Liberty (Flash Gold, #5) by Lindsay Buroker

his partner on the project? At
least early on.”
    “I’m not sure
met
is quite the word for the encounter we had with her.”
Cedar rubbed his backside, remembering those tiny bullets biting
into it.
    “What if she has all the
same notes that he had?” Kali whispered. “What if the secret is
right here within these pages?”
    “Why would someone who
wanted to destroy the flash gold—and make sure nobody else ever
made any—keep instructions on how to create it?”
    “I’d never throw out my
notes, especially if I discovered something important.” A wistful
expression crossed Kali’s face. “Not that I’ve ever done anything
important. Making gadgets to ride around on isn’t exactly
groundbreaking.”
    “Kali. First off, your
gadgets
are
important, and they’re damned clever too.
They’re much more useful than anything some stuffy scientist in a
stuffy laboratory would come up with. Second, you’re eighteen.
Nobody expects a scientist to be groundbreaking until she’s at
least twenty-five.”
    She snorted. “I’ll never
be a scientist. Not with my lack of education.” She turned the
page, her gaze never leaving the journal as she spoke to him.
    “It’s not like you can’t
get some formal schooling once you get out of here.” Cedar had not
had much formal schooling himself, so he couldn’t speak of how
useful it might be, but she was smart enough that she might enjoy
it.
    Kali shook her head and
flipped another page.
    He almost opened his
mouth to try again, to assert that she had plenty of time to make a
difference in the world, if that was what she wanted, but his lips
faltered, and the words died on his tongue. How was she going to
enroll in school somewhere if she was a known criminal? How would
she publish papers, if her name and face were on post office walls?
He rubbed his face, holding back a groan. Had he ruined her life by
letting her rescue him? It wasn’t as if he could have stopped her
from within that jail cell, but if she’d never met him, she never
would have been tempted to turn criminal.
    With a lump of regret
thickening in his throat, he started toward the front window,
intending to look out again to make sure they didn’t have any
company. On the way, he accidentally kicked the corner of the box
of firewood.
    A click sounded behind
him, followed by a
ker-thunk
as a trapdoor fell open on
the other side of the fireplace. The spot where he had detected the
hollow.
    Kali lowered the journal
and dropped to her knees to peer into the darkness. “There are
stairs here going down to a room. I’m going to take a look.”
    “It’s darker than
midnight down there. Might want the lantern.”
    Cedar walked toward the
table to fetch it, but remembered that he had wanted to check
outside and swung over to the window on the way. He thought it
would be a cursory glance, but he cursed when he spotted movement
out near the pond. Someone was pushing through the reeds near the
dock, someone wearing the red uniform jacket of a Mountie.
    “Kali, it’s time to go,”
Cedar whispered.
    She had disappeared down
the stairs and did not hear his whisper. Instead, she called back,
“Cedar, come look. Someone did some mining down here, and she’s
using the hollow for a workshop. This is where all of her goodies
are. I think that’s a table for alchemy—there’re all manner of
potions on it. Are you bringing the lantern?”
    Cedar ducked below the
window, so he wouldn’t be visible if the Mountie looked toward the
cabin, and crouched by the trapdoor.
    “Kali, we’ve got company
coming, and the guard spider isn’t likely to stop it.”
    “
Now?
I want to
look around.”
    “It’s a Mountie, and
there’s probably more than one.” He was probably one of the
trackers Cedar had been thinking of earlier, leading a party of
men.
    Kali poked her
soot-covered face out of the hidden nook. “What if you shut the
door and join me, and we hide down here until they give up
searching for us?”
    “You