Page 57 of The Lonely Road

But will I?

I ignore the sense of doom pervading through me and spend the day doing survey work—the real job, which doesn’t require me to examine anything difficult.

The rodeo grounds in the April sun are warm now, actually spring-like with the mud firming up at the edges. I work for six hours and think about nothing useful, and I feel the satisfaction of a man whose body is doing something his mind can’t interfere with.

Feig stops by at three with two coffees from Wild Coffee.

“Structural engineer approved the access road calc.” He hands me a cup. “We’re greenlit for the next phase.”

“Good.”

“Stick around.” He raises his coffee in a toast. “This thing actually comes together…I’ll need you through the summer. Also, I have another piece of land that you can help with.”

I don’t answer but look at him enquiringly.

“Good money,” he continues. “And honestly?” He winks. “I think you like it here.”

He means Taya.

Everyone saw us together at Kincaid Farms.

There is an acceptance that something is going on between us.

I take a sip of the coffee and say nothing, which Feig reads as modest agreement, which it is not.

I won’t be staying here long. I have to leave. I have to get what Jessup needs and leave before I hurt her—or myself.

As a man who has kept his emotions locked down for most of his life, I have a fairly sophisticated understanding of what’s happening to me right now—which is its own kind of torture.

I can name it. I can trace it back to its origin—The Rusty Spur, the corner of the bar, a woman who didn’t know I was watching.

I can map every moment since with the precision of someone trained to do exactly that. But knowing the territory doesn’t mean you can’t get lost in it.

Like my ex-wife said: I am the most competent and least present person she knows.

I have spent fifteen years being extraordinarily good at being somewhere without being there—without leaving anything of myself behind, without taking anything away that I didn’t intend to take.

Clean entries.

Cleaner exits.

This is the professional discipline of a man who understood, early, that caring about outcomes is a vulnerability and caring about people is a liability.

And then Taya Morningstar smiled at me and called me Mr. Brooks and the rest….

Fuck!

She texts me at five.

Taya: Rusty Spur tonight? Bree talked Joy into a girls’ night, but Joy is already lobbying to make it not a girls’ night.

Me: Seven?

Taya: Yes.

I look at my phone for a moment.

I should use tonight. I should steer the conversation toward the case, gently, the way I know how. She’s relaxed at The Spur, among her people, in her element.