Chapter 18 #2
She opens her eyes. Looks at me. The look has layers, some of them appropriate for public and some of them decidedly not. "Open road. Quiet. You."
"I can do that."
"And food. I haven't eaten since six this morning."
"In that order? Or simultaneously?"
"You figure out the logistics. I'll sit here and be grateful."
"Grateful. That's new. I should mark the date."
"Don't push it, Holloway."
We climb in, and I pull out of the lot heading south.
The road drops through the Rio Grande Valley, the river running low and brown, cottonwoods lining the banks.
The land opens wide and flat and uninterrupted, the geography that makes a person feel small in a way that comes closer to relief than threat.
Kenna has her window down and her boots on the dash.
The wind fills the cab with the smell of river water and warm earth, and it catches her hair and whips it across her face, and she doesn't bother fighting it.
The hem of her jeans rides up above the boot line, showing a strip of tan skin that I have no business finding distracting and find distracting anyway.
She catches me looking. "Eyes on the road, Holloway."
"My eyes are on the road."
"Your eyes were on my leg."
"I can appreciate the whole picture."
"You're a man who's going to put us in a ditch." But her mouth twitches, and she doesn't pull her boots off the dash.
We eat at a roadside place outside Socorro that serves green chili cheeseburgers and coffee strong enough to strip paint.
We slide into a vinyl booth with our knees touching under the table.
The waitress calls me hon and refills Kenna's coffee without being asked, and the jukebox in the corner is playing something with a steel guitar that nobody is listening to.
"Rainey's deposition wrapped yesterday," Kenna says between bites. "Torres says it was devastating. Photographs, dates, names. Everything Grant and Rainey documented, organized and corroborated. FBI protective detail the whole time, done by video from Colorado."
"Good. She earned that protection."
"She earned more than that." Kenna sets down her burger.
"Torres said Rainey was the witness who tied everything together.
The photographs of Vic with the animals, the shots of Merrick with Thornton, the financial documents from the safety deposit box, all of it laid out in sequence with dates and locations.
Whitfield's team is going to have a very bad day with photographic evidence. "
"They'll try to discredit her."
"They'll try. And Rainey will sit there with her quiet voice and her organized files and bury them.
" She picks up her burger again. "You know what I love about Rainey?
She's terrified. She's been terrified since Grant died.
And she testified anyway. That's the kind of courage that makes Whitfield's billable hours look cheap. "
"Flint?"
"Came forward too. He gave a written statement corroborating the timeline of Grant's investigation and Tyler Brennan's death.
" She takes a bite, chews, swallows, and the shift in her expression tells me the next part carries weight.
"He also provided documentation about his own son.
Ten years ago. A suspicious riding accident at a Thornton Livestock event that was ruled accidental.
Torres is adding it to the pattern evidence. "
A decade. Flint lost his boy ten years ago and sat on that grief while the circuit kept spinning and more riders kept dying. The guilt of that silence is probably the reason he lives alone with his doors locked and his phone turned off.
Grant told me about it once, late night on the road between events, offhand and quiet, the way Grant told me most things. He said Flint carried something he wouldn't talk about, something heavy enough to bend a man's spine without ever touching his back.
"Grant knew about Flint's son," I say. "Told me once, driving between events. Said Flint carried something he wouldn't talk about."
"Grant was right."
"He usually was." I push my plate back. "There's somewhere I need to go."
"Where?"
"Las Cruces."
She goes quiet, her hands still on the napkin. "Grant's grave."
"Haven't been since the funeral. I need to go."
"Do you want company?"
The question is careful. She's learned that my grief operates on a schedule that doesn't accommodate other people, and the respect she gives that is one of the things I love about her that I haven't said out loud yet.
"Yeah," I say. "I want company."
We leave the diner and drive the rest of the way south in a quiet that doesn't need filling.
The landscape shifts from valley farmland to open desert, the road cutting through low hills studded with creosote and yucca.
I keep my speed steady and my hands loose on the wheel, and Kenna rests her head against the window and watches the terrain roll past.
Her left hand rests on the center console between us, palm up, and I cover it with mine without taking my eyes off the road. Her fingers curl around my knuckles and hold. By the time Las Cruces appears on the horizon, the afternoon light has gone gold and neither of us has let go.
The cemetery sits on a hill east of town, overlooking the mountains.
The afternoon throws long shadows across the headstones, and the desert scrub is close to beautiful in this particular gold.
A groundskeeper's truck is parked near the entrance, but the rest of the hill is empty.
Nothing but stones and wind and the mountains holding the skyline.
Grant's plot is at the end of a row. The stone is simple granite, bearing his name, his dates, and a single line: He rode with everything he had.
I stand in front of it with my hat in my hand and the wind pulling at my shirt, and for a long time I don't say anything. Kenna stands beside me, her fingers laced through mine, steady and quiet. She doesn't try to fill the silence. She just holds on.
"Hey, buddy."
My voice sounds wrong out here, too rough and too alive for a place built around the permanent silence of the dead.
"We got him. Merrick. FBI arrested him at the South Point Arena, in front of cameras and sponsors and every rider on the circuit. Cuffs and the whole thing. Torres built a case so tight his lawyers can't breathe, and every piece of evidence you gathered is the backbone of the prosecution."
The wind shifts. A hawk circles overhead, patient and unhurried, riding the thermals above the ridge.
"Thornton's dead. Tried to flip and got killed for it.
Before he died, he told me about the smuggling corridor.
The livestock transports. What was riding in those trailers.
You were closer to a much bigger truth than any of us knew.
You paid for it with your life, and I'm going to carry that until I stop breathing. "
I kneel in the dirt. The granite is warm under my hand, sun-soaked, holding heat the way desert stone does long after the light moves on.
"Rainey came through. She testified yesterday, everything you two built together.
She's safe. Flint came forward too. Told the FBI about his son, the accident at the Thornton event ten years ago.
You knew about that. You told me he carried something, and you were right, and now it's part of the case. Every thread you pulled is holding."
I run my thumb along the edge of the stone.
"I have to tell you something, and you're going to find it hilarious, because you always had the worst sense of humor about my personal life.
" The corner of my mouth lifts, and it hurts.
"Kenna. Your sister. The woman you kept telling me about, the one you said I needed to meet, the one you claimed was smarter than both of us combined and twice as stubborn. "
I can almost hear his laugh. That full, reckless sound he made when life handed him something so absurd that the only honest response was to let it knock him sideways.
"She showed up on the circuit with your mother's maiden name and a fake press badge and a fury that doesn't quit, and I fell for her before I knew who she was. Your sister. Of all the people on this circuit. The woman whose eyes I can't look into without seeing yours looking back."
I press my palm flat against the warm granite and hold it there, the way you'd press your hand against someone's chest to feel their heartbeat, and the stone gives back nothing but heat and silence and the carved name of a man who deserved more time than he got.
"You'd think it was funny as hell. And you'd be right."
I stay for a while. The shadows lengthen. The hawk makes another pass. The cemetery is quiet the way only open desert can be, holding space for things that need saying without an audience.