Page 89 of Wilder

Having even the slightest possibility of someone poisoning our rescue animals was beyond fucked up. And yeah, maybe there was a chance I was wrong and misread the entire situation, that Carter had somehow been exactly where he wasn’t supposed to be for an entirely innocent reason.

But so what?

I’d rather be overly cautious than give anyone the benefit of the doubt when it came to the lives of the animals we were working our asses off to rehabilitate.

Carter working here for as long as I had didn’t mean shit if he was constantly getting himself into some kind of trouble. Most of the time it was petty shit, like fighting with the other ranch hands and picking arguments with whoever he could if the day struck him wrong.

We all knew how to handle him, when to stand up to him and tell him to fuck off when we needed to.

Well, except for Dusty... but even he was starting to learn how to hold his own these days.

Outside of that, the guy was simply a ghost all of us forgot about until something else happened with him mysteriously at the epicenter of it.

Coming up to the storage shed, the doors groaned against the hinges before letting out an ear-piercing screech when Wilder and Sully yanked the doors open.

I winced at the noise, resisting the urge to clap my hands over my ears while they fought to open them wide.

The inside wasn’t much to look at, about the size of a standard tool shed with narrow but well-organized floor-to-ceiling rows of shelves lined with bottles, jugs, and metal cans. All of them had labels facing out, making it easy to see what was available.

Most of it was pest and weed control, standard stuff that would be kept around a property like this and used away from whatever livestock we have to keep from running the risk of contamination.

A quick glance told me everything looked to be in order, no obvious spots suddenly looking a little too empty, though that didn’t exactly mean something hadn’t been tampered with.

“See anything familiar?” Sully nodded to the shelves.

Stepping inside, I let my eyes roam again.

While I’d only gotten a brief look at the bottle, the label was distinct to stick out in my memory: a white bottle with a bright green label and a red ‘X’ through the center of the words.

The moment my eyes landed on it, I knew.

Tucked back behind another set of containers, shoved out of immediate view like someone had gone out of their way to hide it.

I carefully slipped it off of the shelf to hold it up.

This wasn’t some random misplacement—someone had obviously tried to cover up their tracks. The kind of person that would wait around for me to leave the stables before coming back to clean up whatever evidence was left behind.

“This one.”

Wilder’s eyes narrowed on it when I turned around to show him. “You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

He held out his hand to take it from me, our fingers brushing together for a single second. Something hot and electric shot through me, sending a shiver racing up my spine. Even now, in the middle of this potentially disastrous situation, my body had tunnel vision.

I swallowed hard, forcing myself to focus. His eyes darted up to meet mine, just enough for me to catch them slightly widening before he quickly moved back from me, giving us both enough room to breath again.

Well, at least I wasn’t the only one feeling this still.

Sully slipped the bottle from Wilder’s hands, turning it over to run a finger over the back label where the ingredients were listed. His lips moved silently as he mouthed while he read, his expression growing dark the further he went.

Then, quietly to himself, he muttered a low, “Shit.”

A bad sign if I’d ever heard one.

“Did you end up testing the feed?” I asked.

Wilder was the first to answer, though he started with a shake of his head. “We’re still waiting for someone to come out and take a few samples. Even if they come today, we won’t have results for at least a week.”