Chapter Nine
He didn’t move. Just watched the farmhouse.
Didn’t like how last night went.
Didn’t like the look in her eyes when he’d kissed her—panic where there used to be trust.
Didn’t like the way he’d turned apology into command, like muscle memory didn’t know the difference.
He’d promised himself he’d never use that tone on her again.
And then he had.
He rubbed a hand over his face, jaw locked tight.
Control was supposed to be his thing. The only thing that still worked.
But with her—Christ, with her—he lost it every damn time.
And Lainey’s words wouldn’t quit crawling around his head. Girl don’t even know half of what she’s standin’ on.
Wooldridge saying he was being watched. Land deals. Backroom handshakes. Pills. The word ridge. Her name tangled in the middle of it.
The thoughts lined up like rounds in a mag—money, councilmen, church families, dirty contracts.
A whole operation buried under Sunday smiles.
And Amara, building that house out there like plywood could stop what’s coming.
Good men dead. Smart women left holding the bag.
Same story. Different county.
The alarm hit slow and cold. Resolve met it, hotter.
Make a plan. Secure the perimeter. Find the weak points. Keep her breathing. That was the job now. Whether she wanted him here or not.
He took a pull from the thermos. Coffee was cold. Bitter. Perfect.
The sun cut the horizon like a blade, bleeding gold through the soy. The porch light still burned—small and stubborn—like it had fought all night and lost.
He stared at it too long, jaw ticking.
She’d call it interference. He’d call it protection. Truth was, he didn’t know the damn difference anymore.
The door opened.
Mama James stepped out with that same carriage he remembered from a decade ago—chin high, shoulders back even when the world leaned.
Georgianna. Fifty-something and still beautiful in a way that didn’t ask permission, raven waves pinned half-up, eyes bright, skin with that warm, sunlit undertone the camera never catches right.
The robe was tied neat—the smile that spread when she saw him wasn’t.
“Ethan?” she called, voice catching on a laugh. “Lord above—Ethan Kane?”
He was out of the truck before he thought about it, hat in his hand like muscle memory. “Mornin’, ma’am.”
She crossed the porch steps quick, bare feet sure, and wrapped him up before he could protest—fierce, mother-strong, exactly the way she used to hug him when she sent leftovers home in foil.
He stood there and took it, a tall, armed, sleepless man who suddenly had nowhere to put his hands but her shoulders.
“Look at you,” she said, holding him at arm’s length, giving him the inventory a mama gives a son who swore he’d write and didn’t. “All beard and trouble. You eating? You sleeping? ’Course not, look at those eyes.”
He felt something tight give in his chest. “Doing fine.”
“Liar.” She grinned bigger. “You here for the Wooldridge funeral?”
“Was,” he said. “And some work.”
Her gaze sharpened the way Amara’s did when she smelled a lie. “Work, huh.” She glanced past him at the fields, then up the road toward the ridge. “Well, I’m glad to see you all the same.” A beat. Softer, “Been too long.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She tipped her head, studying him. “You come inside, get some real coffee. I got pecan bread in the tin. Ain’t much, but it’s warm.”
He hesitated, eyes sliding to the upstairs window he knew was hers. Curtain still, but he felt her like weather. “Appreciate it. I should—” He caught himself before keep watch came out. “—check a couple things first.”
Georgianna followed his look, and something flickered—knowing and kind both. “She’s stubborn,” she said, not whispering, not apologizing. “You and that girl could wear the same mule out in a day with all that pride between you.”
“Comes by it honest,” he said.
“She does.” The smile dimmed, didn’t die. “You mind the barn roof if you’re walkin’ the place? Tin’s slappin’ again. She’ll climb up there herself if I don’t beat her to it.”
“I’ll look.”
They stood in the soft, new light, the old road waking around them. He heard what didn’t get said, I trusted you once. I still do. He heard what couldn’t be said, Don’t break my girl.
He tipped his hat back on. “I’ll take that coffee after I circle the outbuildings.”
“Door’s open,” she said. She leaned in and squeezed his forearm like a quiet blessing. “It’s good you’re here, Ethan.”
He watched her cross the yard, robe catching sun, that familiar gait cutting through the years. Then he moved—boot prints neat along the gravel, eyes on corners.
Behind the barn he took a leak, quick and private, steam lifting in the cool.
Human first, Marine second. He zipped, rinsed his hands at the spigot, splashed his face until the night ran off him in cold rivulets.
From his pocket he pulled a beat-up travel brush and a nub of paste.
The pump handle squealed, water arced, and he scrubbed his teeth until mint cut the diesel grit and gunmetal out of his mouth.
