Page 114 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

Her expression doesn’t give much away beyond that. Controlled, measured, waiting to see which version of me she’s dealing with this morning.

“I found something,” she says before I can bring up anything heavy.

“You… did?”

She nods, her lips pursed together in a thin line. “Yeah, and I think you’re going to want to see it.”

Okay, so that’s what we’re doing. “Show me.”

She turns the laptop, angling it so I can see, then shifts in her chair to make space beside her. I step closer, close enough to read the screen clearly, aware of the proximity without letting it become the focus.

The data comes first.

“These are the vendor entry logs,” she says, tapping the screen lightly. “Standard approvals. Most of them match operational needs.”

I follow the entries, scanning quickly. Names, dates, categories. Everything aligns at first glance, which is exactly what I would expect if more was being hidden inside it.

Then she highlights one.

Jake Dorsey. Vendor access approved.

I read it once, then again, cross-referencing automatically with what I know of that week’s schedule.

“Keep going,” I say.

She does.

She walks me through the absence of supporting documentation, the way the approval sits inside a high-volume period where it wouldn’t draw attention, the lack of follow through that should exist if the access had been legitimate.

Her explanation is clean. Structured. No unnecessary speculation.

She’s not trying to prove a theory, she’s showing me a pattern.

“There’s another one,” she adds, pulling up a second entry. “Earlier. Smaller. Same structure.”

I lean in, bracing a hand against the desk as I read. The second instance confirms the first. Different date, same method. Same approval channel.

Jake.

The conclusion forms without needing to be forced.

“This creates an access point,” I say, more to confirm alignment than to state something new.

She nods. “Yes.”

“For someone who isn’t being tracked through normal channels.”

“Yes.”

“And it lines up with the financial discrepancies.”

Her gaze flicks to mine. “It does.”

The room hushes around that, because that’s the moment the pieces stop existing separately. Money bleeding out in controlled increments, unauthorized system access, physical entry points created through legitimate looking approvals.

All of it tied together by one thing.

Internal knowledge.