Chapter 2
TWO
KNOX
I don't believe in accidents.
Not on this ranch, not in this family, and not with Maren Sullivan bleeding in the dirt while her horse screamed and the crowd stood there like they'd forgotten how to move.
Three hours later, I'm still thinking about it.
The room Blackwater Ranch uses for situations like this one isn't called a war room.
It's called the study. Mahogany desk, leather chairs, a bar cart nobody touches when my father is in it.
Gideon is at the head of the table, my mother is at his left, and Holt is standing against the wall like furniture that could kill you.
The numbers don't add up. A route that went dark. Two hundred thousand dollars in cattle and cargo, gone somewhere between here and the border.
"Sullivan Transport ran that haul." My father doesn't raise his voice. He never does. "They had access to the route manifest, the timing, the gate codes."
"They always have access." I keep my voice level. "That's the arrangement."
"The arrangement assumed good faith."
"The arrangement assumed mutual benefit. Blowing up a haul they're contracted to protect benefits them how, exactly?"
My father looks at me the way he looks at things he's already decided about. "You tell me."
I don't answer. The honest answer is I don't know yet, and Gideon Blackwater doesn't pay for uncertainty.
Holt catches my eye from his position by the window. One look. He's thinking the same thing I am: whoever touched those records did it from inside our system, not theirs. I don't say that either. Not yet.
"The manifest was altered before the truck left the property," I say. "That's where we start."
My mother sets down her water glass. "Which truck?"
For half a second something crosses her face. The expression of a woman who has been waiting for a certain kind of bad news and has just been told it arrived. Like she'd done the math on this possibility years ago and set it somewhere she hoped never to open again.
The room moves past it. My father is already redirecting to the gate log timeline, and the question should be unremarkable. Except my mother doesn't ask odd questions by accident. Whatever she knows, she’ll tell me when she decides to.
The meeting runs another thirty minutes. Underneath all of it, I keep seeing Maren fall.
Her body controlled even in the moment of losing it. Fighting for the horse right up until she couldn't. And then the dirt, and the silence, and me already moving without deciding to.
My hands weren't steady when I reached her.
My hand on her throat, her pulse hammering against my fingers. I wanted to put my mouth there. Not to check anything. To feel it. To know she was alive in a way my fingers weren't telling me adequately enough.
Not professional. Not clinical. Not anything I'm examining in a room full of family.
The meeting ends. People disperse. I'm already pulling out my phone when Jacob Mercer appears at my elbow.
He's been in and out of the room all evening, the way he always is at these things. Jacob has run Blackwater Ranch operations for fifteen years. He knows where everything is kept and his presence here is not unusual.
But the way he's hovering is.
"Knox." His voice drops. "You got a minute? Somewhere private."
My first instinct is not concern, it's assessment. What does Jacob know, what does he want, and is he a problem I need to manage before morning. I note it, hold onto it, and choose the version of myself that listens.
"Jacob." My father's voice carries from across the room. "Walk me through the gate log timeline."
Jacob's eyes cut to the doorway and back, something urgent trying to cross the distance through eye contact alone. Then he goes.
I watch him cross the room. Jacob Mercer is Wyatt's father, and Wyatt has been my closest friend since we were eight years old. That means I'm now obligated to tell him his father looked like a man carrying something too heavy for the walls. That's not a small thing, and it's not a thing I enjoy.
I step into the hallway, pull out my phone, and make the first call.
"Security footage," I say when Cruz picks up. "Seventy-two hours, all ranch cameras. Hold everything before anyone from outside files a request." I pause. "Not because it shows the theft. Pull it because it shows other things."
Cruz doesn't ask which things. That's why Cruz handles things.
The call ends. I make two more. One to the operations manager at the grounds, one to the man who runs security for the fairgrounds and who will hand over arena footage before anyone thinks to ask him not to.
Both pick up on the second ring. Both say yes without asking why.
This is not new behavior; this is what Sunday looks like.
I give myself the walk from the hallway to the back porch. Enough time to think about Maren Sullivan before it becomes something I can't put down.
Whiskey Girl doesn't spook. I've watched that horse compete for years and I have never once seen her go sideways like that. Which means something intentionally spooked her.
Which means someone was in that stable who shouldn't have been.
Which means Maren Sullivan's near-catastrophic fall happened at the exact same event where our shipment vanished, and I do not believe in coincidences any more than I believe in accidents.
I go back inside.
My father is at the bar cart. The meeting is officially over.
What comes next is the conversation the meeting was clearing space for.
Gideon pours two fingers of whiskey and sets it on the edge of the desk.
Not handed over. Set down. He's already decided what I'm doing next and he wants me to walk to it.
I do. The whiskey is good. It's always good.
"Find out whether the Sullivans betrayed us," he says. Then: "And Knox. Find out completely."
The emphasis on the last word is slight. Anyone else would miss it. I don't. Completely means: whatever you find, bring it to me before anyone else sees it. And if the answer is yes, be ready for what comes next.
I've been ready for what comes next since I was nineteen years old and my father sent me to have a conversation with a ranch hand who'd been selling cattle records to a competitor.
I had that conversation in the equipment barn.
It lasted forty minutes. The man left Rimrock the next morning and never came back.
I didn't sleep well for a month.
I sleep fine now. That's the part that should worry me.
I finish the whiskey and set the glass down.
"I'll need access to Sullivan Transport's system records."
"Arrange it."
Holt materializes from somewhere behind me. He does that sometimes. Moves through rooms like a draft, present before you register he’s arrived. My father looks at him, then back at the table. His voice drops to something quieter than what the meeting required.
"If this was a betrayal," he says, "whoever made it happen doesn't leave Rimrock with the ability to do it again. West pasture. Same as always." He doesn't look up from the table.
Holt doesn't react. I don't react. Not because the instruction doesn't register. Because it registers so automatically that there's nothing to react to.
Same as always. The west pasture borders the national forest. Deep timber.
No roads. No neighbors. The elk and the bears and the mountain lions are thorough, and they don't ask questions.
I've known about the west pasture since I was twenty-two.
Holt has known since he came home from the Army.
Neither of us has ever used the word burial. We don't need to. That's the point.
My father walks out.
Holt and I stand in the empty room for a moment and exchange a look. Nothing needs to be said.
I walk out into the night. Warm still, but the mountain air is starting to drain the heat out of it. Somewhere underneath the numbers, the manifests, and my father's orders, something keeps pulling at me.
Maren Sullivan's horse doesn't spook.
Which means today wasn't an accident.
Which means the missing shipment isn't where this ends.
It's where it starts.