He spat into the grass, wiped with the back of his wrist, and felt almost civilized. Mint and morning. Ready.
He checked latches, peeked the loft, clocked the new padlock on the feed shed and the way the dew bent around fresh tire marks that shouldn’t be there. The alarm inside him settled into something harder, cleaner.
He didn’t like how last night had ended. He didn’t like the names in his phone or the tidy way the bodies were stacking. He sure as hell didn’t like that Amara’s dream sat on ground somebody might be willing to poison.
So he’d do it the way he knew—boots on gravel, eyes on corners, questions nobody wanted asked. If she hated him for it, fine. Better hate than a headstone.
He checked the magazine, holstered, and started walking the place like a perimeter—slow, quiet, eyes down.
South fence first. Fresh scuff where the chain met the post—no bolt cutters, but somebody had worried at it.
Two sets of tires in the ditch—one light truck, one heavy with wide lugs.
New pink flags stuttered by the culvert, PVC stakes Sharpied with numbers that didn’t look county.
He thumbed one, felt the wrongness settle in his gut.
At the barn’s north wall he hit the squeaky yard hydrant, rinsed dirt from his hands, listened. Distant road noise, a hawk, nothing else. He bled the pump line at the cinderblock house by the kitchen garden, the pitch evening a hair. It would hold until it didn’t.
Sometime around midday, footsteps crunched behind him. Two shadows resolved by the side gate—Cord McCoy and Sadler Barnes, each with a fence stretcher and a salt block, hats pushed back, faces too young for the set in their mouths.
“Kane?” Cord asked, halfway between greeting and question.
“Mornin’, gents,” he said. “You two headed south line?”
They traded a look. Sadler nodded. “Yes, sir. Ma’am—Miss G—asked us to check the corner. We, uh…found something this morning.”
“What kind of something?”
Sadler dug in his pocket and came up with a snack-sized baggie, cloudy from riding with change. Inside were three spent casings, a dull brass kissing of light. He held it like it might bite.
“Picked ’em up by the cedar,” Sadler said. “Didn’t wanna leave ’em where cows could get to ’em.”
Ethan tipped one into his palm. Shorter than .223, not .22. Clean mouths, no dings. The stamp was rubbed but legible enough. He didn’t say it out loud.
Cord shifted his weight. “We ain’t lookin’ to make noise. Just—Mr. James always said pick up what don’t belong. We done that. Took some flags down, too, a few days ago…but more were back this morning.”
“You put the flags back where you found them?” Ethan asked.
“No, sir,” Cord said. “We tossed ’em over the fence. Figured if county wanted ’em, they’d come ask Miss G. These had…numbers. Not county numbers.”
Ethan slid the casings back into the bag and zipped it. “You see anyone?”
“No one,” Sadler said.
His tone stayed flat, but his eyes told the rest—head down, do the work, don’t borrow trouble—but worry had its foot in the door.
Ethan studied them the way he studied maps. Cord’s shirt was dark with sweat along the spine, Sadler’s hands were nicked from staples and wire. Boys. Good ones. The kind a decent man took care of.
“How long you been on for the James place?” he asked.
“Couple summers,” Cord said. “Mr. James…he was good to us.” He swallowed. “Drove me to get my GED test when Mama’s car wouldn’t start. Paid us cash when my hours got cut at the co-op.”
“Taught me to splice wire proper,” Sadler added. He tried to smile and missed. “Said I was all thumbs ’til I wasn’t.”
Ethan felt something shift under his ribs, a familiar ache he’d learned to keep quiet.
Come have dinner with us, a man had said once.
Sit, eat, stay. He saw Sergeant James’ hand clap his shoulder again in memory, and for a second Cord and Sadler blurred into the him he’d been—twenty-seven, bone-tired, directionless—until a good man had handed him a place at the table.
“Miss G want to tell the sheriff about the brass?” Ethan asked.
They both shook their heads without quite meeting his eye.
“No,” Cord said. “And we don’t wanna bring heat she didn’t ask for. Folks talk. We just…we want to do right.”
“Right don’t always mean loud,” Ethan said.
He held up the baggie. “This stays with me. If you find more, don’t touch—photo it with a boot or a knife for scale, then call me.
Don’t walk the south line alone anymore.
Pair up. No earbuds. Radios, if you got ’em.
If something feels wrong, it is. You step back, you call. ”
Sadler nodded, relief and worry tripping over each other. “Yes, sir.”
“And if anyone shows with a clipboard or a badge you don’t recognize,” Ethan added, “you ask for names and cards. You don’t let ’em past the gate, and you don’t sign a damn thing. Miss G or me stands there when they talk.”
Cord’s jaw worked. “You think this is…big?”