“I pulled the title commitment.”
“You already had it.”
“I pulled the archived version. The one before final revision.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“And?”
“There was an exception removed two days before closing.”
“Removed by who?”
“The title officer. At the request of a prior reviewing attorney.”
“What exception?”
Grace was silent for one heartbeat.
Then two.
“An old mineral reservation tied to a company called Red Mesa Extraction.”
“I don’t know that name.”
“I do.”
She breathed out slowly.
“Caleb, Red Mesa was Mason Vale’s first company.”
Outside, Hank began to growl.
Low.
Deep.
Not at the phone.
At the dark beyond the kitchen window.
I stood.
The pasture was black except for moonlight along the fence.
Then I saw it.
A light on the western ridge.
One white beam moving between the pines.
Not a truck on a road.
Not a neighbor.
A flashlight.
On my land.
At 10:46 p.m., another light appeared.
Then a third.
Grace was still talking in my ear.
“Caleb? Are you there?”
I moved to the gun safe by the mudroom.
The lights on the ridge spread out like men searching for something.
Then my phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number.
No words.
Just a photo.
It showed Warren Hayes standing on the western ridge at night, older and thinner, holding a shovel beside a freshly opened hole.
Behind him was Mason Vale.
And at their feet, half-buried in the dirt, was a rusted metal case marked with three faded letters:
D.O.E.
Then a second text came in.
LOCK ALL THE GATES YOU WANT.
WHAT’S UNDER YOUR RANCH WAS NEVER YOURS.