Chapter 14
LUKE
The Copper River Fourth of July smells like fried dough and horse sweat, and has the kind of civic pride that makes grown men wear matching shirts without a single apology for it.
I have been doing this rodeo since I was nine years old. I have never once worn a matching shirt. I have also never spent the first half of my morning tracking a head of red hair through a crowd of four hundred instead of watching the chutes.
"Sixteen on the nose," Cal says, coming up beside me at the fence rail with a coffee that smells better than what I'm holding. "That red roan is going to go wide in the third turn."
"Yep."
"You watching the roan?"
"Yep."
Cal looks at the wolf outreach booth on the far side of the grounds. Looks back at me. Takes a long pull of his coffee and says nothing, which is one of the many reasons I have trusted this man for fifteen years.
Three nights ago she told me she'd been thinking about me since the gate, since the morning she came with her permits and I read every page without looking at her once.
She sounded almost aggrieved about it. Something in my chest cracked open so fast I had to close my eyes. Then neither of us was talking anymore.
I have been adjusting my jeans at inconvenient intervals ever since. I make myself watch the roan but my eyes drift anyway.
Mags is crouched to the level of a kid who can't be older than six, pointing at a laminated map, her braid half loose in the July heat, red catching the sun like she set it on purpose. The kid is nodding like everything she says makes complete sense.
The roan goes wide in the third turn.
"Told you," Cal says.
"Yep."
Mason finds me at the chutes between the junior barrel runs. He's got a corn dog in one hand and the expression of a man who has been waiting to say something for forty-five minutes.
"Don't," I say.
"I haven't said a word."
"You've been building to something since the parking lot."
He takes a bite of the corn dog, chews, and looks toward the outreach booth with the theatrical casualness of a man who failed drama in high school. "She's good with kids."
"She's a scientist. She talks to people for a living."
"She made that little girl in the pink hat laugh so hard she fell over."
I know. I saw it. I am not going to tell Mason I saw it. "I'm watching the chutes."
"Right." He takes another bite. "Colt's looking for you. Says it's about the other thing." He points his corn dog at the outreach booth. "She has Gina's coffee cup. The Griddle one, with the blue lid. Which means Gina got up early on a holiday specifically to?—"
"Mason."
"Show community support for the wolf program."
"Go find your fiancée."
His eyes light up at the mention of her and he grins, the infuriating one that hasn't changed since he was twelve. "Viv is judging the pie contest. She has recused herself from the blueberry category on account of conflict of interest because of the blueberry situation last?—"
"Mason."
He goes. Corn dog and all.
Colt is behind the stock pens, leaning against a gate with his hat pushed back and the look of a man glad to put something heavy down.
"I got a name," he says. "Not Cutter. Above Cutter. Registered in Delaware, office address in a coworking space in Missoula. Opened in 2021." He passes me a folded piece of paper. "Bash's contact is running the beneficial ownership. But it matches the timing."
I read the name. Read it again. "2021."
"Three months after Dad died." He holds my gaze for a beat, long enough to make sure I sit with that, then looks away. "Make sure Mags has the entity chain. If the corridor authorization gets contested, she needs it."
"I know."
"You talk to her this morning?"
"I was working."
"Luke."
I hold his stare.
"People take breaks at rodeos." He pushes off the gate. "Hank said something this morning. Ellery is calling it 'Mags.' I'm not arguing with her." He walks off toward the family section without looking back. "Just so you know."
Lucy finds me instead. This is its own category of problem.
She's at the lemonade stand with the expression of a woman who has been discussing me recently.
I know this expression because I grew up with it aimed at Colt, and then Mason, and I understand now with full clarity what it cost both of them.
Nora is on the ground beside her, hat with a horse on it, fully focused on a French fry she has located in the dirt and is evaluating with the seriousness of a federal inspector.
"Hey," Lucy says, too bright.
"Lucy."
"Great rodeo this year."
"What did you say to her?"
She blinks. "To who?"
"Lucy."
"We may have had a brief conversation earlier."
"How brief?"
"Very brief."
"About what?"
She looks at the lemonade. "Rodeo things."
"Lucy."
"Okay, I told her that you once drove forty-five minutes in a blizzard to bring Mason a sandwich when he was stuck at a fence line, and that the only other person you have ever done anything equivalent for in years is—" She glances down, lunges, extracts the French fry from Nora's fist without looking.
"—currently standing right here. I thought she should have that information. "
Nora stares at her empty hand with the outrage of someone who has been genuinely wronged.
"You told her about the sandwich."
"It's a very illustrative sandwich."
"That was three years ago."
"Luke." She glances at Nora, who has already redirected toward something else in the dirt, then back at me. "Sharp green eyes run in my experience. She was going to figure you out eventually. I was helping."
"She said—" Lucy starts.
"Don’t tell me what she said."
