Micah (Dry Creek Cowboys #3)

Prologue 1-Micah

People think seed bull ranching is simple.

Feed the cattle.

Fix the fences.

Collect the semen.

Ship it.

Repeat.

They're wrong.

Every bull on Jersey Iron Ranch wears a GPS ear tag that reports its location every thirty seconds.

Every paddock has motion sensors.

Every barn is wired with thermal cameras that alert my phone before a water pipe freezes or a generator fails.

The cryogenic storage vault holding millions of dollars' worth of frozen genetics is monitored twenty-four hours a day by redundant sensors.

If the liquid nitrogen level drops, the temperature shifts even a fraction of a degree, or a compressor hiccups, my phone starts screaming before anyone else knows there's a problem.

See, that’s what I’m good at.

The tech stuff.

Sawyer runs the day-to-day operation. And Benji knows how to handle cattle.

Me?

I built the nervous system.

I know every heartbeat on this ranch.

Or damn near.

Everything reports back in real time. I built every inch of that system myself. If something goes wrong, I know before anyone else does.

Nothing fails quietly on my watch.

I close the tailgate on my pickup and look over the last of my boxes.

There aren’t many.

I've never owned a lot of stuff.

Just a couple of duffel bags' worth of clothes—tactical gear mainly.

Three Pelican cases full of electronics.

Two custom-built servers.

Enough networking equipment to make a Fortune 500 company blush.

And my rifles, of course.

Everything else I need is already waiting inside my new place.

Finally finished. Just sitting, waiting—kinda like me.

I glance toward the log cabin sitting on the northern ridge of Jersey Iron Ranch.

It looks exactly like every other wealthy rancher's dream home.

Massive timber frame.

Natural stone chimney.

Wide porch with rocking chairs.

A weathervane spinning lazily above the roofline.

Nobody would ever guess it's probably the most technologically advanced dwelling in northwestern New Jersey.

The solar panels across the southern pitch?

They're real.

They power the cabin.

What they also do is hide a hardened satellite uplink that feeds directly into a secure server room beneath the loft.

The stone fireplace?

Behind it sits enough battery backup to keep my entire system running for three weeks if the power grid goes down.

The old-fashioned weather station mounted near the barn?

Half weather instruments.

Half surveillance array.

Every inch of this place is layered.

Protected.

Hidden.

Exactly the way I like it.

People see cowboy.

They expect horses.

Hay.

Boots.

They don't expect quantum encryption.

Military-grade firewalls.

Private servers spread across three continents.

I smile to myself.

Good.

That's the whole fucking point.

Jersey Iron Ranch fills my days.

But my private cybersecurity consulting company?

That’s what makes me rich.

Most of my clients don't even know where I live.

They just know when their systems get tested, nobody gets past me.

Banks.

Medical companies.

Defense contractors.

A couple of billionaires who pay me obscene amounts of money just to sleep better at night.

If someone's trying to break into their network...

I'm already there, waiting.

Oh, it's easier than people think.

See, computers follow rules.

Strict. Unbreakable. Rules.

Humans? Not so much.

People lie.

Machines don't.

I learned that lesson overseas.

The hard way.

I grab another box and carry it toward the porch.

The front door unlocks before I reach it, using facial recognition software that I wrote.

The lights come on.

Temperature adjusts.

Coffee starts brewing.

Home sweet home.

Or as close to home as I've ever had.

The house is finished.

Sawyer moved into the big house from the get go—as he was right to.

Benji built and finally settled into his dream house just as everything with Esme, his wife, worked itself out.

And that leaves me.

The last bachelor standing.

And it is exactly the way I intended my life to be—single, solitary, and alone.

I set the box down in my home office.

Wall-to-wall monitors.

Fiber running through dedicated conduits.

Dual workstations.

A six-foot display showing every security feed across the ranch.

One glance tells me everything's normal.

Sawyer's truck is parked outside his place.

Benji's out with the breeding stock.

Esme's filming something near the equipment barn.

Bit's hanging laundry and rubbing her swollen belly with an expression on her face that makes me wonder if it’s everything it’s cracked up to be—the whole love, marriage, baby thing.

Alex's phone just connected to the bunkhouse Wi-Fi—yes I get alerts on that as well.

Angie and Diego have settled in for their usual after dinner cup of coffee.

And this right here?

This is my day to day.

Routine.

Order.

Predictability.

I should be satisfied.

But I’m not.

Something’s been nagging me lately.

A kind of restlessness I can't just code away.

I know exactly what’s bugging me.

Or rather...

Who.