“Cassiopeia?” I asked.
“A family called the Kittridges. Veterans’ therapy program outside Bozeman, Montana. Rose vetted them herself.” Kaya’s voice cracked for the first time. “Brutus went to Steadfast Ranch outside Pueblo. At-risk teens. The director, Carmen, took one look at him and said the kids were going to love him. Starlight is with Donna in Wyoming. And Ricky went to a family called the Brennans in Fort Collins, for their daughter Hally. She’s eleven. Trauma survivor. Rose read every application like she was placing children, not horses.”
Brutus. Twelve hundred pounds of stubborn, magnificent horse who’d rested his head on my shoulder while I talked to a camera, and eleven million people had watched and fallen in love with. The horse who tested everyone and trusted almost no one and had decided, for reasons I’d never fully understand, that I was worth following.
He was working with teenagers now. In Pueblo. Being steady and patient for strangers the way he’d been steady and patient for me.
I put my head in my hands.
“Brutus is in a good place,” Kaya said quietly, reading the silence. “Rose made sure of it. She made sure of all of them.”
Of course she had. Because that’s who Rose was, even while her world was collapsing. She’d have lost sleep over it. Made calls. Driven out to inspect barns and meet owners and watch how they handled feed buckets and spoke to animals. She’d havegiven away pieces of her heart, one horse at a time, and called it the responsible thing to do.
“She’s not in Colorado anymore, Graham. She left about a week ago. Went to her cousin Maggie’s place in Manhattan.”
“She’s not answering my calls.”
“She’s not answering anyone’s. Hank tried. I tried.” Kaya’s voice softened. “She’s in survival mode. When Rose gets hurt badly enough, she goes somewhere inside herself where nobody can reach her. She shuts down and waits until she can breathe again.”
“Is she safe?” My voice didn’t sound like mine.
“Safe? Yes. Maggie won’t let anything happen to her.” Kaya paused. “But Graham, she’s not okay. She hasn’t been okay since you left. And losing the ranch...” Another pause, longer this time. “That place was everything she had. It was proof that she could make something that lasted. And now it’s gone.”
“I should have stayed.”
“No.” Kaya’s voice was firm. “You leaving was the right call. The photographers were making it worse every day. Rose knew that. She’d never admit it, but she knew.” She took a deep breath. “You can’t save someone who won’t let you, Graham. You can only be there when they’re ready to let you try.”
“And if she’s never ready?”
“Then you tried. And that matters more than you think.”
We were quiet for a moment. I could hear the wind on her end. She was still standing outside the diner, probably getting cold, giving me time she didn’t have on a break she couldn’t afford.
“Kaya. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Just don’t give up on her.”
She hung up.
I sat there for a long time. Then I called Malcolm Hale.
He’d already been working the TKM Digital trace since I’d hired him on the drive out of Colorado, and I needed to know where things stood.
“Malcolm. Where are we?”
“Moving, but slower than I’d like.” His voice had the measured frustration of a man who was used to getting results and didn’t enjoy explaining why he hadn’t. “The corporate filings are done. We’ve mapped every shell company connected to TKM and traced the vendor relationships. That part is clean. The problem is the banking side.”
“What’s the hold-up?”
“Bank signatory records are protected under federal privacy law. First Mountain Bank won’t release account holder information without a court order, and getting a judge to approve a subpoena for personal financial records requires showing probable cause of fraud. My team filed the motion ten days ago. The judge assigned to the case has a backlog, and Colorado courts don’t move fast on financial crime unless there’s an active prosecution.”
“So we’re waiting on a judge.”
“We’re waiting on a judge. I’ve pushed as hard as I can without making it look adversarial. If the bank gets spooked and lawyers up, it slows things down even more.” He paused. “Graham, Iknow this isn’t what you want to hear. But this is the part that matters most. When we get those signatory records, we’ll know exactly who opened the TKM account. If Denise Harlow’s name is on it, that’s the piece that ties everything together. It’s worth doing right.”
I gripped the phone. Right. Thorough. Patient. All the words that meantnot yetwhile Rose was somewhere in Manhattan not answering her phone.
“Just keep pushing. Whatever it costs.”
