Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Annie
By the time I pull into the rodeo grounds, the sky is doing that late afternoon Pacific Northwest thing where it can’t decide if it wants to be gold or gray.
The clouds hang low over the mountains, bruised purple at the edges, while the last of the sunlight spills over the arena fencing in warm stripes.
Dust swirls under truck tires. Somewhere nearby, a horse nickers. Country music crackles faintly from a speaker that sounds like it has survived at least three decades and one bar fight.
It should feel chaotic.
Instead it feels like breathing.
Not because my life has magically become less of a mess. It absolutely hasn’t. I still have a missing SD card. Still have the memory of that note tucked under my windshield like a threat with neat handwriting.
Still have Silas Harlan looking at me like I’m both a liability and something he wants to lock in a tower. Still have the memory of Cody Harlan kissing me like he was trying to prove a point he didn’t understand himself.
And Duke…
Nope.
Not doing that right now.
This, tonight, is mine.
Or as close to mine as anything in Colter Creek gets.
I kill the engine and sit, fingers resting on the steering wheel, letting the peacefulness of the car wrap around me before I have to step back into a world full of people, questions, and eyes.
My camera bag sits in the passenger seat beside me, and my thumb taps once against the strap.
Twice.
Three times.
A rhythm only I know.
Then I grab the folder Millie from the bakery passed along at the Sunday potluck—event notes to help me photograph the whole thing—and climb out.
The rodeo grounds are already half alive.
Temporary pens line one side of the arena. A couple of volunteers wrestle with folding tables near the concession stand. Kids run wild in boots too big for them while their parents pretend not to notice.
The bleachers catch the last of the light, weathered silver and familiar. There’s a banner hanging crooked over the gate that reads COLTER CREEK RODEO in big red letters, and no one has fixed it because apparently asymmetry is part of the rustic charm.
“Wright!”
I look up just in time to see Sammy Brooks marching toward me with a giant smile on his weathered face.
He’s built like old barbed wire and bad coffee. Late fifties, maybe early sixties. Sun-leathered skin. Ball cap pulled low. Clipboard clutched against his chest like it contains state secrets.
Which, given the way this town treats rodeo season, maybe it does.
“You’re late,” he barks.
I check my phone. “I’m four minutes early.”
He grunts like facts are disrespectful. “Early’s on time. On time’s late.”
“Well,” I say, slinging my bag over my shoulder, “it’s good to know the military has expanded into event planning.”
His mouth twitches.
“Come on,” he says, turning on his heel. “I got people already making my eye twitch and I need somebody in this town who can tell me they know what they’re doing.”
“That does sound like me.”
“I know it does. That’s why I called.”
I fall into step beside him. Sammy talks fast and points faster.
Vendor booths here. Equipment rentals there. Livestock staging on the east side. Entry desk near the gate.
He’s got three color-coded maps, six pages of notes, and the energy of a man being kept alive purely by irritation and civic pride.
I like him immediately.
“The town council approved the expansion on the south side,” he says, flipping through pages on his clipboard. “More food vendors this year. More merch tables. More entries in the ranch events. More tourists who think boots make them cowboys.”
“Sounds fun.”
“It sounds expensive,” he chuckles, “but we’re gonna make it work.”
We cut across the edge of the arena, and I catch sight of three men near the chutes.
One’s leaning against the fence like he was carved there on purpose. Older than the others, broad shouldered, scar cut pale against weathered skin, his expression so unimpressed it circles back around to interested.
There’s a calmness about him. Like he’s made of old wood, old pain, and doesn’t particularly care if people are comfortable around him.
Next to him is a younger guy, all restless movement and bright energy, tipping the front legs of a chair off the ground while talking with his whole body. Blond hair, open face, sweet in a way that reads genuine instead of naive. Probably.
And then there’s the third.
The third looks like if trouble put on a grin and learned how to juggle.
He’s half-sprawled across the rail, laughing at something only he found funny, bright shirt unbuttoned at the throat, expression so animated I can practically feel him from here.
Sammy follows my line of sight and sighs like a man deeply burdened by other people.
“Hell.”
“That bad?” I ask.
“That depends on your tolerance for nonsense.”
“Mine’s medium.” I chuckle. “Although it might have expanded now I’m at Ironwood.”
“Then brace yourself.”
We reach them, and sure enough, all three turn. The older one gives me a brief nod, assessing. The younger one perks up immediately. The third beams at me like we’re already friends and possibly co-conspirators.
“Boys,” Sammy says, already annoyed, “this is Annie Wright. She’s helping with the event. She’ll be the photographer. Quite the talent, I’ve heard, but she’s also doing numbers for the Ironwood brothers, so…”
“We can throw everything complicated her way,” the loud one jokes. “Sounds like you’re in for a treat, Annie Wright.”
Sammy levels a look at him. “Willy.”
“I’m just boosting morale.”
“This,” Sammy says, pointing with his clipboard to the older guy, “is Red Bronson.”
Red lifts two fingers from the fence in the roughest approximation of a greeting I’ve ever seen.
“And Emmett Holt.”
The blond one gives me a bright smile. “Hi.”
“And Willy Kane, Lord help us all.”
“So, Annie,” Willy drawls as he holds out his hand to me to shake it. “You got a nice camera there. You been taking lots of photos at the ranch?”
I try to smile but nerves grip my stomach. “When I have time.”
