Chapter 9
RHETT
Iam checking irrigation lines in the East Vineyard before dawn when I find the main feeder line deliberately cut, not worn, not weather, cut clean through, and my stomach goes cold in a way it has not since the year the accusations nearly buried the Collins name.
The cut is clean. Straight across. No fraying, no rust, no sign of a line that gave out from age.
Someone did this on purpose.
I crouch down and run my thumb along the severed edge anyway, like touching it will change what my eyes already know. Water has pooled dark in the dirt beneath it, soaking into ground that should be dry until the drip cycle kicks on at six.
I pull out my phone and take pictures. Wide shot first, then close on the cut itself, then the puddle spreading toward the vine row like it is trying to tell me how long this has been running.
Hours. Maybe since midnight.
I stand there in the gray light before sunrise, boots wet, and think about the broken sensor two weeks back. I wrote that one off as faulty wiring. Told myself it was bad luck, nothing more.
Two incidents in one month is not bad luck.
My phone still has Camille Ashford's number in the recent calls list, the one from a week ago that I never returned. Water rights consultant. Questions about the property line that were too pointed, too well-timed, for someone who claimed she was just doing her job.
I do not believe in coincidences. Not anymore. Not after everything that has already cost me.
If this reaches anywhere near the Collins name again, there will not be a version of me that stays reasonable about it. I close my phone screen and shove it into my back pocket, done thinking about Camille Ashford until I have something worth telling Sadie.
I call my ranch foreman first, tell him to get a crew out here to patch the line before the vines start showing stress. Some part of me is already three miles down the road before he finishes agreeing to it.
Then I stand alone in the row a minute longer, listening to the birds start up in the live oaks, and I already know where I am driving next.
Sadie needs to hear this from me. Not from town gossip. Not from someone else's version of it.
The drive to Collins Cellars takes four minutes, gate to gate, if you don't ease off the gas. I don't.
Four minutes is nowhere near enough to figure out how to say this without sounding like I am accusing her family, or dragging her into something that is not hers to carry. I burn through every version of it anyway, before I even hit her driveway.
Her place looks quiet when I pull in. No lights on in the tasting room, just the porch light still on. I cut the engine and sit there a second, telling myself this cannot wait until a decent hour.
I knock twice before the door pulls open.
Sadie stands there in yesterday's flannel, sleeves pushed to her elbows, hair loose around her shoulders. Bare feet on the cold porch boards. She blinks against the morning light like she has not been up long enough to process someone standing at her door this early.
"Rhett." She says my name like a question. "It's not even seven."
"I know."
She glances past me at the sky, the dark fading slow toward silver, dew already beading on the fence line, then back at my face, and whatever she reads there straightens her spine.
"Someone cut my irrigation line last night," I say. "Main feeder in the East Vineyard. Clean cut. Not the first thing that's happened this month."
Her hand goes still on the doorframe.
"We need to talk about the property line," I say.
Her whole posture changes. Arms crossing over her chest, weight shifting back like she wants a wall between us and whatever I am about to say.
"What does the property line around my family's winery have to do with your irrigation?"
"I don't know yet. That's the problem."
She studies me the way she used to when we were kids and she thought I was hiding something from her, which, if I am honest with myself, I usually was.
"Come in," she says finally. "Before Mrs. Patterson next door decides this is worth a phone call to my mother."
I follow her inside. The house smells like coffee that has not finished brewing yet, and her kitchen counter is lined with open bottles, six of them, corks pulled and standing upright beside crystal glasses catching the pale early light.
I recognize the labels before I understand why they are out at six in the morning.
Beaumont Reserve. Iron Oak Cabernet. Legacy Red. Midnight Harvest. Silver Spur Rosé. Hill Country Gold. A legal pad sits beside them, covered in handwriting too small to read from where I stand.
"You drink alone before sunrise now?" I ask.
"I work before sunrise now." She does not look up from the pad. "If Collins fruit is going into a Beaumont blend this season, I need to know exactly what I'm blending into. Structure. Tannin. Where the oak sits on the palate."
She lifts the Iron Oak Cabernet and tilts it toward the window, studying the color like it might confess something the label never will.
"Heavy French oak. At least eighteen months, a third of it new barrel." She sets it down, precise, grading it without meaning to. "Whoever makes your decisions on that one has a heavy hand. Beautiful wine. No restraint."
I almost smile, because it would not be the first time someone said that about a Beaumont.
She reads wine the way some men read weather, fast, sure, no second-guessing. I have watched buyers twice her age stumble through half of what she just did before their coffee's gone cold.
I lean into the doorframe and let myself watch her work instead of pretending not to.
Whatever she learned out west didn't dull that instinct one bit. If anything, it sharpened it.
