I nod back, raising my coffee mug in a caffeine salute. Just as I usually do. But something is still not right.
Two of the families who used to take breakfast at the long table in the mess hall are carrying their plates back to the north cabins. They’ve been doing that for three mornings.
The rhythm is off. I’ve walked this yard every day for most of my life. I know when it’s humming, and I know when it isn’t. Right now it isn’t.
My wolf has been pacing since I woke. Restless. Directionless. Like an animal with a splinter it can’t lick out.
Three days since Conner walked. The pack is recalibrating.
That’s all this is.
I tell myself that, but the wolf keeps pacing.
The meeting hall smells like yesterday’s coffee. Dawes is at the far end of the long pine table with the patrol maps spread and weighted at the corners with river stones. Thermos at his elbow. The lid is off. He’s on his second cup.
Mid-twenties. He’s run boundary patrols since he was nineteen. When Conner walked, he stepped into the gap without asking. Competency is wired into him.
“Mornin’, Alpha,” he says, without looking up.
I set my coffee on the table. “What’s the status?”
“Eastern boundary’s clean. South and west, nothing. I doubled the rotation on the north approach like you asked.” He turns the map toward me and traces a line with his finger. “Moved Jessie’s group to the creek crossing for the day shift. Gives us overlapping coverage with the south patrol.”
“Good. The junction?”
“Nobody’s been near it.” He pauses. Pulls the lid back onto the thermos. “I put Cal down there yesterday. Says the road’s been dead since Tuesday. No vehicles, no contact.”
The junction. The gravel pullout where the county road bends around the limestone shelf.
Where the trucks came.
I don’t think about where the trucks went. That wasn’t our operation. Never was.
Wasn’t your concern.
I push the thought down and study the map. It’s been a lot harder to believe that lately.
“Keep Cal there. Rotating shifts. Eyes on it around the clock.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Dawes takes a drink. Sets the thermos down at the angle he picked it up. He’s got something on his mind. He keeps glancing at a point on the map that doesn’t need looking at. “There’s one more thing.”
“Say it.”
“Conner’s weapons kit. He cleaned it before he left. Stripped, oiled, organized. Sidearm, field knife, tranq kit. Everything racked.”
I wait.
“He left his keys to the ranch house on the study desk. I found them when I was pulling the patrol maps yesterday morning.”
“I saw them,” I say. I take a sip of my coffee. Set the mug down. “Think it’s time you checked on the yearlings we brought in yesterday.”
Subject closed.
He nods. Picks up the map and the thermos. Walks out. The screen door eases shut behind him because he catches it with his heel. Dawes doesn’t let doors slam.
I stand there with my hand on the table.
A compromised man runs. A man making a choice folds his affairs.