Six
WALKER
For a few days, I let myself pretend.
It was the best stretch I’d had in fifteen years, and I knew it even while it was happening, which is its own kind of ache.
Mornings I’d wake in that water-stained motel room and find myself actually looking forward to something—to her sharp tongue and her sharper mind, to the way she’d hand me a task without softening it, treating me like a hired man one minute and an equal the next.
We solved problems together. We laughed.
One evening she fell asleep against my shoulder on the porch swing, mid-sentence, and I sat there not moving for an hour because waking her felt like a crime against the natural order.
I should have remembered that men like me don’t get stretches like that for free.
The break in the case came three days later, and it hit me like a punch I never saw coming.
I’d been going through auction records in my motel room, cross-referencing dates and buyers, looking for any pattern that led to the people behind Double Star.
The trail pointed to a network of middlemen scattered across central Texas—people who “cleaned” stolen cattle by altering brands and forging documents, taking a cut while keeping their hands technically clean.
I had three names. I was feeling good about it when I found the fourth.
Brody Henderson.
I stared at the document, willing the letters to rearrange.
They didn’t. A deputy in Marble Falls had flagged him—seen meeting with Carlos Vega, a suspected middleman I’d been tracking for eighteen months, at a bar called the Rusty Spur.
And there was more. Bank records showed Brody had unexplained cash deposits over the past year, always just under the threshold that triggered federal reporting.
He’d been absent from the ranch on dates that lined up with thefts in neighboring counties.
The picture was damning. Circumstantial—all of it—but together it painted a portrait I didn’t want to see. Cass’s brother might be one of the very people responsible for the crime that brought me here.
My first instinct was to tell her. That’s what a partner would do.
But if Brody was involved, warning Cass could blow the whole investigation.
She’d confront him—of course she would, she was fiercely loyal—and give him time to warn his contacts and destroy evidence.
Everything we’d built would evaporate. The Castellanos family would never see justice.
Dozens of other victims would never see the people responsible face consequences.
I couldn’t let that happen. But the thought of Cass’s face when she found out I’d known and said nothing—
I scrubbed my hands over my face until it hurt. I needed more evidence. Maybe there was an innocent explanation. Maybe Brody was an idiot who’d gotten mixed up with the wrong people, not a participant. I owed it to Cass to find out the truth before I destroyed her family.
And I owed it to myself to stop pretending my feelings for her weren’t already affecting my judgment.
I should have told her immediately. That’s what a partner would do—a real one, not someone playing at partnership while hiding the thing that would blow it all apart. I should have walked into her kitchen the next morning, sat her down, and laid it out.
Instead I did what cowards do. I compartmentalized.
During the day, I worked beside her—drove her truck, drank her coffee, listened to her stories about growing up on this land.
I kissed her in quiet moments and let myself fall deeper into something I had no right to.
And at night, alone in my motel room, I built the case against her brother.
Two versions of the same man, and neither one could look the other in the eye.
I told myself I was protecting her. The truth was simpler and uglier: I was protecting the version of my life where she still looked at me like I was someone worth trusting, and every day I kept the secret, that version got a little harder to save.
I told Cass I had leads to follow in Austin—not entirely a lie. The way she looked at me when I left, trusting and open in a way it hadn’t been two weeks ago, made me want to confess everything on the spot.
In Austin I laid it all out for Marcus across his cluttered desk. He listened without interrupting, his expression growing grimmer.
“The brother. You’re certain about these connections?”
“I’m certain he’s connected. I’m not certain how deeply. He could be a full participant. Or a dupe being used without his knowledge. Maybe even blackmailed—we’ve seen that before.”
“And the Henderson woman? Does she know?”
“No.”
“Are you planning to tell her?”
I hesitated. Too long. Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “Walker. We’ve talked about maintaining objectivity.”
“If I tell her now, she’ll confront him. She won’t be able to help it. That gives him time to warn his contacts. Everything unravels. I’m going to find the truth first. Then I’ll tell her everything.”
“Everything? Including that you’re not a livestock broker?
That your whole relationship with her is built on professional deception?
” He shook his head. “I’ve known you ten years.
You’re one of the best investigators I’ve got.
But you’re falling for your primary source, and that kind of complication gets people hurt. ”
“My feelings for Cass Henderson have no bearing on the investigation.”
“Don’t they?”
I didn’t have an answer. We both knew the truth.
“Finish what you started,” Marcus said. “Get the evidence. But don’t let this explode in your face. The fallout won’t just hurt your career. It’ll hurt everyone involved. Including her.”
I thought about that warning the whole drive back. I was falling in love with a woman I was actively deceiving, and her brother was tangled in the very crime I’d come to solve. This was going to end badly. I could feel it in my bones.
But I couldn’t stop. Not now. Not when we were finally making progress.
I spent two more days quietly digging, trying to find an explanation that made everything make sense. And slowly, a different picture formed.
The bartender at the Rusty Spur remembered Brody. “The young guy always looked nervous. Like he wanted to be anywhere else. The other one—Vega—he was in control. The young guy was scared of him.”
Scared. Not the body language of an equal partner in crime. And the bank deposits, when I looked again, were small—barely enough for gas money and bar tabs. Not the profits of a willing criminal. They came at regular intervals, like payments on a schedule.
A confidential informant filled in the rest at a truck stop outside Austin. “The Henderson kid’s not really part of the operation. He’s insurance. Saw something he shouldn’t have about a year ago, figured out what was going on, and tried to shake them down for money to keep quiet.”
“And they turned it around on him.”
“They always do. Find someone with access, get them compromised, keep them that way. He’s been feeding them ranch schedules ever since.
The payments keep him on the hook—just enough that he can’t claim he was only coerced, not enough to buy his way out.
He tries to go to the cops, they’ve got enough to make him look like a full partner.
He tries to stop, they threaten to expose him. Either way, he’s trapped.”
I sat back, processing. It was better than I’d feared—Brody a victim of manipulation rather than a willing criminal—but still bad. He’d made a terrible choice and been too proud or too scared to ask for help.
Which meant Cass didn’t have to lose her brother to the justice system. But it also meant I couldn’t keep hiding this. She needed to know—not just that Brody was involved, but that there might be a way out.
*Tomorrow,* I told myself, driving back through the Texas twilight. *Tomorrow I’ll tell her everything.*
It was a promise I would break. But in that moment, I genuinely believed I’d keep it.