Page 26 of Kid Gloves

Chapter 10

Wade

The call comes Tuesday at 0710, and I know it's trouble because Whitaker opens with how's the family, and Whitaker has never once cared how the family is.

"Three-day detail," he says, once the pleasantries are cleared like brush. "Starting Thursday. Federal witness, corporate fraud case, testifying in Austin — marshals have the man himself, but his counsel wants residential sweeps and a dog on the property overnights, and the U.S. Attorney's office asked for you by name. Not Iron Creek. You."

"I have instructors⁠—"

"By name, Wade. The AUSA was at the Larkspur demo two years ago. Says she wants the humorless one." A pause I can hear him enjoying. "Her words. I did not correct the record."

I look at the schedule on the wall while he talks terms. Thursday to Sunday. The pups are eighty-seven days old, deep in the polish weeks. Ranch at full operational tempo: two training cohorts' worth of client dogs, the rebuild estimates due on the Boone barn, feed delivery Friday, and the small matter of my entire life having relocated to a guest house thirty yards off my kitchen.

Three days. I've left this ranch for exactly four nights in nine years, and I scheduled two of them around a vaccine window.

"Send the file," I say.

Here's what I learn about myself over the next forty-eight hours, documented in the interest of accuracy: I am not worried about the ranch. I'm worried about the ranch the way you check a knot you tied yourself — reflex, not doubt. Grady can run training in his sleep. Cash holds the schedule like a man holds a rifle, familiarly and a little sadly. Jake, whatever else is true of Jake, has never once dropped an operational ball he knew was in the air. Dean flies the transports and the client shuttles — half these contracts renew because he can put a plane down on a caliche strip with a general's aide aboard and have the man laughing by wheels-down.

The problem is the other thing. The problem is that there's a program on this property with one irreplaceable component, and protocol says the deputy director covers command absences, and the honest truth, the auditable truth, is that the person I'd trust with the whole keyring isn't on the org chart I inherited. She's on the amendment I wrote six weeks ago, under a title I invented because the org chart needed the role.

I take it to the brothers Wednesday night, which is a mistake, because I frame it as a question.

"You're asking," Jake says slowly, savoring, "whether it would be appropriate⁠—"

"Operationally sound."

"—operationally sound, forgive me, to leave your girlfriend in charge of the ranch."

"The early-development program and its support functions. Grady keeps training. Cash keeps the client dogs. She holds program authority and facility coordination. It's a lane assignment."

"It's the whole road, Wade." Grady, mild, not looking up from the harness he's re-stitching. "Feed, vet liaison, kennel staff, the rebuild contractors walking the Boone site Friday. That's ops. You're leaving her ops."

"She rebuilt a burned program out of a horse trailer before the ash was cold."

"Oh, we know." Jake props his boots on my desk specifically because I hate it. "We're not the ones who needed convincing. We're just enjoying the view while you convince yourself."

Cash, from the corner, folds the evening's four words into the coffin of this conversation: "She'll hold it fine."

I do the handover Thursday at 0600, and I will concede, under direct questioning only, that I over-prepared.

She stands in my office holding the binder I made her, and she doesn't say anything for a long time, and I begin to suspect the binder was a tactical error. It's not a large binder. It's a normal, reasonable binder. Forty pages. Tabbed. The tabs are labeled, and the labels are, in retrospect, laminated.

"Wade."

"It's an operations continuity document."

"There's a tab for goat contingencies."

"Tab nine."

"There are contingencies plural." She flips to it. Her mouth is doing something dangerous at the corners. "'In the event subject Brisket breaches Building C, do not pursue into the feed alley. She wants you to pursue. Close the south door and she will self-extract at feeding time.'" She looks up. "This is the most romantic document ever assembled by government-adjacent personnel."

"It's a binder."

"It's a love letter with tabs, and we both know it." She sets it down and gets serious all at once, storm-glass going clear, the way weather turns in this county — no transition, just the other sky. "Say the actual thing. What am I holding while you're gone?"

Say the actual thing. Fine.