10. Navarro Only
Navarro Only
Jay found the itinerary on top of his laptop the next afternoon.
No envelope. No message asking whether the dates worked. No explanation for why it had appeared while he was away from the conference room. Only a folded route map with Harris’s handwriting across the front.
Jay opened it.
The route ran into the high country he had been trying to access since they arrived: the old spring system, the abandoned homestead, the north lookout, the line cabin.
Until then, the places had existed as names in production notes, family stories, and pieces of landscape Harris pointed toward from somewhere else.
Before he reached the bottom, Jay was already assembling footage: shrinking water at the old spring, development near the original homestead, the lookout above the valley, the line cabin in the upper range.
Two nights were marked in Harris’s handwriting, with a third listed in case weather slowed them. At the bottom:
No pack horse past North Ridge. Carry what you bring. Pack light.
And beneath that:
Navarro only.
Jay read the last two words again.
Priya came around behind him carrying coffee. “What’s that?”
“Apparently I’ve been summoned.”
She leaned over his shoulder. “Navarro only?”
“Very exclusive.”
“Why you?”
The question was professionally reasonable and therefore irritating.
Eli was the better cinematographer and remained the better rider, despite the private lesson that had recently upgraded Jay from probable danger to himself and livestock to capable of stopping an elderly mare without insulting her mouth.
Jay looked over the route again. “Director privilege?”
“That is not usually how you describe carrying the equipment yourself.”
“Dangerous precedent. I agree.”
Priya studied the overnight stops, distance, water sources, and weather contingency. “Did you ask him for this?”
“I’ve asked him for access to the high country approximately fourteen times.”
“You asked him to take you alone?”
“No.”
She handed the map back. “Make sure the satellite phone is charged.”
That was all. No raised eyebrow or invitation for Jay to explain why Harris had dismissed an entire camera department.
Jay turned the page over. Nothing on the back. Of course not. Harris Shaw had communicated everything he considered necessary in fewer than thirty words and a route map. There were ransom notes with more emotional transparency.
Beyond the conference-room window, the ranch fields climbed toward timber and the darker rise of the mountains.
Two nights. Maybe three. Alone with Harris.
Jay’s brain, which had been extremely well behaved for almost twelve consecutive hours, immediately produced several possibilities that were neither professional nor useful.
He shut them down.
Harris was straight. Harris was emotionally unavailable. Harris had also spent several days acting strange after learning Jay was gay—and yet he’d just chosen Jay, specifically, for three days alone in the mountains.
Jay picked up the itinerary again.
Navarro only.
Annoyingly interesting phrasing.
* * *
Jay had ridden under Harris’s supervision exactly once. Evidently, that was enough for Harris to form permanent opinions about his abilities.
At five Tuesday morning, Harris watched him approach Red and said, “Remember what I told you.”
“You told me many things. Most of them deeply critical.”
“Hands. Knees. Let him pick his feet.”
“See? Criticism.”
The ranch remained mostly dark, the eastern sky only beginning to pale behind the mountains.
Somewhere inside the lodge, Della had already been awake long enough to leave two thermoses and enough food for three men on the rear counter.
A note on top threatened Harris by his full name if any of it returned uneaten.
Red stood beside the barn half asleep with one hind leg resting. Harris had chosen a younger dark gelding for himself rather than Rain, who was still recovering from the cut to her leg and, according to Harris, had earned the right not to carry his ass into the mountains at twenty.
They had stripped the equipment down to what the horses—and eventually the two men—could carry beyond the north ridge. Jay had lost the tripod, two lenses, most of the audio kit, and an eleven-minute argument.
Priya had called the final kit barbaric. Harris called it sufficient. Jay remained privately offended on behalf of the visual arts.
Harris checked Red’s cinch again.
“I watched Evan tighten that,” Jay said.
“Good for you.”
“He’s presumably qualified.”
“Mostly.”
“And yet here you are.”
Harris handed over the reins.
Jay mounted from the correct side without kicking Red and settled into the saddle. The stirrups fit exactly.
He looked down. “You remembered.”
Harris assessed the angle of his leg. “Wasn’t hard.”
“My proportions made a lasting impression.”
“Your bad stirrup length did.”
