I round up the last of the cattle with the sheriff’s deputy holding a spotlight from his cruiser.
We get them through the gaps and I wire the fence shut with baling wire and T-posts because a real repair has to wait for daylight.
Earl is on the porch when I get back to the house.
He hasn’t gone inside.
He’s been sitting in that rocker for two hours in the cold, waiting.
“We lost the Hereford,” I say. No way to soften it.
He closes his eyes. Nods. Doesn’t speak.
One of his best cows.
A good breeder.
Revenue he can’t afford to lose, taken by a set of wire cutters and a message from a man who smiles when he delivers threats.
“Lockhart,” Earl says.
“Yeah.”
“Prove it.”
“I can’t. But I know someone who might be able to.”
I go inside. Sit on the edge of the guest bed. Pull out my phone.
My fingers hover over his name in my contacts.
Lee.
The man who kissed me days ago and hasn’t spoken a full sentence to me since.
The man who looked at me like I was both the answer and the sin.
The man who took Earl’s papers and said nobody’s taking it from him, not while I’m standing.
I swore I wouldn’t chase him.
Swore I’d hold my ground and let him come to me on his own time, if he comes at all.
But Earl’s cattle were on the highway, his best cow is dead, someone is coming for this ranch, and the ground I’m holding isn’t just mine anymore.
I call him.
He answers on the first ring.
The significance of that—the man who hasn’t answered a phone call in five and a half years, picking up before the first ring finishes—hits me so hard I forget what I was going to say.
“Bex?” His voice. Alert. Immediate. Not the flat, guarded tone of the last three days. The real one. The underneath one. “What’s wrong?”
I tell him. Fences cut. Cattle on the road. The Hereford dead. Lockhart. Everything.
Silence on the line, until he says something that surprises me. “I’m on my way.”
He hangs up. No discussion. No hesitation.
