Page 171 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

I feel it.

Annie keeps talking, already pulling up another page. “Look here. Temporary fencing contracts. Portable sanitation rentals. Equipment transport. Livestock staging permits. Vendor hospitality supply chains.” She glances at me. “These aren’t tied only to ranch operations.”

Cold settles low in my stomach.

No.

Annie’s fingers move faster now, opening more files. “The consulting behavior spikes around the rodeo schedule too. Not just Ironwood expansion periods.”

I straighten slowly in the chair. The warmth drains right out of the room.

“Annie,” I say carefully.

She doesn’t hear the warning in my tone yet because she’s too deep in the numbers now.

“The shell behavior overlaps with regional event vendors. Not all of them. Just enough to create movement opportunities that wouldn’t trigger scrutiny because event accounting’s messy by nature.”

My chest tightens hard.

Because I know rodeo circuits. I know how many people move through them. Contractors. Suppliers. Temporary workers. Livestock haulers. Entertainment crews. Security. Sponsors.

People nobody questions because there are too many to track cleanly.

Annie finally looks at me then, and immediately stops. “Duke?”

I stare at the spreadsheet. Then at the rodeo vendor classifications. Then at the pattern connecting them.

“This is worse than I thought.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Annie

The thing about messy systems is that eventually they start repeating themselves. Real fraud hides in repetition people stop seeing because repetition feels safe.

Which means for the last three days, my entire life has become staring at overlapping town budgets until my eyeballs threaten legal action.

The office smells like coffee, paper, printer toner, and the cinnamon candles Duke keeps sneaking into shared spaces because apparently he thinks ambiance is a necessary condition for accounting.

My desk is covered in contracts. Rodeo vendor agreements, town event budgets, regional livestock transportation invoices, temporary permit requests, sponsorship packets, insurance documentation… the kind of paperwork nobody reads carefully because everybody assumes somebody else already did.

Which is exactly how people get robbed.

I sit cross-legged in my chair with one of Cody’s highlighters between my teeth while I compare approval signatures across three different filing systems.

“Okay,” I mutter at the screen. “You sneaky little bastards.”

The problem with event accounting is that it’s naturally inconsistent.

Temporary staffing. Rotating vendors. Last-minute supply requests. Permit changes. Insurance amendments. Emergency equipment rentals. Livestock transport variations.

Nobody expects it to look clean, which means it’s the perfect place to hide patterns.

The same way Ironwood’s busiest operational periods created camouflage inside the ranch books, the rodeo circuit creates camouflage through movement.

I’ve spent three straight days cross-referencing vendor clusters against event budgets and regional contract schedules, and now the overlaps are starting to surface.

Not enough to accuse anyone, but enough to make my stomach hurt.