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I ignore his nonsense because that’s what it is—an attempt to bullshit himself into thinking he has the upper hand. Obviously, he’s more used to men like Trafton, who are all brawn and no brains. Men like me never give away their advantage.

Except when they fall in love!

“Your lawyers will soon have a real vulnerability in the Whitman case—not the change-of-use argument. Something deeper. A procedural defect in a 1971 supplemental decree. Publication notice ran two weeks when the statute requires three.” I pause. “Nobody knows about it. Nobody except me.” And the lawyer.

The silence on his end has a quality to it—one of a man who is arranging his face from smug to serious.

“That’s something we can hang our hat on.” He’s back to talking like he’s comfortable now, even though he knows not to be. I beat up Trafton—and he knows, most definitely about my relationship with Taya—and he knows what I’m about to ask of him.

“I know.” I look at the faded striped wallpaper of the Ridgeline Inn’s meager lobby through the dirty windscreen of my truck. “I’m sending the documentation. Publication record, statute, and north pasture coverage. Your Texas team will know what to do with it.”

I pull the photographs. Thirty seconds in her office, while she sat in front of her computer, stressing and trusting me.

I send them.

“In return”—I let out a long, slow breath as I end my career as a fixer—“you pull your people. All of them. No more Trafton, no more pressure on the lawyer, no more contact with Clara Whitman.” I drop my voice to the register I use when I mean every word precisely. “If anyone connected to you comes near Taya Morningstar again, I will walk everything I have on you—the communications, the financial chain, the connection to your son-in-law’s holding company—straight to the Senate Ethics Committee. We clear?”

The silence lasts nearly thirty seconds, which is pretty long when you’re on the phone.

I don’t mind.

I have nowhere to be except out of here.

Finally, after weighing his options, I am certain, he says, “Crystal.”

He hangs up.

I don’t believe him.

Powerful men make agreements that last exactly as long as it takes to find a different angle, and I know this because I’ve spent years being the different angle.

But Jessup is no fool.

He now knows I set my job on fire for her, which means I’ll easily set him on fire if he harms her.

After a minute, I pack my bag and get ready to get the hell out of Wildflower Canyon.

CHAPTER 27

taya

I’m reviewing the augmented flow report when he comes into the office I’m borrowing from Mav.

I know from the way he appears in the doorway—filling it, not entering—that something is wrong.

I’ve spent enough time reading courtrooms and witnesses to know what a man looks like when he’s decided something and is here to say it, and Mason Brooks at noon in a doorway he’s not walking through looks like a man who has already left.

“Mason.”

“Hey.” He comes in. Doesn’t sit.

I set the report I’m studying down. I give him my full attention, which is what I do when I know something will require it.

He stands in the middle of my borrowed office.

His facial expressions are controlled within an inch of their lives.

“I’m leaving,” he says.