Chapter 11
ELEVEN
MAREN
Rimrock's idea of a community fundraiser is two hundred people crammed into the Elks Lodge, drinking overpriced whiskey for a cause nobody can argue with, and everyone uses as cover to find out what the other family has been doing all summer.
I know this. I have attended fifteen of these.
I still put on a green silk dress and some makeup, pull my hair back into a low bun and show up, because a Sullivan who stops showing up is a Sullivan who has something to hide, and I have several things to hide right now and cannot afford to look like it.
Dawson finds me at the bar before I've ordered.
He doesn't say hello. He leans against the rail beside me, flags the bartender with two fingers, and looks out at the room the way our father looks at rooms. Cataloguing. Prioritizing. Deciding who matters and in what order.
"Blackwater Ranch has good internet, I hear," he says.
The bartender sets two glasses down. Dawson pushes one toward me. I pick it up.
"Sullivan Transport's system had a surveillance breach," I say. "Knox had secure access."
"Knox." He tastes the name like he's checking it for something.
"Blackwater. You've met him."
Dawson looks at me sideways. He is thirty-two years old and he has our father's patience and our mother's eyes. He has been watching me since I was six years old trying to keep up with him on horseback. He knows every tell I have. He invented half of them.
"Be careful," he says.
Not don't. Not stop. Be careful. The Sullivan version of a blessing and a warning in the same two words.
"Always am," I say.
He picks up his glass and walks toward Declan and I turn back to the bar and breathe.
Knox arrives thirty minutes after I do.
I feel it before I see it. The shift in a room when someone who changes the temperature walks in. Two women near the door turn without meaning to. The crowd parts the way it always parts around a Blackwater. Fast and automatic, like a reflex nobody chose.
I do not turn around.
I find him anyway, in the mirror behind the bar.
Dark jacket, no tie, hat off because we're indoors and Knox Blackwater has manners when he decides to deploy them.
He shakes two hands on the way in, says three words to each person, and moves through the room without stopping.
His eyes find me in the mirror before I can look away.
I look away.
My phone is face-up on the bar. I've been running the McKenna cross-reference in a browser tab between conversations for the past hour.
Tate texted twenty minutes ago: three trucks, two-week window, checking the corridor.
I texted back: pull the strip mall cameras on 10th.
I have a contact at the property management company.
Tate: of course you do.
I'm halfway through the property management contact's email when someone steps into the space on my left that Dawson just made unoccupied.
"Maren Sullivan." The man is smiling. He's from Choteau, works in county permitting, has shaken my hand at six of these events and remembered my name at two of them. "You look incredible."
"Thank you," I say, and mean it without apology, and turn toward him with my full attention.
He leans on the bar. I ask about his work, about the Choteau development project that's been in the county commission agenda for months. He lights up. People always light up when you ask about the right things. I learned this before I learned to drive.
Knox is twenty feet away talking to a cattlemen's association board member. He is not looking at me.
His jaw is tight.
The man from Choteau touches my elbow and Knox goes very still. Eyes flat. The cattlemen's board member keeps talking and Knox keeps nodding and none of it is reaching him.
I tell the man it was lovely to see him and excuse myself toward the far end of the bar.
Knox materializes beside me thirty seconds later. He picks up a glass of water and doesn't look at me.
"Friend of yours?" he asks.
"He works in county permitting." I keep my eyes on the room. "I'm friendly with everyone in county permitting. It's useful."
"I'll bet."
"That almost sounded like something, Knox."
"Observation," he says. "That's all."
I pick up my drink. "Your jaw was tight."
A beat. "Gravel road this morning."
I laugh before I can stop it, quiet enough that no one around us hears, and I feel him register it the way he registers everything I do. Without appearing to. Completely.
"You look—" he starts.
"Don't."
"I was going to say professional."
"You were not."
He brings the water glass to his mouth. I watch his throat move and I think about the creek and the cottonwoods and his hands below the water. I press my feet into the floor and stay exactly where I am.
"How's the research going," he asks.
"Slow."
"Really?"
"Really slow," I say. "Almost no progress at all."
The corner of his mouth moves. Not quite a smile. Close enough that it does something to my sternum I don't have a name for.
We are standing close enough that I can feel the warmth off him, two people in a crowded room with nothing between us but the performance of distance.
Then someone says his name.
He is already moving, swallowed by a cluster of men near the far wall, and I watch him go and feel the warmth of him linger like a hand just lifted.
I go back to my phone.
The text arrives at nine forty-seven.
Unknown number. The message is four words.
Stop digging, Sullivan girl.
I read it twice, set the phone face-down on the bar, and pick it up again.
There's an attachment.
A photo. The Rimrock arena, shot from elevation. North bleachers, second level, a clean angle on the barrel racing gate. The timestamp in the corner is Sunday. Six days ago.
I am in the photo. Pink snap shirt, light cowboy hat, dark braid falling below the brim, Whiskey Girl's hindquarters visible at the edge of the frame. I am checking my cinch. My back is to the camera.
The timestamp reads 2:14 p.m.
The horse went sideways at 2:31.
The shipment call came in at 2:47.
I sit with that for ten seconds. My pulse doesn't spike. That's the Sullivan in me, the part Kathleen built before I knew she was building it. I feel the threat land and then I go to work.
I pull the unknown number and start tracing.
Burner. The prefix confirms it before I'm two steps in.
I text my contact at the strip mall management company on 10th in Great Falls, the woman whose lease renewal Declan smoothed over two years ago when her landlord tried to price her out.
I ask for the external camera schedule for the past two weeks.
She'll have it to me by morning. I text Tate: unknown burner, Great Falls prefix. Add it to the corridor cross-reference.
I close the browser tab and put the phone in my clutch.
I find Knox near the back hallway on my way to the bathrooms.
I don't say anything, I just take the phone out and hold it so he can see the screen. He reads the message and scrolls to the photo. Everything in his face goes still and cold the way water goes still before it freezes.
He looks at the timestamp, then at me.
"This was taken before your horse went sideways," he says.
"Yes."
He looks back at the photo and something calculates behind his eyes. Pieces connecting in an order I can see but not yet read. Whatever conclusion he reaches, he does not share it. He hands the phone back and his hand covers mine for two seconds, warm and deliberate, then releases.
I feel the absence of it the moment he lets go.
He looks up and he has already decided something.
I already know he's not going to tell me what it is.