Chapter 17 #3
I let him hold me. I press my forehead into his collarbone and breathe against the worn cotton of his shirt and let his heartbeat do the work my own can't manage right now.
"He's not lost," Colt says. His voice is low and rough against the top of my head. "Grant is the reason they just cuffed that man. Every piece of evidence, every witness, every thread we pulled started with him."
"I know."
"This is his." His arm tightens. "The arrest. The case. The story. All of it."
I pull back enough to look up at him. "He'd hate the attention, you know. He'd want to be in the stands with a beer, watching Merrick walk out, making some terrible joke about karma and bull riders."
"He'd say Merrick should have known better than to mess with a Corbin."
"He would say exactly that." The laugh that comes out of me is wet and ragged and surprises us both. "And then he'd buy everyone in the section a round and tell the story six times."
"Getting louder each time."
"Every single time."
We remain standing together, his arm around me and my face against his shirt, and the laughter fades into something quieter and harder to name. The arena hums below us.
We watch as the other bull riders finish their rides. The arena empties in stages, the crowd thinning, the noise winding down. Neither of us is ready to leave the spot where we watched the man who killed Grant walk out in handcuffs.
My phone buzzes. Torres.
Merrick in custody. Shell companies frozen. Accounts seized. I'll be in touch tomorrow with next steps.
I show the text to Colt. His jaw unclenches by a fraction.
"She works fast," he says.
"She's been waiting longer than we have."
He nods, then looks toward the empty VIP section. The abandoned bourbon glass catches the overhead light. The leather chairs are pushed back from the table at the angles where their occupants left them.
"Grant told me something once," Colt says. "Driving between events, three in the morning, middle of West Texas. He said the circuit was the best and worst thing that ever happened to him. That the cost was going to come due for the people cheating the sport."
"He was right."
"He was always right. Annoying as hell about it, too." His mouth fights a smile. "You Corbins. Every last one of you."
"Annoying?"
"Right."
I lean into him. His arm stays around my shoulders, and we stand at the railing watching the empty arena below us.
The ache in my chest is complicated. Part grief, part gratitude, part the bone-deep exhaustion of a woman who has been running on rage and coffee and stubbornness since the morning they buried her brother.
Colt presses his lips to the top of my head. Unhurried. Public.
"Let's go," he says.
"Where?"
"Hotel. Food. Sleep."
"You left something off the list."
"Several things. All requiring a locked door and more energy than I currently have." The heat behind the exhaustion is a low flame.
We begin to make our way to the exit. The arena noise has faded to the hum of ventilation and the distant clang of stock pens being secured for the night.
The parking lot is quiet. Colt's truck sits under sodium lights, the new rear window from the Kingman shop still cleaner than the rest of the glass.
He opens my door. I climb in.
He stands there for a moment, one hand on the frame, and the way he looks at me carries the weight of everything we've been through and everything still coming.
"Don't stop," he says. "Whatever comes next. Don't stop."
The words are blunt and simple and so completely him that they hit harder than any speech would. I hook my fingers into the front of his shirt and pull him forward until his forehead touches mine.
"I haven't stopped yet," I say. "Not planning to start."
His mouth is inches from mine. I can feel his breath, warm and steady, and the proximity is its own kind of torture because I know what that mouth can do and the parking lot is not the place.
His hand comes up and cups the side of my face, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw, and the restraint of not closing the distance thrums between us like a guitar string pulled tight.
"Drive, Holloway. I'm starving, exhausted, and you have a rain check I intend to collect before this night is over."
His hand drops from my face. Slowly. Like releasing something he's not sure he wants to let go of.
"Yes ma'am."
"I told you not to call me that."
"You also told me you're starving and exhausted. That's two conflicting priorities."
"Feed me first. Then we'll talk."
He closes my door, walks around to the driver's side, and we pull out into the Las Vegas night with Merrick in a federal holding cell and the circuit stretching behind us like a road we've traveled in the dark so long that the city lights feel like another country.
I roll down the window. The desert air is warm and dry, and for the first time since that last phone call with Grant, the air I'm breathing doesn't taste like grief.
It tastes like the start of something, which is the problem.
Merrick is in custody, but he has lawyers.
Expensive ones. And the smuggling corridor Thornton died trying to expose is still running.
Tonight we got the arrest. Tomorrow the real fight starts.