Page 5 of Forbidden Protector

"One agent," he says, quieter, turning the folder a half-inch like he could read the back if he found the angle. "An hour and a half from the airport for one agent. Somebody wanted her small. Somebody wanted her quiet." His eyes come up. "Find out who she is to this, Holt. Before she finds out who we are to it."

"Understood." A complete sentence. I leave.

I get in the truck. Run yesterday's tape once more.

Then I drive out to find the answer my father would pay anything not to hear.

THREE

MACKENZIE

The study smells like woodsmoke and money that stopped needing to prove itself sometime before I was born.

Gideon Blackwater does not stand when I come in. He gestures at the chair across the desk with two fingers, the way a man indicates a horse he's decided not to buy.

I sit because sitting is the move, not because he offered.

"Agent Tatum."

"Mr. Blackwater. Thank you for making time."

"I didn't." He squares a pen against the edge of the desk, aligns it, and leaves it. "I made a decision. Time was already mine."

Behind me, near the north wall, Holt exists.

He hasn't spoken since the truck.

He came through the door two steps behind me, put his back against the wall between a gun cabinet and a window, and stopped.

I have spent every second since aware of exactly where he is in the room. It’s the awareness you keep on a dog that hasn't decided about you yet.

Dark eyes under his black hat pulled low. The hoop catching light every time he turns his head, which is twice in ten minutes, both times toward the window.

I open my file and take out the least important document I brought. I want him watching my hands early, before it matters what my hands are doing.

"You run cattle, hunting leases, mineral rights, and a holding company registered in Delaware," I say. "That last one's unusual for a family that's been on the same ground since before Montana was a state."

"It's unusual to be anywhere that long." Nothing crosses his face. "The rest is accounting."

"Your accountant is in Calgary."

"My accountant is expensive. Geography followed the invoice."

"Do you know a man named Ray Coleman?"

"No."

"He's moved four hundred thousand dollars through a feedlot in Shelby with your brand on the paperwork."

"Then he knows me." Gideon's hands stay flat on the blotter. "I'd be careful, Agent, about the difference. A great many people in this state know me. I've met almost none of them."

Twelve minutes and he's given me his name, his patience, and no purchase.

So I stop asking questions and start setting bait.

"How much of the Front does your family survey?"

The pen doesn't move. Nothing on his face moves. But his breath, which has run one steady rhythm since I sat down, catches half a beat on the intake. His dark eyes come up off the blotter and land on me full weight for the first time since I walked in.