Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Duke
I should’ve shut that dinner down five minutes in.
Maybe ten.
Hell, maybe the second Vivian opened her mouth.
Instead, I sat there and let it happen. Let her pick Annie apart as if she was assessing livestock instead of a person who’s done more for this ranch in a few weeks than most people do in years.
And then Annie stood up and walked out. She didn’t slam anything, didn’t raise her voice, just… left, which has left me feeling way more hollow.
I give it about three seconds before I push my chair back.
Vivian’s still talking, something smooth and poisonous about “family matters,” but I’m done listening. Been done for years.
“Duke,” Silas says.
I don’t stop.
If he wants to have that conversation, he can have it later. Preferably somewhere that doesn’t involve linen napkins and warfare.
The hallway’s silent when I step out, the kind of peace that always follows a storm inside this house. The walls are holding their breath, waiting to see what breaks next.
I don’t slow down.
I grab my keys off the hook by the mudroom door, shrug into my jacket, and head straight outside.
Cold air hits hard.
Good.
Better than whatever the hell was happening in there.
I don’t have to look far.
Annie’s out in the garden, halfway down the path, standing still, trying to remember how to exist outside of that dining room. Shoulders tight, hands flexing at her sides, working the stress out of her system.
Yeah.
I know that feeling.
Ironwood does that to people. Gets under your skin, wraps around your lungs, makes everything feel smaller than it should.
Vivian’s just… better at it than most.
I lean against the post for half a second, watching her, giving her space to breathe and then I push off and head down toward her. “Come with me.”
She just follows me, no questions asked.
Night in Colter Creek feels different once most people have gone home.
The town gets more peaceful. Porch lights beam. The diner sign swings. Somewhere a dog barks once and gets told to shut up by somebody unseen.
The mountains sit black against the sky, big enough to make all the town drama feel briefly ridiculous.
The truck heater kicks in slow, and Annie sits tucked into the passenger seat with one hand around the sleeve of her cardigan, holding herself in place by the cuff.
I don’t push conversation right away. Partly because I’ve learned she’ll tell me things in her own time if I don’t crowd the edges and partly because I just enjoy driving with her.
She fits in the cab in a way that seems impossible after such a short time. The space was made to hold her little silences and her camera.
Dangerous thought.
I set it aside for later, where I keep all the other dangerous thoughts that look suspiciously like future.
“You know,” I say as we roll through town, “for the record, if you want me to egg Vivian’s car, I’m not saying yes, but I’m saying I’d hear your pitch.”
Annie snorts. “That’s your solution?”
“It’s not my first solution.”
“Comforting.”
“My first solution actually involved dramatically faking my own death at age twelve so I could avoid one of her piano recitals.”
That gets her attention. “You took piano?”
“I was forced into piano.”
“Wow.”
“Exactly.” I nod solemnly. “You understand my trauma.”
She turns in the seat a little more, studying me. “You?”
I grin. “What, you thought I sprang fully formed from the earth with a pie recipe and emotional intelligence?”
“No,” she says dryly. “I just assumed the universe handcrafted you to be irritating.”
“That too.”
The bakery is still lit when we pull up, smelling of butter, cinnamon, and the best decisions you’ve ever made.
Millie McDougal is behind the counter when we walk in, cardigan buttoned crooked over her floral blouse, gray hair pinned up in a soft twist that never seems to move no matter what the weather’s doing.
She looks up, spots me, and smiles in that way older women do when they know exactly how full of nonsense you are and love you anyway.
“Well,” she says. “If it isn’t trouble.”
“Millie,” I say, wounded. “I came for baked goods and spiritual healing.”
“You came because you know I start discounting the day-olds after nine.”
“That too.”
Her eyes slide to Annie and soften immediately. “Hi, Annie.”
She smiles thinly and greets Millie back.
Millie has a way about her that makes people unclench without quite realizing it. Maybe it’s the way she never pounces on silence, or her smell of sugar and yeast and absolute maternal authority.
Or maybe it’s just that she’s one of the few people in Colter Creek who can look at you and make it seem she’s not trying to sort you into a category before deciding whether you’re worth her time.
She points at the case. “Lemon bars, cinnamon rolls, blackberry hand pies, and one chocolate cake slice I’m willing to part with under emotional circumstances.”
“Strong menu,” I say.
Annie leans over the glass case, and I see real interest light her face. Small. “What’s the hand pie situation?”