She picks up the Old Oak Reserve next, thumb finding the small Texas star tucked into the crest, easy to miss if you are not looking for it.
Sadie notices it. She always did.
"Your family still hides that star in every label," she says, running her thumb over the embossing. "Nobody else ever catches it."
"You always did."
Her eyes come up to mine, and for a second neither of us says anything.
She sets the Old Oak Reserve aside and lifts the glass of Silver Spur Rosé instead, bringing it to her mouth like there's no clock in the room. Her throat moves once, swallowing, and I make myself look somewhere else. Anywhere else.
The counter. The window. The crest on the label. Safer ground than her mouth.
"This one needs another six months in the bottle," she says, setting the glass down. "The finish drops off too fast for what you're charging for it."
"I'll let Beck know his rosé disappointed you."
"Tell him I said it with love."
Twelve thousand dollars stands between her and losing the label her grandfather built, and she is standing here grading tannin structure like none of it touches her. I know a deflection when I hear one. I grew up watching my own family do the same thing.
The kitchen feels smaller than it did a minute ago. Six open bottles, coffee that never finished brewing, no shoes in sight, and I have to remind myself why I drove out here in the first place.
She clears a chair without asking, waves me toward it, and leans against the counter instead of sitting herself.
"Start from the beginning," she says.
I tell her about the cut line. The pooled water. The photos on my phone, which I hold out so she can see for herself instead of just taking my word for it. She scrolls through them slow, mouth flattening into a hard line, before handing the phone back.
"You said this isn't the first thing."
"Two weeks ago a sensor failed. I wrote it off as faulty wiring." I shake my head. "I don't think it was."
"And you think it's connected to what, exactly?"
I hesitate. This is the part I have not fully worked out myself, and saying it out loud makes it feel more real than I am ready for.
"A woman called me last week. Camille Ashford. Said she's a water rights consultant, had questions about the Beaumont property line." I watch her face for any flicker of recognition.
There it is.
Sadie goes quiet a second, arms crossed, studying the counter like it might have answers written on it.
"I've met her," she says. "At the Cork and Spur. She never called it a consultation, but that's what it felt like." She looks up. "I never called that number back either."
"That's why I'm here."
She pushes off the counter and crosses to the window, looking out at her own vineyard rows dark under the last of the shade.
"Back then, when everything fell apart with my family," she says slowly, "there were rumors too. People saying things that didn't add up if you looked at them close enough. Nobody ever proved anything. It just... buried us anyway."
The mention lands harder than she means it to.
"This isn't that," I say, though I am not sure I believe it yet myself.
"How do you know?"
I don't. Not for certain. And she deserves better than a promise I cannot back up.
"I don't," I admit. "But I intend to find out before it gets anywhere close to your family's name again."
She turns from the window, and for a second neither of us says anything. The coffee maker clicks off behind her, and the quiet stretches longer than it should.
"You drove out here at six in the morning to tell me this yourself," she says. It is not quite a question.
"Wasn't going to let you hear it secondhand."
Something in her face softens, just barely, before she catches it and pulls the guard back up.
"I appreciate that," she says. "I do. But Rhett, if this is connected to something bigger, I need to know everything. Not the version you think I can handle."
"I'm not in the habit of deciding what you can handle."
"Aren't you?"
The question sits between us, sharper than either of us expected, and I do not have a clean answer. Not one that does not open a door I am not ready to walk through yet.
As I stand, a folded page shifts loose from under the legal pad, just enough to catch my eye. Letterhead I do not recognize, half hidden under her own handwriting. She catches me looking and slides it flat under a bottle without a word.
I do not ask. Something tells me now is not the time.
My phone buzzes in my pocket before I have to answer her. I glance down. My foreman, confirming the crew is on site and already patching the line.
"I have to get back out there," I say, standing.
Sadie walks me to the door, arms wrapped around herself against the chill.
"Keep me posted," she says. "On the line. On Ashford. All of it."
"I will."
She holds the door open, bare feet still on the cold boards, and for a second her eyes drop to my mouth before she catches herself and looks back up.
My hand finds the doorframe instead of her, close enough that my knuckles brush the sleeve of her flannel. Neither of us moves away from it right away.
I make myself walk down the steps before I do something that has no business happening at seven in the morning on her front porch.
I am halfway to my truck when she calls out.
"Rhett."
I turn.
"Thank you for not waiting to tell me."
I nod once, because it is the only answer I trust myself to give her right now, and climb into the truck before the look on her face undoes every ounce of restraint I have got left.
Driving back toward the East Vineyard, I turn Camille Ashford's name over in my head like a burr caught in a saddle blanket, one I cannot shake loose no matter which way I turn it.
Whatever she is after, I have a feeling this is only the beginning of it.