She wasn’t prepared for what she saw. The room was in complete disarray. Clothes had been pulled out of the armoire and strewn about. Drawers were opened everywhere, their contents littering the floor and bed. Nothing had been left untouched, including the bolts of expensive cloth she’d brought with her from Boston.
Hunter dragged a hand down his face and looked around. He looked even less pleased than she did. “Thank God you got out,” he muttered.
She agreed with the sentiment, although part of her wished she had waited long enough to at least get a glimpse of the perpetrator. She hated being in the dark over the Syndicate’s identity.
“I should try to straighten up and see if anything is missing.” Though she was certain nothing was. She had little of value to a thief, unless the thief was into dressmaking, and she had even less of value to the Syndicate. The only evidence she possessed she’d taken with her.
“I’ll help,” Hunter offered, but Meredith shook her head.
“No. It’s better if you return downstairs before anyone is the wiser.”
He turned on her, fire blazing in his eyes. “I’m not leaving you alone.”
“You don’t have a choice. We can hardly march about town attached at the hip without raising suspicion.” She walked over and rested her hands on his broad chest. “I promise I will be careful. I have a meeting with Bertram. I won’t be alone. Besides, they’ve already searched my room and found nothing, so there’s no reason for them to return.”
He touched her face, his fingertips trailing across her jaw. “Promise me, you won’t go anywhere without an escort?”
She smiled up at him, keeping her tone light in the hopes of erasing the worry pulling his mouth into a tight line. “I promise.”
His gaze swept the room one last time, uncertainty coloring his expression. “When you’re done with Bertram, come over to the jailhouse. I have an errand to run first, but I’ll meet you there.”
She agreed and let herself be swept up in one last kiss, filled with the passion of last night and the uncertainty of today. The need to expose the Syndicate grew more urgent with each passing day with not only her father’s innocence riding on it, but their future happiness, as well.
“I wish I could say it’s going to be easy,” Bertram said. Meredith’s spirits sank and she slouched in the deep leather chair in the lawyer’s office. “Now, don’t give me the long face. Just because it’s uphill doesn’t mean you can’t climb it.”
His words bolstered her somewhat, but doubt remained. Even Hunter hadn’t sounded positive earlier this morning. Not that she’d mentioned that to Bertram. She didn’t want to have to explain to him what she was doing with Hunter in the wee hours of the morning.
An hour after he’d left, Reggie had showed up indicating the sheriff had given instructions for him to bolster the lock on her door by adding a secondary bolt she could latch from the inside. Thankfully, she had started cleaning the sitting area first, leaving no evidence of what had occurred last night that could set Reggie’s tongue wagging. If Reggie wondered why Hunter had made the request, he’d given no indication. She was thankful for Hunter’s thoughtfulness, though she wondered if she would ever be able to get a good night’s sleep in this room again, preferring the idea of sleeping curled up in Hunter’s arms instead.
But she couldn’t risk another night. Her reputation wouldn’t withstand the scandal it would create if they were found out.
“What if the council denies my proposal?”
Bertram leaned back in his chair and tapped his thick fingers on the arms. “If they deny it, you have the option to reapply three months hence. Or you can open your business somewhere other than the main core of the town. The council only concerns itself with that area. So long as they don’t have to look at it, they don’t much care.”
But she needed her business to be in the main core, to be front and center to drive in the customers. If she tucked her business away in some little corner outside of town she would never make the profits she needed to be successful.
“Have they ever denied a claim before? Excluding my father, of course.” She remembered how angry Pa had been when they’d denied his proposal to open a hardware goods store where the butchery now stood. Vernon Donovan made certain the council voted against him. Two months later, Mick Ronson had opened a hardware store on the opposite side of the street. The Diamond D Ranch had benefited from a lifelong discount from Ronson’s Hardware ever since. “One of the girls from The Seahorse Saloon proposed a brothel. Council shot that down, though I think there were some members that were sad to see the claim die.”