Millie puts a hand to her chest. “Excellent, thank you for asking.”
That gets Annie smiling.
We leave with a paper bag full of pastries and two coffees Millie refused to let me pay for.
Annie laughs at that all the way out the door.
I’d buy Millie a car for less.
We end up parking near the creek trail behind the bakery, where the water runs dark and silver under the trees and the gravel path curves away from town just enough to feel private without being stupid.
I know better than to take Annie anywhere isolated right now. She might come with me because she trusts me, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to abuse that by dragging her into the woods.
This isn’t a horror movie with better flirting.
So we walk where the bakery lights still catch the trail in soft pieces and the town isn’t too far behind us.
She keeps to herself for the first few minutes, blowing on her coffee, the paper bag bumping against my leg where I carry it.
Then she says, “You weren’t joking, were you?”
“About the piano?”
“About Vivian.”
I breathe out through my nose.
Well. There it is.
“Nope,” I say. “Not even a little.”
She glances at me. “You really grew up like that?”
I take a second before I answer, because some things are easier to laugh off than lay out plain, and if I start doing plain with Annie too often I might get attached in a way that ends badly for me.
Too late, probably.
Still.
“Vivian likes order,” I say. “That’s the pretty version. The real version is she likes control, and she thinks the two are the same thing. After our parents died, she stepped in like the ranch was a problem to be managed and we were extensions of it.”
Annie’s face tightens. “Jeez.”
“Yeah.” I kick a stone off the path. “Silas got the worst of it.”
She nods because that makes immediate sense.
“Oldest,” she says.
“Oldest,” I agree. “Which meant Vivian started leaning on him way too young and never really stopped. By the time Silas was eighteen, he already acted like the whole ranch lived or died on his shoulders.”
Annie goes very still beside me. “And Cody?”
I smile without humor. “Cody got precision. Schedules, lessons, expectations. He got praised for being exact until exact turned into the only place he knew how to live.”
Her gaze drops to the path. “And you.”
Ah.
Well.
I pop a piece of cinnamon roll into my mouth because chewing buys time and I’d rather not say she made me charming because charm is useful when you need people to stop looking at the cracks.
But Annie’s too smart for me to dodge that cleanly.
“She mostly wanted me pleasant,” I say. “Presentable. Easy. The one who could smooth things over, make guests comfortable, keep the room warm while everybody else handled the serious work.”
Annie looks up. “That’s bullshit.”
I laugh, softer this time. “Yeah, sweetheart. I know.”
“No, I mean…” She gestures with her coffee. “That isn’t softness. That’s labor. She made you into social glue and called it a personality.”
I stare at her. Then laugh again, because holy hell.
“There you are,” I say.
“What?”
“The part where you get mad on my behalf and accidentally say the smartest thing anybody’s said all week.”
A flush rises under her freckles, but she doesn’t look away. “I just mean… that’s ugly.”
“It was.” I shrug. “Still is sometimes. Ironwood’s gotten better now that we’re older. More ours than hers. But she still walks in and tries to stand her ground.”
Annie takes a sip of coffee and stares out toward the creek. “She told me I was temporary. Like it was an awful thing. Like I don’t belong.”
My face goes tight before I can help it. “She’s wrong.”
Annie laughs once, brittle and tired. “She’s not wrong that I’m temporary.”
“That’s not the part I meant.”
We walk a few more steps in silence.
The creek moves beside us over rocks. Somewhere back toward town, a truck door slams. The night is cold water, full of pine and cinnamon sugar from the bag I’m still carrying.
“I’m scared,” Annie says suddenly.
The honesty in it hits me harder than almost anything else could have.
I don’t rush to fill the space. “Yeah?”
She nods, eyes on the dark ribbon of water.
“Of the money trail. Of what happens if we’re right.
Of how much bigger this is starting to feel.
” She wraps both hands around her cup. “Of whoever took my card, whoever’s been on the property, whoever keeps getting close enough to touch things and then step back before anyone can catch them. ”
I listen.
“And,” she says, then laughs without humor, “apparently I’m also scared of my own terrible taste in men.”
That pulls me up short. “Now hold on.”
She glances at me, and there’s something so open and miserable and furious in her face I almost stop breathing.
“I mean it, Duke.” She shakes her head. “This is insane.”
I know what she means before she says it. I’ve known for a while now. I might be the fun one, but I’m not blind.
