Page 112 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

Work.

Anything other than thinking because thinking also leaves me with my other unsolvable issue.

Evan.

I sit cross-legged on the bed, open the laptop, and pull up the files Cody showed me.

Not the protected stuff he’d guarded like state secrets, but the pattern. The method. The way he had me stop looking at single entries and start looking at behavior.

Not one invoice, a chain, or one approval, a system.

My hands still as soon as the spreadsheet opens.

There. That’s better.

I pull the ranch guest list logs first. The sort of background paperwork most people never read because it’s mind-numbingly dull until it isn’t.

I start with recent entries, then work backward, cross reference dates against the suspicious consulting charges, then against after hours file access windows.

Then against event supply movements.

My room goes silent around me except for the click of keys and the sound of the laptop fan.

One line at a time, one date at a time, patterns, behavior, noise reduction.

The way Cody does it, except faster now, because I know what I’m looking for. Or at least I think I do.

Two normal entries. One livestock delivery. One equipment repair. Both backed by the right paperwork. Both approved through the expected channels.

Then another.

Vendor access approved by Jake Dorsey.

Normal on the surface. I almost skip it. Then don’t.

Because there it is again. That damn name.

Barrow Agricultural Consulting.

I pull the supporting file, scan the request, then sit up straighter.

No.

No, that shouldn’t be there.

I go back, check the date again, the authorization code, the event tag, then cross-reference it against the operational schedule for that week.

Nothing.

No corresponding delivery, no scheduled service window, no reason for temporary vendor access on that day at all.

A cold ripple moves down my spine.

I click deeper.

The approval sits under Jake’s system credentials, clean, neat, and incredibly, impossibly wrong. It was entered during a high-traffic period when half the ranch was focused on shipment intake, which means it would’ve blended easily with legitimate access requests.

But it wasn’t legitimate.