Page 59 of Branded

Garrett shifts in his chair. Pain narrows his eyes before his face goes still again. I write down the time of each transfer and let him manage his own body until he asks for help. It’s harder than it should be. I want to put my hand on the back of his neck.

“Why give Mott a page at all?” he asks.

“Because he still believes his value comes from knowing where every animal belongs before anyone else does. An honest employee reads that draft, sees a dead account, and challenges it. Someone trying to finish the old pattern might read it as permission.”

“And if he challenges it?”

“Then we learn this didn’t move him. A trap that only works if he’s guilty is a wish.”

Mercer almost smiles. “She’s hard to impress with her own plan.”

“Saves time,” I say.

Mott receives his envelope in the public manager’s office at 2:12. He reads the disclaimer before the cattle numbers. His thumb stops on 4473 for less than a second. The camera catches the pause. It doesn’t catch a crime.

“W-Seven will hold six,” he says, sliding the page back. “Water pressure was low last week.”

That fact isn’t on his page. It might be ordinary competence. I add it to the list to check rather than assuming competence is a disguise.

At three, we walk the pens while trucks unload cattle for the sale in two days. Gates hit their stops. Employees call head counts over recorded radios.

Four armed security men stand along the buyer lane. Four more wait at the north and west approaches, visible enough that Mott would have to be unconscious to miss them.

Garrett follows my eyes. “The road attack used a deputy and two civilian vehicles. Eight men is restraint.”

“Eight armed men around a six-head planning draft tells Mott the paper matters. It might change who he uses. It might stop him from moving at all.”

“If he brings the deputy back, four isn’t enough.”

“My team handles the deputy,” Mercer says. “Your people handle the ranch.”

Garrett’s left hand closes around the top rail. The cut under that bandage isn’t supposed to take weight, and his right arm can’t help. I look at his hand until he lets go without my having to turn worry into an order.

“Which four do you keep?” he asks.

I show him on Nora’s diagram. Two at the public entrances. One with the night cattle crew. One at the records corridor. None in the alleys unless Cole calls an emergency.

He studies the diagram and the cattle, looking for every place an attack could start while he can’t stop it with his own hands.

“Cut the team in half,” he tells Cole. “Keep the four she picked. Nothing changes without an animal-safety emergency or her say.”

Four men leave in pairs. Not happy. Not slow enough to make it defiance.

Garrett signs the no-move order left-handed, in block letters that look carved rather than written. When he hands me the pen, our fingers touch.

“If somebody moves those cattle,” he says, “they disobey me before they help him.”

“That’s why it had to come from you.”

Mott returns his page at 3:58 with one note in his handwriting. VERIFY W-7 WATER BEFORE MOVE.

The concern is reasonable. The word move assumes more than the draft allows.

Cole checks W-Seven anyway, because animals shouldn’t pay for our suspicion. Two witnesses watch him open the valve. The trough fills to its mark within tolerance. The maintenance log shows a low-pressure report six days ago, a clogged screen, and a clean check the next morning. Mott’s memory may just be stale.

At five-fifteen, Garrett works from a chair in the sale office while Cole runs the floor. The upper edge of his dressing has started to pull under his shirt, and when I check it the skin below the stitches has gone dark with swelling. No fresh blood.

“Follow-up in the morning,” I say.