Chapter 2
Kade
The folder sits on the passenger seat like a dead thing. I’ve been staring at it for the better part of five minutes, parked in the lot of The Rusty Nail with the engine idling and the heater pushing stale air into my face.
It’s just paper. Research. Names, dates, financials, the kind of shit Roman collects on everybody who breathes in this county.
I’ve done dozens of these drop-offs. Surveillance on a rival rancher, dirt on a county official, leverage on whoever needs leveraging.
It’s what I do. What I’m good at, if I’m good at anything.
“You’re a delivery boy, Kade. That’s all you’ll ever be.”
Thanks a fucking lot, Dad.
I kill the engine and grab the folder. The half-full parking lot contains mostly trucks caked in the same red mud that coats mine.
An evening at the bar filled with regulars and ranch hands looking to wash the taste of work out of their mouths won’t draw attention.
All they want is a cold drink. Nobody will give a shit about two Bishops sharing a booth in the back.
The cold hits me the second I step out. It’s the kind that crawls inside your coat and settles in your bones, the kind that makes you wonder why anybody chooses to live in this fucking state.
I duck my chin and cross the lot, boots crunching on frozen gravel.
I tug the door to the bar open and nearly sigh.
Inside, the warmth is thick with the smell of spilled beer.
Not going to lie, I’ve smelled worse in my life.
I scan the room, mostly out of habit. It’s best to know if you’ll be sharing space with an enemy.
A couple of ranch hands from the McKinnon place are already three sheets to the wind.
Old Dale is in his usual corner, nursing a whiskey like it owes him money.
There ain’t nobody worth worryin’ about in here.
I spot Sawyer across the room, sitting in a booth. My brother has never been late for anything in his life, which is just one more way he makes the rest of us look like shit without even trying. He’s in the last booth, the one tucked against the back wall where the jukebox drowns out conversation.
His jacket hangs neatly on the hook beside him, his white button-down crisp enough that it could’ve come out of the packaging five seconds ago.
A glass of something amber sits in front of him, and he’s scrolling through his phone so focused I want to punch him just to see what he’d do.
The Bishop family attorney, ladies and gentlemen.
The legitimate face of the Bishop operation.
Where the rest of us have calloused hands and rap sheets.
Well, we would if we didn’t own the law around here.
Sawyer has a law degree and cuff links. Roman likes to parade him around as proof our family isn’t all blood and dirt even though we both know Sawyer’s hands aren’t as clean as his shirts.
He finally looks up from his phone when I slide into the booth across from him. “You’re late.”
With a shrug, I strip off my coat, leaving it in a heap on the bench next to me. “Traffic.”
He gives me a look. There’s no traffic between the ranch and town. There’s barely a road. “You were sitting in the parking lot again, weren’t you?”
I didn’t come here to be psychoanalyzed. Instead of answering him, I drop the folder on the table between us, next to the drink he’s already ordered for me.
Whiskey, neat. At least he knows that much.
“Lowry,” I say, tapping the file. “Everything Roman asked for is in here.”
Sawyer pulls it toward him and carefully flips it open. Whatever he was looking at on his phone is old news. I watch as his eyes scan the first page while I grab the glass of whiskey and take a swig. The liquid burns a path of fire down my throat before settling in my belly.
“Jackson Lowry,” he reads, half to himself. “Twenty-six. Son of Joseph Lowry, who runs the Lowry cattle operation out of—”
“I know who he is. I don’t need a fucking recap.”
Sawyer’s cool gaze flicks up to me, appraising. He’s three years my junior, but sometimes it feels like he’s older than me.
“Then you know this is bigger than one rancher’s kid.”
“I know what’s in the report. I put it together.”
He nods, conceding that much, and turns his attention back to the pages. I watch him read because I don’t have anything better to do, and because it keeps me from thinking about why this particular job has been sitting in my gut like a boulder for the past two weeks.
