Waverly's Arc

Chapter 2 of 13

The courier arrived just after dawn with a message from Prescott. Waverly read it twice before setting it down on the desk. The greenhouse owner who supplied Lovelock's roses had sent word that someone had been asking questions about their business arrangements—the same pointed questions about routes and schedules. Waverly was measuring out grain for the pigeons when the woman herself rode into town an hour later, her horse lathered and breathing hard from the overnight ride. She dismounted outside the inn and strode through the door carrying a wooden crate lined with cultivated roses, each bloom perfect and expensive. She set the crate on the front desk hard enough to rattle the glass inkwells. The stranger had threatened to find another supplier if she kept selling to Lovelock, she said. He claimed he represented buyers who could purchase her entire stock for three seasons if she cut ties with Skull Valley Ranch. Waverly asked what the woman told him. Nothing, she said, but he'd left her a map marked with locations of wild rose patches—places he said he could harvest himself if she refused. Waverly lifted one of the roses from the crate and examined the stem. Wild roses wouldn't sustain a serious operation, she told the woman. Whoever sent him didn't understand the flower trade. The greenhouse owner's jaw tightened. Then why did he know exactly how many plants she sold to Lovelock each month? Waverly paid the woman double rate for riding through the night to deliver the warning in person, then sent her to the inn's kitchen for breakfast while the horse rested. She carried the crate of roses to Lovelock's shop herself and explained what the stranger was doing—mapping their supply chain, looking for pressure points, testing who would break first under the right offer or threat. Lovelock listened without interrupting, then asked what they should do. Waverly locked the shop door and pulled down the shade. They needed to know who the stranger worked for before the storm hit, she said, because once the weather turned, their supply lines would be cut for days. If he planned to move against them, he'd do it then. Lovelock nodded and reached for the ledger where she tracked every supplier, every route, every backup source they'd cultivated over the years. They spent the next two hours writing down alternatives—who else grew roses, who owed them favors, which routes the stranger hadn't mapped yet. By the time Waverly left, they had a plan to shift three shipments to different suppliers and reroute two deliveries through contacts the stranger couldn't have found. It wouldn't stop him, but it would buy them time to figure out what he wanted and who was paying him to squeeze their business.