And killing Todd is the easy answer.
The clean answer for me. Not the smart answer for the ranch.
I close his location feed and open another.
Bell Insurance, Garrison, Texas.
Todd's been there nine years.
Account manager. A book of business worth maybe four million in annual premiums spread across three dozen mid-sized commercial clients in East Texas.
Decent producer. Not a star.
I went through his work email last week. A few messages caught me at the time, and I noted them down, but didn't think about them again until last night.
I open them again now.
The messages are between Todd and one of his clients—an oil services company out of Tyler—about a premium adjustment on a fleet policy.
The math in the emails doesn't quite line up with the math on the policy endorsement Todd filed in the system.
A few hundred dollars per vehicle, spread across thirty-six vehicles, over the course of the policy year.
The kind of small under-reporting that wouldn't show up unless somebody at the home office decided to audit Todd's book.
I pull his other policy endorsements and cross-reference them against the email threads.
By the time I'm done, I have seven separate accounts where Todd's reported premium adjustments don't match the agreements he made with his clients.
Total skim across the seven: a little over thirty thousand dollars across the most recent policy year.
Not enormous, but enough to do what I’m going to.
I write a tip.
Three short paragraphs, plain language, no fingerprints.
Route it through a chain of relays I've used for other things and address it to the compliance officer at Bell's home office in Houston.
Not the regional manager. Not anyone who could be in Todd's pocket. The compliance officer, who has a job that exists forexactlythis kind of email.
I send it.
The audit will land within a week.
Internal investigation. Suspension with pay while it runs. The kind of investigation that ends in termination for cause, not in criminal charges, because Bell will want to handle it quietly.
He'll lose his job. He'll lose his standing in Garrison. He'll lose his easy social access to Garrett's mama, because the womanis a deacon at First Baptist and she's not going to keep coffee with a man the insurance company fired for skimming.
He'll lose the version of himself he's been using to justify chasing Hadley.
He won't be in jail.
At least, not yet. There are so many things I can do to a man before shedding his blood is necessary.
He could come back, if he wants to, somewhere down the road. Which means the door stays open—for him, and for me.
He's not going to lay a hand on her. He's not going to come back to my road anytime soon.