2. Kaycee
KAYCEE
By nine the next morning, I'd verified three things about Travis Cole. He paid his bills on time, his cattle sales matched the deposits into his ranch account, and I'd thought about his smile more times than I’d ever admit. Only two of those things belonged in my notes.
The committee hadn't brought me in because of Travis.
The audit had already been necessary after problems surfaced in the rodeo's livestock paperwork, vendor payments, and ownership records.
The five thousand dollars in Travis's account was only one of several transactions that needed an explanation, although it had the unfortunate distinction of pointing directly at a man half the town already expected to be guilty.
I pushed my glasses higher on my nose and looked over the Kincaid lease again. The rodeo office was quieter than it had been yesterday, but not by much. Somebody was dragging folding tables across the gravel outside, and the little window air conditioner sounded like it might give out before lunch.
The current lease was straightforward: a hundred and sixty acres, payments current, the legal description matching the county records Morgan from City Hall had sent me. Not a single addendum in the file. There also wasn't a Parcel 17-B.
I checked again because staring at a document until it confessed was a large part of forensic accounting. Still nothing.
The old Cedar Draw records used the parcel number. The modern lease didn't. Morgan had already confirmed the older description fell somewhere inside the land Travis currently leased, but nobody knew why someone had resurrected it for a five-thousand-dollar transfer three weeks ago.
That was the part that was bothering me. Travis claimed he didn't know anything about the transfer or the old parcel number, and so far, his paperwork agreed with him.
I picked up my phone.
He answered on the third ring. “Harper.”
Apparently, hello was optional for him. “Cole.”
“Are you calling to tell me where my five grand came from?”
“No.”
He let out a huff. “That's disappointing.”
“You've known me less than twenty-four hours. You shouldn't have expectations yet.”
His laugh came through the phone, low enough to remind me why I'd been thinking about his smile in the first place. “I've got all kinds of expectations.”
I picked up my pen, mostly so my hand had something useful to do. “I need to see your ranch records.”
“That didn't take long.”
I frowned. “What didn't?”
“You coming up with a reason to see me again.”
Heat crept up my neck, which was ridiculous. I'd spent years sitting across from people who'd lied about hidden accounts and missing money. One rancher with an overdeveloped sense of confidence wasn't going to throw me off.
“I need your original Kincaid lease, the bills of sale for the cattle you sold Roy Pritchard, and anything else tied to those transactions. I also need to see the leased acreage.”
The teasing dropped out of his voice. “Why?”
“The current records don't use Parcel 17-B. I want to know what that land is now.”
He paused. “All right.”
“I can be there in an hour.”
“I'll be here.”
“Try to contain your excitement.”
“Can't make any promises.”
I hung up before he could say anything else, then checked my reflection in the dark computer screen before I gathered my files. Shouldn’t matter what I looked like. I had to see Travis for work, that was all.
The Cole ranch was about a twenty-five-minute drive outside Mustang Mountain. More than enough time to collect my thoughts before I saw him again.
I passed the Mercantile and the old water tower, then followed the highway until the mountains took up more of the sky. Late-August grass stretched gold along the ditches, and cattle dotted pastures behind fences patched in three different shades of wood.
Finally, I turned to go underneath a metal arch with the Cole brand in the center and followed the gravel drive toward a house, several barns, and the outdoor corrals.
Nothing about the ranch felt staged, and I liked it better that way.
A stock trailer had a dent along the side, a tractor sat next to a stack of round bales, and a couple of horses stood with their heads over the rail like they had nothing better to do.
It looked like a place where people actually worked.
Travis wasn't waiting for me. I found him at the corrals, moving cattle with another man I didn't recognize.
I watched the two of them through the windshield for a moment. A black steer balked at the gate, and the ranch hand took a quick step toward it. The steer turned sideways, kicking up dust.
“Give him room,” Travis called out. He didn't sound irritated. He just backed off and waited until the steer settled on its own.
So the cowboy wasn't all talk.
I already knew Travis was attractive. I had eyes, and our initial meeting at the office yesterday had made that difficult to miss. But watching him work added a new layer. He wasn't loud or showy. He didn't muscle the cattle around or bark orders just because he could.
He paid attention. Competence was always attractive. Competence in worn jeans and a T-shirt damp between the shoulder blades was sparking heat deep in my belly.
