We didn’t speak. Silence was one thing that had never bothered me. Didn’t appear to bother Warren much either.

But we needed to get on with things. Because the Foxes couldn’t hide here in the store forever, and I wanted to make sure they were someplace safe when I left them to go snooping over at the mine.

“Where’s your house?” I asked. “Does Violet still live at home with you?”

Warren nodded. “She does. The house sits on the back edge of the lot, behind a stand of trees, next to a small creek. You can’t see it from the road.”

So not only did Tobias Dawson want the land where Warren’s store sat, he also wanted the old man’s house.

In the South, taking someone’s ancestral home was even worse than merely wanting their land. Even more reason for me to kill the dwarf.

“I’ll need to see the house in a bit. Make sure it’s as secure as it can be.”

Not that some wood, nails, and a door would keep out a giant, but every little bit helped. Even a few seconds’delay could mean the difference between the Foxes escaping or not, living or dying.

Warren nodded, and we lapsed into silence again.

“I suppose I should thank you,” Warren finally said in a gruff voice. “For wanting to help me.”

“You don’t have to thank me. Just do what I say, and everything will be fine.”

Warren stared at me. “You’re a lot like him, you know. Like Fletcher.”

I didn’t respond. At one time, I would have enjoyed the comparison. Now, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be like Fletcher Lane, with his secrets and hidden agendas. I still couldn’t believe he’d known who I really was all these years, that he’d compiled that file about the murder of my family, that he’d known Bria was alive and where she was—and that he hadn’t told me about any of it.

Why had Fletcher kept it from me? What had been the point of hiding it from me? I thought I’d known Fletcher better than anyone. I was his apprentice, after all. The one he’d taught all his secrets to. Now I wondered if I’d really known anything about him—other than what he’d wanted me to know.

“You’re hard like he was,” Warren continued. “Able to put his feelings aside and do what needed to be done no matter what. I always admired that about him. Fletcher was always stronger than me. Even when Stella left us both, I never saw him break. He never wavered, not once, not even for a second. You would have never known anything was even wrong with him.”

Stella, the woman they’d both loved. The one who’d ruined their friendship, then run off with another man.