Chapter 18
COLT
Merrick's lawyers are exactly as expensive and exactly as ruthless as Torres predicted.
Weeks after Merrick's arrest at the South Point Arena, the pre-trial deposition takes place in a conference room at the federal courthouse in Albuquerque.
The defense team fills one side of the table like a wall of tailored wool and legal pads and the predatory calm of people whose hourly rate could cover a month of my mortgage.
Merrick brought a full bench to a deposition that concerns two witnesses and a case file Torres could recite from memory.
The lead defense attorney is a woman named Whitfield. Silver hair, narrow glasses, a voice that could file down rebar. She arranges her legal pad at a precise angle to the table edge, uncaps her pen with the same deliberate care I've watched surgeons use with scalpels, and starts with me.
"Mr. Holloway, you have a documented history of violent behavior.
Multiple altercations at circuit events.
Confrontations with other competitors. A public confrontation with Mr. Merrick himself at the Tucson event that required physical restraint by stock contractors and a bullfighter. Is that accurate?"
"I've been in fights. Most riders have. The difference is I don't start them."
"But you finish them. With enough force that multiple people had to restrain you."
"When someone puts their hands on a person who can't defend themselves, I respond. I'd do it again."
Whitfield makes a note. She does it slowly, the pen moving across the legal pad with deliberate precision, a performance designed to make me feel like every word is being filed for later use.
I've been on the back of bulls that weigh more than this woman's entire legal team combined. The intimidation lands somewhere south of effective.
"Mr. Holloway, isn't it true that your grief over Grant Corbin's death has made you emotionally unstable and unreliable as a witness?"
"My grief made me the only person on this circuit willing to ask why my best friend was killed. Whether that makes me unstable is a question for someone with a different degree than yours."
Torres, seated at the end of the table, does something with her mouth that might be a suppressed smile.
Whitfield shifts tactics. "You entered stock pen areas in Albuquerque to surveil employees of Thornton Livestock.
You traveled to Creede, Colorado, to locate a witness the FBI hadn't yet contacted.
You went to a storage yard to meet Dale Thornton, a meeting that ended in Mr. Thornton's death.
" She lets each item land before continuing.
"Would you characterize these as the actions of a stable, measured individual cooperating with law enforcement? "
"Thornton contacted me. I didn't arrange anything. And I'd characterize the rest as the actions of a man whose best friend was murdered while the system designed to protect him looked the other way."
"The system being the Southwest Circuit."
"The system being every person with authority who knew something was wrong and chose not to look."
One of the junior attorneys shifts in his seat. Whitfield doesn't blink.
"You've had a romantic relationship with Kenna Corbin throughout this investigation. A woman who entered the circuit under false pretenses, using a fabricated identity, and whose personal vendetta compromises every piece of evidence she's touched."
"Her identity wasn't fabricated. She used her mother's maiden name. And her personal stake in the case is the reason we're sitting in this room instead of waiting for the next rider to die."
"So you're acknowledging that both of you approached this investigation with personal bias."
"I'm acknowledging that we cared enough to do the work your client spent a lot of time and money trying to bury."
Whitfield leans back and studies me. I've watched enough bulls size up the chute to recognize when an opponent is deciding whether to charge or circle.
"Do you regret any of the methods you employed during this investigation?"
I look at the camera recording my deposition.
The red light is steady, unblinking, recording every word for a transcript that Merrick's legal team will comb through for anything they can use.
I think about Grant in this room, about what he would say if he were sitting in this chair with Whitfield's questions aimed at him.
He would tell the truth. Grant always told the truth, even when the truth was the thing most likely to get him killed.
"No. My only regret is that Grant isn't here to see the man who ordered his murder face justice."
The room goes quiet. Whitfield's pen doesn't move. The junior attorney has stopped shifting. Even the court reporter's fingers pause over the keys for a beat before resuming.
"No further questions at this time."
Kenna is called next, and her deposition runs longer.
