Page 92 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

She gasps a little. “Why?”

Because I don’t escalate until certainty exists. Because Silas’s solution set tends toward force, and force is inefficient when the problem is still structural.

Because if this is what I think it is, premature confrontation will collapse the trail before I’ve finished tracing it.

I don’t say any of that.

“Because I wanted verification first,” I say.

Her eyes flick to mine then. “And you thought I might be involved?”

I don’t insult her by denying it. “I considered every available explanation.”

She holds my gaze for one beat longer. Then nods once. “Good.”

That one word ignites a small, unwelcome shift somewhere under my ribs. Respect, maybe. Or the more cutting thing underneath it.

The thing I keep trying not to name when it comes to her because names create structure and structure creates consequences.

“Sit,” I say.

She arches a brow. “That sounded suspiciously like an order.”

But she takes the chair beside mine, pulling it in with the kind of practical movement that wastes no time. I sit again immediately after, and the room narrows to monitor light, paper, and proximity.

I open the invoice batches she flagged weeks ago and layer them beside the access logs. “Walk me through the vendor behavior again.”

She doesn’t bother pretending she needs a second to reorient. “Amounts stay below alert thresholds. Timing aligns with high-volume operational periods, which creates visual noise. Entries don’t repeat identically, but they behave identically.”

“Meaning?”

“They’re designed to survive surface review.”

I click through the invoices. “And the company?”

“Exists enough to pass. Not enough to justify frequency. I think, anyway.”

“Continue.”

She reaches past me for a pen, pauses when she realizes it’s mine, then takes it anyway. I don’t comment.

She shouldn’t be able to make that look as natural as she does.

“Look here,” she says, drawing a line across a set of charges on the printed invoice summary. “Different amounts. Different dates. But all of them hit during periods when Ironwood was already compensating for legitimate expense spikes.”

I track the entries. Shipment week, overtime approvals, feed increase, emergency equipment repair.

She’s right.

Annoyingly, predictably right.

“They’re hiding movement inside legitimate volume,” I say.

“Yes. Which means if someone was monitoring totals, nothing looks dramatic. No single charge is large enough to trigger alarm. The bleed only appears when you examine behavior over time.”

“Not entries. Context.”

“Exactly.”