Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Annie
The ranch feels different after violence.
Quieter.
Every shadow feels occupied.
Sheriff Hank Miller arrives twenty-three minutes after Silas calls him. By then the ranch is already locked down.
Jake sits handcuffed at the kitchen table with Cody standing behind him like a very scary executioner.
Benji’s in the mudroom with an ice pack pressed to his jaw and two deputies watching him like he might try something stupid.
I’m wrapped in one of Duke’s jackets even though I’m indoors because my body cannot seem to figure out temperature anymore.
Cold.
Then hot.
Then shaking so hard my teeth nearly chatter.
Adrenaline is a scam invented by the human body to make sure emotional collapse arrives fashionably late.
Sheriff Miller takes statements one at a time.
Hours blur afterward.
Deputies move through the ranch taking photos and statements. Staff members gather in frightened little clusters near the barns. Rumors spread through Ironwood like gasoline finding flame.
Jake refuses to speak without a lawyer.
Benji mostly stares at the floor.
Silas makes calls in clipped, lethal sentences from the study.
Duke refuses to let me out of his sight for more than thirty seconds at a time.
And Cody brings me evidence.
It’s nearly midnight when he finds me sitting alone in the office staring blankly at my laptop screen without actually seeing it.
The room smells like cold coffee and stress.
A very corporate perfume.
Cody closes the door behind him. “You should sleep.”
I laugh softly. “That ship sailed approximately three catastrophes ago.”
His mouth tightens.
Then he sets a flash drive on the desk beside me. “I found more.”
Immediately my pulse spikes. “More what?”
“The backup archives from Jake’s deleted server folders.”
I sit up straighter. Fatigue evaporates on contact with obsession.
Cody drags the second chair beside mine and sits close enough our knees almost touch. Then he plugs the drive in.
Folders populate across the screen. Emails. Financial routing chains. Investor communications. Shell company agreements.
My stomach twists tighter with every click. “Oh, wow.”
Cody says nothing.
Just watches the screen with that terrifying stillness he gets when emotions are being held together entirely by spreadsheets and spite.
The emails paint the whole picture now and it all links to one person.
Vivian.
Not directly. Never directly. That’s the thing about powerful people. They almost never touch the knife themselves.
Cody leans back slowly, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “Jake still could’ve been using her name.”
I turn toward him fully. “No. This is her.”
Cody’s jaw flexes once. “She raised us.”
“I know.”
His expression hardens.
“Cody… I know men like Jake. They orbit power. They don’t invent it.” I gesture toward the screen. “This? The manipulation? The emotional leverage? The obsession with image and legacy? That’s not operational thinking. That’s family dynasty thinking.”
Cody stares at the emails for a long moment. “I thought she loved us, despite everything.”
The words hit me harder than I expect. Because he sounds younger when he says it. Not Cody Harlan: terrifying human calculator. Just a man trying to reconcile impossible things.
I look back at the screen carefully. “Your aunt mistakes control for love.”
He says nothing to that.
I close the laptop abruptly. “I need air.”
Cody stands. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
“Annie.”
“I just need ten minutes where nobody watches me breathe.”
His eyes narrow behind his glasses. “Ten minutes,” he says carefully. “Then I come looking.”
I nod once and leave before he can change his mind.
The ranch is almost completely dark now. Cold wind moves through the trees surrounding the property, carrying the smell of pine and distant rain.
I keep thinking about Vivian. Her smile, her pearls, her perfectly measured voice.
The way she looked at me like she’d already decided my expiration date.
I grew up around women like that. Women who weaponized kindness because rage was too obvious. Women who smiled while dismantling your life piece by piece.
The polished ones are always the most dangerous.
Always.
I stop near the fence line and pull the flash drive from my pocket.
A copy.
One final backup.
Because if tonight taught me anything, it’s this: Never trust one hiding place.
I crouch beside the fence post slowly, fingers cold against the dirt. Then I reach underneath the loose stone marker near the old property boundary. The tiny waterproof case slides perfectly into place beneath it.
Hidden. Protected. Forgettable.
Nobody would ever look here.
I press the dirt back into place carefully. Then stand slowly, wrapping my arms tighter around myself against the cold.
The ranch stretches endlessly into the dark, all polished fences and quiet power. Beautiful. Controlled. Bleeding from the inside anyway. And somewhere beyond the storm, Vivian Harlan is still smiling.