Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Annie
The second Silas speaks, every good thing from tonight dies a fast, ugly death. “Where the hell have you two been?”
The office is too bright after the dark outside.
It still smells like paper and printer ink and leather from the tack room down the hall, but now there’s a bite under it too.
Anger, maybe, if anger had a scent. Control stretched so tight it’s gone metallic.
Silas’s shoulders are rigid beneath a dark thermal, his jaw cut hard enough to look painful, his eyes fixed on me with a kind of furious intensity that makes my whole body go on alert.
Not because I’m scared of him exactly. Because I know, with a horrible immediate certainty, that this isn’t really about where I’ve been.
This is about the fact that I went off-grid after being threatened.
Duke shifts half a step beside me, subtle but unmistakable, and if I wasn’t already furious, that would do it all by itself.
Because I don’t need buffering.
“We went into town,” I say flatly. “Why?”
Silas’s eyes flick to Duke, then back to me.
“Why?” he repeats, like the question itself is offensive. “Nobody knew where you were.”
I blink at him. “I’m sorry, did I miss the part where I’m on house arrest?”
His mouth hardens.
Duke, apparently sensing exactly how close this is to becoming an actual disaster, says, “She didn’t disappear, Silas. She went out.”
“With you.”
There’s enough in those two words to build a whole fire out of. Is he… jealous? Or just purely worried about me?
Duke’s expression changes, not much, but enough that I feel it. The easy warmth from the café is gone, tucked away behind a forced steadiness.
“Yes,” he says.
Silas lets out one breath through his nose. “At night. After everything that’s happened.”
I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “Wow. I didn’t realize Ironwood had a curfew.”
“I was worried about you. I thought something might have happened.”
Silas comes around the desk, every step intentional, every inch of him saying he’s holding on by the last frayed thread of restraint and resents having to do it.
The worst part?
I know some of this is fear.
I can feel it under the surface, ugly and hot and badly translated into control, but that doesn’t make me want to forgive it. It makes me want to shove it right back where it came from.
“You disappeared for two hours after getting threats, Annie,” he says.
“But I went with Duke. I wasn’t exactly wandering the woods barefoot.”
Duke turns his head. “Silas.”
“Don’t,” Silas says without looking at him.
Oh, that does it.
I step forward before I’ve fully decided to, anger hitting so hard it burns clean. “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”
“I’m talking to you like someone I was worried sick about.””
“That doesn’t mean you get to manage me because you’re in a mood.”
His face changes. “I’m not in a mood.”
That’s so ridiculous I actually laugh. “Right. Of course. This is your normal relaxed demeanor when I go get soup with your brother.”
Duke mutters, “It was grilled cheese too, for the record.”
Neither of us looks at him.
Silas’s gaze stays locked on mine. “This is exactly the problem.”
“What is?”
“Everybody in this house suddenly acting like the threats against you stopped mattering.”
“But I was with Duke.”
“And Duke should’ve known better.”
I stare at him, every nerve in my body lit up and furious. I know this situation is messy enough to blur lines that shouldn’t blur. “You don’t get to decide everything I do.”
“This is about safety.”
“From where I’m standing it looks a lot like you’re trying to dictate my personal life because your control issues are having a bad night.”
Duke actually winces.
Good.
Let him.
Silas takes another step closer. The air goes taut. “You think this is control?”
“Yes.”
“You think I’m doing this because I enjoy it?”
“I think you’re doing it because it makes you feel better.”
Duke steps between us. “That’s enough.”
Silas finally looks at him and whatever sits between those two men goes tight enough to hum.
“No,” Silas says. “It isn’t.”
Duke folds his arms. “She’s not one of the ranch horses, man.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you’re forgetting it.”
There’s more than me here, I can sense it. Years of history and hierarchy and old habits shifting under pressure, and apparently I’m the spark tonight. Fantastic.
Silas’s expression goes glacial. “You took her off this property without saying a word to anyone.”
“She needed air.”
