Chapter 5
TORIN
I told myself I was just checking in on the rodeo project. That's what I did. I kept tabs on things… made sure nothing slipped through the cracks before it became a problem.
But the truth was, I couldn't shake the date on that missing envelope or the way Claire had traced that empty divider tab with her finger, like she could feel the absence of whatever had been there.
Lois Hollister hadn't been careless. Everyone in town knew that. If a file was gone, there was a reason.
I turned onto the gravel road leading to Wilde Creek Ranch. Dawson would be working horses this time of day. He always was.
I found him in the round pen, working a bay mare through her paces. The horse moved smooth and steady, responding to the slightest shift in his body language. Dawson didn't look up when I pulled in, but he knew I was there. He finished the exercise before crossing to the fence.
"Didn't expect to see you out this way," he said.
"Figured I'd check in on the rodeo prep."
His mouth twitched. "You mean you want to know if I've hit any walls with the deadline."
"That too."
Dawson wiped his hands on his jeans and jerked his head toward the barn. "Come on. I'll show you what I've got."
Inside, the barn smelled like hay, animals, and leather. Unlike a lot of folks in Mustang Mountain, I didn’t grow up on the land and didn’t have a ton of experience around horses. Still, it wasn’t hard to see why someone would love a place like this.
Dawson pulled an old ledger from a locked cabinet near his office and set it on the workbench. The cover was cracked, the pages yellowed with age.
"This is what I've been working from," he said. "Breeding records going back to the early 1900s. Most of it's straightforward, but there are gaps and places where the records don't line up with what the town's been saying about the feud."
I leaned over the ledger, scanning the entries of dates, names, and bloodlines traced in careful, looping script. The handwriting changed every few years, like different people had kept the records alive across generations.
"What's this?" I pointed to an entry dated March 1912. A Kincaid mare was listed alongside a Hollister stallion, and the foal recorded six months later.
Dawson crossed his arms. "That's the problem. If the feud had already divided the families completely, that breeding shouldn't exist. But it's right there. Clear as day."
I scanned the surrounding entries. There were more overlaps signaling cooperation that didn't fit the story everyone in Mustang Mountain had been telling for a hundred years.
"The feud hardened around that time," Dawson said. "Everyone knows that. But the records suggest it wasn't always a clean break. There was overlap of shared work, maybe even shared land."
I straightened, my chest tight. "What year did things really go south?"
"Best I can tell? Around 1914. That's when the entries stop mentioning both families together. After that, it's all separate. Hollisters are on one side, Kincaids on the other. No crossover."
That was two years after the missing file Claire had found. Two years after whatever Lois had been cross-referencing.
"Have you ever seen anything in the records about land transfers?" I asked.
Dawson's eyes narrowed. "No. Why?"
"Claire found a gap in her aunt's files around 1912.” I trusted Dawson to keep whatever we discussed to himself but didn’t want to give him more information than he needed.
He went still. "That’s the same year as the breeding overlap."
"Yeah."
We stood there in silence, the weight of it settling between us.
The ledger showed cooperation. Claire's missing file pointed to something that happened the same year.
Whatever went down in 1912 hadn't just been about horses or land.
It had been about both. And someone had made sure the proof disappeared.
"Does Claire know about the ledger?" Dawson asked.
"Not yet."
"Are you going to tell her?"
I looked down at the ledger again, at the careful notations that proved the feud wasn't as simple as everyone believed. "She needs to see it for herself."
Dawson nodded. "Be careful. If someone pulled that file from Lois's records, they're not going to be happy if Claire starts asking questions."
"I know."
"And if this gets out before the rodeo—"
"It won't. Not until we know what we're dealing with. Do you mind if I take a picture of this page to show her?"
“As long as this is off the record, go ahead.” Dawson waited until I’d snapped an image with my phone, then closed the ledger and locked it back in the cabinet. "You let me know if you need anything."
I clapped him on the shoulder and headed back to my truck. The sun had started to dip behind the ridge, casting long shadows across the valley. I should have been heading home. Should have been ending my shift and letting someone else handle the night patrol.
Instead, I turned toward Claire's house.
She needed to see the ledger and needed to understand that whatever her aunt had been researching wasn't just about land ownership. It was bigger than that. It might be connected to bloodlines and breeding records and a feud that had never been as clean as the town wanted to believe.
I gripped the steering wheel, my mind running through the possibilities.
If the families had been cooperating in 1912, something must have broken that cooperation apart.
Something bad enough that it got buried and stayed buried for a century.
And if Lois had found proof of what really happened, someone had made sure it disappeared.
I'd spent my whole life keeping the peace in Mustang Mountain. Holding the lines. Making sure things didn't crack open and spill their guts all over the valley. But now I was driving toward Claire's place with information that could shake everything loose.
Maybe I should have been more careful or should have thought it through. But all I could think about was the way she'd looked at that empty divider tab, like she could already feel the shape of what was missing. She wasn't going to let this go, and I wasn't going to let her dig alone.
The snow crunched under my tires as I pulled up to the Hollister house, but before I'd even cut the engine, I heard noises coming from inside.
Something crashed. A muffled curse followed.
I was out of the truck and through the front door before I could think twice, my hand automatically going to my belt.
"Claire?"
