Page 41 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

CHAPTER EIGHT

Silas

Ironwood wakes the same way every morning.

Staff in motion just after sunrise. Coffee brewed by me by five. Horses fed on schedule. Deliveries checked, logged, verified. Radios crackling low. Doors opening and closing with purpose.

Even the quiet has structure here. It’s one of the few things I trust. If anything changes, there’s a reason.

This morning, the rhythm is off.

Duke isn’t in the kitchen when I come back inside for breakfast, which by itself means nothing and also too much. Annie’s office light’s still off, though she’s usually at her desk before half the staff has finished their first cup of coffee.

There’s a low murmur threaded through the hallway when I pass the laundry room, voices pitched just under conversation, the kind that die the second I get close enough to hear actual words.

I don’t stop.

I don’t need to.

By the time I step out toward the barns to find the ranch hands, I already know something happened.

Benji confirms it ten minutes later with all the subtlety of a kicked gate.

He catches up to me just beyond the south paddock, boots hitting gravel too fast for casual conversation, breath carrying the brisk bite of morning cold and coffee.

He’s young enough to still think information burns a hole in his chest if he doesn’t unload it quickly. Usually, that irritates me.

Today, it doesn’t.

“Morning,” he says, falling into step beside me.

“Benji.”

He glances over, trying to sound casual and failing. “You want the feed counts now or after Jake checks the north delivery?”

“Now.”

He gives them to me. Numbers, timing, one missing bag that turns up three seconds later because Terry stacked it in the wrong place. I listen, correct one detail, keep walking.

Benji lasts less than half a minute before he breaks.

“So,” he says, voice lowering in a way that suggests discretion and achieves the opposite, “one of the housemaids was upstairs yesterday.”

My jaw tightens, but I don’t look at him. Benji isn’t one to gossip, so wherever this is going is new. “And?”

“She said she walked past Duke’s room,” he continues, slower now, realizing too late that this isn’t the kind of information I appreciate being handed mid-task. “The door was open.”

I stop walking.

Benji takes two more steps before he realizes I’m no longer beside him, then turns back, already reading the shift in my posture. Most people do.

I don’t raise my voice often, and I don’t need to. By the time I’ve gone still, they usually understand they’ve crossed into something that matters.

“And?” I repeat.

He swallows. “Annie was in there.”

A detail small enough to sound insignificant and crisp enough to cut through the entire structure of this house.