Page 171 of Unleashed
Just my name. Nothing else.
Jett sits up on the bench. I set my phone down.
"What?" I ask.
"You need to come with me."
"Where?"
"East fence."
"Why?"
He doesn't answer. He just looks at me, and whatever he's not saying is louder than anything I've heard today.
"Colt. What happened?"
"Xander called it in ten minutes ago. I need you to saddle up and come with me. Now."
I don't ask again. The tone in his voice doesn't leave room for it. I grab my hat, cross the yard, and head into the stable. Seven is in his stall, already alert, ears forward like he knows something's wrong before I do. Horses are like that. They read the air better than people.
I saddle him fast. My hands are steady, but my chest is tight, that instinct you develop growing up the way we did.
Colten's already mounted. We ride out through the back gate and head east across the property. Neither of us speaks. The only sounds are hooves on packed dirt and the wind moving through the grass.
We ride for fifteen minutes. Past the cattle grazing in the south pasture. Past the water tanks. I see Xander first. Standing about a hundred yards out, next to the fence line. Hat in his hands. Head down.
Xander is never still. Xander is six-foot-four of constant motion, always shifting, always looking for something to do with his hands. That’s what makes him so damn good at his job. The fact that he's standing like a statue with his hat off tells me everything I need to know before I'm close enough to see.
I pull Seven to a stop. Dismount and hand the reins to Colten without a word.
I walk the last fifty yards on foot and come to a stop when I see it.
Paulie is face down in the dirt.
His hat is three feet away. His rifle is beside him, still slung across his back. He never even got it off his shoulder. Never saw it coming.
The knife is still in his back. Between the shoulder blades. Buried to the hilt.
I stop walking.
The world goes very quiet.
Not silent. Quiet. The kind of quiet that happens inside you when something breaks, and the sound hasn't caught up yet. The world is still moving, and Paulie is face down in the dirt, and those two things can't exist in the same reality, except they do, and I'm standing in the middle of it trying to make my lungs remember how to work.
Paulie.
Paul Reeves. That's his real name. His full name. The one on his birth certificate, the one his mother called him, the one nobody on this ranch has used since he showed up at our back door with a bloody nose and nowhere else to go.
My dad took him in. Gave him a bunk in the barn that first night. A room in the house by the end of the week. I grew up with Paulie beside me. He was already here when I was born. He might not be a Sterling by blood, but by everything else. Every cattle drive. Every fence repair. Every late night on the porch when Dad would tell stories about the old days, and Paulie would sit on the steps and listen like he was memorizing our history.
He ran this ranch. Not officially. Not with a title. But everyone knew. If something needed doing, Paulie had already done it. If a fence was down, he'd fixed it before you noticed. If a new hand was struggling, Paulie was the one who showed up beside them and worked in silence until they figured it out. He held this place together the way the ground holds the roots. You don't see it until it's gone.
And now he's face down in the dirt with a knife in his back, and I don't know how to stand here and look at that and keep my legs under me.
I crouch down beside him. Close enough to see the dust on his hat brim. Close enough to see the calluses on his hands. Close enough to see the face of a man I've known since I was a kid, turned to the side, eyes open, expression almost peaceful. Like he was looking at the sunrise when it happened.
He probably was. Paulie loved the east fence at dawn. Said the light was different out here. Said you could see all the way to forever.
