Chapter 5 Jennie
The Coleman house could have doubled as a prison if a person overlooked the windows and ignored the history. I'd never seen a residence with more deadbolts, crossbars, or locks installed at random on interior doors. Dinner was at eight sharp. I turned up on time.
Wyatt found me right before I walked into the dining room.
“You made it,” he said, with the air of a man expecting me to fall flat on my face at some point, preferably soon.
He arrived trailed by the scent of a cologne that smelled incredibly cheap.
He was dressed for a corporate retreat, crisp white shirt, cuffs unbuttoned but rolled exactly three turns, slim-fit slacks, boots so shiny I could see the ceiling fan reflected in them.
If he’d done a single hour’s work on the ranch in the past decade, I’d eat my boots.
I smiled the way I do when a bouncer tells me my shoes are almost club-appropriate. “I am staying just upstairs, after all.”
He scanned me head to toe. Yuck. “You’re wearing black,” he said.
“It hides stains,” I replied.
“Ah,” Wyatt said, and nodded as though he had any idea what it meant to work in the field.
He motioned me down the hallway toward the dining room.
The walls were hung with oil portraits of men in hats and women in pearls, all with the same hawkish cheekbones and hungry eyes.
The house was curated within an inch of its life, every old photograph, every trophy, even the cracks in the baseboards felt arranged, a diorama of generational eccentricity.
We passed a door that was padlocked, and then a staircase with its bottom three steps cordoned off by velvet rope, and I debated whether to ask or file it under “rich and/or weird people shit.”
“Do you ride?” Wyatt asked as though he hadn’t gone out with me and left me to the clutches of a wild boar and wolf. That was how he dealt with being a coward, apparently. Pretending it never happened.
“I grew up in Texas,” I said. “Everyone rides, or at least enough to fake it.” Even though my mom hadn’t been big on outdoorsy stuff, we’d had riding lessons through the local church, day camps, the whole nine yards. I could stay on a horse, mostly.
He smiled, teeth too white and even for a cowboy. “Then you know horses better than most we hire. That’s good. The hands,” he said, lowering his voice, “they don’t like outsiders. Or women, if we’re being honest.”
“Lucky for you, I don’t give a shit if they like me,” I said.
He barked a laugh, which I rated at six out of ten for sincerity, and we turned a corner into a cavernous dining room.
Three of the chairs were already occupied.
Wyatt took the head of the table. His brother, Levi, sprawled to his left, a study in carefully disheveled.
Where Wyatt’s energy was a carbonated fizz, Levi’s was more a low-frequency vibration.
He wore a black tee with a band logo I didn’t recognize, designer jeans with just enough distress to suggest a brush with manual labor, and his eyes were so bloodshot I wasn’t sure how he could see.
“Hey, science lady,” he said, not moving from his slouch.
I pursed my lips. “That’s me.”
“You do actual science?” Levi asked. “Or, like, fake science for oil companies?”
Wyatt answered for me. “Jennie here’s the real deal.”
Levi grinned, a slow reveal of surprisingly sharp teeth. “Guess you’re not the only liar at the table, Wy.” Hm. What did that mean?
Across from Levi sat Cordelia Coleman. She had the sort of posture that made me feel instantly slovenly.
Her hair was white, lacquered into a bun so tight it must have hurt, and her dress was a severe navy that matched the veins in her hands.
She wore no jewelry except for a wedding band and a pair of pearl studs, but the way she moved her hands, slow, deliberate, so precise they made my own hands feel clumsy.
“Ms. Cardin,” she said, not standing.
“Ms. Coleman,” I replied in the same tone of voice.
Cordelia’s smile was not a smile. “You must love the outdoors,” she said. “I expect you’ll be in the field all day again tomorrow?”
“That’s the plan,” I said. “Assuming Jupiter’s ready.”
“She’ll be saddled,” Cordelia said, then turned her gaze on Levi, who shrugged and reached for a sweating glass of iced tea.
A bell chimed somewhere, and a big man walked in.
Harlan Coleman. He wore a linen suit the color of old teeth, open at the neck.
His skin was leathery, lined, and made for long stares across hostile rooms. He had a horse’s head cane, silver and ornate, and he used it mostly as a pointer, gesturing at the food or at a person’s chest if they talked too long.
He carried himself with the stiff authority of a man used to outranking the room.
As soon as he sat at the other end of the table, I did a quick scan.
His sidearm was on his belt, the way his hand rested on the table made it clear he knew the weight to the ounce.
Levi had his pistol tucked in his waist band, but the hoodie obscured most of it.
Wyatt wore his in an inside pocket, less obvious but not to me.
Cordelia was clean, unless she had something up her sleeve, which I wouldn’t have put past her.
The table was set for a war council, not a family meal, pork roast, buttered potatoes, a bowl of something green that nobody acknowledged, and a decanter of bourbon that traveled only between Harlan and Wyatt.
“Ms. Cardin,” Harlan said, spearing a potato. “What brought you to working for an oil company?”