“Less romantic, but I’ll take it.”
Harris’s jaw moved as he checked the second leather, though neither required adjustment. “Hands.”
Jay loosened his grip.
“Knees.”
“I’m not gripping.”
“You will.”
“You realize you’ve made me coachable. This could have serious consequences for my reputation.”
“Try not to undo it before breakfast.”
Jay adjusted the camera harness across his chest. “No promises.”
Harris mounted in one clean movement. Jay looked away from the flex of his thighs and the fit of worn denim with the disciplined speed of a man who had learned absolutely nothing from recent events.
“Ready?” Harris asked.
“Professionally or spiritually?”
“To leave.”
“Then yes.”
They rode out before the ranch fully woke. The buildings disappeared behind the cottonwoods and then the first low ridge until the world narrowed to dry grass, timber, and the rhythmic movement of the horses beneath them.
For the first mile, Harris stayed slightly ahead. Red proved irritatingly competent, choosing his footing with the calm certainty of an animal who understood that the person on his back was largely decorative. When the road narrowed over loose stone, Jay’s knees tightened automatically.
Harris’s voice returned from the corral: Give him a direction. Let him handle the ground.
Jay forced his legs to loosen. Red immediately moved more easily beneath him, picking a path through the stones without Jay attempting to supervise each footfall.
Harris glanced back, his attention moving briefly over Jay’s hands, seat, and legs. “Better.”
The single word produced the same ridiculous satisfaction Jay had felt during the lesson.
“I assume you’ll issue a certificate at the end of the trip.”
“Assuming you make it.”
“There’s the faith I was looking for.”
Harris faced forward, but not before Jay caught the edge of a smile.
Riding required a surrender Jay disliked. He could climb backward down a wet embankment carrying a camera while directing Eli; on horseback, competence began with admitting the horse knew more than he did.
Humbling, but no longer entirely unfamiliar.
Harris had specifically chosen Jay for three days alone in the mountains.
For work, obviously.
There was a reason Jay did not develop crushes on straight men. The reason was self-respect.
Work was the only interpretation he intended to entertain.
* * *
Taking Navarro had been a serious lapse in judgment.
Harris had known that before sunrise. Probably before he wrote the man’s name on the itinerary.
Somewhere between deciding he needed to behave normally around Navarro and writing NAVARRO ONLY across a route map, Harris had apparently lost track of what normal meant.
There were legitimate reasons to bring him. Navarro knew what footage mattered, learned quickly, and Harris trusted his judgment now.
That should have been enough explanation.
It wasn’t.
Harris rode beneath the timber listening to Red’s hooves behind him. The morning air still held some coolness, though dust lifted wherever the horses crossed exposed soil.
This was not how Harris usually handled potential problems. He fixed weak fence before cattle found it, replaced bad wire before somebody got cut, and cleared dead timber before fire season. If something had a reasonable chance of becoming dangerous, Harris dealt with it early.
He did not invite it into the mountains for three days.
Behind him, Navarro said something quietly to Red.
Harris glanced back and found him adjusting the camera harness, brown hair already working loose around his face.
Navarro looked comfortable in the saddle now.
Not experienced, but learning quickly. He had stopped trying to control every step and started paying attention to what the horse told him.
Harris faced forward.
There it was. The truth he had stopped bothering to disguise from himself.
He had wanted Navarro to come. Not because Eli could not do the job, and not only because Navarro could.
Harris wanted to be alone with him.
That was bad enough. Worse was the reason he had avoided examining when he left the itinerary on Navarro’s laptop: some reckless, deeply uncharacteristic part of him wanted to find out what might happen when nobody else was there to interrupt them.
No crew. No family. No Walt appearing with a broken fence and the correct radio.
Only the two of them, two nights from the ranch.
It was a poor plan by any practical standard.
Harris had made it anyway.
He did not generally ride toward a known hazard just to see whether it would burn him.
Apparently this week he had made an exception.
* * *
By midmorning, the trees opened onto a broad high-country slope. Green held longer there than in the valley, though dry seed heads had begun rising through the grass. Pale shelves of granite broke near the ridge, and cattle grazed far enough away to resemble dark stones scattered across the land.