“You don’t decide that alone. I thought we discussed this.”
Oh shit. What did I miss?
Duke lets out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Pretty sure Annie decides what Annie needs.”
Oh, I shouldn’t enjoy that as much as I do. But I really, really do.
Silas hears it too.
His eyes cut to me again, and for one split second emotion flares there that is absolutely not just anger. Possessiveness. Jealousy. It’s dark enough to make my pulse trip and my temper surge harder in the same instant.
Which is insane.
All of this is insane.
“I’m standing right here,” I bark. “You can stop talking about me like I’m a scheduling conflict.”
Silas says, “Fine. You want direct? Here it is. I don’t want you dating Duke.”
The room goes dead still, and then my anger goes nuclear. I think I actually see white around the edges.
“You don’t want…” I repeat, then laugh once because otherwise I might throw something. “That is genuinely unbelievable.”
“Annie—” Duke starts.
“No.” I hold up a hand without taking my eyes off Silas. “No, he can hear this too. Whether I date Duke,” I say, every word honed to a blade, “is none of your business.”
“It becomes my business when it affects this house.”
I stare at him. Then I say, softly and with real disgust, “You really do think everything here belongs to you, don’t you?”
Silas goes still in a way that would terrify smarter people. “I think this ranch survives because people follow rules.”
“And I think you hide behind ‘rules’ whenever your feelings get inconvenient.”
For one heartbeat, nobody moves.
Then a voice from the doorway says, “I leave for ten minutes and apparently miss the collapse of civilization.”
I turn.
Of course.
Of course it’s Cody.
He’s standing in the open office door in dark jeans and a henley, glasses in one hand like he took them off halfway through approaching this disaster and already regretted bothering.
His gaze flicks across the room in quick, cutting assessment. Silas furious, Duke braced, me somewhere between murder and meltdown, and I can practically see him categorizing the damage in real time.
“This isn’t any of your business,” Silas says.
Cody arches a brow. “That would be more convincing if you weren’t conducting this business at a volume audible from the main house.”
Duke scrubs a hand over his jaw. “Perfect.”
“No,” Cody says, stepping into the room. “Perfect would’ve been all of you making one competent choice between you.”
My laugh comes out ugly. “You know what? Great. Since everyone’s here, maybe we can make it official. Is there a sign-up sheet for controlling Annie’s life, or do you divide it by department?”
Cody’s eyes snap to mine.
Silas says, “That isn’t what’s happening.”
“Really? Because from where I’m standing, you just told me who I’m not allowed to date, so I’d love to hear the alternate interpretation.”
Cody goes very still. “He said what?”
“Oh, don’t act surprised,” I bite out. “This whole place runs on men with opinions.”
Duke mutters, “That isn’t untrue.”
Silas shoots him a look that could strip paint.
Cody’s expression, meanwhile, has gone flat in the way that means he’s angry enough to become even more controlled, which on him is somehow its own kind of violence.
“Silas,” he says, “explain.”
Silas doesn’t look away from me. “She left at night without telling anyone.”
“And?”
“And went into town with Duke.”
Cody pauses. I can practically hear the gears turning.
Threats against me. Late-night disappearance. Duke. Silas. Me. Personal entanglement colliding headfirst with security concern and control.
“Annie,” Cody says, “where did you go?”
I whirl on him. “No.”
His brows draw together. “No?”
“No, I’m not doing this with you too.”
“This isn’t interrogation. It’s fact finding.”
I let out a short, incredulous laugh. “You really hear yourself say things like that and think it helps?”
His jaw tightens.
“Answer the question,” Silas says.
I turn back on him so fast my hair slips from my bun another inch. “Stop ordering me around.”
“Then stop acting recklessly.”
“Going to Old Mill with Duke isn’t reckless!”
Silas shakes his head. “Leaving after dark when someone’s already threatened you is.”
“Maybe I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want exactly this reaction!”
His eyes flash. “So you knew it was a bad idea.”
I step closer. “No. I knew you’d make it one.”
