Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Silas
Traps only work if the prey feels safe enough to move.
That’s the mistake most people make.
They think pressure forces exposure. Usually it doesn’t. Pressure makes people cautious. Careful. Predictable in the wrong ways.
No, if you want someone intelligent to reveal themselves, you give them opportunity. You give them confidence.
Then you wait.
The fake vendor account takes me and Cody six hours to build properly.
Not because the structure itself is complicated, but because it has to survive scrutiny from someone who understands Ironwood’s systems intimately.
If the bait looks artificial, nobody touches it. If it looks too clean, too convenient, it becomes suspicious immediately.
So we build it the same way the real fraudulent accounts were built.
Layered routing, seasonal operational overlap, timing attached to livestock transport fluctuations. Enough legitimacy to pass casual review. Enough temptation to invite interference.
Cody sits across from me in the office, glasses low on his nose, eyes moving rapidly between screens.
“Transfer path?” he asks.
“Embedded under deferred maintenance.”
He nods once. “Good.”
The room smells of stale coffee and tension.
Outside the office windows, Ironwood moves through another gray afternoon. Ranch hands crossing the yard. Horses moving through the paddocks. Trucks pulling feed deliveries toward the north barn.
Normal.
Everything keeps pretending to be normal.
That’s the part I’m starting to hate most.
Annie sits at the far end of the table, reading with that intense focus of hers. Blue hair twisted up messily. Pencil tucked behind one ear. Thumb tapping absently against her camera strap while she thinks.
Every time I look at her lately, my chest tightens harder.
I should’ve contained this weeks ago.
Instead, somehow, Annie Wright got under my skin quickly enough that I didn’t realize the damage until it was already structural.
Now she matters too much, and that changes everything.
Cody glances toward me briefly. “If the reroute triggers, we’ll know within minutes.”
I nod once. But my eyes drift back toward Annie automatically.
“What?” she asks without looking up from the spreadsheets.
“Nothing.”
Annie snorts softly. “You stare like a man preparing for battle.”
“I am preparing for battle.”
“That’s reassuring.”
Duke appears in the doorway carrying coffee and grilled chicken wraps because apparently his response to organized crime is support catering.
He sets one beside Annie first.
“You’ve all been in here too long,” he says.
“We’re working,” Cody replies.
“You’re deteriorating,” Duke corrects.
He leans down briefly beside Annie, fingers brushing lightly against the back of her chair as he steals one quick kiss against her temple.
Jealousy doesn’t spike. Not anymore.
I look back at the screen before anyone notices.
Annie glances between all of us eventually, perceptive as hell.
“You know,” she says carefully, “the tension in this room could probably power a small city.”
Duke grins. “That’s the ranch spirit.”
Cody wants to argue with gravity itself.
I focus on the operation because it’s the only thing keeping me functional.
The trap is simple in theory.
The fake vendor payment sits buried beneath legitimate operational transfers. Visible only to someone with internal access and enough familiarity with the system to recognize opportunity.
If someone moves the payment, if someone reroutes it, we’ll know. We’ll know the theft is active from inside Ironwood itself.
No more theories.
No more instinct.
Proof.
I lean back in my chair, thumb brushing unconsciously over the worn leather glove in my hand.
“Sherry sees the fake approval at five,” I say evenly. “Jake receives routing visibility at six. Nobody else gets direct notification.”
Annie finally looks up. “And if nobody touches it?”
“Then we reevaluate,” Cody says.
“No,” I answer.
Three pairs of eyes turn toward me.
I hold Annie’s gaze. “Someone will touch it.”
Because they’re confident now. That’s the problem. The escalation at the ranch, the gates, the tampered locks, the threats toward Annie.
Whoever’s behind this stopped behaving cautiously weeks ago.
They think they’re protected. And protected people make mistakes.
The thought settles cold and hard inside me.
Because if I’m wrong, if this trap fails, then whoever’s escalating this situation will realize we’re close, and Annie becomes the most obvious target.
The trap goes live at 6:13 in the evening.
By 8:00, nobody has touched it.
By 10:00, Cody’s still monitoring system behavior from his office.
By midnight, I’m walking the property lines because I can’t sit still anymore.
Cold cuts across the ranch, carrying the scent of pine, horses, and incoming rain.
My instincts haven’t relaxed in weeks.
I circle the north paddocks automatically, scanning gates and fence lines before heading back toward the main house.
The office light is still on.
I step inside.
Annie sits curled sideways in the leather chair near the desk, laptop open as she focuses. Her hair’s half fallen from its bun, one socked foot tucked beneath her. Empty iced coffee beside a stack of paperwork.
She looks up when I enter. “There you are.”
The words land strangely intimate in the office.
I close the door behind me. “You should be asleep.”
“So should you.”
Fair.
I loosen my grip around the leather glove still in my hand.
Annie studies my face for one long second. “You look exhausted.”
“I’m fine.”
“Mm.” She closes the laptop gently. “That’s your least convincing habit, by the way.”
I lean against the desk across from her.
The office feels smaller at night. Closer. Only the desk lamp glows, painting warm light across wood floors and scattered paperwork.
Annie watches me carefully. “You think the trap’s going to work.”
“Yes.”
“But…”
I exhale slowly through my nose. “But if it does, whoever’s behind this realizes we’re onto them.”
Understanding flickers across her face. “And you think they’ll escalate.”
“I know they will.”
The honesty hangs heavily between us.
Annie’s fingers curl loosely around the edge of the chair. “You can’t protect everybody, Silas.”
“No.”
My answer comes too fast. Too rough. Because that isn’t the real problem. The real problem is much worse.
I step closer before I fully decide to. Annie stills. The room narrows around us. Lamp light. Coffee. Rain beginning softly against the windows.
Her pulse flickering visibly in her throat. Mine hitting hard enough to hurt.
“I need you to understand something,” I say. Her eyes stay locked on mine. “When this started, I thought I was protecting the land. Then it became protecting my family,” I continue. “Cody, Duke, Ironwood itself.”
Annie swallows softly. “And now?”
There it is. The question I’ve been avoiding for weeks.
I look at her sitting there in my office wearing oversized socks and stubbornness as armor.
This woman who walked into Ironwood carrying temporary plans and somehow became essential before I noticed it happening.
The realization hits hard enough to bruise.
Because I know exactly what this means now.
If Annie gets hurt, there’s no version of me that recovers from it intact.
“I’m not just protecting Ironwood anymore,” I say.
Annie goes very still.
I take one final step closer. Close enough to touch. Close enough to feel heat radiating between us.
“I’m protecting you.”
The truth settles heavily into the room.
Raw.
Unavoidable.
Annie’s lips part. “Silas…”
“I don’t care what it costs me,” I admit roughly. “I don’t care what line I cross. If somebody threatens you again…”
Her hand closes suddenly around my wrist. The contact stops the rest of the sentence in my throat. I look down at her fingers wrapped around me. Then back up at her face.
“You don’t always have to carry everything alone,” she whispers.
The words hit somewhere dangerously deep. Because carrying things alone is the only way I’ve survived this long.
I lift my hand slowly, brushing one loose strand of blue hair back behind her ear. My fingers remain against her jaw longer than necessary.
Annie leans into the touch instinctively. That tiny movement nearly destroys me.
I kiss her.
Annie makes this soft sound against my mouth that nearly snaps the last thread of control I have left. And I realize I’m falling deeper than I ever thought I could.