Page 18 of Warrior Security
I stood at the barn entrance and looked at the property. The peeling barn paint and the patched fencing and the gravel lot with its deep ruts. Forty acres held together by one woman who couldn’t stop moving long enough to see what she’d built.
This wasn’t my place. I was here to fix fences and haul feed until I figured out what came next. Temporary help for a woman who needed it, a roof and a routine for a man who had nothing else.
Temporary. That was the deal. And it was all I was good for.
Chapter 6
Logan
The door at Murphy’s Hardware fought back when I pushed it. A thick wooden slab on hinges that needed oil badly enough that every customer announced their arrival whether they wanted to or not.
The inside was narrow and deep. Floor-to-ceiling shelves packed tight with inventory that had been organized by someone who understood their own system and nobody else’s. A man behind the counter with reading glasses on a chain looked up when I walked in.
“Hey there. What can I do for you today?”
“I’m here to pick up an order for Lark Monroe. Fence wire, staples, and a couple bags of quick-set.”
“Right. Give me a minute. It’s in the back.”
He disappeared through a doorway. I stood at the counter and waited, looking at a pegboard display of carabiners and small flashlights. The front door groaned open behind me.
“No way. Logan?”
I turned. Beckett Sinclair stood a few feet inside the door with a paper coffee cup in one hand and sunglasses pushed up on his head. His face broke into the same wide grin he’d flashed multiple times during that Warrior Security op a couple weeks ago.
“What are you doing here? Hunter said you left town.”
“Plans changed. I’m working out at Pawsitive Connections. Lark needed a ranch hand.”
Beckett’s eyebrows went up. He stood there for a second, coffee cup halfway to his mouth, and I watched the surprise land and then settle into something he didn’t say out loud. Something in his posture eased, and the grin that followed reached his eyes in a way he probably didn’t intend for me to notice.
“Pawsitive,” he said. “No kidding.”
“No kidding.”
“You know, I trained security dogs out there for a while.” He leaned against the doorframe and crossed one ankle over the other. “Good luck getting Lark to actually let you do anything. She’ll say she needs help and then do it all herself before you get your boots on.”
Truer words never spoken. “That’s been my experience so far.”
“How’s the parrot?”
“Foul-mouthed.”
“Clarence never changes.” Beckett shook his head. “That bird called Audra a word on her second day that I won’t repeat in polite company. Fortunately, Audra laughed so hard she had to sit down. It was the first real laugh I ever heard from her.”
He looked at his coffee cup for a second. Turned it in his hand, obviously lost in a private memory. Then his face turned a little darker.
“Lark hired Audra when she had nothing. I meannothing. She showed up with the clothes on her back and a story shecouldn’t tell, and Lark paid her cash, gave her work, didn’t ask a single question. Just handed her a purpose and let her breathe. I wouldn’t be married to the love of my life if it weren’t for Lark. Hell, I don’t know if Audra would still be alive if it weren’t for Lark. So, you’re with good people there.”
I thought about a woman in a coffee shop at five thirty in the morning, handing a stranger a flyer and a job and the keys to a cabin on her property. No background check. No references. Just Hunter’s three-word text and her own read on a man with no plan and nowhere to go.
I didn’t get the chance to sit with that. The front door groaned open again, and Hunter walked in. He saw me and stopped. The same surprise I’d watched cross Beckett’s face, followed by something quieter that he tucked away behind a nod.
“Logan.” Hunter extended his hand. I took it. His grip was the same as the last time: firm, steady, holding a beat longer than necessary. The last time had been in the Resting Warrior parking lot at four forty-five in the morning, and neither of us had known if we’d see each other again. “Good to see you.Surprisedto see you.”
“He’s working at Pawsitive,” Beckett said. “Ranch hand.”
Hunter let go of my hand and looked at me. Really looked, the way he had that morning in the parking lot, reading whatever he could find in my face. Whatever he saw now must have been different from what he’d seen then, because something behind his expression settled.