Silas doesn’t want me with Duke. Duke absolutely does not appreciate being told that. Cody…
Cody’s eyes meet mine for one split second and I have to look away first because there’s too much in them. Too much tension, too much thought, too much of that precise, contained intensity that always feels like it’s one bad moment away from snapping.
I cannot be in this room anymore.
“Unbelievable,” I say, shaking despite my best efforts. “All of you.”
Then I turn and walk out.
No one stops me.
I’m grateful for that for exactly half a second before I realize it means they’re probably all too stunned or furious to move.
Fine.
Good.
Whatever.
By the time I reach the house, my chest is tight and my hands are shaking again, which is getting real old, real fast. I go upstairs too quickly, nearly trip on the last step, slam my bedroom door behind me, and just stand there like an idiot.
Breathing.
Trying to breathe.
My room is dark except for the moonlight at the window, all pale silver across the floorboards. My bed is still unmade from this morning.
My cardigan is draped over the chair by the desk. My camera bag sits by the wall where I left it.
Normal.
Everything looks normal.
I don’t feel normal.
“Jeez,” I whisper to no one.
Then, because apparently my life has become a nonstop parade of disasters, I laugh once and it comes out too close to a sob for comfort.
Nope.
Absolutely not.
I’m not doing this.
Not the crying thing, the replaying the argument thing, the why do all three of them make me feel like I’m standing too close to a live wire thing.
I need something concrete, real, with columns and time stamps and logic that doesn’t care who kissed who or who thinks they get to tell me what to do.
My laptop.
I grab it off the desk so fast I nearly knock over my pen cup.
If the men of Ironwood Ranch want to spend their night imploding over control and jealousy and whatever the hell that scene in the barn office was, then I’m going to do the thing I’m actually good at.
Work.
Anything other than thinking because thinking also leaves me with my other unsolvable issue.
Evan.
I sit cross-legged on the bed, open the laptop, and pull up the files Cody showed me.
Not the protected stuff he’d guarded like state secrets, but the pattern. The method. The way he had me stop looking at single entries and start looking at behavior.
Not one invoice, a chain, or one approval, a system.
My hands still as soon as the spreadsheet opens.
There. That’s better.
I pull the ranch guest list logs first. The sort of background paperwork most people never read because it’s mind-numbingly dull until it isn’t.
I start with recent entries, then work backward, cross reference dates against the suspicious consulting charges, then against after hours file access windows.
Then against event supply movements.
My room goes silent around me except for the click of keys and the sound of the laptop fan.
One line at a time, one date at a time, patterns, behavior, noise reduction.
The way Cody does it, except faster now, because I know what I’m looking for. Or at least I think I do.
Two normal entries. One livestock delivery. One equipment repair. Both backed by the right paperwork. Both approved through the expected channels.
Then another.
Vendor access approved by Jake Dorsey.
Normal on the surface. I almost skip it. Then don’t.
Because there it is again. That damn name.
Barrow Agricultural Consulting.
I pull the supporting file, scan the request, then sit up straighter.
No.
No, that shouldn’t be there.
I go back, check the date again, the authorization code, the event tag, then cross-reference it against the operational schedule for that week.
Nothing.
No corresponding delivery, no scheduled service window, no reason for temporary vendor access on that day at all.
A cold ripple moves down my spine.
I click deeper.
The approval sits under Jake’s system credentials, clean, neat, and incredibly, impossibly wrong. It was entered during a high-traffic period when half the ranch was focused on shipment intake, which means it would’ve blended easily with legitimate access requests.
But it wasn’t legitimate.
It couldn’t have been.
Because the vendor category doesn’t match any active need, the timing doesn’t align with an actual task, and the corresponding service record is basically a ghost. Just enough detail to exist, not enough to verify.
My heartbeat starts to kick harder.
I pull another log.
Then another.
The same vendor name appears once before, buried in a month-old supply overlap that looked routine if you weren’t paying close attention.
And Jake approved that one too.
“What is he doing?”