Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Building Something Real
Jace
The house is almost done.
A couple weeks have passed since everything shifted, just enough time for the dust to settle on the surface, not nearly enough time for anything underneath it to go quiet.
It’s the first thing I focus on this morning, something solid I can see, touch, and measure in straight lines. Finished work instead of questions that don’t have answers yet.
Framing’s been up for weeks. The roof’s sealed, and the windows are in. The wraparound porch is finally finished. The boards are sanded smooth, stained dark, the kind of place you can sit with a cup of coffee and see half the property without moving your head.
Inside, the cabinets went in yesterday, and the guys are finishing trim work today, moving through it with the kind of rhythm that comes from doing this a hundred times over.
Normal work, normal noise, with hammers tapping, sawdust drifting, and country music playing low from someone’s radio.
It should feel like progress, and it does, but it isn’t clean anymore.
Because every time I look at this place, I don’t just see what we built, I see what we found.
Lane’s already there when I pull up, leaning against the side of the house with a coffee in his hand. His eyes are tracking the crew without looking like he’s paying attention.
Dusty’s sitting on the tailgate of his truck, one boot hooked on the bumper, talking low with Wade and Luke like they’ve been here a while already.
My brothers don’t look up right away because they don’t need to, they know I’m here, that’s how it’s always worked between us.
“What’s left?” I ask, stepping up onto the porch.
“Finish trim, touch up paint, couple fixtures inside,” Luke says, glancing over his shoulder. “Another week, maybe less.”
Wade looks up then, squinting against the morning light. "It's looking good, Jace."
Coming from Wade, that's a heavy duty compliment.
I built the room sizes bigger than I needed for one person. Somewhere in the future I want a family, so I planned for it and it’s looking like that time might be now.
I didn't examine that too closely at the time.
But I'm examining it now.
"Couple more days," I say, more to myself than to Wade.
He comes to stand beside me, arms crossed, looking at it the same way I am.
"You know what you're doing?" he asks.
And I know he's not talking about the house.
“Yes,” I say, but my attention’s already drifting past the work.
Back to the ground.
Wade notices it first.
“Still thinking about it,” he says, not a question.
“Hard not to.”
He nods once, like that’s all the answer he needed.
Because it is, we all saw it, every last piece.
The first time was supposed to be nothing, just post holes, dirt, rock, and whatever the land’s been holding onto for the last hundred years.
Then the shovel hits metal, not scrap or something you toss aside and keep digging, but something placed, deliberately.
We pulled out a rusted box first, edges eaten through but still holding shape, buried deeper than anything natural settles. Inside was wrapped tight in oilcloth, the kind that keeps moisture out if you know what you’re doing.
Inside that were ledger pages, numbers, names, payouts that didn’t match any official record I’ve ever seen.
“Fixed rides,” Dusty mutters from the tailgate, like he’s still finishing the thought from last night.
I nod once.
“That wasn’t all,” Lane adds quietly.
It wasn’t, so we kept digging, because we had to, and the more places we dug the worse it got.
Old gear, not ranch gear but rodeo equipment. More paperwork.
Bull ropes worn smooth in spots they shouldn’t be, like they’d been handled too many times without being used right. Tags stamped with circuit codes that haven’t been active in years. A bent spur with a marking I recognized but couldn’t place until Dusty said the name out loud.
Caldwell circuit, four years gone with no clean ending, no explanation, just gone.
“And then the casings,” Wade adds.
That’s the one that shifted everything.
Not old or buried long enough to match the rest, recent.
Which means someone didn’t just use this place once and walk away.
They came back, and they’ve been coming back.
My jaw tightens as I look out over the stretch of land beyond the house, the part we haven’t touched yet, the part that suddenly feels a whole lot bigger than it did when we started.
“This wasn’t random,” I say.
“No,” Lane agrees. “It wasn’t.”
Silence settles for a second, not empty, just full of the same thought moving through all of us at once.
This place was chosen. They had no idea we were going to buy this place and build on it.
“And now it’s not buried anymore,” Luke says.
There it is, the part nobody’s saying out loud.
We uncovered something that wasn’t meant to be found, and whoever put it here knows that now. All the items are hidden and safe in the barn for now.
I glance back toward the house, toward the work being finished, toward something that’s supposed to be new and clean and mine.
It doesn’t feel that simple anymore.
“Then we don’t treat it like it is,” I say finally.
Wade looks at me. “Meaning?”
