Page 35 of Branded

It’s a vehicle weigh station that closed years ago. The scale house is still there. The road beyond it stopped being public when a private company took over its maintenance.

I check the maintenance filings.

The road belongs to the ranching operation whose man offered to buy Barbed Crown’s debt at Calvin’s memorial dinner. The one Garrett refused. The one Russell has been meeting for months.

The shell vendor gets its mail at a dead weigh station on a road controlled by the rival ranch.

I sit back in my chair. My first instinct, before I think about Mercer or counsel or the chain of custody, is to pick up the phone and tell Garrett.

I don’t.

But I want to, and the wanting sits in the quiet apartment with me for a long time after I send the file to counsel.

At 11:20, I give up and text him. Not the case. Never the case, not on this line.

Did The Accountant get out today?

The dots appear almost instantly. Then disappear. Then appear again. I can picture him sitting on the edge of that bed under his father’s photograph, typing with his thumb, deleting, typing again, trying to find a sentence that doesn’t ask for anything.

She did. Cole found her in the alfalfa trap at noon looking pleased with herself. He’s talking about a combination lock.

She’d learn the combination.

That’s what I told him.

I stare at the screen. I don’t know what I want to say. I know what I don’t want to say, which is almost everything.

You didn’t say anything personal at the trailer today, I type, and then, before I can stop myself, I send it.

The dots take a long time.

You asked for work only. I didn’t want to take something you hadn’t offered.

I know. I noticed.

Was that wrong?

No. It was exactly right. I just didn’t like it.

A long pause.

I didn’t like it either.

I put the phone down on my chest and close my eyes. My face is hot. I’m thirty-three years old and I have testified in front of a federal judge without my voice shaking, and I’m lying in a rented bed blushing over a text message about a cow.

Goodnight, Garrett.

Goodnight, Tessa. Lock both doors.

I was going to.

I know. I just needed to say it.

I read that last line three times, because he said it in the hallway the first night too, and I don’t think he remembers, and I do.

Chapter 12

Garrett