Page 107 of The Fire Line

Harris put the phone away and continued toward the barn, mostly because he could not think of an answer that would not reveal how long he had spent trying.

After that, the pattern arranged itself with very little help from either of them.

Around other people, nothing changed. Jay worked with Priya and Eli, Harris moved through the ranch as he always had, and they managed ordinary greetings without giving anyone much reason to look twice. Harris called him Navarro across barns and pastures because he always had. The name carried naturally through the yard.

Alone, Jay came more easily.

So did the improbable tendency to find each other whenever nobody else was nearby: behind the equipment shed, on the shadowed side of the lodge, once beside the old calving barn where Jay claimed he had come to photograph the boards and Harris claimed he had come to check a latch that did not exist.

They were careful. Mostly.

A kiss could fit into thirty seconds if neither man wasted time pretending it had happened accidentally. Harris learned which doors could be seen from the lodge windows and which buildings carried sound. Jay learned to move away the moment Harris’s attention shifted past him.

At night, privacy was easier to find, but they were not stupid enough to make Jay’s walk to the cabin a nightly occurrence. Priya and Eli slept down the hall from him, and people on a ranch noticed movement without trying: a door opening after dark, footsteps across the yard, a light coming on through the cottonwoods. Two or three nights in a row would have become too conspicuous.

Jay had mentioned Priya asking why he’d started taking so many walks after dinner. He’d told her sitting in the edit room all day was destroying his spine. According to Jay, she’d accepted the answer with an expression suggesting acceptance and belief were separate concepts.

So they avoided having a routine.

Sometimes Jay knocked after nine, once the lodge had settled and the yard had gone quiet. More often, he didn’t. He never stayed until morning. Other nights they made do with thirty stolen seconds behind a building or nothing at all.

Harris told himself the irregularity was practical.

It did not explain why, on the nights Jay didn’t come, he had begun noticing the silence outside the cabin door.

Two nights after the fence line, Jay appeared carrying two beers and a paper sack from the lodge kitchen.

“I brought provisions.”

Harris stepped aside to let him in. “From Della?”

“Obviously.”

“What’d I do?”

“Apparently eating dinner at five thirty and then moving fence for three hours qualifies as neglecting yourself.”

“Course it does.”

“Della was looking for someone to bring this out. I told her I was going for a walk anyway.”

Harris looked at him.

Jay lifted the bag. “Technically true.”

“Sure.”

Inside was one enormous slice of blackberry pie, Della’s idea of a reasonable serving for a single adult man.

Harris looked at it. “Jesus.”

“She was very clear it’s for you.”

“Then why’re you still here?”

Jay put a hand to his chest. “I deliver food to your remote outpost and this is the gratitude I receive?”

Harris got two forks, and they split the pie at the kitchen table while Jay gave him a brief but deeply felt account of his battle with the county archive database.