“Joseph Lowry has been acquiring land along the southern border of Bishop territory for the past eighteen months,” Sawyer summarizes, turning a page. “Quietly. Shell companies, third-party buyers. He’s also invested heavily in the McCray ranch—”
“Which puts him on three sides of our eastern pasture.”
“Right.” Sawyer nods and takes a controlled sip of his drink. Everything he does is meticulous. Even the way he sets the glass down, perfectly centered on its ring of condensation. “And now he’s making a play for the Porter ranch through his son.”
There it is. The rock in my gut shifts, grinding against something raw.
“An engagement,” Sawyer continues, watching me now instead of the folder. “Jackson Lowry and Allison Porter. Roman thinks it’s a strategic merger. Lowry gets Porter’s water rights and the last piece he needs to box us in from the south.”
I raise the glass to my lips and take a gulp of whiskey this time.
“You okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Sawyer doesn’t push. That’s one thing I’ll give him. He knows where the lines are, even if he also knows what’s behind them. Maybe because he knows.
His attention drifts back to the paperwork like he’s doing me a favor.
Allison Porter. Like I needed to hear her full name read from a file, like she’s just another asset on a spreadsheet. I mean, she should be after the way she ripped me apart.
“The engagement hasn’t been announced yet.” I keep my voice flat. “The ring is new. She’s been wearing it around town since she got back from school, but there’s been no formal announcement. It seems legit to me, but what the fuck do I know?”
“How do you know she’s wearing it?”
Because I fucking watched her play with it in line at the coffee shop, and I had to stop myself from taking it and throwing it in the fucking trash. “I have eyes.”
Sawyer studies me for a beat too long. “Roman wants us to monitor the situation. If Lowry consolidates the Porter land with his own holdings, we lose negotiating power on water access, and the county board shifts against us.”
Did he not hear me when I told him I put this together?
“I read the brief, Sawyer. I wrote half of it.”
“I understand that. What I don’t understand is why you aren’t having a bigger reaction to the information inside.” He leans back, folding his arms across his chest. Even the way he crosses his arms looks deliberate, like he practiced it in a mirror.
“What do you want me to do? Go in guns blazing?”
Sawyer doesn’t even blink. “No. I’m just surprised. You’re usually very impulsive. I thought you’d have made some moves by now.”
Normally, I would’ve, but Allie’s involved, and I don’t know how to deal with it.
“Trying something new.” I shrug.
Sawyer lifts an eyebrow as if to say he doesn’t believe me. “Dad doesn’t want to move on the Porters directly. Not yet. He wants leverage. Dirt on Jackson, dirt on Joseph, anything that gives us a seat at the table when the deal goes through.”
“If it goes through.”
“You don’t think it will?”
I stare at the whiskey in my glass. The Lowrys are rich, connected, and expanding.
The Porters are drowning. Emma’s been hemorrhaging money for years—the ranch is bleeding out slowly, the way an animal that’s been shot does, and the person to do it doesn’t have the decency to finish the job.
She’s too proud to ask for help and too stubborn to sell.
A marriage alliance with the Lowrys is probably the only play she has left.
“I think Emma Porter is desperate,” I say. “And desperate people make deals they wouldn’t normally make.”
Sawyer nods slowly. “Which means Allie doesn’t have much of a choice in this.”
My fingers tighten around the glass. Allie never puts herself in a situation where she doesn’t have a choice.
He noticed. Of course he did. Sawyer doesn’t miss shit. “This is business, Kade.”
“I know what it is.”
“Do you?” He leans forward, elbows on the table, voice dropping beneath the jukebox. “Because if you still have something going on with that Porter girl, you need to lock it down now. Whatever it was, it’s not worth facing Roman’s wrath for.”
What it was. Like it was nothing. Like she was nothing. Like the months I spent sneaking onto that ranch, meeting her in the dark, learning the shape of her laugh and the way she tasted and the way she looked at me like I was something worth looking at—
“There’s nothing to separate,” I tell him, and the lie tastes worse than the whiskey. “She made her choice.”
