He didn’t look up. His hand reached back, broke off a piece, and passed it over his shoulder to me without breaking rhythm on whatever he was stirring.
“You’ve been doing laps of the property since five,” he said. “East ridge will still be there after breakfast.”
I took the pastry. It was warm. My fingers registered this information before my brain did, which was a problem because my brain was supposed to be in charge of things like that.
“I haven’t been doing laps,” I said.
Caleb cocked one eyebrow without turning around. “Interesting. Mitch timed you.”
I ate the pastry. It was objectively excellent, which was the kind of information my tactical mind would have filed under “irrelevant” two months ago and now filed under “Caleb, pastry, exceptional, continue monitoring.”
“Tell him to find a hobby,” I said.
“He has one.”
The doorway filled. Mitch stood there with his hat perched backward, arms crossed, and that exact grin he reserved for moments when he knew he was right and had no intention of letting anyone forget it.
“Ranch security,” he said. “That’s my hobby.”
I looked at him. “That’s not what hobby means.”
“Sure it is. Hobby: an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure. I’m doing it. I’m enjoying it. QED.”
“You’re quoting the dictionary.”
“I’m quoting common sense. You have a problem with common sense?”
“I have a problem with people who think dictionary definitions are arguments.”
He grinned wider. The kind of grin that said he’d won something and the winning was the point, not whatever he’d won. I ate the rest of the pastry and didn’t comment on its quality, which was a tactical error because Caleb noticed anyway. He noticed everything.
The kitchen wrapped around me with a warmth I hadn’t asked for and couldn’t seem to refuse. Mismatched mugs perched on open shelving. The wood stove ticking in the corner,holding the morning chill at bay with the steady, patient competence of something that had been doing its job longer than I’d been alive.
Mitch slid onto the bench at the long table, boots up, one ankle crossed over the other, taking up exactly as much space as he felt entitled to, which was considerable.
Caleb moved around the range with the easy, unhurried precision of a man who’d made this room his own one cast-iron pan at a time.
I chose to stand. Coffee in hand. Maps spread before me, weighted at the corners with whatever was nearby—a salt shaker, a coffee mug, the pepper grinder Mitch had been using as a paperweight since he’d discovered it was the exact right height.
My eyes tracked the eastern ridge through the window, the notch where the access road cut through the tree line, the place where a vehicle could park with sight lines to the main house and not be seen from the county road.
Technically, I was working. Really, I was watching the window. The distinction mattered to me, if to no one else.
Mitch watched me from the bench. Not obviously, just the quiet, steady attention of a man who had decided that watching Sterling Callahan watch a ridge was worth his time, and was willing to outlast whatever resistance I put up about it.
His hand reached across the table. Lifted a piece of toast from Caleb’s plate without looking, without asking, the theft so routine it had stopped being theft and started being part of the kitchen’s operating procedure.
He bit into it. Kept his eyes on mine the whole time, chewing with the deliberate satisfaction of a man who had just committed two minor infractions and was enjoying both of them equally.
I held his gaze. One beat. Two.
“You’re predictable,” I said.
“So are you.” He swallowed. “Difference is, I’m predictable in a charming way. You’re predictable in a way that makes people think you’re about to detonate something.”
“I don’t detonate things.”
“You think about detonating things. I can see it. Right there.” He tapped his temple. “Little explosive symbol behind the eyes. Very you.”
