29. Gabriel
Gabriel
Eight weeks later
“Put it down,” my father says, stepping through the open barn door, carrying two coffees. He’s wearing the expression he’s perfected over the last eight weeks—the one that says I’m a grown man incapable of keeping myself alive without direct supervision.
I look at the length of pine I’m holding. “It weighs twelve pounds.”
“Fifteen.”
“You weighed it?”
“I know lumber.”
“You fly helicopters.”
“I also know lumber.”
Dad waits.
He’s become good at that. Not patience exactly. Jacob Sutton has never been patient in his life. But he’s learned not to walk away when I make things difficult.
“I’m cleared for twenty pounds,” I say.
“You’re cleared for twenty pounds once. Not twenty pounds every five minutes because you think arithmetic makes disobeying the cardiologist legal.”
I look at the length of pine. Fifteen pounds might be generous. Thirteen, maybe. Fourteen at most.
Behind me, Chance shifts inside her stall, blowing a quiet breath through her nose as if she’s also expressing her disapproval.
“I’ve moved three boards.”
“Four,” Dad corrects.
“You counting?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because your brother put me in charge.”
“Which one?”
“Both.”
I set the board down harder than necessary.
Dad doesn’t flinch. He places one coffee on the workbench, then looks at the half-built partition between the two stalls.
The frame is finished, and the outside door is in. Ethan wired the lights last weekend while Daniel and Henry argued over ventilation as though either of them had spent a day rehabilitating a frightened horse. The rubber flooring arrives tomorrow.
Evie’s shelves are already marked in pencil along the far wall—feed, medical supplies, bandages, training equipment. She’s labeled every section in handwriting that slopes more when she’s tired, which is often now.
Seven months pregnant and carrying our daughter like she plans to arrive ten pounds strong and already giving orders.
“You’re supposed to be sanding,” Dad says.
“I was sanding.”
“With a board in your hands.”
“I had to put it on the sawhorses.”
“You could have asked.”
That’s the thing he says most now. You could have asked.
For help. For a ride to cardiac rehab. For someone to carry the groceries.
For him to sit through another appointment while a specialist discusses electrical pathways, scar tissue, and the small machine now resting beneath the skin below my collarbone.
I didn’t want the defibrillator, but I wanted even less to admit I was afraid of needing it.
Dad came to the consultation anyway and sat beside me without speaking until the doctor left, then said, “Being harder to kill seems useful on a ranch.”
I signed the consent forms.
Now the incision has healed to a raised pink line, and I’m not allowed to lift my left arm too high, haul anything heavy, ride alone, or pretend that dying in a pasture was an inconvenience everybody should stop mentioning.
I frown. “I don’t need help carrying a board.”
“No.” Dad picks up the coffee he brought for me and holds it out. “You need help remembering you don’t have to prove you can.”
I stare at him. He looks uncomfortable the second the words leave his mouth. Good, because that makes two of us.
I take the cup. “Decaf?”
“Half.”
“Maggie get to you?”
“She threatened to replace my coffee with chicory if I brought you anything stronger.”
We stand beside the workbench drinking bad coffee in the morning light. Eight weeks ago, silence between us would have felt like a wall. It’s still awkward, but it’s not empty anymore.
Dad comes to my cardiac rehabilitation twice a week.
He drives without asking whether I am capable.
I complain without telling him to leave.
Afterward, we stop at the feed store or hardware store or anywhere else that lets us talk about fence posts instead of feelings.
We keep circling the harder things, but at least now, neither of us walks away.
He looks toward Chance. “She seems settled.”
“She is.”
The mare stands with her head over the stall door, watching us. Evie can approach her now without that first long pause. She still doesn’t like quick movement behind her, and ropes make her go rigid, but she comes when Evie calls.
Trust doesn’t return all at once. It comes in pieces. A step. A breath. A hand held out and not withdrawn.
I understand that better now.
Dad reaches into his jacket and takes out a folded sheet of paper. “Daniel has information.”
The way he says it changes the air.
I set down my coffee. “About Voss?”
Dad nods. “And LandCorp.” He unfolds the paper but doesn’t hand it over yet. “Federal prosecutors added conspiracy and unlawful restraint to the kidnapping charges. The state filed separately over the runway, the forged easements, and the contamination.”
“Bail?” I ask.
“Denied again.”
The tightness in my chest—the kind that has nothing to do with my heart—eases.
“And Vance?”
