Chapter 4 Reid #3
I stared at her for a second, then leaned toward her, resting on my pommel. “Why’d you really take this job, Jennie?”
She considered me. “Money. Curiosity. Maybe a little self-hate.”
“That’s honest,” I said.
She shrugged. “If I lied, you’d know.”
I believed her, but I didn’t say so. She was lying and I did know, meaning her statement was factual.
We didn’t talk much after that, both of us thinking.
Why was she really here? She got off Jupiter and started collecting soil samples in little vials, storing them in her saddle bags.
Once she'd made a million more notes, I led her back toward the Coleman ranch until we hit a spot she could safely make it on her own.
As we slowed to a stop, she looked at me and said, “You’re a good man, Reid. Even if you pretend not to be.”
After saying goodbye, I watched her ride off, her tracks fading into the scrub. My wolf tracked her until she was out of sight.
There were a lot of words for what this was, and I didn’t know any of them.
When I got back to the barn, the light had turned from gold to full white, the air heavy enough to flatten the shirts of anyone dumb enough to stand still. The horses were cooling off, flicking at the flies. Ghost sidestepped to the water trough, where Buck was leaning on the pump handle.
Buck eyed me as I walked Ghost into the shade. “You ride her hard, or put her away wet?”
He meant the horse, but Ash caught it from across the yard and nearly spit out her own coffee. “Pretty sure that’s not how it went, Buck,” she said. “I got twenty bucks says Reid spent the whole ride getting a geology lecture.”
I unbuckled the saddle, set it on the rack, and ignored both of them. Buck grinned, his sun-bleached teeth catching the only thing in the barn whiter than his hair. “That’s what I like about you, Reid. Man of mystery.”
“I’m a man of efficiency,” I said, patting Ghost’s neck.
I made quick work of the tack, then headed for the house.
As I walked the shaded path, I tried to file away what I’d learned that morning.
Jennie Cardin wasn’t a geologist. Or, if she was, she’d missed some basic training.
When I brought her to the fossil, she’d looked at it with blank indifference, not the reverence it deserved.
That stuck with me. Most people faked their expertise, but she didn’t even try.
Her notes were sharp, her eyes sharper, but her reactions didn’t fit the profile.
She watched the world like a cop, not a scientist. The way she held her phone, scanned each fence line, never let her right hand drift far from her holster, none of it was accidental.
The kitchen was cool and quiet, the hum of the fridge the only sign of electricity in the old house. Calder was at the end of the table, arms crossed, head bent over a tablet, looking at some spreadsheet. He looked up as I walked in. “Well?” he asked.
“She’s smart,” I said. “Not a geologist, though.”
He grunted. “Did she say what she was looking for?”
I shook my head. “No, but she’s casing the land. She hit the ridges, the water cut, the old firebreak. Didn’t touch the buildings, just the borders.”
Calder was quiet, the fan over his head making his hair dance. “You think she’s law?”
“Maybe ex,” I said. “She doesn’t act like a Fed, but she’s still running their script.”
He tapped the ledger, not looking at me. “If she’s law, she’s here for us.”
“I don’t think she knows what we are,” I said. “Not yet.”
“You sure?” The edge in his voice was mild, but there.
I considered it. Thought about how the whole time, my wolf had been clocking her every step, mapping her location, predicting when she’d zig and when she’d zag. Hunting wasn’t the right word. Scouting, maybe. Keeping her close, just in case.
“She’s got instincts,” I said. “But she’s not gunning for us. I think she’s more curious than anything.”
Calder relaxed, just a little. “That’s worse. Curious people get themselves killed, or worse, they get us killed.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” I said.
He nodded. “Good. But don’t let her inside. Not unless you’re willing to gut her if it goes bad. If she’s a problem, we need to know sooner rather than later. Reid, you’re point. Anything changes, you bring it straight to me.”
I slipped outside, past the glow of the porch light. The cicadas were at it again, loud enough to drown out anything short of a rifle shot. I walked the yard, let the humidity stick my shirt to my back, and tried to shake off the sense that something was coming. Not a threat, exactly. Just a shift.
In all my years running with this pack, I’d never felt my wolf track a person the way it tracked her. It wasn’t hunger, or even the hunt. It was a compass. The old stories didn’t talk about this. I didn’t know if anyone’s did.
I stood at the edge of the yard and watched the house pulse with light and life. Maybe this was fate. Just the slow, inescapable draw of something I couldn’t name. I let it pull me for a while, then turned and walked back inside. If anyone noticed the change in me, they didn’t say a thing.