Chapter 15 #2
The last time I’d been back here, that door had been shut. I couldn’t pin it to a specific date, but I was certain enough that the difference registered.
I pushed the door open the rest of the way. The hinges complained but moved.
Inside was a dirt floor, old shelving along one wall, a rusted implement shoved into the far corner. Maybe fifteen by twenty feet. Equipment that used to sit against the back wall had been pushed to one side, clearing a rough circle of floor space in the center.
And in that…five or six beer cans, mostly Coors, crushed and tossed toward the far wall. Three cigarette butts ground into the dirt near the door.
The dust on the shelving was undisturbed. Nobody had touched the old tools. All the activity was on the floor, the kind of cleared circle you’d make if you wanted somewhere to sit and drink without being seen.
Tova appeared at the threshold anyway, sniffed once, and lost interest. She wandered back toward a patch of sun near the fence.
“Yeah,” I told her. “What the hell do you think this is all about?”
I stepped back outside and walked around the shed. Behind it, hidden from the main property by the pines, the grass was worn in a rough patch. Tire tracks in the soft ground, partially filled by rain but visible.
I stood there and turned it over. Could this be the drug runners Beckett had mentioned? Entirely possible.
Also entirely possible? Kids.
I’d grown up in small-town Wyoming. More than once when I was seventeen, my buddies and I had found an empty building on someone’s back forty and used it as a place to drink where nobody would catch us.
So, beer cans and an old shed on a rural property with back road access? Definitely could have been teenagers getting into teenager-type shenanigans.
But the cut fence from a few days ago wouldn’t let me land there. Kids climbed fences. They went over gates or squeezed through the wire or walked around. They didn’t bring cutters and make clean cuts in a boundary fence.
And Beckett’s briefing from a few days ago sat right behind it. The operation used remote rural properties. Back road access. The edges of land where the owners weren’t watching.
This was Lark’s land. Forty acres she’d built from nothing with money she didn’t have enough of, on a property she was three months behind on, in a life she’d chosen after walking away from one that had nearly destroyed her.
Every fence post on this boundary was hers. Every board on that shed was hers.
And someone had been out here without her knowing.
If it was kids, okay. But if it wasn’t…
Fuck. I couldn’t take the chance.
I left the shed the way I’d found it. Door cracked, nothing disturbed. I walked back to the truck with Tova at my heels, dropped her at the barn, and drove over to Resting Warrior Ranch. I didn’t want to worry Lark until I had as much information as possible.
The Warrior Security office occupied a converted outbuilding on the north side of the ranch property. Only around a ten-minute drive from Pawsitive. I hadn’t been back since I’d left.
Hunter was at the planning table with a county map spread in front of him and photographs weighted at the corners. He looked up when I came in. His focus shifted to me and settled, immediate and complete, and I felt the weight of it land.
“Logan.” He didn’t stand. Didn’t need to. “Is it my lucky day and you’re here to work with us again?”
“Maybe. But not in the way you think. That drug operation you and Beckett told me about last week. Beckett mentioned it again a couple days ago.”
“Yeah. It’s very definitely still a pain in our ass. We’re working with the sheriff.”
“I’ve been noticing some things at Pawsitive, and I want to run them past you.”
He leaned forward. Elbows on the table, full attention. “Talk to me.”
I sat across from him and laid it out in order.
“A few weeks ago, I was walking the property at night. Found fresh tire tracks on the back access road. Two sets, heavy, coming in from the county route. They stopped about thirty yards onto the property and turned around. Same night, a gate I’d latched was open.”
Hunter’s eyes stayed on my face, taking in each piece.
“About a week later, I was fixing a fence on the back boundary with Lark. Found a section of wire cut clean. Not broken, not sagged. Cut with a tool. Fresh tracks on the other side.”
“Where on the boundary?”
“South fence, near where the access road cuts in from the county route.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.” Hunter shook his head. “What else?”
“Today, I checked the old equipment shed on the back corner of the property, the one screened by the pines. Someone’s been using it. Beer cans, cigarette butts, floor space cleared out. Tire tracks behind the building where you could park out of sight.”
He was quiet for a few seconds. His fingers pressed flat against the table, the only movement in his body. “Beer cans don’t match the MO of our assholes. This sounds like kids.”
“That’s what I thought. Rural property, empty building, nobody watching. I certainly got into my share of trouble in spots like that as a teen.”
“But?”
“Kids don’t cut fences with wire cutters. Even if they were the ones in that shed, I think whoever was messing with the fence was someone else with uglier purposes in mind.”
His jaw tightened. “Where does the access road that runs along the back boundary connect?”
“County route, half a mile south. You can get onto the property from the back without ever coming near the barn or the house. The shed, the fence line where I found the cut, the tire tracks—they’re all accessible from that road.”
“And Lark doesn’t patrol back there?”
“She barely has time to keep the main operation running. The back forty might as well be another property.”
He glanced at the county map already spread between us. His finger traced the line I recognized as the route running past Pawsitive’s southern boundary.
“Beckett told you more about the operation we’ve been tracking?”
I nodded. “Yeah. That they’re moving product through rural properties. Back roads, remote structures.”
“Here’s what he might not have told you.
” Hunter looked up from the map. “Lachlan got intel last week that they’re looking to set up a new staging point.
They’ve burned through a couple of locations.
Used them for a few weeks, cleared out before anyone caught on.
Those spots are getting hot. They need somewhere fresh. ”
“And Pawsitive fits the profile.”
“Big acreage. Remote structure with road access. Owner who’s too stretched to patrol her far boundary.” He paused. “Yeah. It fits.”
The office was quiet. Monitors hummed on a side table.
“I’m going to keep a more alert eye out. Especially around that area where the fence was cut.”
He nodded. “What does Lark think about all this?”
“Honestly, I haven’t mentioned it to her.
She’s got a shit-ton on her plate right now.
” I wanted to explain her financial problems because I knew Hunter would be the first to rally the troops to help her.
But that wasn’t my decision to make, and if she didn’t want anyone to know what was going on, I would respect it.
“And until we’re more sure, I’d like to shoulder this for her. ”
“I respect it, but if you see escalation, you call us or the sheriff right away. Activity. People on the property. Vehicles moving.” His eyes found mine, sharp and direct. “You see that, you call me. Day or night.”
The office was quiet for a beat, then I stood and extended my hand.
“Will do. This place means everything to Lark. I’m not going to let anything happen to it.”
His grip was firm, and he held it for a beat before letting go. “Glad you’re out there.”
“I am too.” There was nowhere else I’d rather be.