I stare at the ceiling.
The early light is coming through the slats in the blinds.
Soft and grey. My chest feels strange. Not bad. The opposite of bad, honestly. It feels… calming.
It feels like a decision got made in me overnight—quiet, and heavy, and mine.
I want her here. I want her here in this bed.
I want to roll over and find her with her hair across my pillow and the chain at her throat warm between us.
I want to wake up to her breathing. I want this to be the shape of every morning for the rest of my life.
That's a lot of things to want for a man who has spent longer than he should admit not wanting much of anything at all.
I lie there a moment longer with my hand on the empty pillow, then I get up, because I've got work to do, and the things I desire aren't going anywhere.
I make coffee, pull on jeans, a clean shirt, and some boots.
Don't put the hat on yet. It stays on the hook by the door until I'm ready to leave the cabin.
I sit down at the desk.
Three monitors come alive in front of me.
Left for the ranch books. Center for the club ops. Right for off-the-books, the surveillance feeds and the trackers I don't share with anyone but Phantom.
I pull Todd first.
His card was hit again last night at the Hampton.
Eleven drinks at the bar between seven and closing. Whiskey doubles for all eleven, the kind of bar tab a man runs when he's trying to drink himself into making a decision he already knows he's going to make.
His room key registered him going back to the room at twelve-fourteen. He's still in the room now. Hasn't moved.
Eleven doubles.
A man who's drinking eleven whiskey doubles in a hotel bar for days running is a man who's working himself up to something.
I know because I've seen it before, in a different life, in different men.
I think about the options.
I could kill him. Phantom would back me if I chose to.
The brothers would hand me the shovel before they asked a single question.
Marlena would have a casserole in Hadley's kitchen by the time the dirt settled.
The body would never surface. The man would be gone like he was never on this earth.
But a dead Todd is a body that someone has to explain.
His mama in Garrison knows where he is. His employer knows where he is.
The Hampton in Marble Falls has him registered.
A dead Todd is a missing-persons report, a small-town sheriff, and a string of questions that lead, sooner or later, to a ranch in Llano County that has been doing fine staying off the radar of small-town sheriffs.
