Ghost reached for the notebook and tapped one blunt finger against Otis’s name on the first page. “Jacqueline’s one of ours now. We’d handle this if the ranch sat on the other side of the fucking state.”
The answer came from around the table in short nods and hard expressions, nothing dramatic because none of us needed a speech to understand what had just been said. To these men, Jacqueline belonged to the club because she belonged with me. And because Otis had spent years earning their respect long before any of us knew his granddaughter would come home.
I looked at every brother in the room, letting the weight of their loyalty settle where it belonged before I closed the notebook and stood. “Let’s get this shit done.”
We met the sheriff at Black Castle an hour later, using a secure conference room inside the executive wing instead of asking him to drive through the gates of the compound in a marked county vehicle. Raines had worked beside us often enough that the arrangement didn’t need explaining. If anyone saw him enter Black Castle, he was a sheriff consulting one of the most respected private-security firms in the country, not a lawman sitting down with a motorcycle club.
He arrived in plain clothes anyway, gray button-down rolled at the forearms, badge clipped at his belt. When he finished reading, irritation carved around his mouth before he dropped Otis’s notebook on the center of the table.
Hawkeye sat to my right, Judge to my left, while Ledger, Cipher, and Bishop took the remaining chairs facing the wall display. Raines stayed standing for a moment, both palms planted on the table as he looked from the notebook to the map Cipher had projected behind us. “This helps. It gives me dates, vehicle descriptions, partial plates, and proof that Otis noticed activity along the rear road but still doesn’t give me a crime.”
“He recorded what he saw,” Judge replied, flipping to one of the marked entries without putting on the polished courtroom voice he used when somebody needed dismantling in public. “A judge may find the observations credible enough to support other evidence, but the notebook alone won’t establish that Wade knew anything.”
Raines dragged one hand over his mustache and looked toward the map and reiterated what we knew from the scene at the ranch and Otis’s log. Including the bullshit excuses we’d heard from Wade and his people. “Every asshole in that company has discovered the same convenient case of amnesia.”
“Because Wade built it that way,” Hawkeye reminded him, studying the clusters Cipher had marked across the county. “His trucks go to ranches, construction sites, equipment yards,auctions, and private sales for legitimate work. He doesn’t need an excuse to be near stolen machinery because hauling machinery is the fucking business.”
“And his people are loyal enough to lie,” Ghost added, though the disgust in his voice suggested he didn’t consider purchased silence worthy of the description. “Or scared enough.”
Cipher enlarged the display, bringing up a timeline that overlaid Otis’s entries with reported thefts, Kessler truck sightings, auction dates, and properties Wade’s crews had legitimate reasons to visit. The individual points meant little on their own, but the lines between them formed a shape none of us could ignore. Equipment disappeared near routes Wade’s drivers used, then similar machines surfaced through private sales or rural auctions after serial numbers and tracking systems had been altered. The rear road on Otis’s property sat close enough to several of those routes to work as a temporary stripping site without requiring Kessler’s trucks to cross Black Crowns land.
“We’ve got movement,” Cipher explained, using one finger to trace the progression from a ranch north of town to a private auction two counties away. “Not proof. A Kessler truck appears near a property, equipment goes missing within forty-eight hours, then something close to the same make and model shows up for sale after enough time passes to muddy the trail. Sometimes Wade’s company moved it legitimately before the theft. Sometimes one of his subcontractors had access.”
Bishop leaned forward, elbows braced on the table as he studied the parcel data he’d pulled from county records. “He picks locations his crews already know. Ranches where they’ve delivered feed, construction sites where they’ve hauled dirt, and equipment yards where they’ve moved stock. Nobody questions the truck because it’s been there before.”
Raines stared at the map with the expression of a man who could see the entire machine and still couldn’t legally put his hands around the bastard operating it. “I can use this to reopen some files and justify interviews, maybe push for records on specific trucks if the county attorney doesn’t lose his spine. What I cannot do is arrest Wade because his company appears near places where equipment later disappears.”
“We know.” Though the reminder scraped at my patience. Wade had protected himself with distance, legitimate contracts, and employees willing to step into the blast radius for him, but every layer he added created another person who could make a mistake. “Working on it.”
Judge closed the notebook and pushed it toward Raines. “Use this copy. The original stays with Jacqueline.”
The sheriff’s eyes shifted to me at her name, the frustration in his face easing into something more measured. “She know what this means?”
“She knows the notebook matters and the case isn’t there yet.” I’d promised to keep her informed, and I had no intention of deciding that only applied when the news was useful. “She’ll know what comes out of this meeting.”
“Good.” Raines straightened and tucked the copy Judge had prepared beneath one arm. “Because Wade’s going to realize we’re looking harder, and men like him don’t react well when the walls start narrowing.”
Neither did I, but I had more walls, more men, and far less concern about what happened to Wade if he chose Jacqueline as the weak point in his operation. I looked at the map one final time, memorizing the routes and properties before Cipher cleared the display. Somewhere inside those dates, trucks, auctions, and lying employees was the mistake Wade believed he’d hidden, and the Black Crowns were going to find it before he got another chance to make a move against Jacqueline.
15
JACQUELINE
By early afternoon, the heat had settled in hard. We’d already spent most of the morning checking the irrigation lines, and now we were inside the barn repairing stalls. Not what most people wanted to do on a Saturday, but ranch work didn’t wait for weekdays. And it certainly didn’t hurt that Brogan had stripped off his shirt, even if concentration had become a serious problem for me.
Sweat traced slow paths down the hard planes of his chest and stomach, darkening the waistband of his jeans. The black ink of the skull on his forearm flexed every time he drove a nail. The larger tattoo on his right arm shifted with every swing of the hammer, the Black Crowns MC emblem on his right pec rippling along with it.
“You’re going to put a nail through your hand if you keep watching me instead of the board,” he murmured without looking up.
My cheeks heated. “I’m supervising.”
His mouth twitched, but he didn’t call me on the lie. I cleared my throat and forced my attention back to the task we were completing.
“When I finally get the rehab side going, I want this whole row converted. Wider stalls for horses that need more space while they recover. Then turnout pens off the back so they can ease into being outside again. And eventually more stalls over there”—I pointed toward the far end of the barn—“with better ventilation and a separate section for quarantine if we ever need it.”
Brogan listened without interrupting. When I finished, he set the hammer down, pulled the measuring tape from his back pocket, and started to jot down the length of the current stalls, the distance to the back wall, and the open space outside.
He didn’t explain what he was doing. He just made notes on his phone before moving to the next section.
