Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Silas
Duke waits until evening to tell me with a level of seriousness that means he already knows I’m going to react badly.
He isn’t incapable of seriousness. People mistake warmth for softness all the time, and my brother has made a career out of letting them.
He’s easy with people in ways Cody and I have never been, but that doesn’t mean he’s careless.
When something actually matters, the joking goes first. The room shifts around him, his face settles, his voice loses whatever ease he usually wraps around the truth to make it more bearable.
He comes into my office just before dinner and shuts the door behind him. That alone tells me enough to brace.
“What?” I ask.
He doesn’t sit. He stands across from the desk with his hands in his pockets, shoulders set, jaw tighter than he wants it to be. “Annie got a note.”
I furrow my brow in confusion. “What do you mean ‘a note’?”
“A threatening one.” His eyes meet mine. “And before you start, no, I’m not being dramatic. She found one at the trailhead this afternoon. Under her windshield wiper.”
I set my pen down carefully. “What did it say?”
His mouth flattens. “You don’t belong here.”
The room goes still.
I hear the old clock on the wall, the buzz of the vent, a truck in the distance coming up the drive.
Then I ask, “Why am I hearing this from you and not from her?”
Duke’s expression darkens in a way that tells me the answer isn’t going to improve my mood. “Because I caught her crying as she came back to the ranch earlier with it clutched in her hand.”
He offers me a one-shouldered shrug. “And maybe because I was the one she came to when her SD card went missing…”
“Wait, what?” I stop him in his tracks. “What are you talking about? What the hell has been happening?”
“She said her SD card went missing from her office.”
Ice-cold fear moves into place behind my ribs. “Missing from here? And she’s sure she hasn’t lost it?”
Nothing happens here without me knowing about it. Or so I thought…
Duke holds my gaze. “She’s convinced it was taken.”
“And you decided not to tell me?”
His jaw works once. “She was already freaked out, Silas. She thought you’d come down on her for bringing trouble into the house before she’d even finished proving herself.”
“She thought I’d what?”
“Fire her. Judge her. Decide she was too much risk. I don’t know. She’s having a hard time with it all.”
I lean back in the chair, because if I stand right now I’ll start breaking this conversation into pieces with my bare hands.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“In her room, last I checked.”
I stand.
Duke doesn’t move out of the way. “Silas.”
“What?”
“Don’t go in there treating her like she’s the problem.”
I look at my brother long enough that most men would’ve stepped aside . Duke doesn’t. He knows me too well for that.
“She should’ve told me,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“She kept this to herself while someone got closer.”
“Yeah.”
“And now I have to decide whether I’m angrier at whoever’s doing it or at the fact that she thought she had to handle it alone.”
Duke’s face shifts. “Start with the first one.”
I brush past him.
The hallway upstairs is peaceful. Pipes settling, a floorboard clicking somewhere near the back stairs, the smell of dinner coming up faint from the kitchen.
I know this house well enough to tell who’s where by sound alone most days, but right now all of it feels irrelevant. The only thing I’m aware of is the end of the hall.
Third door on the right.
Her door is shut.
I knock once and open it once she answers.
Annie’s sitting on the edge of her bed with her laptop open beside her and her camera in her hands, turning it over as if it might help her think. She looks up fast when I come in, surprise crossing her face before she reads mine and goes still.
“You look furious.”
“I am.”
Her grip shifts on the camera. “That’s encouraging.”
I shut the door behind me. “Duke told me about the note.”
Her expression changes. “Of course he did.”
“He also told me about the SD card.”
She looks away for half a second, which from Annie qualifies as a confession.
“Were you planning on telling me that something of yours went missing under my roof?”
She sets the camera down carefully on the bedspread. “I wasn’t planning anything.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one I have.”
I take a step into the room. “Someone went through your things.”
“I know.”
“Someone followed you today.”
“It seems like it, yes.”
“And you said nothing.”
Her eyes flash. “What exactly do you want from me?”
I ignore the edge in her tone because if I answer it directly, this gets louder than it already is. “Why?”
She folds her arms. “Because I didn’t know you’d want to be involved. But I still have the note if you want to see it.”
“Do you have any idea what could’ve happened if this escalated and no one knew? You should have told me.”
Her laugh is short and carries no humor in it. “Right. Because that definitely felt like the smart move.”
“It would’ve been.”
“No,” she snaps, pushing to her feet. “No, it wouldn’t.”
I’m starting to think this is fear, but Annie’s dressing it as irritation first.
“Explain that,” I say.
Her chin lifts. “You want the polite version?”
“I want the true one.”
“Fine.” She takes a breath that does nothing to soften what follows. “I didn’t come to you because I’m new, because this ranch already runs on enough tension to qualify as a hostage situation, and because I didn’t need my boss deciding I was suddenly too much trouble to keep around.”
I can’t believe what she’s saying. “I wouldn’t have fired you.”
She throws her hands in the air in frustration. “How exactly was I supposed to know that?”
“Because I would’ve taken it seriously.”
“Really? Because I was worried that marching into your office with ‘hi, I think someone stole one of my camera cards and maybe left me a creepy note’ would become a great way to get looked at like I’d become a liability before I’d even finished untangling your books.”
I furrow my brows. “You think that little of me?”
“I think that little of how powerful men react when the woman they hired starts attracting the wrong kind of attention.”
