Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Annie
Bedlam has a sound.
It isn’t screaming, exactly.
It’s the violent metallic clang of something hitting fencing at full force. The sharp, panicked whinny of a horse. Boots pounding across gravel before the sun is even fully up. Radios crackling over each other. Men shouting names.
My eyes snap open before my brain catches up, pulse already sprinting. For one disoriented second, all I know is darkness and adrenaline and the fact that something is wrong.
Another shout tears through the morning.
“Horses out near the east paddock!”
I’m out of bed before I think about it, yanking a hoodie over my tank top, feet shoved into boots without socks because apparently basic human functions no longer matter at Ironwood Ranch.
The hallway outside my room is a blur of movement. Ranch hands rush past, doors open, radios hiss.
Duke nearly collides with me at the corner.
His hair is a mess. His jaw rough with stubble. Hazel eyes wide in a way I’ve never seen before.
“Stay inside,” he says.
Which tells me this is serious faster than anything else could.
“What happened?”
“One of the gates was left open.”
Ice slides down my spine.
“No,” I breathe.
“Yeah.” His voice is tight. Too controlled. “Couple horses got spooked. Benji and the others are trying to round them up now.”
A crash sounds outside somewhere distant.
Duke flinches.
Duke.
The man who treats madness as a personality trait.
Fear curls cold in my stomach.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Annie—”
“I want to help.”
His jaw flexes hard enough to cut glass, but he grabs my wrist anyway, tugging me down the hall with him.
The morning air hits like a slap the second we step outside. Cold. Smelling of dirt and panic.
Men move across the ranch in fast, controlled lines. Horses are agitated in the paddocks, stamping and snorting. One ranch hand is trying to calm a gelding that keeps jerking against the lead rope hard enough to bruise itself.
And in the center of all of it, Silas.
He looks lethal.
His dark hair is damp like he dragged a hand through it too many times already. His shoulders are rigid beneath a thermal henley, jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscle ticking from ten feet away.
A ranch hand is talking to him rapidly.
“The latch wasn’t broken,” the guy says nervously. “It was opened.”
Silas goes terrifyingly still. “You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
Then Silas turns, eyes scanning the property with the kind of focus predators probably use before they kill.
“Check every gate on the north side,” he orders coldly. “Every lock. Every chain. I want eyes on all the horses until further notice.”
Nobody argues. Nobody hesitates. They move instantly.
Cody appears beside him a second later. His expression is somehow worse than Silas’s.
Ice cold.
“What time was the gate found?” Cody asks.
“Five twenty-three,” the ranch hand answers.
“Who opened the paddocks last night?”
“Benji locked them after evening feed.”
Cody’s gaze pierces, like he’s slotting puzzle pieces into place whether he wants to or not.
Then his eyes land on me, and there’s a flicker. Suddenly I understand. This isn’t about property damage anymore.
Someone could’ve gotten hurt. A horse breaks a leg in a panic, a rider gets thrown, a ranch hand gets crushed against fencing in the dark.
Accidents happen fast out here.
This is escalating.
They’re not trying to scare me anymore. They’re destabilizing the ranch.
Silas stalks toward the open gate himself, boots cutting through mud with purpose. I follow before anyone can stop me.
The latch hangs loose against the fencing.
A shiver crawls over my skin.
Silas crouches near the post, gloved hand brushing over the metal.
“Boot prints,” I say.
His eyes flick toward me.
There are tracks in the dirt near the fencing. Deep enough to see despite the churned mud from the horses.
Too large to mean anything useful. Too messy now to identify.
My pulse kicks harder.
Silas straightens slowly. “Get inside,” he says without looking at me.
“No.”
“Annie.”
“This isn’t random.”
His jaw tightens. “I know. I’m worried for you.”
“No,” I snap, frustration slicing through my fear. “I mean, this specifically isn’t random. Somebody wanted disruption. Panic. A mess big enough to pull attention away from something else.”
Cody walks up behind us just as the words leave my mouth. “What are you thinking?”
My brain starts moving before I can stop it. “Vendor entries.”
Silas frowns. “What?”
“The gate happened before shift rotation. Everybody’s distracted now. Nobody’s watching admin systems this early.” I look between them. “If somebody needed access to move something through the books quietly, this would be a good time to do it.”
Cody’s expression changes. “You think this was coordinated.”
“I think,” I say carefully, “that whoever’s doing this understands how Ironwood functions.”
Silence again.
Cody looks toward the house. “Office. Now.”
The admin building is eerily silent compared to the drama outside.
The fluorescent lights hum overhead while my fingers fly across the keyboard hard enough to ache.
Coffee sits untouched beside me, which might be the clearest sign yet that the apocalypse is coming.
Cody stands behind my chair, close enough that I can feel heat radiating off him. Silas paces near the window like a storm trapped in human skin.
Duke leans against the desk beside me, arms folded tight across his chest.
Nobody talks much.
I pull up vendor approvals first. Then entry logs. Then timestamps.
My stomach sinks lower with every screen.
“There,” I whisper.
Cody leans closer. A vendor approval request, submitted early this morning, approved through Jake’s admin credentials, but the company name is different this time.
Not Hollow Creek Consulting.
Not one of the names we already flagged.
This one reads: Northline Agricultural Solutions.
My pulse pounds harder.
“Open the payment routing,” Cody says.
I do.
And my blood turns cold.
“It’s the same formatting,” I whisper.
“What?” Silas asks.
“The tax variants. Look.” I point at the screen. “They’re using the same sequencing tricks. Same numerical substitutions. Same backend routing structure.”
Cody’s face hardens with every word. Because he sees it too. This isn’t coincidence, this is the same person, the same operation, just wearing a different mask.
Silence settles over the office. Heavy enough to choke on.
Then Duke says, “So what does that mean?”
Nobody answers immediately, because I think we’re all afraid of it, afraid of where the line finally points.
My fingers hover over the keyboard. Jake’s credentials stare back at me from the approval log.
Jake approved the vendor entry.
Jake’s system processed the authorization.
Jake’s access rerouted the payment structure.
Again.
Again.
Again.
A horrible feeling unfolds slowly inside my chest.
I lean back in the chair, heart hammering hard enough to hurt. And finally, I say the thing I’ve been avoiding for weeks.
“Jake truly might be involved.”
Duke exhales harshly. Silas’s expression shutters, becoming closed off. Cody just stares at the screen.
I swallow hard. “There’s still a chance someone’s using his credentials,” I say quickly, because I want that to be true. “Or manipulating approvals through his access point or—”
“No,” Cody interjects. “He’s either involved, or he’s catastrophically incompetent.”
Silas drags a hand down his face.
“And Jake doesn’t do incompetent,” Duke mutters.
The office suddenly feels too small, too warm, too tight around my lungs. If Jake’s involved, if he’s part of this, then the danger isn’t circling Ironwood anymore.
It’s already inside it.