Page 151 of Dusty Spur Ranch Cowboys

I move on to the tack inventory, and it doesn’t take long to find more discrepancies. Buckles, rigging plates, bolts, and strips of repair leather are all missing while the ledger still shows full counts.

On their own, any one of them could pass as a counting mistake or a forgotten repair, but stacked together with the missing fuel, they stop looking like oversights and start looking like sabotage.

Beau’s initials sit at the bottom of every page, and I keep reading them as though they’ll suddenly belong to somebody else. They never do.

I close the ledger and brace my hands against the desk while the truth settles deeper than I want it to.

Travis came after me because he believes I ruined his life, and now Sadie, Emmett, Willy, Arizona, and everybody else tied to Dusty Spur keeps getting pulled into a fight that should’ve ended years ago.

I won’t stand by and let him take one more thing from people who never deserved any part of this.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Arizona

I sit on the top rail outside the tack room with my notebook balanced on my knee, staring at the half-finished lyric I’ve been trying to fix for the better part of an hour while Dusty Spur carries on around me.

Red is replacing fence boards along the south pasture, Emmett is helping Sadie brush Cinnamon beneath the cottonwoods, and Willy moves between the barn and tack room with an armful of saddle blankets, a cup of coffee, and a bag of trail mix he keeps reaching into every few steps.

The page in front of me still isn’t getting any better.

“What’d that notebook ever do to you?” Willy asks as he drops the blankets onto a bench. “You’ve been glaring at it since breakfast.”

“I can’t focus on the pages. They’re too… white.”

He laughs, chews another handful of trail mix, and leans against the fence beside me before following my gaze across the yard. “You’re watching Beau.”

“I keep trying to write, and he keeps distracting me.”

I snap the notebook closed.

Across the yard, Beau hauls the last feed sack into the flatbed and laughs with another ranch hand as though Sheriff Hank didn’t spend half the morning digging through inventory records after fuel, tools, and equipment disappeared under Beau’s watch.

“I still don’t buy his story,” I say.

Willy follows my gaze, tossing another handful of trail mix into his mouth before shrugging. “Then quit waiting for him to confess and watch for him to screw up.”

“Funny thing about liars. They usually get impatient.”

Across the pasture, Sadie waves the guitar pick I gave her before running back to her dad. Last night, she went to bed heartbroken after her mom canceled again, yet today she’s running around the paddock while Emmett laughs behind her.

The slam of a tailgate pulls my attention back across the yard.

Beau climbs into the truck.

I straighten on the fence rail. “Red said he was hauling that trailer after lunch.”

“He was.”

Instead of parking beside the barn, Beau drives through the front gate and turns onto the back road. “He isn’t heading into town.”

Willy watches the truck disappear between the trees. “That road only goes to the practice arena, the rodeo grounds, or Miller’s pasture.”

“And Beau doesn’t have business at any of them.”

He looks at me and sighs. “You’re going after him.”

“Nothing he’s done has made sense for weeks. I’m done telling myself it’s coincidence.”