Nine
CASS
I cornered Brody four days later, after catching him trying to sneak out before dawn.
The pre-dawn darkness was thick as velvet, stars fading into gray half-light.
I’d given up on sleep around four-thirty and was nursing coffee at the kitchen table when I heard the telltale creak of the third stair—the one he’d been stepping over since he was fifteen, sneaking out to meet girls.
I slipped out the back door and intercepted him at his truck.
“Going somewhere?”
He jumped so hard his keys hit the gravel. “Cass. What are you doing up?”
“I could ask you the same thing. Where are you going? And don’t tell me you have stuff to do. I’m not buying it anymore.”
“It’s personal—“
“Bullshit.” The word came out sharp, edged with weeks of fear. “You’ve been sneaking around for months. Disappearing. Coming home looking like you’ve seen a ghost. Losing weight, losing sleep. If you’re in trouble, I can help. That’s what family does.”
For just a moment, something cracked in his expression. The defensive anger fell away, and he looked young. Lost. Overwhelmed.
“I can’t tell you,” he said, and his voice broke. “I want to—God, you have no idea how much—but I can’t. It’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” The word hit like ice water. “Brody, what the hell are you involved in?”
“I messed up. A year ago. A stupid mistake, and now I’m paying for it.” He laughed, hollow. “Isn’t that what you always wanted? For me to take responsibility for once? To clean up my own mess instead of running to you?”
“Not like this.” I reached for his hand. His fingers were cold, trembling. “Whatever you’ve gotten into, you don’t have to face it alone.”
“You can’t help me. No one can. I’m in too deep. The only way out is to keep doing what they want until I find another way. And if they find out I told you—“
He stopped, jaw clenching, like he’d almost said something he couldn’t take back.
“If they find out, what? Brody, are you being threatened?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking. You’re talking about people who might hurt you. Tell me who they are. Tell me something so I can help you.”
For a long moment I thought he might do it. His face was a battlefield—fear and shame and desperate hope warring. He opened his mouth, closed it. Then something shuttered behind his eyes.
“I can’t.” His voice went flat. “I’m sorry. This is something I have to handle on my own.”
He yanked open the truck door and was backing down the driveway before I could stop him. I stood alone in the gray light, watching his taillights disappear, and knew with sick certainty that my brother was in serious trouble. The kind that involved threats and people who scared him more than I did.
And I had no idea how to save him.
I didn’t go back to bed. The obvious answer was Walker—finding out hidden truths was literally his job. But something held me back. Some instinct warning me that bringing him into this might make it worse.
I thought about the way he reacted every time I mentioned Brody. The careful neutrality. The strategic redirections. The way he never quite met my eyes.
What if Walker already knew?
The thought made my stomach clench. It was paranoid, probably. He’d been nothing but supportive. He’d opened up to me, held me while I cried about my mother, kissed me like I was the most precious thing in his world.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there were pieces of this puzzle I wasn’t seeing. Pieces Walker might be deliberately hiding.
I needed to watch his face when I told him about Brody’s pre-dawn confession. Then I’d know.
He arrived at eight, carrying two cups of coffee, wearing the easy smile that had become as familiar as my own reflection.
“Morning, beautiful.” He reached for me the way he had every morning for two weeks.
I stepped back.
Something flickered across his face. “Cass? What’s wrong?”
“Brody tried to sneak out before dawn. I confronted him. He said he’s in trouble—serious trouble, the kind that involves people who might hurt him if he talks.
” I watched him carefully. “He mentioned ‘they.’ People threatening him, making him do things he doesn’t want to do.
You’ve been tracking a criminal organization that operates by finding vulnerable people and compromising them.
Is my brother one of those people, Walker? ”
The pause was infinitesimal. A fraction of a second, nothing that would seem significant to someone who wasn’t watching for it.
But I was watching. And I saw.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d need to look into—“
“Don’t.” My voice came out hard enough to make him flinch. “Don’t lie to me. Not about this. You know something. You’ve known for a while. That’s why you’ve been acting strange every time I mention him, why you keep steering us away from local connections. You found something, didn’t you?”
“It’s not what you think—“
“Then tell me what it is!” The words bounced off the kitchen walls. “Tell me the truth, Walker. Right now. Or whatever this is between us—it’s over.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, like he was gathering strength. When he opened them, there was something raw there—pain and guilt and desperate hope all tangled together.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “I’ll tell you everything.”
And he did.
About a week ago, he’d found evidence connecting Brody to the theft ring. Photographs of him meeting with a middleman named Carlos Vega. Bank deposits that didn’t match his salary. Absences that lined up with thefts.
“You’ve been investigating my brother,” I said, flat. “Behind my back. While we were—“
I couldn’t finish.
“For how long?”
“A week. Maybe a little more.” The admission seemed to cost him. “I needed to be certain before I said anything.”
“Before you decided whether to arrest him? Before you finished using me to build a case against my own family?” My voice cracked. “You’ve been lying to me since the day you arrived. Everything has been a lie—the investigation, the partnership, whatever I thought was happening between us.”
“That’s not true. My feelings for you—“
“Are based on a lie!” I wiped my eyes angrily. “You’re not even a livestock broker, are you?”
He hesitated. Too long.
So I made him tell me the rest. The TSCRA—the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. His real job as a special ranger, a commissioned law enforcement officer. The cover identity, the broker from Fort Worth, the stolen-bull story—all of it constructed to get close to me and my ranch.
But he told me something else, too. That Brody wasn’t a willing criminal.
That he’d tried to blackmail the ring when he discovered them, and they’d turned it around on him.
That he was being coerced, trapped by his own bad decisions, kept compliant with threats and small payments designed to make him look guilty.
“He’s scared, Cass. Scared and trapped and too proud to ask for help.”
I listened through all of it, my face shifting through expressions I couldn’t control. Shock. Hurt. Rage. And underneath, the terrible anguish of watching my world crumble.
“You knew all of this,” I said when he ran out of words. “For a week, you knew my brother was in danger, and you said nothing. You came to my house. You ate my food. You kissed me and held me and looked into my eyes—and the whole time, you were keeping this from me.”
“I was trying to protect you—“
“By lying? By investigating my family behind my back? By letting me fall for you while you built a case that could destroy everything I love?”
“Cass, please—“
“Do you have any idea what it cost me to trust you?” My voice broke, and I hated it for breaking.
“I haven’t let anyone in since my mother died.
Not really. Not all the way. I built my whole life around not needing anyone, because every single time I let someone matter, they left, or they died, or they let me down.
And then you—“ I pressed the heel of my hand against my breastbone like I could hold the pieces together. “You were patient. You were kind. You looked at me like I was worth staying for, and I believed it. I tore down twenty years of walls for you. And you knew the whole time that you were lying. That makes it worse, Walker. Not better. You didn’t just deceive me. You used the loneliest part of me to do it.”
He had no answer for that. There wasn’t one.
“Get out.”
The words hit him like a physical blow. “Let me explain—“
“There’s nothing to explain.” I walked to the door and held it open, morning sun streaming in around me. “You lied to me. From the first conversation, everything has been a manipulation. And I’m done.”
“I love you.”
The words came out raw, the most honest thing he’d said in weeks of dishonesty. I stared at him for a long moment, watching something move behind his eyes—pain, longing, the ghost of what might have been.
“Then you should have trusted me enough to tell me the truth.”
I walked away. I heard his boots on the stairs, heard the screen door close. And I made it to my bedroom before the tears came.