Chapter 2 #3
"That's the question, isn't it." I set my glass down and hold her gaze.
"You want your feature piece? Start pulling on the money.
Follow the prize purse payouts at every Thornton event.
Cross-reference them with the official circuit financials.
If the numbers don't match, you'll see the same thing Grant saw. "
"And if I find something?"
"Bring it to me. Something real. Names. Numbers. Documents. Then we'll talk."
"And if I do, you'll tell me the rest?"
"I'll decide whether you're worth the risk."
She doesn't react to that. She watches me with those eyes, calculating, and I can practically see the gears turning behind her face as she maps out her next move.
The jukebox switches from Waylon to Merle, and somebody at the pool table sinks a shot and lets out a whoop, and the bar goes on being a bar while two people at the end of it negotiate with something that isn't money.
"Fair enough," she says.
I stand and drop a twenty on the bar.
"One more thing," I say, and she looks up.
"You asked why I'm willing to say Grant's name and call it murder when nobody else will.
I already told you he was the best man I ever knew.
What I didn't tell you is that he called me the night before he died, told me what he'd found, and I told him not to ride until I got there.
My truck broke down on the way. By the time I got to Las Cruces, the arena was cleared and Grant was gone.
This is the only thing keeping me upright. "
I let that land.
"Sleep on that before you decide how involved you want to get."
She doesn't answer right away. She picks up her beer and takes a long pull, and over the rim of the bottle her eyes hold mine with a steadiness that has no right being there.
Most people flinch when I tell them the truth about what I'm carrying.
She looks at me like she's carrying something just as heavy and she's daring me to ask what it is.
I don't ask. I'm not ready for whatever the answer is.
I walk out. The parking lot air hits me, warm and dry, carrying the distant sound of cattle trucks on the highway.
I sit in my truck for a long time before I start the engine.
Kenna McEnroe. Freelance press. Eyes that remind me of somebody I can't place.
She's either the most determined journalist I've met or she's running a play I haven't figured out yet.
The fact that she didn't know Tyler Brennan's name bothers me.
A journalist assigned to cover the Southwest Circuit should know the names of riders who died on it, even if the deaths were ruled accidental.
A journalist covering the circuit who's never heard of Tyler Brennan. That doesn't add up.
The fact that she didn't flinch when I told her people die for asking these questions bothers me more. Most people hear the word murder and find somewhere else to be.
She leaned in. Sat down next to me at the bar without being invited and started connecting timelines and contractor names like she'd been waiting for someone to hand her the first piece of a puzzle she already knew the shape of.
She’s a woman on a mission.
I pull up Grant's contact in my phone. His picture stares back at me, that stupid grin, the one he wore right before he did something that was going to get both of us in trouble.
I've called his number more times than I can count since he died. It used to ring. Now it goes straight to nothing, the line disconnected, the voicemail cleared out.
Even his ghost is gone.
I put the truck in gear and pull out of the lot.
Tomorrow I'll go to the stock pens before dawn and watch the Thornton Livestock crew set up for the Saturday event. I'll photograph license plates, write down handler names, document every bull they unload. Same thing I've done at the last four events. Same thing that's gotten me exactly nowhere.
I drive to the motel, park, sit in the dark cab with the engine ticking.
I pull up the number for Torres at the FBI field office in Albuquerque. Her voicemail picks up after a few rings.
"Agent Torres. It's Colt Holloway. Again.
I've got a journalist poking around the circuit asking about Grant Corbin, and I don't know if she's legitimate or if someone sent her.
Either way, people are starting to talk, and the longer you sit on your hands, the more likely somebody else ends up in the dirt. Call me back."
I hang up and stare at the motel room door.
Tomorrow. The stock pens. The handlers. The same dead-end grind that's eaten every day since Grant died.
And now a woman who stands too close and asks too many questions and looks at me like she already knows the answer to something I haven't figured out yet.
I get out of the truck, lock it, and go inside. The room is dark and the bed is too soft and I lie on top of the covers with my boots on, staring at the ceiling, listening to the eighteen-wheelers blow past on the highway outside.
Sleep doesn't come. It rarely does anymore. But tonight it's not Grant keeping me awake.
It's the woman with the suspect credentials and the real anger, lying in another motel room somewhere in this dusty town, and the dead certainty that by tomorrow she'll know more about this circuit's secrets than I do.
The question is what she plans to do with it.