Sawyer frowns but doesn’t say anything further about our relationship.
He pulls out a page near the back of the folder, and I try to stop my body from reacting violently. I know what’s on that paper, and it makes me sick.
“Jackson’s got a history. Two assault complaints from women in Salt Lake City, both dropped before they went anywhere. And a DUI that his father made disappear. Wonder how that happened?”
“When you’ve got a rich daddy, anything is possible.” We know that for a fact.
Sawyer sets the page down. “Exactly. They’ve got money and people to make problems go away. We need to find out who those people are.”
All I do is nod. I tried not to think about Allie as I compiled the information for Sawyer, but I couldn't help it. All I can see in my mind is her bruised and swollen face. She’s going to marry a man who has a history of beating women, and there isn’t a fucking thing I can do to stop her.
I have to remind myself that it isn’t my problem.
She isn’t my problem. She’s made her bed.
And she can lie in it with whatever monster she chose over me.
But even as I think it, I know it isn’t true.
I can’t throw her to the wolves. A sudden throbbing in my hand pulls me from my rampant thoughts, and I realize I’m gripping the glass so hard it’s cracked. Fuck.
Sawyer closes the file. “Get me whatever info you can on who they might be paying under the table—lawyers, cops, judges, anything.”
“Got it,” I murmur.
For a second, he just sits there, looking at me with something that resembles concern but could be calculation, too. With Sawyer, it’s hard to tell the difference.
“You know,” he says, swirling his drink, “Roman keeps us on a tight leash because it’s how he maintains control. Loyalty through obligation. Blood as a chain, not a bond.” He shrugs, like this is a casual observation and not a knife slipped between my ribs. “It doesn’t have to be that way forever.”
I snort. “You planning a revolt?”
“I’m saying the leash only works if you keep wearing it.”
“That’s real inspiring, counselor. You should put that on a coffee mug.”
He almost smiles. Almost. “I’m just saying—the things we do because we’re told to and the things we do because we choose to are different.
Roman doesn’t see the difference. That doesn’t mean we can’t.
Look at Calder. He’s doing what he has to do to keep what he wants, even if Roman doesn’t like it. ”
Calder. Fucking Calder. I don’t want to discuss the secrets we’re keeping from Roman for our oldest brother, because when the truth comes to light and shit hits the fan, I’ll be the one who suffers the worst. I always am.
I drain my drink and set it down hard enough for it to ring against the table. “Are we done?”
“We’re done.”
I slide out of the booth and pull on my jacket, zipping it against the cold I can already feel pressing into my bones. Sawyer stays seated, thumbing through the folder again, probably memorizing every detail because that’s what he does.
Files things away. Builds cases. Waits until he has something he can use against you. I’m walking away, but I stop when he calls my name. “Kade, be careful.”
I don’t know if he means with the Lowry job, or with Allie, or with the ticking bomb that is my relationship with our father. Maybe all three. Doesn’t really matter. A warning to be careful won’t change whatever will happen. A bomb is still a bomb, no matter how you try to defuse it.
“Always am,” I lie, then push through the door and out into the cold.
The night air hits me hard, waking my senses.
I stand there for a second, breath fogging in front of me, staring at the mountains cutting black shapes against the sky.
Somewhere on the other side of those ridgelines, Allie wears another man’s ring and pretends it doesn’t feel like a shackle.
I wish I could change it, but I can’t. That ship has sailed, along with my heart.
I trek across the parking lot to my truck, but something makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
I pause immediately, scanning the vehicles.
The parking lot has filled in more since I sat down with Sawyer.
Nothing seems to stick out, but I can’t shake the tingling at the back of my neck.
Then I see it. I spot a familiar car parked across the lot, and the sight of it makes the air in my lungs deflate.
Allie.