Page 113 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

It couldn’t have been.

Because the vendor category doesn’t match any active need, the timing doesn’t align with an actual task, and the corresponding service record is basically a ghost. Just enough detail to exist, not enough to verify.

My heartbeat starts to kick harder.

I pull another log.

Then another.

The same vendor name appears once before, buried in a month-old supply overlap that looked routine if you weren’t paying close attention.

And Jake approved that one too.

“What is he doing?”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Silas

Sleep never quite settles.

It rarely does when something on the ranch is out of place, and last night left too many variables unresolved to allow for anything resembling rest.

I close my eyes for a time, more out of discipline than expectation, but my mind continues its work regardless. Tracking timelines, revisiting conversations, aligning what I know with what I don’t.

Annie. The office. Duke.

The way the argument shifted from concern into a tension far less controlled.

That piece hangs around longer than it should.

By the time I get up, the sky is still in that gray space before sunrise where everything looks softer and less certain.

I step outside and let the cold settle into my lungs before I move.

Routine comes first. It always does.

The property lines, the barns, the gates, each one checked in the same order, not because I expect to find something different every time, but because consistency is the only way to notice when everything shifts.

Most people look for problems directly. I look for the absence of what should be there.

Once done, I head back toward the house with a clearer sense of direction than I had last night. There’s no point in circling the problem anymore. It’s time to define it.

The office door is already open. Of course it is.

She’s there.

Annie sits at the desk with her laptop open, papers spread in a pattern that looks disordered until you take the time to understand the logic behind it. Everything is positioned for access, for sequence, for progression from one piece of information to the next.

She doesn’t notice me immediately. That tells me how focused she is.

I step inside without speaking and close the door behind me, giving the room a sense of containment that feels necessary before this conversation starts. Only then do I say her name.

“Annie.”

She looks up.

There’s a brief pause, just long enough to acknowledge what happened last night without addressing it directly.