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People are most unguarded in their element.

That’s an operational fact, fifteen years confirmed.

The Rusty Spur on a warm April Friday is The Rusty Spur at full capacity—every booth taken, the dance floor already working, Moxy running three conversations simultaneously without breaking stride.

The band is better than usual or maybe I’ve gotten used to it.

The air smells of whiskey and the aliveness of a community that has come through a long winter and is celebrating that fact.

I get there before her and order bourbon.

Joy arrives first, with Bree in tow, and whatever the girls’ night plan was has already collapsed because Hunt is behind them, and Kaz materializes from a corner booth three minutes later, and now it’s five of us at the bar, and Moxy is pouring without being asked, and the evening is settling into itself.

Taya comes through the door at seven-nine, her eyes searching.

I stand.

She sees me, and her face blooms into a big smile.

She’s happy to see me.

I’m happy to see her.

But just because she’s crowding my heart and brain doesn’t mean I don’t watch my surroundings as I normally do, because at eight thirty, while we’ve polished off fried food that is sticking to our arteries, a man walks in.

Tall, in his early forties, wearing good clothes slightly ill-suited to the setting.

They’re not his.

He’s wearing them to fit in, and yet he’s not.

He scans the room with an efficiency that has nothing to do with looking for a friend. He finds a seat and orders.

But the way he sits—back to the wall, clear sightlines—tells me who he is.

I sigh when I finally get a good look at him.

I know his face.

I don’t know him personally. I know him from a file, two years ago, when I was doing a job in Salt Lake City and needed to know who else was in the room.

His name is Sid Trafton. He’s a fixer—private sector, ex-DEA, operating in the Mountain West. His clients tend toward the corporate side: development, energy, and land acquisition.

I set my bourbon down.

Two possibilities.

First: coincidence. Trafton happens to be in Wildflower Canyon for unrelated reasons, which I don’t believe, because I don’t believe in coincidence in operational contexts, because they are rarer than a mission without variables.

Second: Jessup sent him on a parallel track. As insurance against the possibility that Mason Brooks is taking too long.

Which, to be fair, he is.

I watch Trafton. He’s not looking at me. He doesn’t need to look at me. He’s done exactly what I did three weeks ago: walk into a room, map it, and find the thing he’s looking for, which is Taya.

“You, okay?” Taya asks, her voice low, concerned.

“Yes. Hey, how did your meeting with opposing counsel go today?” I change the topic as she tells me about a case she’s working on—not the Whitman one, but another.