Gray plants both palms on the table. Mr. Coleman stands with one shoulder to the wall, hat brim low. He looks tired in the way men do when they won’t say out loud that it’s getting harder to bounce.
“Walk me through it,” I tell him.
He does. Matter-of-fact, no drama: tractor rolled, even though the ground was flat; south fence cut last week; light grain order; one frightened gelding bowed a tendon and the vet bill came like a punch. He keeps his voice steady, but his fingers worry the brim of his hat the way a rope man worries a good lariat—looking for a weak spot.
“Two different hands,” I say when he’s done. “Somebody clumsy trying to make noise. Somebody careful laying groundwork.”
“Which one do I shoot first?” Mr. Coleman asks.
“The careful one,” Gray says. “But we have to find him before we can introduce him to consequences.”
Delaney stands straighter. “We can’t spook sponsors for Rodeo Days. If people think we’re under attack, they’ll yank checks. We have scholarships riding on this. The whole town does.”
The whole town. She says it like a vow, like she’d arm-wrestle a tornado if it meant keeping the lights on for somebody else. It puts a crack in me I don’t have tape for.
Gray’s gaze flicks to me. “I want you here, Hawthorne. Around the clock.”
That I expected. I nod, already on the logistics. “I can bunk in the?—”
“No,” Mr. Coleman cuts in, sharp. “Whoever’s doing this knows this place. Knows us. The minute I put Lone Star trucks on my gravel, I might as well hang a sign that says ‘spooked.’”
He’s right. The careful one will go subterranean if he smells heat.
“So we camouflage the heat,” Gray says, already shifting the chess pieces. “You need coverage that doesn’t look like coverage.”
“The bunkhouse is full of hands,” Mr. Coleman says. “And anybody new gets sniffed faster than a stranger at Sunday potluck.”
My eyes slide to Delaney before my brain can stop them. She stiffens like she felt the heat of it. Color rises along her throat, then she lifts her chin and meets me, daring me to say whatever I’m thinking.
I don’t. Gray does.
“Fake dating,” he says, like he’s ordering coffee. “We give Valor Springs something better to look at.”
Delaney’s jaw drops. “Absolutely not.”
It hits me wrong and right all at once—wrong because using her feels like a holy thing misused; right because the animal part of me that’s been pacing since I saw her wants an excuse to orbit close and not apologize.
Mr. Coleman doesn’t blink. “Explain.”
Gray hooks a thumb at me. “Nash and Delaney. Everybody knows he and Delaney were thick as thieves back in the day.” His look to me saysnot my story to tellanddon’t make me tell it. “He shows up with a duffel and a grin, folks will assume he’s staying for reasons that have nothing to do with fences. He’s around 24/7 without spooking our snake. He can watch, listen, dig.”
Delaney shakes her head so hard a piece of hair falls out of whatever system was holding it. “Nope. No. Find another cover.”
Gray’s voice gentles. “Got a better one?”
“Say he’s—” She flaps a hand. “—doing some… roping clinic. Training a green-broke. Something that doesn’t involve my face in a fake relationship.”
“People ask less questions about kissing than they do about clinics,” Mr. Coleman says, not unkind. “And folks will expect him to be where you are, which is the point.”
She turns on him, hurt flashing fast then gone. “Daddy?—”
“I don’t like it either,” he says. “But I like somebody cutting our legs out from under us less.”
I keep my mouth shut and my heartbeat slow. The plan is clean. The execution will be messy. The risk is not just operational.
Gray looks at me. “You good with it?”
My throat goes rough. I say it anyway. “If it keeps her safe, I’ll hold her hand on Main Street and dip her under the bandstand at the street dance.”
