Page 66 of The Lonely Road

She looks at me and shrugs. “The ditch company probably has some, but I don’t know. We just got a notice from opposing counsel asking Clara to produce all ditch company records for the past five years, including any records of water delivery to or from adjacent parcels.” She sets her phone face down on the counter. “Which means they already know, or they suspect, that water moved across the ranch’s fence line during the years Deke was sick. They’re not fishing. They’re confirming.”

I keep my face very still.

“They’re framing it as a change-of-use allegation,” she continues, thinking out loud now, not for my benefit but for hers. “If they can show that the water was used on a different parcel, even temporarily, even with no formal transfer—they’ll argue it constitutes an unauthorized change of place of use, which under Colorado water law can trigger a partial abandonment finding on the affected acreage.”

“What will you do?” Tell me your theory of the case, Counselor.

“We’ll have to produce the records. Discovery is discovery.” Her jaw is set in the way it gets when something is serious, and she’s decided not to let it be frightening. “But producing records isn’t the same as conceding the argument. I knew this was coming. I just didn’t know they’d move on it this fast.”

“You said there were no records,” I remind her.

She picks her phone back up. “I think there are.”

“What if you found it and didn’t share it with them?”

She looks at me like I sprang a second head. “That’s illegal. I’ll get disbarred for doing something like that.” She groans. “How the hell did they move so fast on this? I barely know about it.”

They moved on it this fast because someone told them where to look.

I know who that someone is.

I look at my coffee and away from her. I look inside myself and find that I don’t feel guilt, but there is remorse. A new emotion.

“Mason, I’m so sorry, but I have to go. Will you lock up?”

“Sure, sweetheart.”

I kiss her in the doorway—it’s the easy, unthinking kind of kiss, the kind that belongs to people who have established a habit. The domesticity of it feels unnaturally good.

I call Jessup on my way back to the inn.

“Your lawyers have what they need?” Maybe this is it, maybe I can leave now. Maybe the job is done.

“What?”

“I hear that you moved on the water use business.”

I hear a chuckle. “You do have your ear to the ground. Just like they said you always do.” A pause, the smile audible in it. “That request just went out this morning, Mason. That’s pretty fast work.”

No kidding!

It’s fast because I’m sleeping with my mark, and now Jessup suspects it.

“So…am I done here now?”

“Hell no!” Jessup roars. “We need it in black and white. I need documentation. I need it to stand up in court so the judge doesn’t dismiss the case during the preliminary hearing. So, get me the records that say the Whitman woman abandoned the water while her husband was dying.”

Fuck!

“What if there is no documentation?”

“There better be, Mason, because if we have that, we won’t have to do something drastic.”

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t need to know,” he snaps, then hangs up just as I pull into the Ridgeline Inn’s parking lot.

I slam a fist on the steering wheel.