"She said, and I quote, that tracks." Lucy is trying not to smile and failing in the specific way of someone who considers herself a fundamentally kind person but has absolutely no mercy. "I think that's a good sign."
"Nora," I say, "your mother is a menace."
Nora looks up. "Fwy," she says, accusingly, to Lucy.
"We've moved on from the fry," Lucy tells her.
I leave them there.
The booth is slower by midafternoon, the crowd thinning toward the carnival end of the grounds. Mags has acquired a paper basket of powdered-sugar beignets from Benny's stand, which she is eating with the focused efficiency of someone who forgot to have lunch.
I stop two feet from the table. She doesn't look up from the sign she's adjusting.
"You've got powdered sugar on your chin," I say.
She looks up. For one unguarded second her eyes go warm before she pulls the lid back down on it, deep green in the afternoon light, gold in the flecks, doing the thing they do when she is glad to see me and not planning to say so.
She wipes her chin without embarrassment. "You've been watching the chutes all morning."
"Working."
"Your brother says you've been watching the chutes all morning."
"My brother should watch his own chutes."
She considers me the way she considers evidence, without hurry, like she has all the time she needs. "You talked to Colt?"
"Yeah."
"And?"
I lean on the table's corner, close enough that this is private. "Delaware entity. Opened 2021. I'll send you the name tonight. Not proof yet, but it matches Bash's beneficial ownership timeline."
She goes still. "Three months after your father died."
"Yeah."
A beat. Then she looks down at the beignet basket and holds it out. I take one and she goes back to her sign. This is the most domestic thing that has ever happened to me at a rodeo.
A man has been standing at the near end of the booth for several minutes, reading the corridor map in a way that has nothing to do with wolves.
Maybe thirty. Hat, good boots, the easy posture of someone who thinks he has time.
I round the end of the table and come to stand beside her.
Not behind her, beside her. Shoulder to shoulder, facing out, and I eat the beignet like I have always stood here and intend to keep doing it.
He looks up. Takes in the situation.
Mags doesn't look at me. Hands him the printed FAQ as he goes, smooth and unbothered, like she was always going to send him on his way.
Then she turns her head just enough. "You moved."
"I was done with that side of the table."
"You were done with him is what you were."
"You handled it."
"I always handle it." The corner of her mouth moves. "But I didn't hate the backup."
I watch her tuck a loose strand of red back from her face and I don't look away fast enough. She knows I didn't and neither of us says anything about that.
Nora finds her about thirty seconds later.
She comes at a dead run from Lucy's direction, arms out, making the sound of a child who has identified her target and committed.
Mags crouches before I can say anything, catches her, spins her once while Nora shrieks with the pure joy of altitude, and sets her down in front of the wolf display board.
"Woof," Nora says firmly.
"Wolf," Mags says. "See the difference?" She points to the side-by-side display, wolf, dog, wolf, dog. Nora studies it with great seriousness and lands her finger on the wolf.
"Big dog."
"That's actually an accurate scientific description," Mags tells her, and Nora looks deeply satisfied.
I stand against the booth post with my arms crossed and say nothing. Mason is almost certainly watching from somewhere.
Her truck is parked at the east edge of the grounds, past the stock trailers. I walk her out at six-thirty when the booth breaks down, carrying the display board because she didn't ask me to.
She pops the truck's rear door.
I see it before she does. The equipment case on the passenger-side floor, lid flipped open, collar receiver gone, the space where it sits worn pale from use, now empty and wrong.
The July heat is still coming off the gravel but the back of my neck goes cold. She's still talking about the entity timeline when I crouch and look at the dust beside the door.
Boot print. Aggressive lug tread. Wide-set.
Same as the east ridge collar site.
I straighten slowly. The rodeo noise carries across the grounds, a kid on the loudspeaker, a cheer from the carnival end, and it all sounds very far away.
Mags has stopped talking. She's looking at the boot print. Then at me.
"Luke." Her voice comes out steadier than her face looks.
"He was here," she says. "Today. In the crowd."
Four hundred people. Benny's booth. Nora with her big dog. Lucy with her goddamn sandwich story. Colt with his entity name.
Every one of them here today.
And so was whoever did this, close enough to touch her truck, patient enough to wait for his moment, specific enough to take only the receiver.
Not the unit. Not the data.
The receiver.
She's blind to her wolves tonight.
"Don't go out alone after dark," I say. "Not until we know who was standing in this crowd today."
She looks at the empty equipment case. Then at me with the face that means she's already three steps ahead.
"He's not worried about being recognized," she says. "He's been at every site, every event, keeps leaving prints. Either he's careless —"
"Or he wants us to know he can get close."
She looks at the empty equipment case one more time.
"That's a message," she says.
Yeah. It is.
And whoever left it was standing close her all afternoon, watching her spin Nora in the air, watching her eat a beignet, watching her not know.