The sun had barely dipped behind the Texas plains when Calvin Ward, one of the wealthiest cattle ranchers in Dawson County, slammed the door of his truck and marched toward the fence line that separated his ranch from his neighbor’s land.
“You crossed the line again, Rick!” Calvin barked, pointing at fresh tire tracks cutting across the dusty border.
Across the fence stood Rick Holden, a rough-edged man known as much for his temper as for the wild rumors about what he did on his land at night.
“That’s open range, Calvin,” Rick shot back. “And you don’t own the dirt under God’s sky, no matter how rich you are.”
The two men stood chest to chest, voices echoing across the fields. Their ranch hands watched silently—everyone in town knew the feud between Calvin and Rick went back years. But that evening, something in their argument felt different. Fiercer. Final.
Calvin finally turned away, muttering, “One day, Rick, you’re gonna push too far.”
Rick spat in the dirt. “Maybe that day is sooner than you think.”
The Morning After
At dawn, the Ward Ranch erupted in screams.
Calvin’s wife, Miriam, found him kneeling in the pasture, surrounded by the still bodies of over two hundred head of cattle—every last one of his prized longhorns.
Their eyes were glassy. Their limbs stiff. The entire herd wiped out in a single night.
Calvin trembled. “They’re all dead… God, Miriam… all of them.”
Ranch hands gathered in stunned silence, hats clutched to their chests. Miriam sobbed into her sleeve.
No storms had passed. No lightning. No signs of predators. And yet, the earth felt… wrong.
Like something unnatural had swept through.
Enter the Investigator
By noon, the sheriff called in Special Agent Dana Cross, a sharp, relentless investigator from the state’s agricultural crime unit. She arrived in a black SUV, her boots hitting the ground with the weight of someone who had seen too many crimes nobody wanted to believe were possible.
“Mass cattle kills don’t just happen,” Dana said calmly as she crouched beside a carcass. “Someone did this with intention.”
She plucked a sample of soil into a vial.
Calvin shook with rage. “Rick Holden. He threatened me last night. You can’t tell me that’s a coincidence.”
Dana didn’t look up. “Maybe. But threats and guilt aren’t the same thing.”
She walked the perimeter, studying the fence posts, the dirt, the hoof prints—until she suddenly stopped.
There, hidden beneath a cluster of mesquite bushes, she spotted something half-buried in the soil.
A metal canister. No markings. Just a stamp on the bottom: TX-4332.
Dana’s jaw tightened. She had seen that code before.
And every time she had, death followed.
A Bigger Threat
Back at the Holden Ranch, Rick leaned against his porch railing, watching the investigation from across the field. His eyes were tired—not angry, not triumphant. Almost… afraid.
Dana walked toward him with the canister in a plastic bag.
“Rick Holden,” she said, “what do you know about TX-4332?”
Rick swallowed hard. “Where did you find that?”
“On the Ward property.”
Rick lowered his voice. “I didn’t do this. But if someone used that… then Calvin’s fight is the least of his problems. And mine too.”
Dana narrowed her eyes. “Explain.”
Rick hesitated, scanning the horizon like he expected someone to be watching.
Finally he whispered, “That code belongs to a testing program the government shut down years ago. They said all the canisters were destroyed.”
He looked her dead in the eyes.
“They lied.”
