Dakota finishes hers. Stands. Drops a kiss on the top of my head the way she's done since she was tall enough to reach.
"Night, Pops."
"Night, baby girl."
She walks into the house, the screen door closing behind her. The sound of her boots on the hardwood goes up the stairs, then is gone.
I sit in my father's chair on my father's porch on the land that's been Lyle dirt since before Texas was Texas.
The chair next to me is empty and for the first time in thirty years, it's supposed to be.
CHAPTER ONE
Phantom
Dawn on the ranch starts before the sun does.
I'm in the main barn by five, coffee in one hand, clipboard in the other, walking the stalls the way my father used to walk them—checking hooves, checking water, checking the quiet pulse of a hundred-thousand-acre operation that doesn't stop because the man running it had a bad night.
The horses are already stirring. Two of Banshee's rescue projects nicker from the quarantine section, and one of Spur's green-broke fillies kicks her stall door just to hear the sound.
I didn't sleep.
I sat on that porch until midnight, nursing the bourbon Dakota poured me, thinking about Jolene's face when the hope died.
Thinking about thirty years and a white Escalade and a woman crying behind tinted glass.
Thinking about my daughter telling me my ex-wife deserved to be loved for love, not for loneliness, and how a twenty-seven-year-old barrel racer shouldn't have to teach her father basic human decency.
But that's done now. I filed it in the place where I file things that are finished, and I moved on.
That's what presidents do. That's what Lyle men do.
We handle what's in front of us, we keep the ranch running, and we don't sit in our feelings like they're going to solve something.
The cattle operation needs attention this morning.
We're moving the south herd to fresh pasture—three hundred head of Angus that need to be pushed through the gate by noon before the heat turns lethal.
Blaze has the hands organized. Thunder's running security on the perimeter because we had a report last week I don't like—unfamiliar bikes on the county road that parallels our east fence line.
Not our people. Not the Reapers Rejects or the Mojave Wolves. Someone new.
Banshee brought it up at church two days ago.
Calm, the way Banshee brings everything up, like he's commenting on the weather instead of potential territorial encroachment. "Spotted three bikes on County Road 112. Tuesday night. No patches visible from distance, but they weren't out for a leisure ride. Headed south toward the interstate."
Rogue ran the route through his systems. Nothing flagged. No chatter. But the absence of information is its own kind of information, and I've been running this club long enough to know that unfamiliar bikes on familiar roads don't happen by accident.
I told Banshee to keep eyes on it. Told Rogue to monitor. Filed it underdevelopingand moved on to the next item, because there's always a next item.
This morning the next item is cattle.
I walk out of the barn into the blue-gray light and see the hands already gathering at the south corral.
Blaze is there—already barking orders at the hands, coffee in one fist, the other pointing riders into position.
He nods when he sees me. I nod back. That's our entire conversation most mornings. It's enough.
