Chapter 54
EMMA
My hands shake as I pull the folder out.
Inside are documents. Lots of them.
Photocopies of grazing permits that don’t match public land records. Water rights agreements that look forged. Photos of Turner cattle on land they shouldn’t be on—dates and coordinates scrawled in my dad’s handwriting.
And notes. Pages and pages of them.
I sit down hard, my pulse picking up as I read.
Shipments—night runs. Not cattle.
Trucks coming in empty, leaving heavy.
Different plates every time.
Money doesn’t match livestock numbers.
My breath catches.
He didn’t just think they were cheating land. He thought they were moving something. Something bigger.
Something illegal.
There’s another page—messier, rushed.
Brakes felt off last week. Check truck.
Don’t trust—
It cuts off.
My stomach drops. I flip through more folders, faster now.
Illegal grazing deals that pushed other ranchers out. Water theft that dried up streams. Reports of intimidation—fights, threats, things that never made it past whispers in town.
And threaded through all of it are notes upon notes about patterns, times, routes—vehicles that don’t belong.
My father was building a case.
I frown at the organized mess of information. It’s not finished, and the pieces don’t quite connect, but there’s enough to point at something ugly hiding underneath it all.
And then he died.
Sheriff Garrett was right to launch an inquest. In light of all this, I no longer believe it was an accident.
But the only person who’d have answers is gone.
Unless Cole Turner is in on all this too.
I spread the documents across the desk, hands trembling. The question is: what do I do with all this information?
Do I tell Jake? Give him more ammunition? More reason to do something he can't take back? That might get him taken away from me again?
I wince.
Or do I keep this to myself? Keep it quiet for now, protect him by handling this without him if I need to?
I close the folder, the pages fluttering in my shaky hands. I don't know what to do.
But I know one thing for certain: Everything just changed.