Chapter 15 — Change The Plan

The board failed before noon. Hallie knew it the moment Caleb stopped in front of it and swore under his breath. Three marks showed people at the west cabins.

Two of those people were standing twenty feet away unloading a wagon. The third had been sent to help repair a split water trough and had never come back to change the board. Hallie stared at the columns she had been pleased with yesterday.

“They forgot.”

Caleb folded his arms. “They were busy.”

“That doesn’t make the board less wrong.”

“No.”

A man crossing the yard glanced over. “I moved because they needed another pair of hands.”

Hallie looked at him. “Why didn’t you mark it?”

He pointed toward the far side of Cedar Draw. “Because I was already there when they asked.”

Fair. By the time Hallie and Caleb checked the rest of the board, four more marks were stale. The system had solved one problem by creating another.

It assumed people changed work near the board. Cedar Draw worked through people moving directly toward the need.

Caleb leaned against the post beside it. “You want to make everyone report here before they move?”

Bellamy Creek would have. The answer rose automatically.

Then Hallie pictured the woman she had watched yesterday crossing directly to a job that needed her. Making her walk back first would improve the record and slow the work.

“No.”

Caleb’s eyebrows rose. She took the pencil from the ledge.

“Then this part doesn’t work.”

The words were easier than she expected.

At Bellamy Creek, being prepared for leadership had meant being correct before other people saw the mistake. Here, nobody had given her a position.

The board was a test. Tests were supposed to reveal something. This one had.

Hallie erased two names.

“People don’t need to tell the board where they are,” she said. “We only need to know which jobs are short.”

Caleb studied the columns.

“That’s different.”

“It has to be.”

She crossed out the section that tracked individual movements.

“Keep the morning count for jobs that need a minimum number of people. After that, only mark a job if it drops below what it needs.”

“And who marks that?”

“Whoever notices.”

Caleb gave her a look.

Hallie sighed. “All right. That part is terrible.”

“It’s optimistic.”

“I was trying to be polite to myself.”

That got a laugh out of him.

She tapped the pencil against the board. “What if each work group sends one update only when they need help? We don’t track every person. We track shortages.”

“So if the west cabins lose two workers but still have enough, nobody cares.”

“Right.”

“And if the unloading crew drops below what they need, they mark the gap.”

“Or send someone to do it.”

Caleb nodded. “That I can use.”

They changed it. The next two hours were ugly.

One crew forgot the new rule. Another marked a shortage after they had already solved it. Caleb erased so many lines that the side of his hand turned gray.

Hallie kept asking why each mistake had happened. She changed the wording once. Then again.

By late afternoon, the board showed only four active jobs and one actual shortage. A man checked it, called for a spare worker, and left. Nobody asked Hallie what to do.

They did not need to. She stood beside Caleb and watched the shortage mark disappear ten minutes later.

“Better,” he said.

“Not good.”

“Better is allowed.”

Hallie glanced at him. That might have been the most Cedar Draw thing anyone had said to her yet. Grant was not in the yard.

She noticed before she meant to.

Yesterday their fingers had touched over the pencil. Today the absence of him at the edge of the yard felt more obvious than that brief contact had.

He had let the failure remain hers. He had offered neither public reassurance nor an Alpha’s protection around the experiment. He left the workers free to cooperate—or not—without turning her test into an Alpha’s command.

Hallie had thought she wanted that distance. She did. What surprised her was wanting to cross it herself.

“Where is Grant?”

Caleb looked at her. Then smiled very slowly.

Hallie narrowed her eyes. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Where?”

“Storage building.”

She found Grant checking a damaged latch on a side door. He looked up when she entered.

“The board broke.”

Grant set the tool in his hand down.

“We were tracking too much,” Hallie said. “People moved faster than the information did. So we stopped tracking people and started tracking gaps.”

“Did it help?”

“Eventually.”

“That sounds expensive.”

“Mostly to Caleb’s patience.”

Grant’s mouth shifted. Hallie stepped closer.

“I want your opinion.”

His expression changed.

“On the board?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t need my approval.”

“I didn’t ask for approval.”

Grant went still. Hallie could feel the distinction between them as clearly as if she had set it on the worktable. She had not come because he was Alpha.

She had come because when Grant looked at a problem, he often saw the part people were avoiding.

“I want to know what you think,” she said.

He studied her.

Then he asked, “What happens when nobody admits they’re short?”

Hallie frowned. Grant did not soften it.

“If a crew thinks asking for help makes them look weak,” he said, “your board stays clean and the work still fails.”

Another flaw. A real one. Hallie felt no sting this time.

Only interest.

“Then we need to make reporting a shortage normal.”

Grant nodded once. “That’s what I’d watch.”

Hallie looked back at him.

“Good.”

“Good?”

“That gives me something useful.”

For a second, Grant simply watched her.

Then he moved past her toward the door. The heat of his body crossed the narrow space without contact.

Hallie turned her head after him before she caught herself.

“Show me tomorrow,” he said.

He had asked to see it tomorrow. The distinction mattered. Show me.

Hallie followed him outside. Across the yard, someone had added a single mark beneath one of the jobs. A shortage.

A few moments later, another worker saw it and changed direction. The board was uglier than her first plan. It was also beginning to work.