Page 24 of The One Who Saw Her: Boone

His parents' faces moved through his mind—his mom's laugh, his dad's jaw set with determination, and then the crash that had taken them both in a single wrenching second. If he let Virgil strip the water, he wouldn't just lose acres and calves, he'd lose the last tether he had to the people he loved most.

Boone held Virgil's gaze and didn't look away. Didn't blink. Didn't move.

"You're going to want to think very carefully about your next move," he said, quiet enough that Virgil had to lean in to hear it. "Because I have never in my life given up what belongs to me. And I'm not about to start with you."

Virgil's smirk faltered—just barely, just for a second but Boone had seen it all the same.

"I'm not giving you my cattle," Boone said, a cold control wrapped around every word like wire. "We'll find another way. There's a contract and precedent. I will use every resource, every lawyer, and every dollar I have left to make sure this water deal doesn't get twisted to suit a man who inherited his position and never earned a damn thing in his life."

Virgil chuckled, but there was a hint of caution in it now. "You're stubborn as your granddad."

"I know." Boone let that sit for a beat—let Virgil feel the full weight of what that meant, what it had always meant for anyone who'd tried to take something from a Callahan. "That's the first reasonable thing you've said all day."

News of his run-in with Virgil traveled faster than Boone's seven-hundred-horsepower pickup—which was how he found his brothers standing on the front porch before he'd even made it up the gravel drive.

He let himself take in the beauty before the storm. The way the sun dipped low behind the jagged Montana peaks, casting long golden fingers across the rolling fields. Dust from the gravel swirled around the tires as his truck rattled toward the ranch house, the oak trees arching overhead like silent sentinels. The horizon glowed in streaks of orange and lavender, the mountains fading into soft, shadowed purple.

The way the light kissed the land his family had worked for generations—the branches swaying gently in the evening breeze—and how, for all the fights and near misses and sleepless nights, this place still felt like home.

A home he might lose if he wasn't careful.

He put the truck in Park and kicked the door open. His foot hadn't so much as hit the ground when Eli said, "I've got my rifle in the car and my Glock in the center console."

Being a boatswain in the Coast Guard, trained in close-quarter combat, Eli didn't need weapons to do severe damage. He could kill with his bare hands, and most people who met him knew it within about thirty seconds. Yet the corners of his jaw could soften in rare moments of trust, and the faintest crease at the corners of his eyes hinted at a smile he had to consciously practice. Boone understood the sentiment.

"We're ready to roll," Colter added.

"What are you going to do?" Boone asked his middle brother, the local veterinarian and self-confirmed bachelor. "Hogtie him and give him a rectal exam?"

"Better than flapping my lips at him," Colter said, his usually easygoing demeanor stripped back to something rawer.

"I take it you two heard about my run in with Virg?"

"Heard from Spud, who overheard Virgil bragging about raising the water rates to anyone who'd listen at the Tipsy Cow," Eli said. "Went on to say he was personally going to put the Callahans out of business."

Boone went the kind of still that wasn't calm—it was the eye of something.

The thought of Virgil running his mouth like a carnival barker, telling the whole town the Callahans would fold and that the family ranch was finished? The words burned in his chest—a dangerous cocktail of fury and cold disbelief.

Nobody gets to drag my family's name through the dirt.

His family had built this ranch on sweat and stubbornness and honor—three things a man like Virgil would never understand. And if Virgil thought Boone was going to roll over because he was loud, the man was wrong.

Dead wrong.

"Well, so much for keeping the family's business in the family," Boone said, rubbing his temples.

"Wouldn't matter how much that man's lips flapped," Rea said from the doorway. "The way you three are carrying on, I'm surprised there isn't a town hall meeting on our front lawn."

"Sorry, Nan," Eli said.

"I didn't raise you in a barn. Now, come inside and let's talk this out like gentlemen."

"Yes, ma'am," all three said in unison—even though Boone was fairly certain not one of them was feeling especially gentlemanly. But when Rea spoke, they all obeyed. It didn’t matter that she was so small Boone could fit her in his saddlebag, she was the matriarch of this family and therefore deserved their loyalty and respect.

They moved into the family room and took seats around the coffee table. All but Boone, who paced in front of the fireplace the way he always paced when he was working something out.

"What are our choices?" Rea asked, her tone as serious as it was regal.