Page 143 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

“Yes.”

“Today.”

A beat. “Fine.”

He turns to go.

“Jake.”

He stops at the door and looks back.

“Nothing gets approved on this property without support documentation from this moment forward. Not retroactively. Not when it’s convenient. At the point of entry.”

His face gives me nothing now. “Understood.”

I hold his gaze until he leaves.

The moment the door closes, I stand and walk to the window, watching him cross the yard with the same calm, measured stride he came in with. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the conversation hadn’t touched him.

That troubles me more than defensiveness would have.

Too calm can mean innocence. It can also mean preparation. Men who have nothing to hide are often irritated when questioned. Men who expect to be questioned usually arrive having rehearsed their calm in advance.

Either way, I’m done giving him the benefit of the doubt just because he’s been standing in the right place for long enough.

The day moves badly after that. Not inefficiently. Badly.

Every interaction is half obscured. Every approval step reminds me how many places trust lives in a system before anyone bothers to define whether it was earned or inherited by repetition.

I tighten what I can. Review what I can. Say less than I want to because saying more would tip my hand too early.

By evening, none of it is enough.

That has become the defining shape of this week.

When I finally head toward Annie’s office, the house is already moving into its quieter rhythm.

Duke’s in the kitchen. I can hear cabinet doors, the soft scrape of a chair, low music barely audible from somewhere near the stove.

Cody is still in his office. Light under the door. Of course. He’ll stay there until the numbers stop resisting him or he collapses from stubbornness, whichever comes first.

Annie’s door is partly open. I stop just outside it before she notices me.

The first thing I see is the wall.

Not a literal board at first glance, but it might as well be. The surface beside her desk has been turned into an evidence map with a level of intensity that would be excessive in almost anyone else and, in her, reads as completely rational.

Printouts layered over printouts. Vendor names. Dates circled in different colors. Sticky notes marked with short notations that only make sense once you start following the line from one page to another.

Screenshots of log entries. Photos. Development bid references. Arrows. Groupings. Backup drive labels in the corner.

A second stack on the desk, already sorted into categories. Another pouch near her camera bag that I would bet contains more copies of the same material.

It rattles me.

She’s made herself harder to silence.

I’ve been treating her as a risk to manage. That was my mistake. Annie isn’t a problem, she’s a force.