I don’t instantly know what to say to that, because it’s not entirely about me. I know that. She’s talking about pattern, not just person.
Past experiences. Old reflexes. The shape of the world as she has had to survive it.
That doesn’t stop the irritation from cutting.
“You should’ve told me anyway,” I say.
She throws up a hand. “And then what? You assign me an escort every time I want to breathe outside? You start watching me like I’m one bad day away from breaking? You decide I can’t do my job because someone else decided to make me uncomfortable?”
Have I really given her this impression? “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“Then give me better ones.”
I step closer. “If someone’s moving around this property threatening people, I need to know.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It should make you understand the stakes.”
“No,” she says, anger coming cleaner now, less defensive and more direct, “it makes me sound like inventory.”
I correct my tone, not the truth. “It means your safety on this property is my responsibility.”
She lets out a breath through her nose. “And there it is.”
“What?”
“That thing you do. You take a situation and wrap control around it until it looks like care.”
The words settle under my skin.
Control is how I keep things standing. It’s how this ranch survived my father’s death, how my brothers grew up with something other than grief, how bad situations get handled before they become disasters.
Control isn’t cruelty. It’s structure. It’s protection made practical.
But Annie looks at it and sees a cage.
“I’m trying,” I say very carefully, “to prevent whoever is doing this from getting closer.”
“And I’m trying to do my job without being treated like fragile baggage.”
“You think taking a threat seriously turns you into baggage?”
“I think people love using protection as an excuse to sideline women.”
I stare at her.
The certainty tells me this conversation didn’t begin with me. I’m simply the current target standing in front of a much older argument. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“I think it’s what you’d like to do.”
I take another step.
Now I’m crowding her.
Her back’s almost against the wall. She doesn’t retreat. Of course she doesn’t. Annie meets pressure by planting her feet.
The infuriating part is that I respect it.
The more infuriating part is that right now I’d prefer she make this easy.
“You found a note on your car,” I say. “You had property taken from your office. You’re telling me you can handle that.”
Her jaw sets. “Yes.”
I look at her for one long second.
“When you say ‘handle it,’” I ask, “what exactly do you mean?”
She hesitates. “I left the trail. I paid attention. I didn’t do anything stupid.”
“Okay, and…?”
Her glare flashes hot enough that under different circumstances I might have admired it. “I didn’t freeze, I didn’t fall apart, and I didn’t need rescuing.”
“No,” I say. “You needed backup.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I didn’t say babysitter.”
She rolls her eyes. “You implied it.”
“I implied that you’re one person and whoever is doing this is willing to push.”
“And I’m telling you I can handle myself.”
The conviction is immediate, bright, and almost enough to be persuasive.
Almost.
She looks away first, anger giving ground to a new rawness. The first crack in the argument where reality gets in. “I didn’t want to be looked at differently.”
That’s the first honest thing she has said that doesn’t come wrapped in teeth. “By who?”
“You.” She wraps her arms tighter around herself.
I think she hates that she’s admitted even that much.
“I’m here to work. I’m good at what I do.
I finally started finding things that matter, and I didn’t want any of that to get buried under everyone deciding I was suddenly too delicate to be useful. ”
I start to realize Annie’s pride isn’t decorative. It’s structural. One of the load-bearing beams.
Ask her for softness too early and she’ll hand you steel instead. Threaten her independence and she hears erasure, not comfort.
“Listen to me.” Her gaze returns to mine, wary as I continue. “You telling me doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t make you incapable or fragile. It means I have the information I need to stop this before it escalates.”
Her mouth opens, then closes.
Good.
I step back, giving the room air again. “Where’s the note?”
“Desk drawer.”
“Show me.”
She hesitates a beat, then crosses to the small desk by the window and pulls the folded paper from the top drawer. She holds it out.
I take it without letting our fingers touch.
The words are blunt. Heavy marker. Pressed hard enough to leave grooves.
YOU DON’T BELONG HERE.
I fold it once more and slip it into my pocket.
“I need the timeline on everything,” I say. “Start with the card.”
She exhales, clearly hating all of this, and gives it to me anyway. The missing SD card. The first note. Today at the trail. The shape in the trees.
The fact that she caught a blurred shot before whoever it was disappeared.
That gets my attention. “You have the photo?”
“I haven’t printed it yet.”
“Do that first, while I sort this out,” I say. “And for now, I’d feel better if you didn’t go out alone.”
Her stare steels. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I’m trying to keep you safe.”
She’s standing there with her hair half falling loose, anger bright in her face, shoulders squared against me because I’m a problem she refuses to yield to, and the worst part is that some deeply inconvenient me part of me admires her more every time she does it.
That’s not useful right now, so I lock it down where it belongs.
“What would you propose instead?” I ask.
She narrows her eyes, thrown by the question.
Good.
“I keep working,” she says after a beat. “I tell you if something happens again. I stay aware. I don’t stop living my life because someone wants to scare me.”
“Not enough.”
“It’s what you’re getting. If I want to leave, I will, but I’ll always tell someone where I’m going.”
The old pressure returns between my shoulder blades. Decision. Obligation. Action.
I reach for the doorknob, then pause before I open it.
“You keep me informed,” I say.
Her eyes narrow. “And you don’t lock me in a tower?”
“I don’t own a tower.”
“Silas.”
I exhale. “No escorts unless we decide it’s necessary.”
She studies me carefully. “And I keep working.”
“You were always going to keep working. I know that.”