Travis latched the gate and finally looked my way. His gaze landed on me immediately. Then he smiled.
Dammit, I’d been caught looking. I got out before he could enjoy that too much.
He said something to the other man and crossed the yard, dust on his boots and one forearm streaked with dirt.
“Have you been here very long?” he asked.
“Long enough to consider billing you for lost productivity.”
“Looked more like you were busy watching me.”
Before I started blushing like a schoolgirl with a crush, I held up my folder. “Records.”
He laughed and turned toward the barn. “This way.”
A bay horse stretched its nose over the fence as we passed, and I stopped to say hi. Travis caught my elbow before it could get to the papers under my arm.
“That's Bandit. He eats anything he can, including financial documents.”
“Why? That doesn't even make sense.”
“Maybe not. But I got you smiling.”
I immediately stopped. But that only made him smile harder.
I was starting to understand why half the town wanted to strangle him and the other half had dated him. There was probably considerable overlap between the two.
His ranch office took up one end of the barn. Travis opened the door, and I stepped inside, expecting at least some version of the chaos everyone seemed to attach to his name.
Instead, a filing cabinet stood against one wall with handwritten labels on every drawer, and the wall calendar had feed deliveries and vet appointments written across it in neat block letters.
I looked around.
“What?” Travis asked.
“Nothing.”
“That was an accountant's nothing. The kind where you silently judge me.”
Shaking my head, I denied it. “I don't silently judge people.”
“Bullshit. You expected a beer box.”
Maybe I had, but I wasn't telling him that.
He leaned against the desk. “Because you listened to people in town.”
Mustang Mountain hadn't handed me a formal dossier on Travis Cole. Nobody needed to. He was trouble when he was younger. Then he drank too much for a while. He’d built the kind of reputation that would take him half a lifetime to shed, especially in a town the size of Mustang Mountain.
Travis opened the filing cabinet.
“Here's the Kincaid lease.” He handed me two folders. “And these are the Pritchard sales.”
I took them and sat down at the desk to review. Looked like the dates matched. So did the headcounts and deposits. All the brand records lined up with what I'd already pulled.
I checked the last page twice before closing the folder. “So far, this supports what you told me yesterday.”
Travis sat across from me, one ankle resting on his opposite knee. “Good.”
Most people wanted reassurance the second the numbers started clearing them. Travis acted like he'd learned not to expect good news until there was no possible way for it to turn bad.
“For what it's worth, I haven't found anything that suggests you knew Roy was altering records afterward. I'm not clearing you from the deposit yet,” I added. “But this part checks out.”
“Thanks.”
Next, I opened the lease. It showed the same acreage on the same terms with no mention of Parcel 17-B. I spread out the old map next to it. “What do you call this section?”
Travis leaned over the desk and looked at where my finger pointed. “That's the north pasture.”
I waited.
He looked at me. “What?”
“That's it?”
“What were you hoping for?”
“I don't know. Something slightly less imaginative than Parcel 17-B, but slightly more imaginative than the north pasture.”
His upper lip twitched as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to commit to a smile. “Would you prefer me to call it Dead Man's Gulch?”
“No.”
“How about Widow's Ridge?”
“Please stop.”
His lips split into a wide grin.
I tapped the map. “Can you show me?”
His gaze dropped to my boots. “If you’re sure you don’t mind getting your boots dirty.”
“I've survived worse than dirt.”
His eyes came back to mine. “I don't doubt it.”
The way he said it made the words feel less like a joke. I picked up the map before I could think too hard about that.
Five minutes later, I buckled my seat belt in the front seat of Travis’s truck. We drove out past a calving field and a stretch of fence he said needed to be fixed before winter, while the mountains rose in the distance.
“So how does somebody decide to become a forensic accountant?” he asked.
“I’ve always liked puzzles. Now I get to figure them out and get paid for it.
” It was probably part of why the job suited me so well.
I could drop into someone else's mess, sort through the pieces until they made sense, then hand over the answer and move on.
There was something satisfying about problems with clear endings.
“So what do you do when you're not chasing suspicious money?”
“I have a perfectly normal, perfectly boring life in Bozeman.” And I'd always liked it that way.
My apartment was mine, my schedule was flexible, and there was nobody waiting for me to explain why a job had run long or why I'd decided to spend three weeks somewhere else. Work gave me enough complications.
