.

And in his trembling hands was a small leather notebook.

“Miss Loretta,” he whispered. “I found something in my father’s old trunk.”

Boon stepped into the doorway.

The moment Tommy saw him, the boy froze.

“Mr. Mercer?”

Boon crouched slightly.

“Tommy.”

The boy swallowed.

“My father told me something before he died. He said if anything ever happened to him, I should find the man who knew how the mine was built.”

He held out the notebook.

Boon took it carefully.

The first page contained a list of names.

Fourteen names.

But beneath them was another entry.

A date.

A payment amount.

And a signature.

Silas Crowe.

Loretta leaned closer.

“What does it mean?”

Boon turned the page.

His face changed.

There, written in his old engineering shorthand, were the words:

SECOND EXIT SEALED ON ORDERS OF S. CROWE. FOURTEEN MEN STILL BELOW.

Loretta covered her mouth.

Tommy began to cry.

“My father wasn’t supposed to die down there, was he?”

Boon closed the notebook.

“No,” he said softly. “He wasn’t.”

Then he looked toward the window.

Outside, two lanterns were moving slowly across the street.

Someone was watching the Copper Pot.

Boon reached for his coat.

“Loretta, take Tommy into the pantry.”

“Why?”

“Because Silas knows that notebook is here.”

A stone suddenly crashed through the front window.

A folded piece of paper landed among the broken glᴀss.

Loretta picked it up with shaking fingers.

There were only twelve words written across it.

RETURN THE NOTEBOOK BEFORE MIDNIGHT, OR THE COPPER POT BURNS.

Boon read the message.

Then he looked at Loretta.

For the first time since he had entered her restaurant, the quiet mountain man seemed genuinely furious.

“Lock the back door,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“To find out who else Silas has been paying.”

Loretta grabbed his sleeve.

“You’re not leaving us here.”

Boon looked down at her hand.

Then at Tommy, who was clutching his father’s pH๏τograph.

Something in his expression softened.

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

But what Loretta didn’t know was that the notebook contained one more page.

A page Tommy’s father had hidden beneath the leather binding.

And when Boon finally discovered what was written there, he would realize that the fourteen miners hadn’t been the only people Silas Crowe had buried beneath Red Dog.

PART 3 would reveal the secret hidden beneath the old mine—and the shocking reason Silas had spent three years searching for Boon Mercer.