The silence between us had weight to it—the awkwardness of a conversation that had stripped something bare and left both people wondering if they were supposed to acknowledge it.
Jasper poured his coffee with both hands on the pot, movements methodical, like he was trying to minimize his presence in the room. I kept my eyes on my computer, not performing nonchalance but not pushing for more either.
The pretense lasted about thirty seconds before I broke it.
“I made some calls,” I said, voice level, eyes on his face. “About Gerald Hughs.”
Jasper’s hand paused halfway to the creamer, then resumed its motion with deliberate steadiness. “And?”
“He’s a more organized threat than a few hired men,” I said, keeping it factual. “He’s got connections, resources, and a pattern of going after omegas who work in healthcare. You’re not the first.”
Something flickered across Jasper’s face—not quite surprise, but close to it. He nodded once, a short, tight movement.
“I want to think this through together,” I said, the words coming out before I’d fully formed them. “Not hand you a briefing. Actually work the problem with you.”
Jasper’s shoulders dropped a fraction, some of the braced quality going out of them. He carried his coffee to the table and sat down, not across from me where a stranger would have placed himself, but at the corner where the angles met—close enough that conversation wouldn’t require raised voices, far enough that our shoulders wouldn’t touch.
“Gerald’s brother sits on the hospital board,” he said, voice steady in a way I recognized from mission briefings—the calm that came from reporting facts rather than living through them. “That’s how it started. I was on a committee reviewing prenatal discharge protocols. Gerald came to a meeting—said he was representing ‘community interests.’ He cornered me afterward, asked me to dinner. When I said no, the committee got restructured. A week later, I was laid off.”
The story came out in pieces after that—the job loss, the return to Nebraska to help his grandfather, the first “accidental” encounter at the grocery store, then the gas station, then the library. Gifts that started arriving—flowers, then jewelry, then a watch worth more than three months’ rent. Phone calls at allhours. A car that parked across from his grandfather’s house for hours at a time, driver watching the front door through binoculars.
“The men weren’t random,” Jasper said, eyes on the table’s surface rather than my face. “They were sent. Not just to scare me, but to...” He paused, choosing the word carefully. “To establish dominance. To make it clear that refusal wasn’t an option.”
He delivered it all in the same flat, clinical voice he probably used to document patient charts—no dramatics, no pauses for effect. Just words spoken in a careful tone.
I listened without interrupting, understanding that the flatness was doing structural work—that Jasper was holding the story at arm’s length because looking at it straight was still too much. When he finished—when the words had run out and there was nothing left but the weight of what he’d carried—I asked the only question that mattered:
“Does he know about the ranch specifically? Or just that you left Nebraska with someone?”
Jasper shook his head. “I don’t know. My grandfather called your grandfather. The rest was handled face to face. I did send one anonymous email to my grandfather letting him know we’d arrived, but…”
I nodded once. “That’s what we need to find out.”
Outside, the first hint of dawn was visible along the eastern horizon—a thin line of lighter gray against the night sky. The mountain to the west was still a dark silhouette, its face turned away from the coming light.
Jasper’s hands were steady around his coffee cup, his face neutral in a way that spoke of practice rather than calm. I’d seen it before—the control that came from knowing exactly how bad things could get and building your reactions around that knowledge.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, the words coming out before I’d decided to offer them.
He looked up at that, eyes meeting mine directly for the first time since he’d walked in. “I know,” he said, the simple statement carrying more weight than it should have been able to.
We sat in the kitchen as the light changed around us, the problem between us not solved but named—given a shape we could work with rather than a shadow we had to guess at. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
* * * *
After breakfast, I went to find Rawley. He wasn’t in the house or the barn—Jackson said he’d headed north to check the fence line where it crossed the creek.
I found him forty minutes later, a quarter mile from the main house, testing the tension on a section of wire with a methodical focus that would have looked like boredom to anyone who didn’t know better.
The morning was cold enough that our breath showed—white puffs that hung in the air between us before dissipating. Rawley straightened when he saw me, one hand resting on the fence post, the other holding a length of wire cutters. He’d been at it for hours already—his jacket dark with sweat despite the chill, a thin line of mud climbing the left leg of his jeans where he’d knelt in wet soil.
“Problem with the fence?” I asked, keeping it neutral, giving him the chance to finish whatever he’d been working on before I dropped the real reason for my visit.
Rawley shook his head. “Just checking. Creek rises another foot, we’ll need to move the whole section.” He clipped the wire with a quick motion, then turned to face me directly. “What’s up?”
I laid it out without softening it—Gerald’s money, his methods, the prior incidents, the fact that I may have brought this to Rawley’s door without fully knowing the shape of it when I arrived. I kept my voice level, eyes on his face, watching for the shift that meant he was calculating risk against obligation.
Rawley listened without interrupting, his expression unchanging—the neutrality I recognized from mission briefings where the information was bad, but not unexpected.
