Jenson watches my face too closely. “Yeah. That line caught my attention too.”
The waitress appears at the edge of the booth and asks if we need anything. I shake my head once. Jenson asks for pie. She leaves.
I go back to the papers.
There’s a typed summary clipped to the back, Jenson’s work by the look of it. Bullet points. Times. Places. Names of men who carried messages between Cole and Wren. A meeting at a private hunting lodge. Cash handed over through an intermediary who also does security contracts for Wren’s ranch. Enough structure that this wasn’t improvised. This has been building.
“How long?” I ask.
“Six weeks that I can prove. Longer, probably.”
“Why bring it to me now?”
He laughs once, humorless. “Because I’m tired.”
I look up.
Jenson holds my gaze, then drops it to his coffee. “Cole’s not cleaning up a mess anymore, Rye. He is the mess. Used to be there were lines. Ugly ones, but lines. You’d tell him no kids, no civilians, no fire unless it was absolutely necessary. He’d bitch, but he’d follow the order.” He swallows. “Now he does things just to watch what they break.”
I say nothing.
He goes on because he needs to. “He’s got two new boys who think he’s a prophet because he laughs after violence. One of them bragged about the bar fire like it was clever.”
My hands flatten on the table.
Jenson notices. Keeps talking anyway. Brave or stupid. Might be the same thing.
“He said the town council pressure was pretty, but fear lands better when people can smell smoke.”
I fold the papers back into the envelope one page at a time so I don’t put my fist through the table and make us a story.
“Why are you really here?”
Jenson’s eyes sharpen. “Because losing Marcus should’ve been enough.”
The diner noise keeps going around us.
Forks.
Murmured conversation.
Truck engine out front.
But that sentence cuts through all of it.
I don’t move.
Don’t blink.
Don’t give him anything.
He leans in. “You walked after that because you thought if you went legitimate, if you built something clean, maybe his kind of damage wouldn’t follow. Cole took that as betrayal. Fine. That’s on him. But this?” He taps the envelope. “This is him trying to recreate the same grave over and over until you climb into it yourself.”
The waitress brings the pie. Neither of us looks at it.
I speak carefully because if I don’t, I’ll speak dangerously. “You think he’ll stop at the town?”
“No.”
