Chapter 11
SIENNA
The sun was a goddamn hammer today, beating down on the desert like it had a personal grudge.
I’d ditched the long-sleeve field shirt an hour ago for a thin tank top—white, because apparently I still cared about not showing up to Tank’s wedding looking like I’d lost a fight with a tractor.
At least this way the tan lines wouldn’t scream “field grunt who never sees the inside of a salon.” My arms were already streaked with dust and sweat, my jeans stiff with dried mud from the last sample site, and every breath tasted like hot dirt and regret.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket for the fourth time. I wiped my forehead with the back of my wrist, gloves leaving a smear of red clay across my skin, and pulled it out.
Regan: Girls night tonight. Tank’s bride is finally in town and we’re doing the bachelorette for real this time. Even if it’s her third one. Strippers might be involved. We have to sneak them past the guys tho. You in?
I stared at the screen, thumb hovering. The idea of loud music, too many cocktails, and Regan’s chaotic energy sounded like heaven compared to this.
But then I glanced at the cooler full of water samples I’d just pulled from the monitoring well, the ones that had come back with numbers that didn’t make sense. Numbers that made my stomach twist.
Me: Wish I could. Bogged down out here. Soil and air samples piling up.
Her reply came in under thirty seconds, like she’d been waiting with her thumbs on the keys.
Regan: Really? Soil and air samples? Sounds like you’re REALLY busy. Come on, Sienna. One night. You need this.
I sighed, the sound lost under the wind rattling the scrub brush around me.
She wasn’t wrong. After the bar fight, the sidewalk kiss, the cat chase, and Mason’s growly demand for a dance at the wedding…
yeah, I needed a night where the only drama was deciding how many shots was too many.
But the data on my tablet didn’t lie. Something was very, very off.
The water samples from the last three sites showed elevated levels of industrial solvents—stuff that didn’t belong anywhere near the aquifer.
Not trace amounts. Not “maybe it’s runoff from the highway.
” This was deliberate. Concentrated. Someone had been dumping, and it was leaching straight into the groundwater that fed half the town.
I hit Regan back quick: Rain check? Swear I’ll make it up to you before the wedding.
Then I dialed my boss before I could talk myself out of it.
He answered on the second ring, voice clipped. “Sienna.”
“Dr. Harlan, the latest batch from the north transect—”
“Not on the phone,” he hissed. “Site 19. Two hours.”
The line went dead.
Great. Nothing screamed “routine field day” like a paranoid boss demanding a meet at the ass-end of the desert.
I spent the next ninety minutes driving the dusty back roads, tank top sticking to my spine, AC blasting uselessly against the heat rolling off the dashboard.
By the time I pulled up to the old monitoring station at Site 19—an unmarked shed tucked behind a ridge of rock that looked like it hadn’t seen a human in years—my nerves were tighter than the winch cable on Mason’s bike.
Dr. Harlan was already there, leaning against his truck, arms crossed. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. “Took you long enough.”
I killed the engine and stepped out, boots crunching on gravel. “The numbers don’t lie. Someone’s been dumping chemicals. Solvents, heavy metals—way over any background level. It’s seeping into the aquifer.”
He rubbed a hand over his face, eyes darting toward the empty road behind me. “Yeah. I think so too. They’ve been burying it. Drums, maybe. I found disturbed soil up by the old Oakley property line last month.”
Oakley Company. Old money. The kind of family that owned half the country clubs and all the politicians who mattered. Country-club money, he’d called it once. The kind that made problems disappear.
I crossed my arms, ignoring the way sweat trickled down my back. “That’s our job, though. Document it. Report it. We can’t just—”
“We can’t touch it,” he cut in, voice flat. “Not yet. People get shot over shit like this. You know how deep their pockets go. I’m… I’m not even sure our boss isn’t on the take. Something’s off with the oversight chain.”
The knot that had been forming in my stomach since the lab results tightened hard. I thought of the fat raise they’d dangled when I took this job. The way the last environmental scientist had “walked” with zero notice.
He must have seen it on my face. “Just leave the samples with me. Don’t log them into the database. Not yet.”
I stared at him. “You’re serious.”
