“You want to find them, do you not?” the girl asked with a smile. They were back in Annesburg of all places, seated at a table in the saloon. In front of them sat Grace Jacobs, the daughter of the lawman found in the pond at the edge of town only a few months earlier.
There was an eerie serenity to her, absolute stillness. Her eyes were kind yet they weren’t really focused on them but somewhere far beyond. Bishop glanced at his brother from the corner of his eye and the one look shared between them was enough to confirm their feelings on the situation. She had walked right into the tavern and straight to their table. This girl, this crucial piece of the case that had sent them chasing their tails across three states, was now offering to take them to their prize, the Thomas brothers.
They knew they were coming.
This was a trap or an ambush, that much Bishop was sure of. They had been close in Blackwater, so close that Bishop had wanted to laugh when the next morning from Aeron’s nighttime visit, they had found a hastily abandoned camp barely an hour’s walk away from them. But a trail that fresh was easy to follow and it had led them straight back to Annesburg where they had started.
Grace’s hands were gripping the back of Ouija’s saddle behind him while Quint was riding ahead. The girl had been quiet most of the way, just humming an eerily familiar tune between giving the necessary directions. The corners of his mouth must have been stuck in a downward turned, uneasy expression most of the way. So many questions with answers he wasn’t sure if he truly wanted to know burning in his mind.
“Did he kill your father?” he asked finally, his voice quiet.
The girl went very still behind him. She was silent for a moment, then let out a small sigh, “No he didn’t, I did”.
Bishop’s brow furrowed, “Why?”
“My father was a good man, he raised me well and I loved him very much… but he hadn’t seen god the way I have. He didn’t understand and wanted to take me away,” she placed her hand on his bicep and stroked gentle patterns with her thumb. “I didn’t mean to kill him, it was an accident”.
The sun was shining and the air was crisp and fresh, still it did nothing to mask the sense of dread that seemed to always lurk somewhere just beneath the surface in Roanoke Ridge. Bishop let the silence hang as he urged Ouija into a trot to catch up with his brother.
They had spotted the Thomas brothers from the steep hill on the other side of the river. Bishop counted four people through the scope of his rifle, two of them he did not recognize but by their location, he could guess they were preparing for a baptism.
His brother had a reckless tendency of rushing into a fight while Bishop preferred a more stealthy approach. Maybe it was the firmness he rarely directed at Quint that made him still and actually listen to him. The Thomas brothers were not ones to be underestimated and they needed to approach this situation with utmost caution. They hatched a plan out of Grace’s earshot and continued from their location on two different paths to approach the brothers from different directions.