“Have you got a boyfriend?”
My heart skipped a beat. Why did he want to know? “What is this, twenty questions?”
“Just making conversation.”
Conversation, right. “No boyfriend.”
“Good.”
I looked over at him and bit back a laugh. “Good?”
“I don't want him getting jealous when you come watch me rodeo on Saturday.”
“You compete?”
He looked genuinely offended. “You really didn't do your research.”
“I investigated your finances. Your hobbies weren't relevant.”
“Steer wrestling isn't a hobby.”
“Clearly, I touched a nerve.”
“I'm entered Labor Day weekend. You should come.”
The committee had already asked me to stay through the holiday so I could finish reviewing payments. That made it easy to say yes. “I'll be there.”
“Working doesn't count.”
“Why not?”
He glanced over at me. “Because I’m asking if you’ll watch me.”
I fought back a smile. “Depends on who’s asking.”
“Me.” His mouth tipped at one corner.
He turned down a barely visible trail before I had to answer that. We stopped next to a pasture. Cattle grazed near a stock tank. A narrow creek ran along one edge beneath the cottonwoods.
“This is it.”
“This is Parcel 17-B?” I asked.
“According to your map.” He killed the engine. “To me, it's just the north pasture.”
We climbed out and walked along the fence line. He was right about my boots getting dirty. Thanks to the rain the night before, the pasture was more mud than grass. I was looking at the map instead of where I was stepping, and my boot slid out from under me.
Travis caught my hand. The quick pull brought me close enough that my other palm landed against his chest. For a second, neither of us moved.
His hand stayed wrapped around mine, rough and warm. My fingers rested against the cotton of his T-shirt, and I could feel his body heat underneath it.
“You okay?” His voice dropped a few notches.
“Yeah.” I should have stepped back. Instead, I looked up.
The teasing had disappeared from his face, and whatever was left in its place didn't fit on a spreadsheet. His thumb moved once against the side of my hand.
That was enough to bring my common sense rushing back. I stepped away. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
I folded the map and turned toward the fence before he could see how much one stupid touch had affected me. This was work. Swooning over Travis Cole wasn’t part of the job description.
The old parcel designation meant nothing to him, but whoever sent that money had known exactly what to call it. That mattered.
I forced my attention back to the questions I could actually answer.
By the time we returned to the office, I had mostly pulled myself together. I packed the lease and my notes into my bag, keeping my focus on the paperwork instead of the man standing a few feet away.
“I've got what I need for now.”
“Anything bad?” Travis asked.
“Not yet.”
“Yet?”
I slipped the strap over my shoulder. “Your Pritchard sales are clean, your lease matches the county copy, and nothing I saw today suggests you knew about that deposit before it hit your account.”
“I'm still following the money,” I said. “But that's where the evidence stands.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
I started toward the door.
“Careful, Harper.”
I turned. “With what?”
“If you start saying nice things about me people are going to start thinking you like me.”
“I said your paperwork was clean.” Apparently being audited hadn't put a dent in his confidence.
“That’s basically a love letter from an accountant.”
I laughed. “You have very low standards.”
“I've been accused of worse.”
The joke was right there again, easy enough to hide behind if I let him. This time I didn't. “You know your reputation isn't evidence, right?”
His smile faded.
“I know what I said yesterday,” I continued. “I mean it.”
He watched me for a long moment. Then he nodded once. “Thanks for telling me straight.”
“You asked me to follow the evidence.”
“I know.”
“So we’ll see where it leads.” I left before the quiet between us turned into something I wasn't ready to examine.
My phone buzzed as I reached the car.
Travis: Steer wrestling. Saturday. Don't pretend you forgot.
I looked across the yard. Travis stood beside the corral with one arm resting across the top rail. I typed back.
Me: I’m being paid to be there.
Travis: Working doesn’t count. I want you to watch my run.
Me: Why?
Travis: Because I’m good enough to make you forget you’re supposed to be working.
I laughed under my breath. The man had an impressive amount of confidence for someone whose finances I was currently investigating.
Me: Convince me.
Across the yard, Travis pulled out his phone. He read the message, lifted his head, and tipped the brim of his hat toward me instead of answering.
Fine. Saturday, I’d watch. And Travis Cole could prove whether all that confidence was justified.