Page 3 of Captive

“After I keep the rest of these cattle alive.”

His gaze holds mine a beat, weighing pressure the way he weighed the pens. Then he nods. “After.”

He never touches the cow unless I ask him to. When I do, he puts his hand where I point, flat and steady, and keeps it there. When she shifts under him, he lets her move instead of trying to hold her still. Most men I work with want to prove they can handle an animal. He just wants to know what I need.

I file that away. I don’t know yet why it matters.

I treat three more. One is too far gone. Her heart stutters under my stethoscope and stops before I finish the catheter, and I write down the time and cover her eye from the light, because grief doesn’t make a sample admissible and anger is a poor substitute for a label.

By the time the eastern sky turns copper, 14C has her chest up and her legs folded under her. Two more treated cows are breathing easier. Cole’s crew has built a loose panel corridor that lets the herd reach fresh water without crowding.

He comes back with a count sheet written on a folded feed sack. Twenty-four tags. Each marked standing, down, treated, or dead, with times where he has them.

“You missed your calling,” I tell him.

“I like cattle when they’re alive.”

“Most of us do.”

This time the smile happens. Brief, unwilling, and it changes his whole face before he looks toward the road again.

“Is that sign yours?” I ask.

“No. The pens went up yesterday under an emergency protocol. I didn’t order it.”

“Who did?”

“That’s my question.”

I take out my phone. “I’m calling the state animal health line. They need to know about a forged certificate and a fake quarantine sign.”

Cole scans the brush. “Make it quick.”

“Government lines are famous for speed.”

I get through the menu and start with the shipment, the head count, the deaths. The duty officer asks me to repeat the certificate number. I open my mouth, and a rifle cracks from beyond the east fence.

Metal bursts beside me. The tank valve shears off and a hard black stream slams into the dirt. The second shot punches through the passenger door of my truck.

Cole hits me at the waist before the sound finishes rolling across the pasture. We go down behind the treatment trailer as water floods the pen.

“Stay down,” he says.

He isn’t on top of me. He has one forearm braced over my shoulders and his body angled between mine and the fence. He leaves me room to breathe. He’s close enough that I can feel his heart through his shirt, fast and steady. He smells like dust and sweat and warm cotton.

The cattle surge away from the tank. The north panel bows.

“They’ll hit the north panel,” I say.

“Nate, open the west escape and hold the outside gate. Don’t run them.”

The panel swings. The cattle funnel into open pasture instead of piling against steel.

I push to my knees. His hand closes on my upper arm.

“My blue case,” I say. “The duplicate samples. If that water reaches it, we lose the clean set.”

He looks at the case, eight feet out past the wheel. Water is spreading toward it.