Three
CASS
“You look like hell,” Dakota said as I slid into the booth across from her.
“Thank you. Exactly what every woman wants to hear.”
She pushed a cup of coffee toward me—already fixed the way I liked. She was well along in her pregnancy now, round and glowing, due in a matter of weeks, and motherhood already suited her. “Jessie’s version of the bull story involved the phrase ‘over my dead body’ and possibly a death threat.”
“It wasn’t a death threat. Just a strongly worded suggestion that he leave my property.”
“Same thing in Texas.”
So I told her. About Walker Kane and his documents, about the long nights I’d spent going through records, about the growing fear that maybe—just maybe—he wasn’t entirely wrong.
“The ranch that sold him, Double Star, went out of business six months after the auction. Vanished. No forwarding address, no trace they ever existed except the paperwork. And the timeline. Thunder showed up at Fredericksburg in March. The Bar J reported a bull stolen the previous October. Five months. Long enough to move an animal across the state, alter a brand, forge papers.”
Dakota traced a pattern on the tabletop.
“You know, when all that came out about Dawson last year—what he did to my mother—I didn’t want to believe it either.
An outsider showed up with evidence and I fought it with everything I had.
Because believing it meant accepting that everything I knew was wrong.
” She reached across and touched my hand.
“Sometimes outsiders see what we’re too close to see.
That doesn’t make them right. But it doesn’t make them wrong either.
And asking for help isn’t the same as admitting weakness, Cass.
You have people who care about you. Use them. ”
Easier said than done. I’d spent five years proving I didn’t need help. The idea of admitting otherwise felt like failure. But the alternative—losing Thunder, losing the ranch—felt worse.
I went back to the records that night. Dad was asleep by nine, his soft snores echoing through the old farmhouse the way they had my whole life. The kitchen table was buried in papers—Thunder’s whole history, reduced to ink.
On the surface, it all looked legitimate.
But Kane had planted a seed of doubt, and now I couldn’t stop seeing shadows.
Double Star’s website, cached by some archive, showed a logo and a dead phone number.
The address was a housing development now.
No way to verify where they’d gotten Thunder.
No one to answer the questions keeping me awake.
“Damn it,” I whispered to the empty kitchen.
“Cass?”
Brody stood in the doorway, rumpled and half-asleep. “Heard you moving around. This about that broker guy?” He filled a glass at the sink. “Want me to have a word with him? Round up some of the boys—“
“And beat him up in the parking lot of the Dusty Boot? That would definitely solve all my problems.”
He winced. At twenty-eight, he should have outgrown that wounded-puppy look, but he never had. “I’m just saying. You don’t have to handle everything yourself.”
“That’s rich, coming from you.” The words were out before I could stop them.
He flinched like I’d slapped him, and guilt twisted in my stomach. “Sorry,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I’m tired.”
“It’s fine. It’s not like you’re wrong. I’m not exactly reliable.
” He settled into the chair across from me, cradling the glass.
“It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I feel trapped.
Like if I commit to this place, I’ll never have anything that’s just mine.
The ranch was always Dad’s thing. Your thing.
I’m just the screwup brother who can’t measure up. ”
I didn’t know what to say. We’d never talked about this—just circled it for years, building walls out of resentment and assumption.
“You’re not a screwup,” I said. “You’re young. Figuring things out. And Dad’s stroke didn’t just change my life—it changed yours too. You didn’t ask for this any more than I did.”
He offered a small, crooked smile. “For what it’s worth, I know what you do for us.
What you sacrifice. You’re a good sister, Cass.
Even when you’re being a hardass about it.
” He stood, took his glass to the sink, and paused in the doorway.
“Hey. That thing you said about asking for help? Maybe take your own advice once in a while. I know I’m not much. But I’m here. If you need me.”
Then he was gone, leaving me alone with my papers and the growing certainty that Walker Kane might not be as wrong as I’d wanted him to be.
I’d prove him wrong anyway. Whatever it took. I was a Henderson. And Hendersons didn’t quit.