“I’m moonlighting,” I said. “The Beaumonts wanted someone good, so they reached out.”
“The Beaumonts are good folks,” he said, and the whole table heard the lie. “We don’t see enough of them these days.”
“They’re busy, I suppose,” I said vaguely and took a big bite of hopefully-not-poisoned roast.
Harlan poured more bourbon, didn’t offer it to anyone else, then knocked back half a glass. “Not the first time our two houses have had… differences.”
Wyatt broke in. “She’s not here to stir up trouble, Dad. She’s just doing her job.”
Harlan set the glass down so hard the table thudded. “Trouble finds us, whether we send for it or not.”
Cordelia smiled at me. She’d already decided how this ended. “We appreciate your professionalism, Jennie. But please know that out here, we do things our own way.”
“Of course,” I said, and took a bite of the roast. It was, against all odds, perfect, juicy, peppered, just delicious.
Cordelia poured more tea for everyone except herself. “We’re simple people, Ms. Cardin. We value privacy, and we expect the same from those who work for us.”
Levi piped up, “Mom, she’s not the fucking KGB. Relax.”
“Language,” Cordelia said without taking her eyes off me.
Wyatt grinned into his glass. “Levi’s studying for law school. He thinks everything’s a deposition.”
Levi leaned forward, hands flat on the table, and his mask slipped. “Isn’t it?” he said. “You’re not the only one collecting data.”
I decided to take the bait. “You got a list of questions, Levi, or is this all improv?”
He smiled, which meant yes. “You ever fire a gun?”
I gave him a flat look. “This is Texas,” I said. “What do you think?”
“You’ve got trigger callus on your right hand. Looks like .40 cal, maybe nine.”
I looked at my hand, then at him. “I was ROTC for a while in college. Didn’t stick.”
Wyatt’s head whipped around. “You never told me that.”
“You didn’t ask,” I said.
Cordelia’s smile didn’t break, but her jaw clenched so hard I could almost hear her molars grind.
Harlan’s voice was a slow growl. “You carry on the property?”
I nodded. “Of course. Don’t you?”
Harlan sipped his bourbon, weighing the words. “If you’re here to make trouble, it’ll end badly. For everyone.”
“I’m just here to test the soil,” I said. “Anything else is way above my pay grade.” I was a trained liar. I’d done a lot of undercover work in the FBI.
A minute later, a knock echoed down the corridor.
The door opened, and a new player entered.
He was tall, thin, covered in the sort of oil and dust a man only accumulates by working machines older than himself.
His beard was patchy and gray. He wore a blue chambray shirt, sleeves rolled high, and his jeans were dark with grease.
He looked at the table, saw me, then made a small nod to Harlan.
“Sorry to interrupt, boss. Mare in the foaling pen’s colicking. Bad.”
Harlan didn’t flinch. “Vet on the way?”
“Line’s busy,” the new guy said, voice like wind in a culvert. “Want me to try again?”
Harlan wiped his mouth and pushed back from the table. “Keep trying. Use the office line. If you don’t get through, send Bill.”
“Will do,” the new man said. He gave Cordelia a long look, then Wyatt, then me. His gaze was pale blue and unsentimental, and when it found me, I felt the calculation in it. He left the room with the same absence of noise he brought in.
“Otis is our handyman,” Cordelia said, her voice now syrupy with hospitality. “He fixes things. Keeps the place running.”
Wyatt topped off his glass.
Harlan stood, steadying himself on the cane, and nodded at the table. “Enjoy your meal. I’ll be back.”
Wyatt watched him walk out, but only until the door swung shut. The mood in the room softened, just a fraction. The bourbon moved down the table, and Levi poured a splash into his tea.
I forked another bite of roast, chewed, and said, “You run a tight ship.”
Wyatt grinned, then dropped the smile. “You get why, right? People want what we have. Always have.”
Levi said, “Wyatt’s worried you’ll sell us out to the highest bidder.”
I finished my tea and let the cold glass rest against my palm.
“I’m not selling anything. I’m here to run some reports and turn them in.
Buying and selling are in someone else’s hands.
” I fixed Wyatt with a hard glare. “And if something happened to me they’d just hire someone else, probably with a bodyguard. ”
Wyatt laughed loud. “Boy, ain’t that the truth.”
Cordelia stood, gathered plates, and said, “We’re done here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I stood, thanked the table, and turned to go.
As I hit the hallway, I caught a glimpse of Otis at the end, talking in low tones to Harlan. The handyman noticed me, eyes flickering once, and then he gave the smallest, sharpest nod.
Back in my room, I double-checked my sidearm, made sure the round was chambered, then locked the door behind me.
I grabbed a bottle of water out of the stash I’d brought with me, looked up, and played the dinner conversation in my head until the subtext peeled off and the whole picture came into focus.
They wanted me gone. I’d known it before, but now I could taste it in the air. I set my alarm for five-thirty, then fell asleep with my boots on, ready for anything.