Chapter 6 - The Secret in the Fray
"I don't know where the paper is," Leo said quietly, lying with the pure, unblinking innocence only a child could muster. "My dad just told me to hold the bandana if I ever felt scared."
Vance stared at the boy for five long, agonizing seconds, trying to peer through the child's soft demeanor into his mind. Finally, Vance leaned back in his chair, letting out a slow breath through his nose.
"Right," Vance said, standing up and buttoning his coat. "Well, you're going to stay here with Sheriff Miller tonight while we try to locate your aunt up in Denver. You just rest now, kid."
Vance walked out of the room, slamming the heavy wooden door behind him.
Left entirely alone in the dim room, Leo waited thirty seconds until he heard Vance’s heavy footsteps fade down the hallway. He immediately slid off the high wooden chair and tiptoed toward the corner desk where Sheriff Miller had placed his confiscated belongings.
The red bandana lay inside a clear plastic evidence bag, tucked under a stack of unpaid parking citations.
Leo picked up the bag, unsealed the plastic zip, and pulled out the frayed cotton cloth. He held it up to the pale fluorescent light.
To anyone else, it was just a dirty, grease-stained piece of red fabric. But Leo remembered the long winter evenings sitting beside the fireplace in their cabin, watching his father meticulously stitch leather saddles with thick wax thread. His father had taught him a secret code—a simple sequence of knots and hidden seams used by local cattle drovers to mark ownership of livestock without using iron brands.
Leo ran his small thumbs along the double-stitched hem of the bandana.
Near the bottom left corner, the fabric felt unusually stiff. It wasn't grease or dried mud. Hidden deep inside the folded edge of the cotton cloth was a tiny, hard strip of waterproof plastic—a micro-SD memory card, no larger than a fingernail, wrapped securely in wax paper to protect it from water.
His father hadn't left a paper deed. He had recorded everything on his pocket digital camera before going to the old mill.
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Footsteps echoed down the corridor—the heavy, uneven stride of Sheriff Miller returning from the break room.
Leo quickly shoved the bandana back into his pocket, tucked the micro-SD card under his tongue, and scrambled back onto the high wooden chair just as the doorknob turned.
