Chapter 16
COLT
Kenna is still asleep when I ease out of bed at six in the morning, and for a few seconds I stand in the dim motel room and watch her breathe.
She sleeps the way she does everything else, with total commitment.
One arm tucked under the pillow, her hair fanned across the white cotton, her mouth soft and slightly open in a way she'd deny if I told her about it.
The sheet is tangled around her waist, and the early light coming through the curtain gap catches the freckles on her shoulder and the curve of her collarbone, and the want that moves through me is so steady and so constant that it barely registers anymore.
Just the baseline hum of being in a room with Kenna.
Last night, she held my hand while we watched the mountains through the window and talked about the story breaking, about Torres moving, about the ground shifting under Merrick's feet.
Her voice was calm and certain in a way that made me believe, for the first time since that last phone call with Grant, that the ending of this thing might not require my funeral.
I pull on my boots and step outside for coffee, and the morning air is dry and sharp, and the motel parking lot is empty except for my truck and Kenna’s rental car and the vending machine humming against the wall.
That's when I see it.
Someone has taken a knife or a key to the driver's side of my truck. The paint is gouged deep, metal showing through in silver streaks, and the word they carved is one I've seen before.
HANDLED.
The same word Thornton used in the ledger. The same column where Grant's name appeared, dated the week after Las Cruces.
I stand in the parking lot with my hands at my sides and my jaw locked so tight my back teeth grind, and the rage that moves through my body is immediate and physical, a hot wire running from my chest to my fists.
Underneath the word, scratched smaller but just as deliberate, is a second line: a phone number. Kenna's phone number.
They’re making the point they know where she is and that they can reach her. This is the second time in two days someone has gotten close.
Last night, before she came to bed, Kenna told me a dark sedan followed her from the arena to the motel. Tinted windows. Engine running in the lot for twenty minutes before the driver pulled away, slow and deliberate, making sure she knew he'd been there.
She described it calmly, the way she reports everything dangerous, like facts are a shield. I spent the rest of that night awake beside her with my hand on my phone, listening to the lot and wanting to put my fist through something.
I should have checked the truck before I let myself sleep. Should have walked the perimeter. Should have done any of the things a man does when his instincts are screaming that the darkness outside is closer than it looks.
The door opens behind me. I hear her boots on the concrete, then the pause.
"Colt, I just got off the phone with Sylvia and she says the follow-up piece is—" The words die. She's seen it. "That's the ledger term."
"Yeah."
She moves beside me, and her shoulder brushes my arm.
Even here, even now, that contact registers somewhere south of my belt.
"That's my phone number." Her voice is flat, controlled, but I catch the micro-flinch, the tightening around her eyes.
She pulls out her phone and photographs the damage. Methodical. Every angle. The depth of the scratches, the precision of the letters, the number underneath.
"This is escalation," she says, straightening up. "The car was surveillance. This is a direct threat. They're telling us they know how to get to me, and they're connecting it to what happened to Grant."
"This is Merrick telling us the story got his attention."
"Good. That was the point." She scrolls through her photos. "I'm calling Torres."
"Tell her we need to talk about security. And tell her I'm running out of patience."
"Tell her yourself. You're standing right here."
"I'm busy thinking about what I'm going to do to the person who scratched your phone number on my truck."
She pauses mid-dial. Her eyes flick up to mine, and there's something in the look that's half concern and half the particular challenge she throws at me when she's testing how close I am to doing something destructive.
"Define what you're going to do."
"I haven't decided yet. The options range from inconvenient to federal."
"Let's aim for the inconvenient end of the spectrum. Torres first. Felonies later."
Torres answers on the third ring. Kenna puts it on speaker, her voice clipped and professional.
I stand close enough that I can smell her shampoo, something citrus cutting through the dry morning air.
It shouldn't register right now. Every time I'm near this woman, my body runs a parallel track that has nothing to do with the crisis at hand and everything to do with the way she tilts her head when she's being precise.
Torres asks if we've been followed. Kenna describes the sedan, the timing, the deliberate exit and also tells her about the message carved into the paint of my truck. Torres goes quiet in a way that tells me she's writing this down.
