Chapter 23
Lark
The back road to the equipment shed was barely a road at all. Two tire ruts through tall grass with the ridgeline on one side and the tree line closing in on the other, and I took it slow because I was in no hurry and I knew exactly why.
My phone was in my back pocket. My mother’s number was in my contacts. And I was driving to the far corner of my property to inspect a shed that law enforcement had already processed, because apparently that couldn’t wait, but calling my family could.
Last night in the field, with the sky going from gold to copper and Logan’s voice low and raw beside me, saying I would call them and ask for money had felt possible.
But this morning, I’d fed the animals, cleaned three kennels, reorganized the tack room, and now I was bouncing along the back forty checking on a crime scene that didn’t need checking.
I was fooling exactly no one, least of all myself.
Every version of the conversation I rehearsed with my parents ended the same way: my mother’s silence, or worse, her conditions. I told you this would happen, Eleanor. That you’re not meant to be running a business on your own. You should have listened to us years ago.
The same message in different arrangements, the same verdict they’d been handing down since I was old enough to understand that being kind and loving animals was a character flaw in the Monroe family.
My sister was a lawyer. My brother was in finance. I was running a rescue ranch in Montana, and to my parents, that meant I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere around puberty and never corrected course.
My father wouldn’t even be on the call. He hadn’t picked up the phone when I left Carter or when I went to the hospital or when I disappeared from their lives entirely. My mother was the spokesperson for both of them, and she’d deliver his silence along with her own judgment, as she always had.
I pulled up beside the shed and killed the engine.
Being here in daylight, I could see exactly why the drug runners had chosen this spot. Hidden from the house and the barn, back road access to the county route, enough tree cover to move vehicles in and out without being visible from any direction that mattered.
I climbed out and pushed the door open. The hinges protested, same as always.
The interior held boot prints and in front of the door tire tracks, both from two nights ago, but everything else was gone.
The beer cans, the duffel bags Logan had told me about, whatever they’d been staging in here had all been processed, photographed, hauled away.
All that was left was a dirt floor and old shelving and a rusted implement shoved into the far corner and the tracks of strangers who’d been using my land like a loading dock.
I walked through it anyway. I ran my hand along the shelf, and it came away clean, which meant someone had dusted it for prints.
The cleared circle in the center of the floor was obvious now that I knew what to look for.
I’d walked past this shed a hundred times in five years and never once came back here to check on it or wonder who might be using it.
I’d been too busy keeping the front of the property running to worry about the back of it.
Logan had found it. Logan had brought it to Hunter. And two nights ago, I’d stood in my barn doorway with a shotgun while Warrior Security and the sheriff took down six men on the back edge of my own property.
Someone had been operating on it for weeks without my knowing. That was over now. The shed was just a shed again, and the back road was just a back road, and the only thing I needed to do with this corner of my property was forget about it.
I stepped outside into the sun and pulled the door shut behind me. Two cigarette butts lay ground into the dirt right outside the threshold, side by side, like someone had stood here smoking and stubbed them out before going in.
I bent down and picked them up and looked around for any others, but there were only the two.
I shook my head. Of course the guys would process an entire crime scene, bag every beer can and scrap of evidence, haul away six men in handcuffs, and leave two cigarette butts right outside the door. I could practically see it.
I shoved them into my jacket pocket and brushed my palms together. Next time I saw Lachlan, I’d give him a hard time about it.
The drive back across the property was quiet. I kept the windows down and let the air move through the cab, and I did not take my phone out of my pocket.
I would call my mother. I just wasn’t calling her right now. I had important things to do. I needed to finish the training with Gimbal since her new owner with hEDS would be picking her up soon.
Yeah, right. Who was I kidding? Gimbal was perfect and had been ready all week.
I pulled onto the county route toward Garnet Bend with my supply list on the passenger seat.
Feed was running low, Duchess’s joint supplement was nearly gone, and I needed a case of dewormer for the goat rotation.
Logan had mentioned heading to Murphy’s this morning for a hinge he needed for one of the stall latches, and I’d told him I’d handle the rest.
Because…way too busy with my very important stuff to do to make any calls.
I parked on Main Street a few doors down from the feed store.
The morning was bright, and the sidewalks had the easy traffic of a weekday in Garnet Bend, people moving between the hardware store and the bakery and the post office at the pace of a town that wasn’t trying to impress anyone.
I grabbed the list, left the truck unlocked because this was Garnet Bend and nobody locked anything, and went in.
The feed store run took twenty minutes. I loaded the fifty-pound bags into the truck bed myself, tipping each one off the dolly and stacking them flat, same as I’d been doing since before I could afford to hire help.
Halfway through the fourth bag, my skin prickled.
A slow crawl between my shoulder blades, the sensation of being watched landing on me from a direction I couldn’t place.
I straightened and looked around. The street stretched in both directions, two blocks of storefronts, a handful of parked trucks, a woman walking her dog on the opposite sidewalk. Nobody was watching me, and nothing was out of place.
The feeling stayed anyway.
I loaded the last bag and closed the tailgate. It was stress. The drug operation, the takedown, the call I was definitely not avoiding… That cocktail was more than enough to turn an ordinary parking lot into something that felt wrong.
I walked toward Deja Brew.
