And because I could not, I did not check.
The wolf stays still. Not pacing. Ruminating.
I sit with the stone for twenty minutes. The sun climbs, and the shade starts to pull back. Ridley stamps.
I stand. Mount up.
The ride back is always shorter. I’m a quarter mile from the compound when something catches my eye.
A flash at the junction. Sun on metal. Brief, deliberate, the angle of a signal set for a rider on this particular trail at this particular hour.
I pull Ridley in and watch. Nothing moves. The pullout is empty. No vehicle, no tracks, just the glint of something small in the gravel.
My wolf snaps to attention. I dismount on the ridge and walk Ridley down by the reins.
The flash resolves at ten yards. A hunting knife. Planted blade-down in the gravel where the trucks used to park, the handle upright, the steel clean. Not local. Not a pattern I recognize. The kind of knife that comes from a catalog, paid for in cash, carried by the kind of men who pay cash for knives.
Pinned under the blade, weighted against the wind, a folded sheet of paper.
I crouch. Pull the knife free — heavier than it looks, balanced for a grown man’s hand — and lift the paper from the gravel. Plain, unmarked, sealed along the flap with a thumb-press, no tape.
I break the seal with the knife and draw out a single sheet.
Heavy stock. A typed list of dates, running the length of the page. Every handoff from the past three years. I know becauseI kept the schedule in my head the way I keep everything in my head, and this list matches.
Below the dates, a single line:
We’re reviewing our partnership. Expect contact.
No signature. No header.
I fold the paper back into the envelope. Slide it inside my jacket, against my ribs.
The Syndicate. They know the corridor is compromised. And they’ve stood on my land and left a message, a list of my own dates.
“Fuck,” I mutter, taking off my hat and brushing the back of my hand across my forehead. The sun beats down.
The restlessness that has dogged me since dawn has turned into something else. A threat I need to build around. A problem that needs a plan.
Protect the pack.
I mount up and ride. The same dust that settled behind whoever left the envelope settles behind Ridley’s hooves.
The message sits against my ribs. Light as paper. Heavy as the blade that pinned it down.
Chapter 3
Briar
Cedar and limestone and dry grass. The Hill Country smells the same as it did when we arrived three weeks ago.
I park the truck behind the collapsed hay barn three miles south of Cedar Falls. Same dead-end ranch access lane. Same brush screen. Nothing on the road. I found it when I was here with Willow. I’m using it now.
I strip and shift.
Heat comes up through my paws first. The stone holds last night’s warmth, and the sun is adding to it fast. The cedar oil is already sharp in the air — resinous, almost medicinal in the heat — and layered under it, Forrester wolf scent on every post and rock face. Weeks old under days old under this morning’s fresh marks. A territory that’s been claiming itself for generations.
I move south through the tree breaks. Four strides per inhale. Four per exhale. The middle gear — ground-covering, not burning. A rattlesnake in the scrub to my left, its dry scentcutting through the air before I see it. I adjust two feet and keep moving. The snake doesn’t care. Neither does my wolf.