Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Duke
The problem with letting loose and going wild after a rodeo is that eventually morning still arrives like an unforgiving tax audit.
Annie against the truck.
Cody looking one bad decision away from climbing out of his own skin.
Silas kissing her, his restraint gone.
The sound she made when all three of us touched her.
Nope.
Not thinking about that before coffee.
I crack another egg into the pan and try to push all the thoughts out of my mind.
The kitchen smells of bacon, cinnamon, coffee, and the faint smoke scent that permanently lives in Ironwood no matter how often we clean. Sunlight pushes through the windows in pale gold strips, catching dust motes around me.
Normal morning.
Except not remotely normal because the woman currently occupying my emotional stability hooked up with all three of us last night and now we apparently have to continue existing as functioning adults.
Behind me, boots sound against the floorboards.
“You’re cooking angry again,” Cody says.
I glance over my shoulder. “I’m cooking with passion.”
“You nearly snapped a spatula in half.”
“It knows what it did.”
Cody ignores that and reaches for the coffee pot. His hair’s still damp from the shower, sleeves rolled up, glasses low on his nose while he scans his phone.
Which would probably look very calm and controlled to anyone who didn’t know him. But I know him.
That man hasn’t slept worth a damn.
“You look terrible,” I tell him affectionately.
“Natural state.” He pours coffee. “Silas already left for the south pasture.”
“Of course he did.” I plate scrambled eggs. “Man experiences vulnerability once and immediately goes to stare at fencing about it.”
Cody’s mouth twitches despite himself.
“And Annie?” I ask carefully.
“She’s already in the office.”
Well. There goes my ability to pretend I wasn’t planning to hover around her as a deeply handsome security threat.
I grab a plate before Cody can say anything smug. Eggs, bacon, toast, fruit because Annie occasionally remembers nutrition exists, and an iced coffee because she’s a menace who drinks cold caffeine even when the weather could legally classify as hostile.
“You’re bringing her breakfast,” Cody says flatly.
“No,” I lie.
He stares at the plate.
I stare back. “This is just… portable hospitality.”
“You’re embarrassingly obvious.”
“Jealous?”
“Yes,” he says, which startles a laugh out of me.
“Damn,” I say. “Look at us growing.”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“Too late.”
I carry the plate out before he can throw something at me.
The ranch is already awake around me. Trucks moving, horses shifting in the paddocks, ranch hands starting the day.
Ironwood’s running on its usual rhythm despite the fact that under the surface everything currently feels one hard shove away from catching fire.
That’s the thing about these places. Disaster rarely stops the chores.
The office door’s open when I get there.
Annie’s inside with her hair piled on top of her head in a messy knot that’s losing structural integrity by the second. She’s wearing one of her oversized cardigans over black jeans, eyes narrowed while she stares at her laptop.
Her camera sits beside her keyboard within easy reach.
That makes my chest twist in an ugly manner. Because I can’t look at the damn thing anymore without thinking about the photo left in her car. The note. The feeling of somebody getting too close to her life.
It makes my skin crawl.
I shove the feeling down before it settles on my face.
“Good morning, criminal,” I announce.
Annie startles, then looks up. “Is that for me?”
“No,” I say. “I just carry full breakfast plates around the ranch for enrichment.”
“Like a zoo animal?”
“Exactly.”
Her laugh loosens my ribs.
Good.
I set the plate down on her desk and lean down to kiss the top of her head before I can overthink it.
She goes still for half a second. Then relaxes into it enough that I almost forget every other problem in existence.
“You made bacon,” she says, sounding genuinely emotional about it.
“Honey, you looked one skipped meal away from trying to fistfight a spreadsheet.”
“That’s fair.”
I pull up the spare chair beside her desk and sit.
“You’re hovering,” she says around a bite of toast.
“I prefer protecting.”
“You’re sitting close enough to count my eyelashes.”
“Excellent. Then I’ll know immediately if you’re kidnapped.”
She snorts into her coffee. Mission accomplished.
But even while I joke, I can feel it underneath. The tension. The speed at which this whole thing is escalating.
I’m good at being the easy one. The brother who softens edges. The one who keeps everybody laughing long enough to breathe again.
But last night at the rodeo rattled me more than I let anybody see.
Because Annie saw him again. And because whoever this is didn’t stop after the notes or the missing SD card or the barn lock.
They came back. They keep coming back. That’s not random anymore.
I hate it.
Annie eats while scrolling through files, muttering occasionally under her breath in accountant dialect.
“Suspicious little bitch,” she murmurs at one line item.
I grin. “Talking to the spreadsheet again?”
“It started it.”
“Fair.”
She keeps working while she eats, because of course she does. Cody’s rubbing off on her in deeply upsetting ways.
The office is tranquil except for keyboard clicks, paper shifting, and the occasional distant sound of ranch activity drifting through the windows.
For a little while, it almost feels normal.
Suspiciously normal.
Then Annie goes still beside me.
I know that look now.
It’s the same expression she gets right before she finds something that makes everybody else’s lives significantly harder.
I sigh. “What did you discover now, tiny menace?”
She doesn’t answer right away. That’s never good.
Her eyes narrow at the screen. One hand comes up automatically, thumb tapping once against the side of her camera body.
Thinking rhythm.
“What,” I repeat more carefully, “did you find?”
Annie zooms in on a section of the spreadsheet, then opens another file beside it. “Okay,” she says slowly. “That’s… weird.”
My stomach drops a little. “Weird how?”
“At first I thought these were just buried operational reimbursements.” She clicks again. “But they’re not coded consistently with ranch logistics.”
I lean closer automatically.
She smells of iced coffee, vanilla musk, and sleep deprivation.
Dangerous detail to notice this early in the morning.
“These,” she says, pointing at the screen, “look like standard consulting bleed at first glance. Same structure. Same splitting behavior under approval thresholds.”
“Okay.”
“But the associated classifications are wrong.”
I frown. “Wrong how?”
“They’re event coded.”
That word lands badly.
I feel it.
Annie keeps talking, already pulling up another page. “Look here. Temporary fencing contracts. Portable sanitation rentals. Equipment transport. Livestock staging permits. Vendor hospitality supply chains.” She glances at me. “These aren’t tied only to ranch operations.”
Cold settles low in my stomach.
No.
Annie’s fingers move faster now, opening more files. “The consulting behavior spikes around the rodeo schedule too. Not just Ironwood expansion periods.”
I straighten slowly in the chair. The warmth drains right out of the room.
“Annie,” I say carefully.
She doesn’t hear the warning in my tone yet because she’s too deep in the numbers now.
“The shell behavior overlaps with regional event vendors. Not all of them. Just enough to create movement opportunities that wouldn’t trigger scrutiny because event accounting’s messy by nature.”
My chest tightens hard.
Because I know rodeo circuits. I know how many people move through them. Contractors. Suppliers. Temporary workers. Livestock haulers. Entertainment crews. Security. Sponsors.
People nobody questions because there are too many to track cleanly.
Annie finally looks at me then, and immediately stops. “Duke?”
I stare at the spreadsheet. Then at the rodeo vendor classifications. Then at the pattern connecting them.
“This is worse than I thought.”