Chapter 15
Silas deserved a drink to celebrate. He drove through the gates of the Three Eagles Ranch and turned toward town.
Nothing beat the feeling of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat or so they used to say in that Olympics commercial.
That was exactly what he had done earlier that day.
He had snatched himself one giant victory over Mr. “My Shit Don’t Stink” Daniels.
Trace thought his daddy’s money and that fancy vet degree made him untouchable.
Silas had watched him parade around town like he owned the air everyone else breathed.
But that degree hadn’t done him a damn bit of good today.
Word was already crawling through the county that Wild River had lost a bison to brucellosis.
Ha! That was only the beginning. More were dropping.
No fancy college classroom in the country taught a cure for what was coming.
By spring, Trace and his brothers would be selling off carcasses for pennies just to pay the bank.
And all because Rios had contacts with some secret society, an Illuminati-type group that had its fingers in lots of technology-driven pies. The drone they’d sent him made contaminating those two feed bins a piece of cake.
But, hey, Silas was a generous guy. When the payout for erasing Rios’s little redheaded problem finally hit his account…
and it would hit, the second Kip stopped breathing…
he would take a chunk of that money and buy the Wild River Ranch straight out from under Trace Daniels and his family at the forced sale.
He could already see the auctioneer’s gavel falling, hear the stunned silence from the locals when Silas Holt signed the deed.
He could practically smell the fresh sawdust from the new branding on the gate that would read Holt Ranch instead of Wind River. The weight of the keys to the big house, the same keys Trace had carried since he was sixteen, was gonna feel mighty good in Silas’s palm.
The grin that stretched his own mouth inside the dark cab felt strange.
Trace was gonna learn no amount of money or education could stop a man like Silas once the right levers got pulled.
By the time the brucellosis finished its work, Trace would be bankrupt, broken, and begging for a job mucking stalls on the ranch that used to be his.
Yep. Today had been a great day, and the future looked to be even better.
As he searched the radio for a good Willie Nelson song, his phone buzzed on the seat beside him. The screen lit the cab blood-red, something he’d never seen before. Lifting the phone, all it said was “Unknown Caller.”
It was well past six in the evening. What unknown caller would call him at this time of day? Only one way to find out.
He pressed accept and put it on speaker, hoping it wasn’t Rios. The man was as rich as Midas, but he scared the shit out of Silas. He gathered all the confidence he could and greeted, “Um…hello?”
“Silas Holt.” The voice on the other end was low, flat, and carried no accent he could place. Every syllable landed like a boot on gravel. Was it modulated? He’d read about things like that on the internet. “You will listen carefully.”
“Who the hell is this?” Silas swallowed. Maybe a call from Rios wouldn’t have been so bad.
“You will call me Mr. Zeus.” A pause, deliberate. “Mr. Rios is no longer your point of contact. I will be your handler now.”
His handler? What the fuck?
The cab seemed to grow colder even though the heater rattled on full blast. Most of the time, Rios had contacted him via text, but he’d had two video calls. Both times, Rios had smiled with too many teeth and left bruises on Silas’s pride that still ached. Men didn’t get scarier than Rios.
Until now.
Zeus continued, voice unchanged. “Wesley Zhou is at the county jail in Wilder. He was being questioned about an incident he had no business being involved in. He will be leaving Wilder tonight. That is where you come in, Mr. Holt. You will pick Mr. Zhou up from the jail and drive him to the Kooskia Reserve, where we will have a private plane waiting for him. We’ve programmed the address into your phone. Do you understand your instructions?”
Silas’s laugh shattered the silence. Time to grow a pair and show this Zeus guy who he was dealing with.
“I’m a ranch hand, not a damn chauffeur.
I’ve got things to do.” Things like getting drunk while listening to the talk about what happened at the Wild River Ranch today, but this Zeus guy didn’t need to know that.
The call went silent for so long, Silas wondered if Zeus had hung up, but then the man said, “I was told you were working for Mr. Rios.”
“Well, yeah, but I had a deal with him. I don’t know you. My deal with Rios had nothing to do with this Zhou guy. And I haven’t heard you say anything about money. Because this kinda thing wasn’t covered.”
Zeus didn’t hesitate in his response. “Check your account.”
“I know how much money I got.”
“Just do it!”
Silas fumbled the phone, nearly dropping it, and thumbed his banking app with grease-stained fingers. The screen refreshed.
