Chapter 13 #2
I prepare two cups and place hers beside her keyboard. Her hand wraps around my fingers over the mug, squeezing once without glancing up.
Naming the feeling in my chest would mean pausing, and I can’t afford to stop. The drive is blinking, the information is loading, and the woman I married yesterday is here in my home. With me.
I pull up the first batch of files and dive into work.
What we uncover is far larger than the flash drive. It’s bigger than Jenna’s worst fears and my most cautious estimates.
It’s LandCorp’s complete acquisition plan.
Water rights for the Clover Canyon aquifer system, which supplies both ranches.
Mineral survey data, an AI geological analysis commissioned through a tech subsidiary, revealing deposits beneath the aquifer.
Gold. Lithium. Enough for someone to escalate from corporate maneuvering to criminal sabotage.
She finds the environmental files first, reading them with her mouth set in a flat line and her hands steady on the keyboard.
“The creek poisoning.” Her voice remains level and clinical.
“The contamination that nearly killed Kitty. It’s all here.
Purchase orders, chemical sourcing, the shell company they routed it through.
” She scrolls down. “Ethan. This isn’t just one property.
It’s both properties: Stoneridge and Havenridge. ”
My father’s ranch and Uncle Ben’s. Two men who barely speak, both targeted by the same corporation for the same resources beneath their feet.
Some of the files are corrupted, sectors damaged, headers missing.
I run my recovery tools, pull fragments, and stitch together what I can.
Jenna organizes the output as quickly as I extract it, her fingers moving across her laptop with the precision of someone who learned to type in public libraries.
She reads corrupted files like they’re bedtime stories.
We work in a rhythm that doesn’t require words.
I piece together the data, she catalogs, our elbows barely an inch apart, her knee resting against mine.
The last recoverable sub-folder is labeled ACQUISITIONS_INTERNAL.
I open it because the recovery flags it as clean, with no corruption or missing headers. A complete file. Jenna is cross-referencing the mineral coordinates while I click through the transfer pages, half-distracted by the scent of her beside me.
Then I see the name.
Gabriel Sutton.
My hands freeze. The chill spreads from my fingertips up my wrists and into my chest. Gabriel’s name appears on a LandCorp land transfer authorization, his signature on a document that transfers water rights access from Stoneridge Ranch to a shell company called Frontier Land it’s more like a man who’s been holding his breath underwater and just found the surface.
“Why would they target me?”
“To fracture the family. Turn us against each other before we can unite against them. It’s a tactic, Gabe. Not a reflection of who you are.”
He’s quiet for a long time. The bridle dangles from his left hand. Outside, a horse stamps its hoof.
“I want to know who put my name on it.” His voice has gone cold and hard. It’s not a request, it’s a demand. The youngest Sutton, telling his older brother that he doesn’t need shielding.
“We’ll find out. I’m calling a family meeting. Both ranches. This evidence affects everything. The whole family needs to see it.”
“Including that.” He nods at the printout.
“Including that. Along with Jenna’s analysis proving it’s fake. Everyone sees everything.”
“Fine.”
He returns to the bridle as if his name on a forged document is just another burden he has to shoulder.
I want to cross the room, put my hand on his shoulder, and tell him the family will believe him because I believe him.
But Gabriel asked with that single, hard word for me not to make this into something soft.
The hardest act of service I can offer is walking out of the tack room, leaving my brother standing there with his back to me, shoulders braced for a storm that’s just shifted direction.
The door closes behind me. It’s a bright, bustling morning on the ranch, with Maggie on the porch and Daniel’s truck making its way to the north pasture. Life continues as if nothing has changed.
The woman I love is at my desk. My brother is in the tack room, carrying something heavy.
His name is on a document intended to destroy him, and my wife just took it apart with font sizes.
Both of those things are true. The evidence is bigger than any of us expected.
The threat is closer. And my family, fractured and stubborn and held together by baling wire and blood, is about to be tested.
I hold both realities because that’s who I am.
These are the things I carry.
Back in the study, Jenna takes over my station as if she were born at this desk.
Within ten minutes, the evidence is restructured, not by date or file type, but by legal weight. What a federal prosecutor needs first. What builds the foundation. What delivers the kill shot. Her fingers dance across the keyboard, the clicking filling the room like a heartbeat.
I bring her another mug of coffee and set it beside her keyboard without interruption. She doesn’t look up. Her hand wraps around mine on the mug, squeezing once.
Pixel claims the warm spot on the desk where my arm usually rests. Crowley migrates from the router to the top of the monitor. Bug and Glitch bat at power cables under the desk with the focus of kittens dismantling critical infrastructure.
I pull up a chair beside her, our elbows nearly touching. Without looking, she slides the corrupted mineral survey files I’ve been piecing together toward my screen. My space has become her space. There are no compartments now.