Chapter 69
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Ace
We ride in at dawn. Literally. Four trucks. Two horse trailers. Colten, Jett, me, and twelve men who know how to work a fence line and clear a building. Hunter stays on the radio, coordinating from the boundary.
Jett's in black from head to toe. No flamingo shirt. No grin. The version of Jett most people never see.
"Let's go take my ranch," Jett says.
Hunter wants Jett to have Ranch 42, and we all agreed it’s best.
We move.
Three teams of four. East outbuildings. Bunkhouse. Main house. Colten, Jett, and I ride straight up the center drive on horseback.
First shots come from the bunkhouse. Just short bursts that are over in seconds. Two Greeks stumble out with their hands up. Our guys finish the job with a single bullet to the skull and move on.
Jett clears the hay barn. Colten and I take the main house. The front door is open. Mattresses on the floor. Ammunition boxes in the hallway. The kitchen table filled with maps. Arizona. New Falls. Sterling Ranch circled in red. Our fence lines marked. Our patrol routes documented.
They've been studying us.
By eight a.m., the property is clear. Seven dead Greeks that were stupid enough to think they could fight.
I stand in the front yard and watch Jett's men bolt a new sign to the crossbeam above the gate.
LAWSON RANCH
Black iron letters on weathered wood. Jett stands beneath it, hands on his hips, hat pushed back. Something settles across his face I've never seen. Pride.
"Looks good," I tell him.
"Looks fuckin' perfect."
Sterling Ranch is big enough, Ranch 42 was between us and the Lawson’s Ranch, and now, there ain’t no one wedged between us.
I ride Seven along the southern fence line, scanning the hills. The territory is sealed. Sterling to the west. Lawson to the east. No gaps. No way in.
And that's when I see it.
A dark sedan. Parked on the service road a half mile out. Blacked-out windows. My skin prickles. I've seen that car before. Outside the feed store last week. On Route 9 after the rodeo. Third time isn't a coincidence.
I call Colten. "Dark sedan. South service road. Blacked-out windows. It's not the first time."
I wait until he rides up beside me.
"I feel like I'm being watched," I say.
"You are," he says quietly.
The car sits for three more minutes. Then pulls away into the heat haze.
"I'll send the plates to Romeo."
I nod. But the feeling doesn't leave.
Around noon, we walk to the cottonwood tree on the eastern boundary.
Me, Jett, Colten, Xander, and three hands who knew him best. The stone is already there. Hunter had it made.
Paulie Vance. Sterling Ranch. Lawson Ranch. This land was his life.
He died on Sterling soil because men with no right to be here put a knife in an old cowboy who never raised a hand against anyone.
Securing this ranch was strategy. But this memorial under this tree, on land we ripped from the men who killed him, this is the real reason. Plant our dead in the earth and dare anyone to cross it again.
Jett places his hat over his heart. We all do.
"You were the best of us, Paulie," Colten says.
I crouch and press my hand against the warm granite. "We got 'em. Just like I said I would."
It's been nine weeks since Harper left. I won the rodeo, and the first person I wanted to call was her. Heartbreak is boring; nobody tells you that. The drama fades. The rage burns out. And what's left is long days bleeding into long nights with a stone in your chest you've learned to carry.
I miss her. I just miss her. I miss Paulie, too.
I put my hat back on and stand.
Hunter's truck rolls up the drive at four.
Colten and I are on the porch of the main house. Jett's inside, walking the rooms, planning renovations. Making this place his. Tate is going to take over full control of the original Lawson ranch while Jett moves in here.
Hunter parks, gets out, walks around to the back, and drops the tailgate.
Two of our men drag Carson out of the truck bed.
He's in bad shape. Hands bound. His face is so swollen you’d hardly recognize him. I think we’ve all taken our anger and grief out on him. He's been in a room somewhere on Sterling property for a few weeks now while we got the paperwork sorted for the sale.
Hunter grabs him by the collar and walks him into the yard. Plants him on his knees in the dirt, in front of the new Lawson Ranch sign.
Colten and I come down from the porch. Jett steps out of the house. We form a half circle around the man who gave his ranch to our enemy to take us out.
"Do you know where you are, Carson?" Hunter asks.
Carson spits blood into the dirt. "My ranch."
"Not anymore."
Hunter crouches and gets level with him.
"You took their money. You let them onto your land.
You let them study us: our fences, our routes, our operations.
You let armed men sleep two valleys from where my son lives.
" He pauses. "And when Paulie rode the fence line like he did every morning for thirty years, your guests put a blade in him. "
Carson's face drains. Whatever defiance he had left dies in his eyes.
"I didn't know they'd—"
"You didn't care." Hunter stands. "That's worse. You sold yourself out to men who kidnap women and kids. Let your men stay here and help them. You put the people I love at risk, and for that, I can’t forgive."
He nods to Colten. Colten walks to the truck and comes back with a rope. The kind you use for heavy rigging. The kind that doesn't break.
Carson starts shaking. "Hunter. Hunter, please. I'll give you anything. I'll leave the state. You'll never see me—"
"You're right. I won't."
My brother's voice is calm.
Colten throws the rope over the crossbeam of the gate, the one that now reads LAWSON RANCH in black iron letters. Carson stares up at it, and the sound that comes out of him is something between a moan and a prayer.
"This is for Paulie," Hunter says. "And this is what happens when someone betrays this family on our land."
I don't look away. None of us does.
Hunter gives the nod.
They string him up beneath the Lawson Ranch sign, and we watch until it's done. Until the kicking stops. Until the rope creaks in the wind and the only sound left is the cottonwood tree rustling behind us, where Paulie's stone sits warm in the afternoon sun.
Nobody speaks.
Hunter pulls his hat lower and walks to his truck. He turns back once.
"Bury him on the property line. No marker."
He drives off. Jett stares at the gate. At his name in iron. At the body hanging beneath it.
"Welcome to Lawson Ranch," he says quietly.
Colten claps his shoulder. I tip my hat to Paulie's stone.
And then we do what he would have wanted, we get to work.
The sun drops. The men dig. And somewhere on the south service road, I swear I see the glint of a dark sedan parked in the distance.
But when I look again, it's gone.
My phone buzzes.
Hunter: Romeo's running the plates. Just be careful, go straight home.
I pocket the phone and mount Seven. Ride the fence line one more time in the fading light. Sterling land to the west. Lawson land to the east. Paulie's stone behind me. The mountains ahead.
Someone is watching.
And whoever it is, better pray they're gone when Romeo gives me a name.