Available balance: $12,847.03
Deposit pending: $100,000.00
His mouth went dry. He’d never had that much money in the bank in his life. “How the hell—”
“How the money got there is not your concern. Your only concern is how you will spend it.” Zeus’s voice dropped another degree.
“You have two hours. If Zhou is not at the address we provided by nine-thirty, the next deposit will go into someone else’s account.
And you will be removed from the equation. Permanently.”
The line went dead.
Silas looked at his phone, then at the balance shining on the screen. One hundred grand. More than he earned in two years kissing old man Clark’s boots. Not enough for a ranch, but enough for a decent house. Enough to disappear.
His mind raced back to the phone call, replaying every word.
Sure, he’d talked big, but the moment Zeus spoke, the cab shrank around him. The man hadn’t raised his voice. Not once. He didn’t fucking need to. The threat sat in the spaces between the words.
What had happened to Rios? Had this Zeus character done something to him? A hundred grand was good, but Rios had promised him an even million if he could show proof the girl, Kip, was dead.
Whoever Zeus was, Silas needed to find out if the deal was still the same. If not, they could hire someone else to clean up the mess they had made. And it had to be a mess because they were paying him a million bucks to fix it.
Then Silas remembered the exact moment his balls had tried to crawl back inside his body. “Removed from the equation.” Not killed. Removed. Like a weed in a garden.
Silas had stared at the pending deposit and felt the hook slide clean through his ribs. How had they accessed his account? He’d checked it the day before, and the money sure as hell hadn’t been there then. He didn’t even want to know how they’d done it.
He blinked the thought away, knuckles now white on the wheel. The call had scared him more than he wanted to admit. Snow packed against the wipers until they groaned. The highway was empty, just blowing white and the occasional reflectors flashing past.
One hundred thousand dollars. And all he had to do was deliver one of Rios’s errand boys. If anything was worth putting off a drink, that was it.
Silas laughed again, a short, ugly sound that echoed through the cab. They were sending him to deal with the errand boy, which meant he wasn’t one.
Damn straight.
He wasn’t anybody’s errand boy. Not anymore. Not ever again. Still, there were questions he needed answered. He had to make sure he wasn’t being set up to take the fall for whatever this Zeus guy had going.
Time to plan.
He would go to the jail and pick up Zhou. After that, the plans Zeus had laid out would change. He would drive Zhou out of Wilder, but not to some private airstrip out at the Kooskia Reserve.
No, he had better plans for Zhou. Zhou was heading to the old line shack up on the western side of the Three Eagles, the one nobody used since the roof collapsed halfway two winters ago.
The other half was still intact, and it had a fireplace so the man could stay warm.
It was isolated, with no cell service, and he wouldn’t have a vehicle. The man would be snowed in until April.
That’s where Silas would find his answers. The prospect of a bigger payday… well, that kind of money could overcome a lot of reservations.
Zhou knew where Rios kept the real money. Silas would lay money on it. The guy knew the routes, the drop points, and the names of the men who paid for protection. And Zhou would talk. Silas would make sure of that. He might even use him to take care of the Harper girl
His lip curled at the thought of her name.
Redheaded little city bitch who had waltzed in and turned Trace Daniels soft.
Because of her, Jack Clark had passed Silas over for foreman, giving the job to that Texan instead.
Because of her, Silas had been stuck cleaning stalls and eating crow every morning.
Kip was the reason he was driving this piece-of-shit truck in the dead of winter with nothing but a duffel bag and a grudge.
He pictured her face when he showed up at the Broken Bridle. What her fear would look like when she realized Hank couldn’t stop what was coming. Best of all, the moment the life left those green eyes. Maybe he would do her himself after all.
After she was gone, Zhou would have an “accident.” It was tragic how easily someone can slip off an icy road into a ravine. His body wouldn’t be found until the spring thaw—maybe never.
One hundred grand was nice, but Rios had promised a million. Dead or alive hadn’t actually been specified, and Silas figured dead was cleaner.
His breath fogged the windshield. He wiped it clear with his coat sleeve.
The plan settled in his mind, sharp and clear.
He smiled into the darkness. Trace Daniels believed he was untouchable behind those big gates and his pack of loyal dogs.
He thought his money and his name kept him safe. Silas flexed his fingers on the wheel.
Trace was about to learn something different. And pretty little Kip, who had messed everything up, would be the first lesson. He hit the gas pedal. The Dodge fishtailed, regained traction, and roared into the storm.
He had a nine-thirty deadline. He had plenty of time.