17. The Enemy in the House
THE ENEMY IN THE HOUSE
Brock
Cami has the file on my desk by seven a.m.
I didn't ask her to pull it. She just knew. That's the thing about Cami, she sees the shape of a problem before I finish describing it, and she doesn't wait for permission to start solving.
The contractor's name is Darren Voss. Private security, Dallas-based, with a clean website and a client list that reads like a country club directory.
Former law enforcement. Spotless public record.
There's a second page — a copy of his active Steele Oil security clearance, issued eighteen months ago.
Same badge series as the other contractors Harrison cycles through the Midland facilities.
I've seen a dozen of them. Which means whoever hired him knew exactly what they were buying.
I knew too. I just didn't know he'd been pointed at someone on my property.
I flip to the third page. There it is, a wire transfer routed through one of my father's holding companies. Not Steele Oil. Not anything with Harrison's name attached. Three degrees of separation and a Delaware LLC, but I know his fingerprints. I've been reading them my whole life.
I close the folder.
I pick up my phone and dial.
Harrison answers on the second ring. A man like him doesn't let calls go to voicemail, that's an admission that something else had his attention.
"Brock." His voice is the same as always. Measured. Unbothered. Like he already knows why I'm calling and has already decided how it ends.
"I need you at the ranch. Today."
A pause. "I have a two o'clock in?—"
"Today, Harrison."
Another pause. Longer this time. Then: "I'll be there at noon."
He arrives at eleven forty-five. Of course he does.
I meet him in the front drive instead of the house. I don't want him inside. I don't want him anywhere near the room where Ariel slept last night, or the kitchen where the coffee is still warm, or any square foot of this property that's mine and not his.
The noon heat is coming up off the gravel in slow waves. Out past the arena, one of the younger horses is working the fence line, indifferent to all of it. The Steele West sign above the barn door catches the light, hand-forged iron, my design, my money. Nothing about this property belongs to him.
He steps out of the car in a charcoal suit, no tie, silver cufflinks catching the noon light. Sixty-three years old and still built like a man who expects the world to rearrange itself around him.
He looks at me the way he always has. Like a balance sheet. Calculating what I'm worth and what I'm costing him.
"You look tired," he says.
"You hired Darren Voss."
He doesn't flinch. Doesn't blink. Just adjusts his cufflink and says, "I hired a security consultant."
"To fabricate audio of a woman who had nothing to do with your business."
"To protect the Steele name." He says it like it's obvious. Like I'm the one being unreasonable. "That woman is a liability, Brock. She's a distraction. The board is watching, the press is watching, and you're?—"
"She has nothing to do with the board."
"She has everything to do with the board." His voice sharpens. Just slightly. "You think I don't know about the gala? The fundraiser? The way you looked at her on the footage from the charity event?" He tilts his head. "I raised you to be smarter than this."
Cold settles behind my sternum. Not anger. Not yet. The recognition of a pattern I should have seen sooner.
"You've been watching the security footage."
"I have eyes on every property with the Steele name on it. That's not new."
"This one isn't yours."
"Everything with the Steele name is mine.
" He says it without heat. That's the worst part.
There's no malice in it, just a man who genuinely believes what he's saying.
"I built this company. I built what you've been using to sell belt buckles and saddle leather to people who've probably never ridden a horse in their life.
The least you can do is not burn it down over a woman you met three weeks ago. "
I look at him for a long moment.
I think about Ariel at the Reporter's office this morning.
Running on no sleep and too much adrenaline, refusing to let anyone fight this for her.
Her voice on that fake audio, her words twisted into something ugly, something she'd never say, playing from a phone speaker while she stood there and took it.
I think about what it cost her not to fall apart in that room.
"Her name is Dr. Hart," I say. "She's the best equine vet in West Texas. She saved a horse on this property that would have cost me six figures in surgical consults and still wouldn't have had her outcome." I take one step forward. "And you used her to get to me."
"You ran the lease pressure through Mercer. I've seen the shell company. You handed him the tool and he used it."
