Page 124 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

I track the remittance accounts next.

Most terminate where expected: standard business accounts, routing paths consistent with regional vendors, nothing outwardly useful.

Then one doesn’t.

I stop.

Read the name, read it again.

At first glance it’s almost nothing. A filing agent designation buried in shell company paperwork connected to one of the vendor variants.

Not the payee or the operating contact. Just a registration reference sitting inside a document that would normally matter only if you already suspected the entity was fabricated.

I zoom in.

The name is familiar, but from where? I can’t place it.

Annie notices the pause. “What?”

I don’t answer immediately.

I open another file. Then another. Search the name against prior contract packets. Legal correspondence. Entity registrations routed through Ironwood over the last five years.

There.

A match.

My jaw tightens.

“Cody?” Annie says.

I lean back in the chair and stare at the screen for a moment longer, because I hate this conclusion enough to want a second pass before I say it out loud.

Then I give it one.

Then a third.

Same result.

The filing reference belongs to a registration intermediary used by Tessa Grange’s legal circle.

Annie watches my face with too much intensity. “What is it?”

I turn the monitor toward her and point to the line.

She scans it once, frowns, then looks again more carefully. “I know that name.”

“You should.”

Her eyes lift to mine. “Legal.”

“Yes. This doesn’t prove Tessa is involved,” I say. “It proves one of these entities was structured through a channel tied to Ironwood’s legal circle.”

Annie exhales slowly. “Which is still very bad.”

“Yes.”

This isn’t just financial theft anymore. It’s architecture. Manipulation built with enough technical literacy to survive internal systems and enough legal familiarity to create plausible documentation trails.