Still, hearing it out loud is stepping off a ledge and finding the ground rush up instead of down.
“I feel too much for all three of you,” she says, and there it is. “You. Cody. Silas. Which is ridiculous and messy and probably a sign I should be medicated.”
I stare at her.
She sees my face and groans softly. “Please don’t be nice about it.”
“I’m trying very hard not to grin like an idiot right now, actually.”
That startles a laugh out of her. “You’re impossible.”
“Maybe.” I step closer, not touching, just enough that she doesn’t have to throw her words across distance anymore. “Annie, honey, I’ve known something was happening.”
“With all of you?”
“With you and me? Absolutely. With Cody?” I tilt my head. “I’m not stupid. He looks at you like you’re a mathematical emergency.” Her mouth twitches. “And Silas…” I exhale. “Silas has been losing his mind by inches since you got here.”
That wins me a real laugh, quick and helpless.
Good.
“I hate you,” she says.
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” she admits. “I really, really don’t.”
That does something to me I probably should discuss with a professional.
I set the paper bag on a nearby bench and step fully into her space then, slowly enough to let her turn away if she wants to.
She doesn’t.
“Hey,” I say, softer now. “Messy doesn’t scare me.”
“It should.”
“Nah.
“Duke.”
I smile a little. “Annie, I grew up at Ironwood. My baseline for messy is unconstitutional.”
That gets another laugh.
Then her face folds again, not into crying this time but into that raw, honest look she gets when she’s too tired to perform being okay.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she says.
I lift one hand and tuck a loose strand of blue hair gently behind her ear before I can overthink it. “You don’t have to know yet.”
Her breath catches.
Mine threatens to do something similarly embarrassing.
“What if I hurt one of you?” she asks.
I let my hand drift to the side of her neck, thumb resting light just below her ear. “Then we deal with it honestly.”
“And if this blows up everything?”
“It might.”
She stares at me.
I shrug one shoulder. “Doesn’t change the truth.”
“You make everything sound so simple.”
“No,” I say. “I just know complicated things don’t get less true because they’re inconvenient.”
I wrap my arms around her carefully, leaving room for her to change her mind and I hold her. Just like that.
Under the trees. Beside the creek. The paper bag of pastries abandoned on the bench because for now, we’ve both forgotten sugar exists.
“You know what’s funny?” she murmurs into my shirt.
“I suspect I’m about to.”
“I trust you the most with this.”
I blink down at the top of her head. “That’s because I’m delightful.”
She snorts. “It’s because you don’t make everything feel like a test.”
I kiss the top of her head because if I aim any lower I’m going to get distracted, and right now she needs steadiness more than hunger.
Eventually we start back toward the truck.
She steals half my cinnamon roll. I let her because I’m generous in victory. She says that isn’t what happened. I say history will remember me kindly.
By the time we get back to Ironwood, the knot between her shoulders has eased enough that I count the whole thing a success.
Then I see the barn, and everything in me goes hard.
The side service light is on, yellow against the dark. The office annex sits quiet. Too quiet.
But it’s the tack room door that catches my eye.
Or rather the lock.
I stop walking so fast Annie nearly bumps into me.
“What?” she says.
I’m already moving.
“Duke?”
The lock on the barn side door is wrong.
The metal plate sits just a fraction off where it should. Fresh scrape marks around the housing. The wood near the latch splintered in a clean, mean little line that absolutely wasn’t there this afternoon.
Someone’s been at it.
I crouch, fingers brushing the edge of the damaged wood, checking the give without disturbing more than necessary.
Behind me, Annie goes still. “Tell me that’s old.”
I straighten slowly. “It’s not.”
Someone’s escalating. That’s all I can think.
They took her card. They left notes. They slipped through systems and access points and shadows. And now someone has put hands on the barn lock. They’re testing how close they can get, how many times they can touch this place before we stop them.
My jaw tightens hard enough to ache.
Annie steps beside me, face pale in the service light. “Duke.”
“I know.”
“Do you think they got in?”
I scan the door, the frame, the ground below it. “Don’t know yet.” I pull my phone from my pocket. “Stay with me.”
“I wasn’t planning to wander off.”
Normally I’d smile at that. Right now, I don’t have it in me.
Whoever this is isn’t backing off.
They’re getting bolder.
And if they think that means we’ll do the same thing we’ve always done. Tighten up, clean up the mess, move on…
They’ve made a very serious mistake.