Harrison's expression doesn't change. "I used available leverage. That's business."
"That's not business. That's what you call it when you want to pretend it isn't cruelty."
He exhales, the sound of a man exercising extraordinary patience. "Brock?—"
"She didn't ask to be in this. She came out here to do a job. A good one." I keep my voice level. "You turned her into a weapon because she was close to me. That's not strategy. That's spite dressed up in a suit."
"That's the cost of being in this family." No apology. No hesitation. "You think I haven't had to make hard calls? You think building Steele Oil was easy?"
"I never thought it was easy." I look at him straight. "I just thought when it got dirty, it was over something worth it."
His expression shifts, barely, just a tightening around the eyes, and I know I've landed somewhere real.
"I'm done."
He stops.
"I'm separating Steele West from Steele Oil. Fully. Formally. The brand operates independently going forward, your board, your reach, your contractors don't touch it." I hold his gaze. "And I'm terminating my contract with Voss. Effective this conversation."
He goes quiet for the first time since he got out of the car.
"You'd walk away from everything I built?—"
"I'd walk away from how you build it." I take one more step. "There's a difference. You've never understood that."
Harrison looks at me for a long time. The look of a man who just recalculated a column in his spreadsheet. Then he straightens his cuff, left one, then right, same order he's done it my whole life, turns, and walks back to the car.
Doesn't look back.
Doesn't slam the door.
Just folds himself in, smooth and controlled, like this conversation was a line item he's already moved past.
I watch the car roll down the drive until it disappears behind the tree line.
I stand there longer than I need to.
The thing about Harrison is that he's not wrong about everything.
He built something real. Something that put food on tables and fuel in pipelines and employed half of Midland at one point or another.
I grew up watching him work eighteen-hour days, watching him make the hard call every single time without blinking.
I used to think that was strength.
It's not. Strength doesn't require a body count.
I look out at the arena. The dirt is still raked from this morning's work, two parallel lines where Red dragged it before sunrise.
Titan is moving along the fence line, easy and loose, nothing like the animal that nearly took out a crowd of investors three weeks ago.
The sun is high and flat and the shadows are straight down and the whole property looks exactly like it did before Harrison pulled up the drive. Three weeks. That's all it's been.
It feels like longer.
I think about Ariel vaulting that rail like she had every right to be there. Sharp-tongued and certain and completely unbothered by the Steele name. The way she talked to Titan, low and steady, like she already knew him. Like he was worth knowing.
I think about my father's voice: she's a liability.
I think about what it means that I heard that and felt nothing except the quiet fury of a man who's done.
I go inside.
Cami is waiting in my office with the buyout paperwork half drafted and a look on her face that means she heard more than she pretended to.
The window behind her desk looks out over the south pasture.
Through the glass I can see two ranch hands moving between the barn and the feed shed like nothing happened.
Work continuing. Ranch breathing. The world outside this room completely unbothered.
"You want me to call the board before or after the filing?" she asks.
"After." I sit down. "Draft a press release too. Short. Factual. The separation is amicable—" I pause. "No. Don't say that. Just say it's effective immediately and Steele West operates independently going forward."
"And Voss?"
"Call his office. Tell him his contract is terminated for cause. Have legal send the formal notice within the hour."
Cami nods, already typing. Then she stops.
"Brock."
Her tone makes me look up.
She's holding her phone. Her face has gone careful in the way it only does when she's deciding how to say something she doesn't want to say.
"I just got a call from Red."
I go still.
"He can't find Dr. Hart." She sets the phone down. "Her truck is gone. Her kit is still in the outbuilding. Her phone is going straight to voicemail." She pauses. "She hasn't been seen on the property since she left for the Reporter's office this morning."
The chair scrapes back before I decide to stand.
"He checked the outbuilding? The guesthouse?"
"Everywhere."
I'm already moving.
"Call Holloway," I say. "Right now. Tell him we have documented evidence of criminal harassment and I want a formal report filed — not a courtesy call. A report."