Page 131 of Wild Sanctuary

“It started small. A few hundred here and there. Bill never checked. He trusted me.”

His voice wavers at that, and, sickeningly, I can tell the emotion is real. “By the time I’d been at it a year, I owed the ranch twelve thousand dollars. Two years in, it was thirty thousand. I told myself every night I’d come clean tomorrow. And then, it was too late.”

Too late.

Not to stop stealing. Too late because he’d already chosen a side.

“Silas Blackwood.” It’s a statement, not a question, and he knows it, too.

He nods without looking up.

“He came to me about seven years ago. By then, I had eyes on half the county’s books, and he said he’d pay me for tips on ranches in trouble. Just information and the like. Nothing illegal. Only telling him what I already knew.”

His laugh is short and ugly to the core. “And the first check he sent me covered the kids’ entire quarterly tuition bills without me needing to move a dollar out of the ranch to do it. After that, the arrangement just… grew. He needed places for the money to land that didn’t have his name on them.” He shrugs. “I gave him places.”

I swallow heavily, trying my hardest to digest what he’s saying, while my phone sits on my thigh, capturing every word. “The Millers. The Hendersons. Larkspur River, every ranch that’s gone under in this valley. That was you.”

“I only told Silas when they were almost ready to fall. The offers came in through Mountain West, so Silas’s name stayed off the chain of title until the flip.” Marcus’s hands spread helplessly. “I was never the one buying. I was never the one pushing anyone out. I was just⁠—”

“Don’t.”

My voice is that of a woman who is sick of the damn lies and half-truths. “Don’t finish that sentence. This whole valley looks after its own. Everyone on this side of the county showed up when the Hendersons lost their ranch two weeks ago. Same when the Millers were floundering, and again when the Taylors needed a new barn roof. Half the town has emptied their pockets time and again, and all of it for nothing, because you were sitting in your office, selling their weak moments to a goddamn Blackwood.”

He tips his head to one side as he runs his thumb over his hat slowly for a moment, then continues as though I never said a word.

“Then Bill started asking questions.” Marcus’s shoulders draw in on themselves. “He caught a number that didn’t match. So he came to me about it, and I told him I’d look into it. I was able to bury it, but only a week later, he came back with three more, and it escalated again and again. And Tom⁠—”

His throat works, and he tugs at his shirt collar. “Tom was working it from every angle. The ranch books. The Miller sale. The shell companies. He was pullin’ threads I thought I’d buried, and he was pullin’ them from places I couldn’t see. And if either one of them finished what they were doing, I was done for. My wife. The kids⁠—”

“You don’t get to bring your children into this.” The words land between us like a whip, and he stops, closing his eyes.

“No,” he says quietly. “No, you’re right.”

“Keep going.”

Marcus opens his eyes and looks at me for the first time since he sat down.

“Stan came to me.” He tips his head toward the doorway, eyes still on mine. “Said his mama had a glass of wine too many and let it slip that it would all be over soon. That I’d be paying for what I’d done by the end of the month.”

He shrugs a shoulder.

“Stan didn’t know what she meant. But I did. I knew the minute he opened his mouth. Alma saw every one of the shell company transfers cross her desk. She had the bank side of the whole operation in her files, and Tom already had the ranch side. If they put their pieces together, I’d be in a cell inside a week. And if Bill found out on top of it, I’d never see the outside of one.”

There’s a weighted silence for a long moment, but I don’t fill it. I simply wait for it to do its job.

“So it had to be both of them. Tom had the records, Bill had the questions, and if either one walked off that road, my whole life would’ve fallen apart.”

My whole life.

As though my dad’s and Bill’s lives were line items in his ledger, and the math only worked one way.

Despite the rage rippling through me, I hold his gaze. Breathe in. Breathe out.

There’s still more to the story.

“Wyatt was supposed to drive them that morning, but a call came that kept him back.”

Marcus drops his gaze to the hat still pinched between his fingers. Surprise crosses his face, there and gone just as fast, but I note it with pride. He had no idea I was looking at the bank call angle until right now.