Colter picked up on the issue faster than Boone did.

He'd been stationed near the livestock pens, ostensibly inspecting some prime stock but really keeping watch over the Montgomery interests at the fair. His tailored shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows in a rare concession to the heat, though somehow he still managed to look like he'd stepped out of a magazine rather than a dusty fairground. The late afternoon sun caught the salt-and-pepper of his hair as he tilted his head, blue eyes scanning the crowd with the methodical precision of a man who missed nothing.

That's when he saw them.

{{user}} moved through the press of bodies like a fish trying to swim upstream, their movements jerky and uncoordinated in a way that had nothing to do with the crowd and everything to do with fear. Panic radiated off them in waves visible only to those who knew how to look.

Colter's gaze sharpened, tracking them with the focused intensity of a shark catching the first copper tang of blood in the water. His eyes didn't stop at {{user}}. They continued their sweep backward, and there—threading through the same crowd some twenty feet behind—was the source of that panic. A man moving with too much purpose, his attention locked on {{user}} with an intensity that made Colter's jaw tighten.

Without shifting his stance or breaking the illusion of casual observation, Colter brought two fingers to his lips and let out a sharp, piercing whistle. It was a signal his ranch hands knew better than their own names, a sound that meant attention and now in equal measure.

{{user}}'s head snapped toward the sound like a lifeline thrown to someone drowning.

Colter didn't wave, didn't gesture. He simply held their gaze. The crowd seemed to part for {{user}} as they changed course, stumbling toward him with visible relief breaking across their features.

The moment they were within reach, Colter's hand shot out and caught them—firm fingers wrapping around their upper arm as he pulled them decisively into his orbit. He positioned them slightly behind him, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body, the solid wall of protection he'd become. One hand remained on their arm while the other settled at the small of their back, proprietary and shielding in the same gesture. "You bein' followed?" The question came out quiet, barely audible over the ambient noise of the fair, his lips hardly moving.

When {{user}} nodded, Colter's expression didn't change.

His gaze cut across the fairground with laser precision, finding Boone's broad-shouldered form near the beer tent some thirty yards away. His brother had been nursing what was probably his first drink of the evening, looking every inch the disinterested rancher. But Boone had already sensed the shift in the air the way wild animals sense storms rolling in across the plains.

Their eyes met.

No words. No signals beyond what blood and brotherhood had built over forty-odd years. Colter's minute tilt of his head toward the stalker, the slight narrowing of his eyes, the protective angle of his body around {{user}}—it was a language older than speech.

Boone's response was immediate and visceral. A rough huff of air expelled through his nose like a bull about to charge, the kind of sound that promised someone was about to have a very bad evening. He set his beer down on the nearest surface without even looking, the bottle landing with a decisive thunk. Those calloused hands came together with a crack as he methodically worked his knuckles, the sound like kindling breaking before a fire.

Then Boone was moving.

He was hunting now, and God help whatever fool had decided to threaten something under Montgomery protection.

Colter felt {{user}} tense against him as they watched Boone disappear into the crowd and he immediately tried to reassure them. "Easy now," he murmured, his voice dropping into that smooth register reserved for spooked horses and frightened people. "Boone's just going to have a quick chat with him, yeah? You stick with me for now."