“Cooperating.”
“Falcon?”
Dad’s mouth tightens. “Him too. Cut a deal.”
The name lands like grit between my teeth. Eight weeks, and I still see the taser lifting in his hand. Still see Evie in front of him. Still wake some nights with my body locked against a current that’s no longer there.
“What did he give them?”
“Emails. Payment records. Voice messages. Enough to place Voss inside the planning from the beginning,” Dad says quietly. “Voss bought the boy’s debt. Business loan gone bad—enough to take everything he’d built. Falcon believed cooperating was the only way to keep him solvent.”
He pauses. “The FBI froze Voss’s assets when they arrested him. The debt instrument died with LandCorp’s operating accounts. His son doesn’t owe a cent.”
An emotion moves through me that isn’t quite forgiveness. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But understanding. The kind that doesn’t excuse what he did and doesn’t pretend it didn’t happen.
“Daniel and Delaney are overhauling the vetting process,” Dad adds. “Both ranches. Financial background checks going forward. Anyone carrying significant debt gets flagged—not excluded, but known about. Supported where possible. The program stays. They were clear about that.”
“Good,” I say.
It matters that the program stays. These men came home carrying things nobody should have to carry alone.
What Voss did was find the one who was carrying something he could use.
That’s not a reason to stop offering somewhere safe to land.
It’s a reason to make sure nobody else gets left holding a debt they can’t climb out of alone.
I look past Dad toward the open door.
The eastern pasture lies beyond the barns, green again where the trucks tore through it. Cutter crews and our men have started restoring the boundary fence. The runway itself has been ripped up under federal order, the packed earth broken and reseeded.
The scar is still visible from the ridge and will be for a while.
Dad finally hands me the paper. The top page is a formal update from the attorney.
Half of it is language designed to say very little in as many words as possible.
LandCorp has withdrawn every active claim against Stoneridge, Havenridge, and the surrounding properties.
The company’s board has voted to suspend all regional operations pending investigation.
“He’s done,” Dad says.
I read the lines again.
“No.”
Dad watches me.
“He’s contained,” I say. “That isn’t the same thing.”
Alexander Voss is still alive. Still rich.
Still surrounded by lawyers. Men like him rarely vanish because justice arrives on schedule.
But he cannot reach Evie from a private plane.
He can’t send someone onto our land without every agency in the state watching.
Can’t pretend this is a disagreement between father and daughter anymore because the world has finally named it for what it was.
I scan the next paragraph. Havenstone County Bank has completed its internal review of every account Marlon Ennis handled during the last eighteen months.
The extension Delaney negotiated remains in force, and all collection activity connected to Stoneridge has been suspended pending formal restructuring.
“They found evidence he was feeding our financial information to LandCorp,” Dad says. “Risk reports. Grant schedules. Payment dates.”
My jaw tightens. “Can the bank do that?”
“No. Ennis could. Apparently, he did.”
I keep reading. The bank’s new manager has approved negotiations to convert the remaining debt into a long-term agricultural loan on standard terms. Delaney’s cost reductions, the federal grant, and two profitable quarters are listed beneath the decision.
“So we still owe the money,” I say. “But Voss can’t use it to take the ranch.”
“No.”
Dad’s mouth lifts. “Delaney made sure of that before any of us knew what game Ennis was playing.”
I fold the paper. “Does Evie know? About LandCorp? Alexander?”
“Daniel called her first. She told him to email the summary because she was frosting a cake and didn’t have time for Alexander.”
A laugh escapes me as I look toward the house.
Dad’s mouth shifts. “She also said if anybody lets Shay add another tier, she’s canceling the wedding.”
“She won’t.”
“No?”
“She proposed. She’s committed now.”
Dad studies me over the rim of his cup. “You happy?”
The question is simple, but it still takes me a moment because no one in this family used to ask things like that. Not directly.
“Yeah,” I say, though the word feels too small. I try again. “I am.”
Dad nods, and his eyes drop to my hand wrapped around my coffee. “Your mother would have liked her.”
Everything inside me quiets. He’s mentioned Mom twice since the hospital.
The first time was at rehab when the therapist asked about family cardiac history, and Dad answered without leaving the room.
The second was in the truck afterward when he told me she hated being fussed over and would have despised every blood pressure cuff she ever met.
Small pieces of my mom, carefully offered.
“What makes you think that?”
“Evie doesn’t scare easy.”
“She was terrified.”