Page 68 of The Lonely Road

“Saw him in town yesterday. At The Spur two nights ago.” He drinks some coffee, a forced casualness in his posture. “He’s not here for the hiking.”

“People pass through.”

“Nobody passes through Wildflower Canyon.” He says it with the flat certainty of someone who grew up here, left, came back, and understands exactly how the geography works. “He’s been asking about the Whitman case. Eunice mentioned it. Came into the Horseshoe yesterday, bought the meat-lovers delight, asked about the water rights situation and the lawyer handling it.”

Something cold moves through me.

“What did Eunice tell him?”

“What Eunice tells everyone.” He looks up, and his eyes carry considerably more than his voice. “Everything she knows. Which isn’t much. But he was asking expressly about Taya.”

Panic, unfamiliar, spreads its wings in my chest.

Not my Taya!

“Mason.” He says my name carefully. “I don’t know what your full picture is. I’m not going to pretend I don’t have suspicions.” A pause. “But that man is a different kind of operator than you are.”

“Still don’t know what you’re talking about.” It’s important to maintain the line. I know men like Kaz—they don’t fish, they wait for you to trip over yourself.

“I’ve come across his work before,” he continues, ignoring my lie. “In another context. What he does—” He stops, taps his fingers on the table. “He doesn’t have your restraint.”

He’s telling me something specific without being able to say it specifically. I understand the construction because it’s the same one I use.

I hold his gaze and say nothing.

He nods once and opens his laptop. “I guess you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.”

“Doesn’t every man?”

“Yeah.” He then watches Trafton until the man has no choice but to look at him. He does and gives him a small nod. A greeting from apparent stranger to apparent stranger.

I finish my coffee and walk out of Wild Coffee, afraid for the first time since I was a kid joining the army.

CHAPTER 16

mason

Feig picks me up at Wild Coffee, and he’s talking even before I get settled in his truck.

I don’t mind because I’m not listening. And Feig doesn’t mind because he doesn’t require a conversation, just a witness.

“Good barbecue at Mav’s, yeah?” Feig navigates the county road north with the cheerful aggression of a man for whom the speed limit is a mere suggestion.

“Yeah.”

“Looks like you and our lawyer have gotten close?”

That gets my attention. “Shut up, Feig.”

He laughs but changes the topic. “You gonna get a kick out of Jeb.”

“Am I?”

“He’s a…how do you put it…a Wildflower Canyon icon. Yeah, that’s the word for it. He’s been running water in this valley since before I was born.” He passes a truck with reckless abandon, which almost makes me wince, but I control it because that’s what men do. Stupid men. “And I ain’t no spring chicken, if you know what I mean.”

“You drive like a teenager,” I mutter.

“Well, that’s how I stay young in here.” He taps a finger to his temple. “Anyway, Jeb knows where every drop of water in this valley goes, and he’s never been wrong about a delivery in fifty years. If we’re going to file the augmentation plan for the rodeo grounds, we need his sign-off on the historical flow data.”