The bell over the door chimed the same way it had every time I’d walked into this shop for five years. The espresso machine was hissing, the community board by the entrance was covered in flyers, and the morning light was coming through the front windows at the angle that made the whole room glow.
Lena was behind the counter, wiping down the steamer. Her purple-streaked braid caught the light as she looked up, and her whole face opened when she saw me.
“There she is.” She set down the towel and leaned both hands on the counter. “I’ve been hoping you’d come in. I heard about that drug-bust craziness. How are you doing?”
“I’m good. It’s been a week.”
“It’s been more than a week, honey.” She was already reaching for a cup. “Want your usual?”
“Please.”
She pulled the shot and steamed the milk while she talked. Lena was married to Jude Williams, one of the founding members of the Resting Warrior Ranch, so I wasn’t surprised she’d heard about everything. There was no such thing as a secret in a town the size of Garnet Bend.
Except mine. Except the fact that I might lose Pawsitive.
“I don’t know details and I don’t need to,” she said, setting my latte on the counter. “I’m just glad those boys took care of it.”
“They were incredible. The whole team.”
“And Logan?”
I could feel the smile before I could stop it. “Logan was incredible too.”
Lena’s eyebrows went up, and she pressed her lips together, holding back whatever she wanted to say about the look on my face. She let it go with a small nod that said she’d seen enough.
“You know what I keep thinking about?” She folded the towel and laid it over her shoulder.
“You take care of every person and animal that walks through your doors. Every kid, every veteran, every family that needs help. You show up for this entire town.” She held my gaze, and her voice dropped.
“I’m glad that for once, someone was there to take care of you. Warrior Security and Logan.”
The deflection was right there. I could feel it loading, the breezy laugh and the joke about how the shotgun counted as self-care. A month ago, it would have been out of my mouth before I’d registered what she said.
“Thank you, Lena.” I wrapped both hands around the cup. “That really does mean a lot.”
I wanted to tell her about my financial problems, but at the same time, I didn’t. It wasn’t her burden to carry. I would figure it out.
She smiled and moved down the counter to wipe a spot she’d already wiped. I appreciated the exit she gave me, the graceful shift to busywork that let the moment settle without making it heavier than it needed to be.
I pulled out my wallet and put a five on the counter.
My latte cost four dollars and seventy-five cents, which meant the five covered it with a twenty-five-cent tip that was insulting and I knew it.
The number added itself to the column in my head, quiet and automatic, another line item on the running total of a life that cost more than it earned.
“Keep the change,” I said, and Lena took it without comment. “Thanks, Lena.”
I pushed back out onto the sidewalk with my latte and walked toward the truck.
The sun was higher, the street had filled in with a few more trucks in the angled spots, and the morning was doing its best impression of a normal day in a normal town where nothing was wrong and nobody needed to make a shitty phone call.
The prickle returned as I crossed the street. Must be because of the neon sign I was wearing: I’m about to call my parents and beg for money, and they’re going to tell me I’m a loser and may or may not give it to me.
I sighed, took a sip of my latte, and kept walking. Nobody was watching me except for my own mind’s eye calling me a coward.
But God, I didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to ask them for the money. Didn’t want to prove them right if only in their own minds.
But more than any of that, I didn’t want to lose Pawsitive Connections. My pride would survive the blow of asking. It was worth it.
I reached my truck and pulled the door handle. The door swung open and I stopped.
A rose lay on the driver’s seat. A single stem, deep red, with no wrapping or cellophane, the bloom resting on the worn fabric.
I stood with one hand on the door and the latte in the other and looked at it.
Logan.
He’d been in town this morning, and my truck had been parked right here for the better part of an hour. He would have walked past it, and he would have seen it.
This was exactly him: a rose on my seat without a note or a text or any production at all, because that was who he was.
He didn’t announce things. He just did them.
I picked it up. The stem was cool and smooth between my fingers, and the petals were full and open, the deep saturated color of a flower that had been chosen with intention, not grabbed from a bucket on the way out the door.
I got into the truck and pulled the door shut.
The noise of town was on the other side of the glass, and in here, it was quiet and I was holding a rose that a man had left for me.
Logan had held my hand in a field last night while I listened to the hardest story he’d ever told.
He’d caught me in a flood. He’d handed me an axe when I didn’t know what to do with my own rage.
He’d promised no more junk drawers and meant every word.
This was one rose with no card and no audience, from a man who had seen my truck and thought about me and taken thirty seconds out of his morning to make sure I knew.
Then I set it on the dash, leaning the stem against the windshield where the bloom caught the sun through the glass. I started the truck.
The phone was still in my pocket. The conversation I’d been rehearsing all morning was still there, still hard, still waiting. But it didn’t have to happen today.
Logan had offered to be beside me when I made the call. He’d said he would sit with me while I dialed, and he would stay for whatever came after.
So I would wait for that. I could pick a day when he was next to me, when I wasn’t running on avoidance and caffeine and a parking lot that felt wrong for no good reason.
Logan wasn’t leaving. He’d given me Reid last night because he trusted me with the heaviest thing he carried. I’d given him my family, my finances, my whole ugly truth, and he was still here. Still fixing fences and feeding animals and leaving roses on the seat of my truck.
I pulled off Main Street and turned toward the county road. The rose slid along the dash as I took the corner, and I reached over and steadied it with two fingers.
Logan would be there when I got home.