“Listen,” he said, stepping closer, voice dropping even though we were alone out here. “If you put them in the system, we could both get… looked at. Hard. Keep it quiet for now. I haven’t figured out the next move.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, the desert wind whipping my hair across my face. “Now I get why this position was open. What happened to the last person? This hasn’t been going on for a week. This is old.”
He didn’t answer right away. Just looked past me toward the horizon, jaw tight. “The last one walked. That’s why they bumped your starting salary. Keep your mouth shut, Sienna. For both our sakes. Don’t make this more dramatic than it has to be.”
He reached for the cooler in my truck bed before I could argue, hauling it toward his own vehicle like the conversation was over.
I stood there in the blazing sun, tank top plastered to me, grime under my nails, and felt the weight of it all settle heavy on my chest. The wedding was days away.
Regan’s texts were still lighting up my phone with promises of strippers and bad decisions.
And somewhere back in town, Mason was probably still stewing over the “date” I’d let him think I was bringing.
But right now, none of that mattered.
Because someone was poisoning the water under our feet, my boss was scared, and I was standing in the middle of it with dirt on my hands and a very bad feeling that walking away wasn’t going to be an option.
The drive back to my apartment was a blur of dust and radio static I didn’t really hear.
By the time I pulled into the lot, the sun was already dipping low, painting the stucco walls orange and making the whole complex look deceptively peaceful.
I killed the engine, grabbed my gear bag, and trudged up the stairs like my boots weighed fifty pounds each.
None of this sat right. None of it. The samples, Dr. Harlan’s scared-rabbit eyes, the way he’d snatched the cooler like it was evidence in a mob trial.
I’d known the raise was too good to be true the second I signed the offer letter.
Environmental field work in the desert doesn’t come with that kind of money unless someone’s buying silence.
And I’m not the kind of person who can look the other way for a paycheck.
That’s not why I got into this. I wanted to protect the water, the soil, the people who drank from it.
Not play cover-up for old-money assholes.
Inside, the place still smelled faintly of spilled water and cat chaos from last night.
I didn’t bother turning on more than the kitchen light.
Stripped off the grimy tank top and jeans right there in the living room and headed straight for the shower.
The water was cold on purpose. I stood under it until my teeth chattered, watching red-brown dust swirl down the drain in lazy spirals.
It felt like the desert was trying to crawl back inside me, like it knew I was about to make a stupid decision and wanted to remind me who was boss.
When I stepped out, towel wrapped around me, I couldn’t help it.
I padded barefoot to the back patio door, slid it open, and stared at the small fire-escape landing where Bandit had vanished.
The railing was still scuffed from his escape.
No gray fur. No jingle of his bell. Just empty concrete and the faint smell of creosote on the evening breeze.
Maybe Bandit had it right. Shit’s too good to be true out here, so he cut and run. Smart little asshole.
My phone was face-down on the counter. I’d ignored the string of texts from Mason all afternoon—Cat back yet? You good? Let me know if you need help looking.—each one making my stomach flip in a way I didn’t have the bandwidth to unpack. I left them unread.
I popped the cap on a cheap cold tequila I’d bought on sale last week, took a long pull straight from the bottle, and winced at the burn.
It didn’t help. The apartment felt too quiet without Bandit’s constant growling, meowing, and dramatic pacing like he was personally offended by every closed door.
I needed the money. I’d just signed a year’s lease on this place, and moving again wasn’t an option.
But I also couldn’t let the aquifer get poisoned.
That was the kind of thing they made Erin Brockovich movies about—people getting sick, kids with rashes, whole families fighting cancer because some rich bastards decided profit mattered more than groundwater.
People could die. Real people. Not numbers on a report.
I sat on the couch in my towel, laptop balanced on my knees, and typed Oakley Company into the search bar before I could talk myself out of it.
Sure as shit.
The first article that popped up had a photo.
There he was—clean-cut dentist smile, pressed button-down, the same guy from the martini bar with his arm around Rylee like he owned the world.
His last name was Oakley. Not the heir apparent, but related.
Cousin. Board member. Family money that stretched back generations and included half the industrial holdings along the northern aquifer.
The same land where we’d been pulling those spiked water samples.