The fixation isn’t sexual… or not just sexual. It’s deeper. A focus that doesn’t respond to logic. I told him to stand downwhen I got home. Told him again when I couldn’t sleep. Told him again at four in the morning when I gave up on sleep and sat on the porch instead, staring at the road as if she might walk up it.
He didn’t listen then. He’s not listening now.
I turn the water cold. Stand in it until the shock clears my head enough to function.
I dress. Jeans, boots, Henley. The leather bracelet—a thin cord, braided, the edges soft from a decade of wear. Maren made it for me when she was twelve. I haven’t taken it off since the day we buried her.
The drive to the compound takes twenty minutes on the ranch road. My truck could do it blind, which is useful because my focus keeps slipping. The look on her face afterward. Not satisfied. Not coy. Shaken. Like something had happened that she hadn’t expected and didn’t want.
I know the feeling.
Although I wanted it. I definitely wanted it.
The compound looks the way it’s looked my whole life. The main house at the center—two stories of local rock and timber, wraparound porch, my grandfather’s design. Bunkhouses flanking it. Equipment barn, meeting hall, training ground. Twelve buildings laid out in concentric arcs, oriented for sight lines. My grandfather built his home like a fortress and dressed it like a ranch. Three generations later, we still maintain both functions.
I park at the main house and walk in through the kitchen. My mother’s at the stove, cooking eggs in the cast-iron skillet that’s older than I am. Sixty-two, still wiry, still seeing everything and commenting on ten percent of it.
“Morning,” she says without turning. “You look like you didn’t sleep.”
“Slept fine.”
“Hmm.” She plates the eggs. Doesn’t push, but I know she’s logged it. “Garrett’s in the study. Wants you before the morning round.”
I take coffee from the pot and head down the hall. Past the pencil marks on the kitchen doorframe, three sets of lines tracking three kids’ heights. The top one still reads MAREN: 5’1” FEB. Four months before we lost her. I don’t pause at it. I never pause at it. But my hand brushes the bracelet on my wrist as I pass, the way it does every time.
Garrett is behind the desk. Our father’s old room. Heavy wood, leather chair, ranch records on the shelves. Garrett fills the space the way our father never quite managed. Taller, broader, more settled. Same dark eyes as mine, but steadier.
“Sit down,” he says.
I drop into the chair opposite, ankle on knee. Garrett studies me for a beat, the automatic scan of an alpha reading his wolves.
“Two women arrived in town yesterday,” he says. “Driving a truck with out-of-state plates.”
I keep my expression neutral. “Okay.”
“One of them spent the day walking the main street. Went into a few shops, had coffee at Dutch’s, checked the notice board outside the hardware store. Told the general store she was passing through on her way to Austin. Then she spent the evening at the Railhead asking about ranch work.” He pauses. Lets the silence do the work. “Jenny says you were there.”
Jenny. The bartender. The town’s unofficial intelligence network.
Fuck.
“I was,” I say. Because denying it would be stupid. “Talked to a few people.”
“Jenny says you talked to one person for most of the evening. Then you both disappeared toward the back for a while.”
The air in the study changes. Not a threat. Just a fact, laid down between us on our grandfather’s desk, and the fact is that Garrett knows exactly what happened in the back hallway of the Railhead, or close enough that the gap doesn’t matter.
“Was she one of the outsiders?” he asks.
“Could have been.” My voice comes out level, which costs me more than it should. “I’ll find out.”
Garrett holds my eyes for a beat. Then moves on. Not because he’s satisfied. Because he’s decided to deal with it later.
“The other woman spent the day in the hills. East of the compound.” He opens a folder on the desk—paper, because Garrett doesn’t trust anything with a screen. “Tate picked up a trail on the ridgeline after she’d already passed through.”
That gets my attention. “Hiking?”
“That’s what it looked like. Could be a recreational hiker who likes limestone country.” He pauses. “But she was on our ridgeline, Conner. The eastern approach. And she’s good enough that Tate didn’t catch her scent until she was already gone.”