“Ooh, the Harlans don’t let you out much, then?”
“Willy,” Red warns.
Willy lifts both hands. “What? I’m being welcoming. Trying to check Annie’s being treated well.”
“You’re being loud,” Red corrects.
Emmett steps in with the smile of a man used to smoothing edges. “What Willy means is, welcome.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I think.”
Willy squints at my hair. “You know, I heard there was a blue-haired woman up at Ironwood and honestly I thought people were exaggerating. But that is blue, and I like it!”
“Thank you.”
“Blue hair in a cowboy town? That’s either confidence or a cry for help. Maybe both.”
I blink, then laugh before I can stop myself.
Willy points triumphantly. “See? She gets me.”
“No,” Red says. “I think she’s being polite.”
“Tomato, tomahto.”
Emmett offers me a sheepish grin. “Don’t worry. He gets worse when he has an audience.”
“That’s not true,” Willy says. “I thrive under attention.”
“Like a fungus,” Red mutters.
Sammy exhales through his nose like patience is a dwindling natural resource. “If you boys are done performing, Annie and I have actual work to do.”
My shoulders roll back as I feel a sense of acceptance here. It’s easygoing and free. Exactly why I wanted the photography gig as soon as it became available.
At Ironwood, I feel watched. Even when no one’s looking.
Actually, especially then.
At the ranch every conversation feels like it has a second layer under it. It’s charged, hidden, dangerous.
Duke’s softness, Cody’s tension, Silas’s control. My own body making terrible decisions in the vicinity of all three of them.
But here it’s just noise. Dust, bad jokes, clipboards, and planning forms.
Mine.
Sammy jerks his head toward a folding table near the announcer’s booth. “Come on. I wanted to show you something on the vendor placement if you don’t mind, before Randy from the kettle corn trailer tries to start a blood feud over electrical hookups again.”
“That’s a thing?”
“In this town? Everything’s a thing.”
“Then yes.” I chuckle. “Show me the forms. I’ll see what I can do.”
I settle at the table with him, dropping my folder beside a stack of papers already fighting for their lives in the wind.
He anchors half of them with a stapler, one with a rock, and one with what appears to be pure force of will.
For the next forty minutes, I’m in my element.
Rental fees. Booth assignments. Livestock transport notes. Electrical usage. Equipment deposits. Timing breakdowns. Insurance riders. Supply requests.
It’s bliss.
Sammy runs the event like a war campaign, but his paperwork is less organized than he thinks it is, which means within twenty minutes I’ve sorted his vendor list into categories, flagged duplicate charges, and made a clear note about missing confirmation signatures.
He stares at my page for a long second.
Then says, “You single?”
I look up.
He squints at the paper again. “Actually, no. Don’t answer that. Not my business.”
“Appreciated.”
“I was gonna say you ought to marry whoever invented formulas in spreadsheets.”
I laugh, because I think he’s joking. I’m pretty sure he’s messing around…
Around us, the rodeo grounds keep moving.
Willy shouts something obscene from near the chute gates and gets yelled at by two separate people. Emmett hauls feed sacks like he’s trying to prove a point to the universe. Red barely moves, but somehow everything around him settles a little anyway.
I make notes, cross-reference deposit amounts, check dates. And then I freeze.
My eyes catch on a vendor invoice. A consulting charge.
Not large enough to make anyone blink. Tucked inside an event operations bundle alongside portable fencing, temporary power rentals, and sanitation service.
The kind of line item most people would skim right past because it sounds boring enough to be legitimate.
My stomach tightens anyway.
I look closer. The company name sits there in neat black print.
Barrow Agricultural Consulting.
The sounds around me dull. My thumb presses hard into the edge of the paper, because I know that name. I know it from Ironwood. From when I spotted something that seemed off.
I stare at the invoice like it might rearrange itself if I glare hard enough.
Same name, same formatting, even the billing code looks familiar.
A weird little pulse starts behind my ribs.
No.
No, maybe that’s good.
Maybe that’s all this is.
Maybe Barrow Agricultural Consulting is a real company that handles logistics or event planning or supply chain review or some other aggressively dull service people with money like to outsource so they can feel efficient.
Maybe seeing it here means the Ironwood charges are legitimate after all and I’ve been building ghosts out of columns and bad instincts.
Maybe.
But my gut goes still in the worst way.
“You okay?” Sammy snaps me back.
I look up too fast. “What?”
“You made a weird face.”
“A… face?”
He shrugs. “I ran this rodeo for twenty-three years. I know an accountant’s expression when she wants to kill a number.”
I huff out a breath and tap the invoice. “This company, Barrow Agricultural Consulting. What do they do for the rodeo?”
Sammy leans over, reading. Then he shrugs again. “Paperwork support, I think. Vendor coordination, maybe. Don’t quote me. That one came in through a recommendation.”
“From who?”
He flips back through his clipboard, muttering to himself. “Town committee… sponsorship review… no… here.” His finger lands on a note. “Tessa Grange flagged them as useful for event contract oversight couple seasons back. Said they’d streamline things.”
Tessa. The attorney. The same woman Silas met with over contract irregularities.
It could still mean nothing.
Small towns recycle professionals like gossip and casserole dishes. One attorney recommending one consulting company to multiple local operations isn’t exactly criminal mastermind territory.
But it sits wrong, and I don’t know why.