Page 92 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
His jaw tightens. "These people have been filling your head with nonsense since the moment you arrived. Whatever they've told you, whatever version of events they've constructed to keep you here—" He pauses, and something colder moves into his voice. "I've seen the articles, Harper. The things you've been putting into the press. That's so unlike you. That's them, using you, feeding you a narrative because it serves their interests." He looks at Logan with specific contempt, deciding someone is beneath him and wants them to know it. "You're better than this, Harper. Better than them. Come back to where you actually belong and leave all of—this—behind."
"Careful," I note, and my voice is flat and clear and carrying. "You're being recorded."
His eyes drop to my phone.
"I walked out of our wedding because I took your phone out of your hand and read eight months of messages," I continue,loudly enough for every person in the clearing to hear it. "Call it what you want. The sheriff's department called it an active investigation into your company's intimidation practices, and they opened it yesterday. The documentation exists. All of it." I hold my phone steady. "The warrant process started this morning. Contractor records. Communication logs. Financial records. The journalists have the business correspondence." I pause. "You drove up this mountain with armed security contractors to remove me from private property against my will. Again. And all of it is on camera."
Dawson's composure holds. Just barely. The practiced surface stays intact, but something underneath it shifts—a tightening at the jaw, a fraction too long before his next word—and it's enough.
"You have no idea what you're talking about," he asserts, the warmth entirely gone now, something harder underneath it. "You've been manipulated by people who don't have your best interests?—"
"My best interests," I repeat. "Like the eight months of messages? Like all of the television interviews or social media posts where you described me as emotionally unstable?" I take one step forward. "Keep talking. I have an excellent battery on my phone and several journalists who are very interested in whatever you say next."
That lands.
He takes a few steps closer, and I hold my ground, and for a moment we are simply standing in a clearing on a mountain looking at each other—the man who spent five years managing my life and the woman who spent all this time on a mountain finding out what her life looks like without him in it.
He signals to his security team.
Two guards start moving toward me.
And then the sound of vehicles comes from the logging road.
Not from above. From below. Coming up the mountain rather than down it.
Three county vehicles come through the gap at the clearing's edge.
They move with the deliberate, unhurried pace of authority that doesn't need to announce itself, and they park in a line that effectively blocks the logging road behind Dawson's SUVs, and Ray Castillo gets out of the lead vehicle with two deputies behind him carrying eleven years of this job in the way he moves, and it shows.
Dawson turns.
The two guards who had been moving toward me stop.
Croft goes very still.
Ray walks across the clearing with the mountain ease that comes from a lifetime on this terrain, and he stops a few feet from Dawson and looks at him—the folder read, the footage watched, everything prepared—and none of it shows except in how unhurried he is.
"Dawson Whitaker," Ray says it like a file being opened.
"I don't know who you are," Dawson begins, the composed authority snapping back into place, "but I am here on a private matter involving my?—"
"Deputy Ray Castillo, county sheriff's department," Ray cuts in, even and unhurried. "We've had reports of armed individuals engaging in intimidation on private property. We're also here in connection with an active investigation into the business practices of Whitaker Development." He looks past Dawson to the vehicles. "My deputies are going to need to search those vehicles."
"You have no authority to?—"
"We have a warrant," Ray states, producing it with economy, anticipating exactly this response.
Dawson goes quiet.
The deputies move to the vehicles already knowing what they're looking for and where to look for it, and it shows. It takes less than four minutes. The deputy at the second vehicle calls something across the clearing, and Ray walks over, looks at what's been found, and nods once.
"Three unlicensed firearms," he announces to the clearing. "In vehicles operated by private security contractors on private property." He looks at Dawson. "That's going to be a problem."
"Those aren't—" Dawson begins.
"Sir," Ray cuts in, quiet and final. "I need you to stop talking."
Dawson doesn't stop talking.
