Page 8 of The Fire Line

No tripping hazards. Harris gave them credit for that before he looked at anything else.

Navarro stood near the window with a notebook, wearing a pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled. His hair had been pushed back except for one piece already falling forward again. When he looked up, the light caught his eyes. Hazel did not quite cover it. Green near the center, amber farther out.

Harris registered the colors because eyes were part of a face. Nothing more complicated than that.

“You’re early,” Jay said.

Harris looked at the clock. “Guess three minutes is early by New York standards.”

One corner of Jay’s mouth moved. “Sit whenever you’re ready.”

He picked up a small microphone. “I’ll need to attach this to your shirt.”

Harris held out his hand, and Jay passed it over without argument. Harris clipped it near the second button.

“The cable runs inside.”

Harris looked at him, brows slightly raised.

“Looks messy on camera otherwise.”

Harris opened another button and pushed the cable beneath his shirt. The clip caught against the fabric, and his fingers were too large to get hold of it properly. He worked at it longer than he should have.

Jay allowed the failure to continue for several seconds before stepping closer. “May I?”

Harris should have handed the whole thing back. Instead, he dropped his hands.

Jay caught the cable between two fingers and drew it free beneath Harris’s collar. The backs of his fingers brushed the skin below Harris’s throat, barely contact, but the heat remained after his hand moved away. Harris fixed his attention on the pale scar near the base of Jay’s thumb until the microphone settled into place.

“There.” Jay stepped back. “Comfortable?”

“Fine.”

Jay returned to his chair, one ankle over the opposite knee and the notebook loose in his lap. Most men relaxed when they sat down. Navarro only stopped moving. Whatever energy kept him talking with his hands and crossing a yard like he had somewhere urgent to be gathered instead in his attention, and then all of it settled on Harris.

Harris had spent most of his life around people who listened to him while doing something else. Checking a horse. Driving. Fixing equipment. Even Claire had asked the important questions while washing dishes or sorting invoices, leaving both of them somewhere else to put their eyes.

Jay looked at him as though there were nothing else in the room worth studying. Harris did not particularly care for it.

Eli raised one hand behind the camera, and the recording began.

Jay started with the straightforward stuff instead of the traps Harris had expected. How long had he worked the ranch full-time? Since twenty. Before that? Summers, weekends, whenever needed. What had he expected to do instead?

“Nothing useful.”

Jay waited. Harris didn’t elaborate.

The man seemed more interested in the space around an answer than the answer itself, which was worse. At least a direct question gave Harris something solid to push against.

Jay moved on to the guest operation: tourism, income, land, Walt’s insistence that guest revenue remained supplemental when Evan’s books said otherwise.

“Does your father agree that tourism keeps the cattle side of the business going?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“But he knows the numbers?”

“Yup.”