Page 48 of Branded

“I didn’t teach you anything. I just kept refusing.”

“Same thing,” he says, “with me.”

Darkness reaches the guest-suite windows while I write up the interview. At 8:31, my phone rings from the rancher’s number. I answer and hear the dog barking hard enough to rattle porch boards.

“The deputy’s at my gate,” the rancher says. “He’s got no warrant.”

Chapter 16

Garrett

Tessa calls me at 8:33, before the rancher’s dog finishes barking behind her first sentence.

“The gate’s locked, the rancher’s inside, the deputy’s outside in a marked unit. Mercer has him on the other line. Don’t go to the house.”

I’m already crossing the porch.

“Garrett.”

“I heard you.” I pull the truck keys from my pocket. “I can reach his road in fourteen minutes.”

“That’s why I said it first.”

Cole meets me at the drive without being called. I stop him long enough to give the only order that’s mine to give: security goes to the feed-store junction from this afternoon’s plan. Nobody sets foot on that man’s land unless he or the law asks.

Then I drive.

The county road narrows past the first cattle guard. Mesquite and huisache crowd the fence until the world is just the strip my headlights cut. Nine minutes in, Mercer comes through the truck speakers.

“Stop at the junction. A clean unit is four minutes from the witness. I’m behind them.”

“I’m closer.”

“Which makes you the first McCall truck the deputy gets to photograph pulling up on a witness who just accused him.”

I know exactly what Mott would do with that picture. What Russell would say at the table. Neither one matters as much as an old man behind a gate and an armed man using a badge to make a lie sound official.

“He’s there for the records,” I say.

“That’s a conclusion. Hold at the junction.”

The order lands right where my worst instincts live. My father taught me that delay belongs to men who expect somebody else to pay for it. A calf coming wrong, a broken water line, a buyer about to walk, it all got the same answer from Calvin. Move first. Explain later.

That lesson built a ranch. It also built the man who put a tracker on Tessa’s case.

I stop at the junction.

Gravel pops under my tires. I park under the dead pole light by the dark feed store and leave the engine running and tell Mercer where I am.

“Stay there.”

“I’m there.”

He hangs up before I can make obedience sound negotiable. Cole pulls in across from me and stays by his door.

Tessa arrives three minutes later with counsel’s driver. She gets out holding her field case and her phone, wearing the face she uses when fear has been assigned a procedure. There’s still pale dust caught in the seams of her boots from this afternoon.

“You stopped,” she says.