Chapter 17 Reid
I sat on the porch for a minute before I went in.
The night was full of insects and wind through the threes and a distant coyote working its way along the creek bed.
My wolf still had a bead on her, same as it had since she rode away at the cattle guard that afternoon.
That had been six hours ago. I’d told myself I was aware of her location the way I was aware of any variable on the land.
That explanation had stopped holding water around the third time I’d woken before dawn with my attention already fixed in the direction of Coleman Ranch, and it was well past gone now.
She wasn't a wolf. None of the old stories had worked out a clean answer for that.
I got out of the truck and went inside.
Calder always kept the lights low after dinner, a habit from childhood. His parents had done the same. He was at the big oak table, elbow propped as he looked at his phone. His hair was wet from a shower, but he was already back in boots and jeans, the workday never fully behind him.
He didn't move or say my name. He closed the phone and set it on the table, giving me his full attention. I stood there and for once I didn't try to line up the words before I spoke. This late, with the house quiet, there was no hiding anything from him.
“She’s a PI,” I said.
He didn’t blink. “We figured it was something like that.”
“Not for the Colemans. Not for any of the local players. The Beaumonts still own the Coleman land.”
His eyebrows went up at that revelation. No doubt he hadn’t realized that either.
“The Beaumonts hired her to dig into some suspicious activity the real oil company noticed.”
He processed that for a long second. “You think she’s on us?”
“Yeah.” I chuckled. “About that…” I told him about the footage, the shift that night, the way she’d sat on it instead of turning it over.
I told him about the drone, about the evidence.
I left out what happened between us at the line shack because it wasn’t relevant to the job.
But I felt the heat of it in my neck anyway.
Calder sat back, arms folded. He stared at the edge of the table, jaw working the way it did when he was running something through that he didn’t like, then looked up. “What do you want to do?” he said.
He didn’t ask what we should do. He didn’t ask whether she was a risk or whether he should trust her. He asked what I wanted.
I didn’t have to think. “I want to help her finish this. I want to get the Colemans off the land for good. And I want her safe. That’s it.”
He held my gaze for a beat. “You sure?”
“Yeah, I am, very.”
Calder nodded. That was the Maddox version of a handshake. Once given, it didn’t come back. He said, “Then that’s what we do.”
He didn’t say it like a blessing or a command, just a fact, the only one that mattered in that room. That’s what we’d do.