"I'm accelerating the warrant timeline," Torres says. "In the meantime, don't go anywhere alone. Either of you."
"We're already past that," I say.
"Good. I'll have local field agents make contact. Expect a call."
She ends the call. Kenna and I stand in the parking lot, and the morning light catches the gouged metal on my truck door, the exposed silver bright against the dark paint.
I'm thinking about what I'd like to do to the man who carved Kenna's phone number into my property when my phone buzzes.
Unknown number. Text message.
Need to talk. Not safe for me anymore. I have information you need. Meet me tonight. Come alone. Storage yard behind the Pima County fairgrounds. 9 PM.
The sender ID comes up a second later.
Dale Thornton.
I read it twice and hand the phone to Kenna. She reads it, and her chin tips up at the angle that means she's already three moves ahead in a chess game I'm still setting up the board for.
"Trap," she says.
"Probably."
"Absolutely. Thornton is Merrick's operation manager. Everything runs through him. Why would he flip?"
"Because the story went public and the FBI is circling. Thornton is smart enough to know that when this whole thing starts to come apart, Merrick's going to throw him under the bus."
"Or because Merrick told him to send that text and lure you somewhere dark and empty so they can finish what HANDLED means."
She hands the phone back, and her fingers brush mine. The contact lasts a half second longer than it needs to. She notices. I notice her noticing.
Neither of us acknowledges it because we're standing next to a truck with a death threat carved into the paint and discussing the likelihood that someone wants to kill me, and the fact that I still want to push her against that truck and taste her mouth tells me everything about how far gone I am.
"I'm going," I say.
"Then I'm going with you."
"The text says come alone."
"The text is from a man who's been complicit in murder, Colt. Forgive me if I don't take his invitation at face value."
"You're not coming."
"Watch me."
She says it flat, with her arms crossed and her weight shifted to one hip and her eyes locked on mine, and I recognize the posture from every argument she's ever won, which is most of them.
This woman fights like a cutting horse—low, fast, aggressive—turning before I even know the direction's changed.
I step closer. Not because it'll change her mind. Because I need to.
"Kenna." My voice drops, and I watch the recognition cross her face, the slight widening of her pupils when I use that tone.
She holds her ground, but I see the swallow, the quick pulse at the base of her throat.
"If this is a setup, I need you somewhere safe.
Not because you can't handle yourself. Because if something happens to both of us, there's no one left to carry on.
Everything Grant died for, everything we've built—it dies in that storage yard with us.
" I hold her gaze. "And because if I let you walk into this and something happened to you, I'd burn this entire circuit to the ground and salt the earth where it stood, and then nobody gets justice anyway. "
"That's very dramatic."
"I'm a bull rider. Everything I do is dramatic."
"Fine." She breathes, and the defiance in her posture shifts to something more strategic. "But you're not going alone. Who do you trust enough to bring?"
"Wade Ashcroft."
Her eyebrow goes up. "The one with the flask?"
"The one who's ridden saddle broncs professionally for twelve years and has hands like cinder blocks. He told me at the Scottsdale chutes that if I needed a body, he was available."
"A body. Charming phrasing."
"Rodeo vernacular. It means backup."
"I know what it means. I'm concerned about the man behind the vocabulary."
"Wade is solid when it counts. He's falling apart in every other way, but when the gate opens, he shows up."
She's quiet for a beat, calculating, and I watch her shift from fighting me to solving the problem. "Wade for muscle. Me on the access road with Torres on speed dial. If anything goes sideways, I call her and we all get out."
"You call her and you drive. Not toward me. Away."
"And if you and Wade can't get out?"
"Wade and I can handle ourselves."
"You and Wade." She repeats it with the specific inflection she uses when she thinks I'm being an idiot and wants me to hear the stupidity out loud. "Your plan for a potential ambush is two cowboys with their fists against people who carve death threats into trucks."
"My fists and my winning personality."
The sound she makes is half laugh, half exasperation, and it does something to the knot in my chest, loosens it just enough to let me breathe.
"No heroics," she says. "No going back for a fight you can't win. Promise me."
"I promise."