“Did you plan to sell any?”
“No.”
“Feed the men?”
“Yes.”
“Not anymore.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
“You think poison?”
“I think somebody put something into this animal through that puncture.”
“With a wire?”
“Possibly a hollow needle attached to it.”
She held up the small tag.
“Or the tag was left accidentally.”
Ethan’s expression became colder.
“Arthur.”
“Maybe.”
His eyes snapped toward hers.
“Maybe?”
“You want it to be him.”
“He has spent four months trying to buy this ranch.”
“That doesn’t make every bad thing his doing.”
“He destroyed my shipping contract.”
“You suspect he did.”
“He hired three of my hands away.”
“They accepted better wages.”
“He poisoned cattle.”
Magdalena held up the tag.
“This says his supply company.”
“That is not the same as saying his hand did it.”
Ethan looked furious.
Not at her.
At the distinction.
Magdalena understood.
But facts mattered.
Especially when anger wanted a faster answer.
“We keep this,” she said.
“We tell nobody yet.”
“Jacob.”
“No.”
Ethan frowned.
“He’s my foreman.”
“Exactly.”
“You suspect Jacob?”
“I suspect everyone until we know how somebody reached this animal.”
Ethan’s expression sharpened.
“You include me?”
“Yes.”
For half a second he simply stared.
Then something strange happened.
He nodded.
“Good.”
Magdalena blinked.
“Good?”
“If you’re serious, you should.”
She wrapped the wire in cloth.
“Where do we store it?”
“My office.”
“No.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Why?”
“Because if somebody inside the ranch is involved, your office is the first place they’d look.”
“Where then?”
Magdalena looked at the salt barrel.
Ethan followed her eyes.
“You’re hiding evidence in salt?”
“No one searches food unless they’re hungry.”
“You’re terrifying.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Three weeks earlier, nobody at Castle Ridge would have described Magdalena Reed as terrifying.
Most barely believed she would last.
She arrived in Dry Creek with one dress good enough for town, two work dresses, a coat, a Bible that had belonged to her mother, a wooden comb, a small sewing kit, and less money than she admitted.
The advertisement had seemed suspiciously generous.
CASTLE RIDGE ESTATE SEEKS CAPABLE, STRONG WOMAN.
Kitchen work.
Food preservation.
Cleaning.
Livestock assistance.
Housing and food included.
No references required.
That final line decided her.
References had become difficult.
Not because Magdalena stole.
Not because she was lazy.
Because every place she had worked seemed to end badly in ways that became her fault after she left.
At a hotel laundry, the owner’s brother began cornering her near the linen room.
She complained.
She was dismissed.
At a boardinghouse, she demanded unpaid wages.
The owner told the next employer she was argumentative.
At a ranch near Lubbock, Magdalena carried feed, cooked for thirteen men, treated two injured hands, and worked until midnight.
When the rancher’s wife returned from visiting relatives, she decided Magdalena had spent too much time around her husband.
Magdalena was gone by evening.
Her body made accusation easy.
People believed a very large woman must either be invisible or desperately hungry for attention.
Nobody imagined she might simply be working.
So when she saw NO REFERENCES REQUIRED, she read it twice.
Then took the paper.
Hank Lawson drove her halfway to Castle Ridge.
“You know Ethan Casteel?” he asked.
“No.”
“He isn’t easy.”
“Can he pay wages?”
“Yes.”
“Then he already improves upon three employers I’ve had.”
Hank laughed.
“He looks at people like he’s calculating how long before they disappoint him.”
Magdalena watched the road.
“That sounds tiring.”
“For him or them?”
“Both.”