Chapter 3

I thought everything would go smoothly.

But I'd underestimated Cora's methods, and I'd underestimated just how shameless Barret could be.

The day before the transport left, the town police came and took me away.

The charge: someone had reported that my parents, before their deaths, had embezzled relief grain belonging to the village collective.

And the man who reported them was Barret.

Sitting in that cold interrogation room, I felt the blood freeze in my veins.

“Gayle Fox, someone has filed a formal report against you, and we dug two sacks of grain stamped with a government seal out of your backyard.”

The officer's face was hard as he laid the evidence in front of me.

“On top of that, your frontier placement has been suspended until the case is cleared.”

I stared at those two sacks of grain, my mind racing.

That wasn't relief grain at all. That was the stale rice my parents had traded for at a steep price on the black market, all to scrape together Barret's tuition.

To keep from being found out, they'd deliberately packed it in old government sacks.

Barret knew the truth. He knew all of it.

And still he'd turned the very thing my parents had died for into a weapon against me.

In my last life he'd done the same, dumping every ounce of filth on me just to be rid of me.

I'd thought a second life meant I was guarded enough this time. Yet here they were again, driving me to the wall.

The door of the interrogation room swung open, and Barret walked in.

He looked at me, his eyes tangled, a flicker of guilt in them. But mostly there was the smugness of a man who held all the cards.

“Gayle, all you have to do is tear up that IOU for the three thousand two hundred, and apologize to Cora in front of everyone.”

“Then I'll go tell the police I remembered wrong about the grain.”

He dropped his voice, and there was charity in his tone.

“A girl like you, carrying an embezzlement charge, your whole life is ruined.”

“You won't make it out west either. Stay in the village, and everyone's spit alone would be enough to drown you.”

I looked at this man I'd loved across two lifetimes, and felt only that he was a complete stranger.

“Barret, you'll even use the dead for your own ends. Aren't you afraid of what's coming to you?”

My voice was shaking, not from fear, but from a hatred too deep to hold.

“I'm trying to help you!” Barret's voice shot up.

“You really want to fight me until we both go down? Cora's father is a county official. You can't beat her!”

“Just bow your head, and we can go back to the way things were......”

“The way things were?” I let out a cold laugh.

“The way you used to work me like a dog? Bleed me dry and still expect me to be grateful for it?”

I shot to my feet and slammed both hands down on the table.

“Barret, keep dreaming.”

The wildness in my eyes made him take a step back.

“Fine. If you won't take the easy way, then you can sit and wait for prison.”

He turned and slammed the door on his way out.

I sat alone in the interrogation room, my nails biting bloody crescents into my palms.

Cora's father was a county official. With that kind of power behind her, crushing me was easier than crushing an ant.

My frontier placement stolen, my parents branded embezzlers, and now the threat of prison hanging over me.

It really was a hopeless trap.

But I was Gayle Fox. I had already died once. There was no way they would ever grind me under their heels again.