“Meaning this isn’t just a build anymore,” I answer. “It’s a problem sitting under our feet, and until we know exactly who it belongs to…”
I let the rest hang.
Don’t need to finish it, they already know, we all do.
Because after last night, this isn’t just about the land anymore.
It’s about Riley and Hadley, and also about a guy she used to date in the past.
And whatever line just got crossed.
And I’m not letting that happen twice.
“Then we don’t sit on it,” I add, pushing off the porch railing before anyone can settle into thinking this through too long. “We move now.”
Wade studies me for a second. “Move how?”
“Same way whoever’s behind this is,” I say, fast, quiet, and ahead of the next step.
Luke lets out a low breath. “You think they’re watching this place?”
“I know they are,” I answer. “The truck didn’t park itself twice, the casings didn’t bury themselves last week, and that note wasn’t a coincidence.”
Lane shifts his weight slightly, eyes narrowing just enough to tell me he’s already running through the same angles I am. “So what’s the play?”
I look out over the land again, letting it settle into something clearer instead of the mess it felt like five minutes ago.
“First thing, we lock this place down,” I say. “No more open access. Anyone on this property is either working for us or known to us. No exceptions.”
Wade nods immediately. “I can handle that.”
“I know you can.”
“Second?” Luke asks.
“We go back through everything we pulled out,” I continue. “Not just what it is, but who it ties to. Names in that ledger, codes on the tags, anything that points back to someone still active and we take pictures of it all.”
Dusty snorts softly. “You’re digging into old dirt that people made a point of burying.”
“Yeah,” I say, meeting his gaze. “Because someone’s still protecting it.”
That lands.
“Third,” I go on, not giving anyone time to talk me out of it, “we find Colt before he finds another angle.”
Wade’s head snaps slightly in my direction. “You really think he’s running this?”
“No,” I say. “I think he’s part of it. And right now, he’s the only piece we’ve got in front of us.”
Lane’s quiet for a beat. “You planning on walking up and asking him?”
“No,” I answer. “I’m planning on making him uncomfortable enough to move.”
Luke huffs a short laugh. “That sounds like a great way to start something we don’t understand yet.”
“It already started,” I say. “We’re just behind it.”
Silence settles again, different this time.
It isn’t uncertainty, it’s momentum.
Wade rubs a hand over his jaw. “And Riley?”
There it is, the piece that doesn’t fit clean into any plan.
I don’t hesitate.
“She doesn’t leave my sight,” I say. “Same for Hadley.”
Luke glances toward the house, then back at me. “You think they’re targets?”
“I think they’re leverage,” I answer. “And I think there is jealousy and I’m not giving anyone the chance to use them like that.”
Dusty pushes off the tailgate slowly, boots hitting dirt with a soft thud. “You’re talking about pulling everyone into this whether they like it or not.”
“I’m talking about keeping them alive,” I say, sharper now. “You’ve seen how this works. You think whoever’s behind that ledger stops at threats?”
He doesn’t answer because he doesn’t need to, we all know the answer to that. "This guy could stop at nothing to cover his crime. We just don't know."
Lane finally straightens from where he’s been leaning, pushing off the wall with a quiet kind of readiness that says he’s in whether he says it out loud or not.
“Alright,” he says. “We tighten the perimeter. Rework the list. Start tracking names.”
Wade nods. “I’ll get the guys moving on it.”
Luke glances back at the house again. “What about the build?”
I look at it too.
At everything it was supposed to be, simple, new, mine, before any of this got tangled up in it.
“Finish it,” I say. “But nobody works alone. Not anymore.”
Wade gives me a short look. “You’re pushing this hard.”
“Yeah,” I say.
Because I don’t have the luxury of easing into this, not after last night, not after that note.
Not after the way Riley looked at me last night to keep her safe.
This isn’t just a problem anymore, it’s a clock I can feel ticking.
And I can feel it ticking whether anyone else hears it yet or not.
“So we move,” Lane says.
“Yeah,” I answer, already stepping off the porch.
We move.
Wade watches me a second longer than the rest.
Not suspicious or unsure, just measuring.
“You’re different,” he says finally.
I don’t stop walking, but I feel it land anyway.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Luke cuts in from behind us, stepping down off the porch with a quiet thud. “You’ve always been intense, but this—” he gestures vaguely toward the land, the house, all of it, “this is something else.”
Lane doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. The look he gives me is enough.
He sees it.