I wait in the hallway. The bench is hard. The coffee from the vending machine tastes like it was brewed during a previous administration. Through the door, I can hear the muffled cadence of Whitfield's questions and Kenna's responses, steady and precise.
Then Whitfield's voice rises enough for a phrase to cut through. "Manipulated by Mr. Holloway."
My hands close into fists on my thighs. The knuckles whiten, the tendons pull taut across the backs of my hands, and I have to consciously flatten my fingers against the denim before the U.S. Marshal at the end of the hallway notices.
The word 'manipulated' sits in my teeth like a piece of broken glass, and every instinct I have is telling me to walk back into that conference room and explain to Whitfield in very specific terms what manipulation looks like when it comes from a man who orders riders killed and hides the bodies in accident reports.
I don't move. Kenna can handle Whitfield. Kenna can handle anyone.
But the restraint costs me something physical, a heat coiling through my gut that has nowhere to go, and I sit on that bench and direct it into the only productive channel available, which is memorizing every crack in the plaster ceiling and imagining Whitfield's face when the jury sees the evidence.
They'll go after Kenna's identity. The false name. The deception. They'll paint her as a vigilante driven by personal vengeance, a grieving sister who embedded herself on the circuit with fake press credentials and a predetermined conclusion.
What they won't be able to explain away is the evidence.
The financial analysis that traced shell companies across four states.
The photographs from Rainey documenting every step of the operation.
Quinn's testimony. Flint's written statement.
The safety deposit box in Albuquerque that held everything Grant built with his life.
Merrick's lawyers can attack our character. They can't attack the math.
Kenna built a financial case from motel rooms and truck stops with a laptop and a grudge.
Every spreadsheet cross-referenced, every transaction traced, every shell company mapped to its parent entity.
I've watched her work. I've sat across from her while she walked me through the numbers, her fingers tracing columns of data with the focus of a woman who treats accuracy like a personal religion, and even I could follow the money from Merrick's accounts through Thornton Livestock and out the other side.
A U.S. Marshal walks past with a file box. A clerk pushes a cart stacked with documents. The courthouse keeps moving while Kenna sits in that conference room and fields questions about her dead brother from a woman whose client ordered his murder.
Kenna emerges a long time later. Her face is composed, but her hands are doing the thing they do when she's spent, opening and closing at her sides, fingers stretching like they're releasing something they've been gripping too hard.
Her hair has loosened from the clip she pinned it up with this morning, dark strands falling against her neck, and the impulse to reach over and tuck them back is so strong I have to shove my hands in my pockets.
"How bad?" I ask.
"They tried the vigilante angle. Then the emotional instability angle. Then the compromised-by-romantic-entanglement angle." She falls into step beside me. "Your name came up seventeen times."
"What can I say? I'm popular."
"You're their favorite weapon. The violent, unstable bull rider who corrupted a grieving sister into a personal vendetta."
"Did they use the word corrupt?"
"They used manipulated. I corrected them."
My jaw tightens. "I heard."
"You heard that through the door?"
"I heard enough. How did you correct them?"
"I told Whitfield that if she wanted to see what manipulation looked like, she should review her client's financial records, because I wasn't the one who built shell companies in four states to launder prize money through ghost competitors.
" She pushes through the courthouse doors into the New Mexico sunlight. "Whitfield didn't like that."
"I bet she didn't."
"Her pen stopped moving. I counted the seconds."
The woman fights legal teams the way she fights everything, with data and precision and composure sharp enough to make the other side realize too late that they've underestimated her.
We cross the parking lot without talking, the New Mexico sun pressing down on our shoulders after hours of fluorescent chill. At the truck, Kenna leans against the passenger door and tips her face to the sky, eyes closed, soaking in the warmth like a woman who's been in a cold room too long.
The sun catches the line of her throat, and I track the shadow that pools in the hollow above her collarbone. My mouth wants to be there. Courthouse parking lot, broad daylight, not even remotely the time or place, and the thought doesn't care about any of that.
"I need a break," she says. "From depositions, lawyers, fluorescent lighting, everything that involves a conference table and a recording device."
"What do you need?"