"You're medium."
The laugh comes out of her before she can stop it. The cup in her free hand jumps a little and she has to set it down so she doesn't spill. She turns her face into my shoulder and laughs into the cotton of my shirt and I stand there at the counter with my coffee in my other hand and her hand in mine and her laugh in my chest.
This is what I've been waiting for. A six-year-old on my rug calling my woman medium. A woman laughing into my shoulder at sunup. An old shepherd settled on my floor.
I'd kill for this. I'd burn down a building for this, and I might have to before the week is over.
But not yet. Right now I just close my eyes and feel her laugh.
Hadley takes Nash back to her cabin around mid-morning to clean him up for the day. She comes back an hour later with his backpack of worksheets and her laptop and a stack of books and sets up at my kitchen table like she has decided this is where she lives now.
I don't say anything. I'm not stopping her.
She gets Nash going on the numbers worksheet like the one I told him I'd help with last night. He starts at the table with a pencil in his fist and his tongue between his teeth.
On her way past me to start a load of laundry in the back—my laundry, which she has decided she's doing—her fingers trail across the back of my neck. She doesn't look back.
I keep my eyes on the monitors and feel the heat of her hand on my skin for a minute after she's gone.
I pull up the relay account I used for the Bell tip yesterday morning. There's a new message.
Automatic acknowledgment of receipt from the compliance officer's office. Standard *we received your communication and will review* template. Date-stamped within an hour of when I sent it.
I scroll down.
A second message—not automatic—from the compliance officer herself. A short note. *Thank you for the tip. We will investigate thoroughly. Please reach out if you have additional details to share.*
The personal note is the tell. A compliance officer who responds in person to an anonymous tip has already opened the file. She's already pulled Todd's book of business. She's already noticed the math on at least one account.
The audit will move faster than the week I told Hadley. Maybe four days. Maybe three.
I close the email and the small dry smile pulls at my mouth.
*Got him.*
The right monitor pings. I turn my head.
Hartley's phone has moved.
I drag the GPS log up on the screen and watch the dot. Last night it was parked off a county road south of Llano. This morning it's moved further south. Further toward Llano County. Further toward the ranch than it's been in two weeks of surveillance.
I pull up the map, calculate the distance. I do it twice because I want to be sure.
Forty-one minutes.
Forty-one minutes by truck on the back roads if a man knows where he's going and isn't worried about getting pulled over. Less on the highway if he's willing to risk the cameras. More if he's running a counter-surveillance pattern and adding distance to break his own tail.
That isn't surveillance distance. That's strike distance.
A man with a long gun and a clean line on a Llano County back pasture could be at Sharp's perimeter in under an hour from where that dot is sitting.
My jaw sets.
I stop drinking my coffee. I set the mug down on the desk slowly. I pull the call log.
No new calls from Hartley's number since the forty-seven-minute briefing yesterday morning. He has his orders. He's running them.
I look at the dot for a long moment and let the rest of the cabin sound fall away—the washer cycling in the back, Nash's pencil scratching at the kitchen table, Diesel's slow breathing on the rug. All of it goes quiet in my head. The dot is what's left. I've been here before.
