Page 75 of Wild Sanctuary

18

DAISY

The name has been sitting in the county records for three days and I still haven’t figured out where he fits.

Daniel Rupert Cutter.

Three days of Wyatt’s office and cold tea. Sunday dinner passed without Wyatt and Rhett, the table louder than usual in the way things get when someone’s trying to fill a space without admitting there is one.

The article finally went to Glen this morning. So did Daniel Cutter’s name, and a short ask to dig into him because the investigation is still stalled on that singular name.

Cutter is a public notary. His signature turns up in the property transfer documentation for the Miller ranch, buried in the third page of an eighteen-page title report. Not the holding company’s name, not a real estate agent or even an attorney. Just a witness. A notarized signature on a transaction that transferred the Miller place to Mountain West Acquisitions for over a hundred thousand dollars below the assessed value. And the same signature on the Holburn land sale the year before that.

On a hunch, I pulled Whitmore’s formation paperwork out of the state database again last night. Articles of incorporation, page two, bottom corner.

D.R. Cutter.

Then Whitmore’s dissolution filing from three years later. Same stamp. One retired Blackstone Creek notary on Helena incorporation documents for a firm that never existed anywhere but on paper. Either Daniel Cutter was driving to Helena, or somebody was driving the paperwork to him.

I’ve run it through every database I have access to and cross-referenced county assessor records back almost fifteen years. The trail keeps hitting the same walls, except this wall has a name on it, and names have addresses.

Sky Country Books is the bookshop on Main Street. I noticed the sign the day June walked me around town when Hemingway, the fat orange cat, sat unmoved in the window while June tapped the glass like he might deign to acknowledge her. I filed it away the same way I file everything—out of habit, without knowing why.

The name above the door is Cutter.

Now I know why.

What I don’t know is what I’ll find when I walk through that door, or whether asking questions about a name on a title report will close it behind me permanently. A notary who signed four fraudulent transfers didn’t do it alone, and whoever was pulling the strings has already proven they’re not above making problems disappear. My father paid fifty thousand dollars for proof and ended up dead on a road he’d driven a thousand times.

I’m aware of the math.

Still.

The trail runs through Sky Country Books and I didn’t come back to Blackstone Creek to stop at the walls.

My tea has gone cold again. I’ve lost track of how many investigations have been conducted over forgotten mugs.

I rinse it at the sink and look out the window to the training paddock visible at the far edge of the yard. West is already in there, moving in that slow, deliberate way of his around a gray mare I don’t recognize. Everything about her posture suggests she hasn’t yet decided whether the world is safe.

I watch for a minute longer, then I go outside. By the time I reach the paddock fence, I still haven’t figured out what I came to say.

He hears me before he looks up. Not because I make noise, but because West Hartley seems to operate on some form of awareness that functions entirely independently of the five standard senses, and almost two weeks back on this ranch has not diminished how much that unsettles me.

“Mornin’.” He doesn’t turn around. The mare’s ear swivels toward me, and she shifts a half-step away, keeping West between us.

“Morning.” I lean on the top fence rail and watch. “She’s new.”

“Came in Tuesday. Out of a property dispute near Billings. They weren’t sure they could place her.”

“But you thought different.”

“Figured she deserved the chance to decide for herself.” He lets the rope out an inch. The mare blows a breath but holds her ground. “Takes time.”

The two of them move together in a slow, quiet negotiation that looks like nothing from the outside and is clearly everything up close. His hands are easy. His feet barely shift. He gives her space to recalibrate between every small ask, like he has all the time in the world and genuinely means it.

The mare is watching me now from behind his shoulder. Assessing. She doesn’t move toward me, but she doesn’t move away.

“West.” I keep my voice steady. “Thank you. For Saturday morning. With Felix.”