"Don't come in here!" Her voice came from the kitchen, loud and a little out of breath. "I've got it under control."
I rounded the corner anyway and stopped.
She was crouched next to the pantry, her hair falling loose from whatever she'd tied it back with, holding a glass jar in one hand and a dish towel in the other.
The flour canister sat on its side on the counter with a trail of white leading to the baseboard.
"What happened?"
"Mouse." She didn't look up, her focus locked on the narrow gap between the cabinet and the wall. "I saw it go under there about thirty seconds ago."
I leaned against the doorframe, watching her adjust her grip on the jar. Her movements were slow and careful, like she'd done this before.
"You want some help?"
"No." She shifted her weight, angling the jar toward the gap. "If you move, it'll spook and run the other direction."
I stayed still.
She waited. Then, in one smooth motion, she swept the towel along the baseboard and brought the jar down fast. The mouse darted right into it, and she slid a piece of cardboard underneath before it could escape.
"Gotcha!" She got to her feet and carried the jar to the back door.
I followed, stepping outside while she walked halfway to the tree line before kneeling and tipping the jar over.
When she came back inside, she brushed the flour off her shirt like catching a mouse was just another normal part of her day.
The Claire I remembered from high school had always seemed untouchable.
This version… with her hair loose, cheeks flushed, and sleeves rolled up… was a hell of a lot harder to ignore.
She caught me staring and cocked her head. "What?"
"Nothing." I couldn't quite keep the smile off my face. "Just didn't figure you for the catch-and-release type."
"It's a mouse, not a threat." She crossed to the sink and washed her hands. "Besides, it was probably more scared than I was."
I thought about the untouchable Hollister girl I'd known in high school. The one who'd walked through the halls like she was carved from something colder than the rest of us. Turned out, maybe she'd just been a little guarded.
This version of Claire—sleeves rolled up, flour on her shirt, handling her own problems without flinching—this was real. And I liked her more than I had any right to.
She dried her hands and turned to face me. "So. Did you drive all the way out here to watch me wrangle rodents, or was there something else?"
"I went to see Dawson."
Her expression shifted, the lightness fading into something serious. "About the rodeo?"
"About the breeding records." I pulled out my phone and found the screenshot I'd taken of the ledger page before leaving Wilde Creek. "He's been going through old stock documents for the deadline. Found some entries that don't line up with what people say about the feud."
I handed her the phone.
She studied the image, her brow furrowing as she traced the entries with her fingertip. A crease appeared between her brows when she was concentrating. I didn’t remember noticing that in high school. Then again, back then I hadn’t been lucky enough to ever stand this close.
"1911 through 1914. Hollister and Kincaid horses listed together."
"Shared breeding," I said. "Shared work. The families weren't completely divided yet."
"But everyone says the feud started before that."
"Maybe it did. But it wasn't a clean break. Not right away."
She zoomed in on the March 1912 entry, then looked up at me. "That's the same year as the missing file from Aunt Lois's records."
"I know."
"And two years before the cooperation stopped completely." She handed the phone back, her jaw tight. "Something happened in 1914. Something that ended whatever partnership they'd had."
"Looks that way."
She crossed her arms, staring at the phone screen like she could pull answers out of it through sheer will. "Lois was cross-referencing that transfer for a reason. If the families were still working together in 1912, maybe that land wasn't stolen. Maybe it was shared."
"Or sold," I said. "Or traded."
"Either way, someone didn't want the proof to survive."
The room settled into quiet, the weight of it pressing down on both of us. Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the new glass I'd installed.
"I'm going to my parents' house this weekend," Claire said. "Sunday dinner. My mother's been asking since I got back into town."
I waited.
"I'll ask about the old breeding records. See if anyone remembers anything about Hollister horses from that time period. Maybe there's still paperwork somewhere."
"Your family's not going to like you digging."
"I'm not asking permission." Her voice stayed even, but there was steel underneath. "If Lois thought this mattered, then it matters. I'm not going to pretend it doesn’t just because it's inconvenient."
There it was again. That quiet, unshakable resolve that had nothing to do with the Hollister name and everything to do with who she was.
I should have left. Should have told her to be careful and headed back to my truck. Instead, I moved closer.
“You’re not digging into this alone,” I said.
Claire studied me for a second. “You don’t even know what we’re going to find.”
“Doesn’t matter.” I met her gaze. “I’m still here.”
The space between us shrank. I didn't remember deciding to close it, but suddenly I was close enough to see the faint line between her brows and the way her breath caught when I lifted my hand to her face.
"Claire." Her name came out rougher than I meant it to.
She didn't move. Didn't look away. I should have stepped back. Should have remembered every reason this was a terrible idea. Instead, I tightened my grip on her waist.
Then I kissed her.
Her mouth was soft and warm, and when she leaned into me, her hand coming up to grip my shirt, everything else fell away... the feud… the missing files… the town watching from a distance. None of it mattered. Just this. Just her.
When we finally broke apart, her forehead rested against mine, both of us breathing harder than we should have been.
"That wasn't very professional, deputy," she said, her voice soft and quiet.
"No, ma'am. It wasn't."
She smiled, and I felt it all the way through my chest.
Whatever this was, we'd crossed a line. And I wasn't walking it back.