Page 79 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

I stop.

My brain tries to offer up a reasonable explanation. A flyer. Someone advertising something. A note left by mistake.

Except nothing about it feels accidental and I can’t pinpoint why…

A slow, uneasy feeling curls in my stomach.

I step closer, my movements more careful now, like that’s going to make a difference.

The paper doesn’t move when the wind shifts, it just sits there. I reach up and pull it free, my fingers brushing the glass as I slide it out from under the wiper.

It’s folded once.

I unfold it.

The letters are written in thick, dark strokes, the kind of writing that presses hard enough into the paper that you can feel the grooves of it under your fingers.

YOU DON’T BELONG HERE.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Silas

Duke waits until evening to tell me with a level of seriousness that means he already knows I’m going to react badly.

He isn’t incapable of seriousness. People mistake warmth for softness all the time, and my brother has made a career out of letting them.

He’s easy with people in ways Cody and I have never been, but that doesn’t mean he’s careless.

When something actually matters, the joking goes first. The room shifts around him, his face settles, his voice loses whatever ease he usually wraps around the truth to make it more bearable.

He comes into my office just before dinner and shuts the door behind him. That alone tells me enough to brace.

“What?” I ask.

He doesn’t sit. He stands across from the desk with his hands in his pockets, shoulders set, jaw tighter than he wants it to be. “Annie got a note.”

I furrow my brow in confusion. “What do you mean ‘a note’?”

“A threatening one.” His eyes meet mine. “And before you start, no, I’m not being dramatic. She found one at the trailhead this afternoon. Under her windshield wiper.”

I set my pen down carefully. “What did it say?”

His mouth flattens. “You don’t belong here.”

The room goes still.

I hear the old clock on the wall, the buzz of the vent, a truck in the distance coming up the drive.

Then I ask, “Why am I hearing this from you and not from her?”

Duke’s expression darkens in a way that tells me the answer isn’t going to improve my mood. “Because I caught her crying as she came back to the ranch earlier with it clutched in her hand.”

He offers me a one-shouldered shrug. “And maybe because I was the one she came to when her SD card went missing…”

“Wait, what?” I stop him in his tracks. “What are you talking about? What the hell has been happening?”

“She said her SD card went missing from her office.”