Lang did not promise arrests. She promised a file that would travel farther than Whitcomb's log. She seized Pettigrew's remaining blank vouchers from a desk in Rourke's outer office with a warrant that made Rourke's smile go thin. Pettigrew himself had already gone to Denver "for his health," which was what flight called itself when it could afford a ticket.
Whitcomb, to his credit, looked faintly ill when Lang laid the voucher blanks on his desk. "I told you he was a citizen," Whitcomb muttered.
"Citizens forge," Lang said. "That's why we invented deputies."
After Lang and Whitcomb finished their stiff exchange, Evelyn asked to see the blanks. The paper was good. The HR die-mark was crisp where sample seals had been pressed and lifted. Border text circled the monogram like a tiny fence: interests, diligence, charter dates worn small. She thought of how easily wax could stand in for character.
"I almost married a fence," she said quietly.
Thomas heard her. "Almost is the word that keeps us working."
They walked Lang to her horse. The animal steamed and stamped. Lang checked her cinch and said, as if mentioning weather, "Rourke will try kindness next. Or charity. Or a job for Miss Calder that looks like respect. Refuse pretty cages."
"I have practice," Evelyn said.
"This buys time," Lang told them on the boardwalk. "Not victory. Time is what honest claims need more than speeches. Keep copies. Keep to public streets after dark. If Rourke offers you coffee, drink coffee someone else poured."
"Comforting," Thomas said.
"I'm not paid to comfort," Lang said. "I'm paid to make forgeries expensive."
Before she rode out, Lang asked Evelyn for a specimen of her own hand and a list of every person in Philadelphia who had known she was traveling. Evelyn wrote both at Cubb's counter while Thomas waited by the stove and pretended not to guard the door. The list was short: the solicitor, a former seamstress who had packed with her, a cousin who had said goodbye without standing up from his chair. Lang folded the paper into her coat.
"If anyone wires you offering comfort in Rourke's name," Lang said, "you bring it to Whitcomb and you wire me. Comfort is how this breed of man rewrites a week."
After Lang left, the town returned to its ordinary noises—hammer, dog, the distant cough of a locomotive switching cars. Ordinary was a disguise. Evelyn felt watched even when the boardwalk was empty.