The first crack of real emotion Desa had seen on him. I didn't know what was in it. Not then I know now. You poisoned him. I carried the bottle.
The Reeve said, the voice raw now, stripped of its usual flatness. I didn't pour the glass, but I might as well have. And I've been living with that every single day since. taking Thorne's money because leaving would have gotten me killed, too. Telling myself I'd find a way to make it right eventually.
And grabbing me off a creek bank, Desa, the voice shaking now, but beating me half senseless. That's making it right. No, Reeve admitted. That was cowardice. Following orders because I didn't have the spine to refuse them outright.
He looked at her, something desperate flickering behind his flat eyes. But I'm done following them, starting now. Why should I believe a single word out of your mouth? You shouldn't, he said simply. Not yet.
But Thorne's planning something bigger than three men and a whip, Miss Lair. He's done waiting on patience, and when it comes, I intend to be standing on the right side of it. Even if that side gets me killed, he tucked the token back into his coat, gathered his reins. Tell Callaway to watch his neighbors, Reeve said. Thorne's the kind of man who burns down someone else's house to draw a target away from his real one.
He turned his horse before she could ask what that meant. The road out the way he'd come, unhurried, leaving her standing alone in the yard with a rifle in her hands and her father's ghost sitting heavier on her chest than it ever had before. When Jed rode back that evening, he found her sitting on the porch step exactly where he'd left her that first night. Except something in her had changed. hardened, maybe or broken open.
He couldn't quite tell which. What happened? He asked already, reaching for his rifle out of pure instinct. Reeve Slate, she said. He came alone.
Jed's blood went cold. Are you hurt? No. She shook her head slow. He came to talk.
She told him everything. The token, the whiskey, the confession that had come apart from Reeve like something long overdue. Spilling loose after months of silence. Jed listened withouting jaw-tightening with every new detail until she finally reached the end. He said Thorne planning something bigger.
She finished to watch our neighbors. Said Thorne burns down someone else's house to pull attention away from the real target. Jed was quiet a long moment staring out at the darkening horizon like it might offer some kind of answer. The Hargroves, he said finally. What?
The nearest ranch to us 2 mi east. Old man Hargrove's got three kids under that roof. His jaw set hard. If Thorne needs a distraction big enough to pull me away from this ranch, he didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.
Desa's face had already gone pale, understanding landing in her at the same moment it had landed in him. " He'll use them," she whispered. " Innocent people, just to get you away from me." " Yeah," Jed said grimly. " That' be about right for a man like Thorne."
The wind picked up across the yard, cold and sudden, carrying with it the first real scent of the storm Wit had warned them was gathering somewhere out past the horizon. Except now it didn't feel unseen anymore. It didn't feel unnamed. It felt like it had a face, a name, a patient, calculating mind sitting somewhere behind a desk, tracing a finger along a map, waiting for the exact right moment to strike at the one place neither of them had thought yet to defend. We need to be ready, Desa said.
For whatever comes next, we will be," Jed said. Except even as he said it, some cold, honest part of him understood the truth underneath the promise. Because being ready for Malcolm Thorne, a man who'd already poisoned one good man for the sake of a spring that never ran dry, was a different thing entirely than being ready for three drunk drifters circling a creek bank. This was just the opening move. And somewhere out past the ridge, in a house Jet had never once bothered to fear, the real storm was already gathering its strength, waiting for the wind to shift, waiting for the one night neither of them would be watching closely enough.
Wit came back on the fifth day. Not with news this time, with lumber. Two wagons full of it, creaking under the weight, plus a crate of nails and a coil of good wire that Jed hadn't asked for and couldn't afford and took anyway. the because that was the kind of man Wit Sullivan was the kind who showed up with answers before you'd even finish forming the question. Figured you'd need more than a prayer and a rifle, Wit said, climbing down stiff from the wagon seat.
Man like Thorne doesn't send three drunks twice for the fun of it. Next time he sends something worse. Appreciate it, Jed said. Truly don't thank me yet. Its eyes moved to Desa, standing in the yard with a hammer already in her hand like she'd been waiting all morning for exactly this.
Thank me if we're all still standing. Come first snow. They work through the day, then the next, then the one after that. Because that's what preparing for war actually looks like. Once you strip away all the songs written about it, not glory, not speeches, just splinters and sore backs and a woman driving nails into shutters with the same controlled fury she'd once used swinging a sledgehammer into fence posts.
Like the wood itself owed her something it hadn't paid yet. Jed watched her work from across the yard sometimes. Watched the muscle in her jaw tighten every time her mind drifted back to her father, which was often which was constant really. a low hum underneath everything else she did now. Whether she said so or not, "You're going to put a nail through your thumb," he told her. "