Chapter Fourteen
The arena was dark, and Boggs was running scared.
Striker could hear him—boots on packed dirt, the ragged pull of a man's breathing echoing off metal grandstands.
Three sets of footsteps besides. Four men in a space built for two thousand spectators, and the only light was the orange glow of burning trailers bleeding through the gaps in the arena wall.
Open ground. Sixty yards of groomed dirt stretching to the far wall, the announcer's stand rising like a dark tower on his left, the livestock pens a maze of steel panels on his right.
Movement. Far side, near the pens.
Striker keyed his radio. "Rascal. Ridge. Livestock pens, far side of the arena. Boggs and three men headed your direction."
"Copy." Rascal's voice was flat. Bored, almost. "We're in the pens. Flanking from the east gate."
"Hatchet?"
"Parking lot exit. Nobody's getting past me, brother."
Striker crossed the arena floor at a jog, his boots silent on the soft dirt.
The announcer's stand passed on his left—a wooden box on stilts, microphone cable dangling, the PA system dead.
Beyond it, the livestock pens opened up in a grid of steel panels and swinging gates, the kind of maze that could hide a man or trap one depending on which end you entered from.
A shape broke from behind a panel twenty yards ahead. One of Boggs's men—young, fast, wild-eyed. He saw Striker and brought up a pistol.
Striker shot him in the chest.
The man dropped backward into a gate, the impact swinging it wide on its hinges. The gunshot echoed through the arena like a thunderclap, bouncing off the grandstands and rolling out into the night.
Silence. Then scrambling—boots on metal, a gate clanging shut, someone cursing in the dark.
Two more of Boggs's crew broke cover at once, bolting from behind a loading ramp toward the far wall. They were running for the exit—the parking lot gate where Hatchet was waiting. Striker let them go. Two rifle shots cracked from outside the arena wall, sharp and measured. Then nothing.
Hatchet's voice on the radio, calm as a man ordering coffee. "Two down at the exit."
That left Boggs.
Striker worked through the pens. Slowly now.
The steel panels formed corridors barely four feet wide, designed to funnel cattle from the holding area to the bucking chutes.
Gates every ten feet, some latched, some swinging free.
The firelight from outside threw angled shadows through the rails, striping the ground in bars of orange and black.
He could smell blood. Not his. Not human.
Horse blood. On the air, on the steel panels where Boggs had leaned or grabbed as he ran. The man had horse blood on his hands from the animals he'd cut, and he was painting a trail through the pens like a signature.
Striker followed it.
Through two gates. Past the loading ramp. Around the water trough where cattle would drink before their eight seconds in the arena. The blood smears got fresher—wet, glistening in the faint light. Close.
The catch pen was at the back of the complex. A dead-end enclosure, twelve by twelve, steel walls on three sides and a single gate on the fourth. Built to hold an animal after its ride—a final stop, no exit.
Boggs was in it.
He was pressed against the back wall, a knife in his right hand, his chest heaving.
Thick body, flat features, the kind of build that came from ranch work gone mean.
His hands were dark to the wrists—blood, horse blood, the same hands that had sliced wire into the legs of animals because he liked what fear looked like when it couldn't be hidden.
Striker holstered his .45.
Boggs's eyes widened. "The hell are you doing?"
"Giving you a chance." Striker stepped into the catch pen. The gate swung shut behind him. Twelve by twelve. Steel walls. No exit. "You've got a knife. Use it."
"You're crazy."
"People keep saying that." Striker rolled his shoulders. "They keep being right."
Boggs lunged.
He was fast for his size—the knife coming in low, aimed at the gut, the kind of thrust a man learned in a bunkhouse fight.
Striker sidestepped, caught Boggs's wrist, and twisted.
The knife clattered against the steel wall.
Boggs swung his free hand—a wild haymaker that Striker ducked, feeling the fist whistle past his ear.
Striker drove his forehead into Boggs's face.
Cartilage crunched. Boggs staggered back, blood pouring from his nose, and Striker hit him again—a straight right to the body that folded him, then a left hook to the jaw that straightened him back out and bounced him off the steel wall.
Boggs tried to swing. Striker caught the punch, torqued the arm, and slammed his elbow into the joint. Something popped—wet, loud—and Boggs screamed. His arm dropped, useless, and Striker hit him with a right cross that spun him sideways.
He went to his knees.
Striker grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back. Boggs's eyes were glazing—blood in his mouth, his broken arm hanging wrong, his body trying to shut down.
"The horses." Striker's voice was quiet. Almost gentle. "You cut their legs because you liked it. Because the fear in an animal is purer than the fear in a person. Because horses can't lie about being scared."
Boggs spat blood. Tried to speak. Couldn't.
"A barrel racer named Amy Reese had to sell her horse because of what you did.
A girl who loved that animal more than anything watched it go lame because you thought fear was fun.
" Striker leaned closer. "That horse Teagan wrapped tonight—the big sorrel—he was shaking so hard she could barely hold the bandage.
Twelve hundred pounds of muscle, and you had him shaking like a colt. "
Boggs's eyes rolled. The fight was gone. The man was gone—what was left was meat and bone and the blood of horses drying on hands that would never touch another animal.
Striker hit him one more time. A short, sharp right that snapped his head sideways and dropped him face-first into the dirt. He didn't move. Didn't twitch. Just lay in the catch pen like the cattle that were meant to end up there—finished, with nowhere left to go.
Boots on the metal walkway above the pen. Ridge looked down from the rail, his face unreadable in the dim light.
"He done?"
"He's done."
Ridge drew his pistol, leaned over the rail, and fired once.
The sound was flat and final in the enclosed space. Boggs jerked and went still. The catch pen fell silent except for the distant crackle of the fires still burning in the parking lot.
Striker stood over the body for a moment. His knuckles ached. His forehead throbbed where he'd used it as a weapon twice. Horse blood and human blood mixed on his boots, soaking into the catch pen dirt.
He stepped over Boggs and pushed through the gate.
"Rascal." Radio. "Status."
"Pens are clear. Three down. No runners."
"Hatchet?"
"Lot's secure. Fire's burning down. No law yet, but it's coming."
Striker walked back through the pens, through the bucking chutes, across the arena floor.
His boots left prints in the soft dirt—the only evidence he'd been there, and the grounds crew would erase them by morning.
He passed the announcer's stand, ducked through the arena gate, and stepped into the stabling area.
Teagan was on her knees beside the bay mare, tying off a leg wrap with hands that moved steady and sure.
Lacey was at the sorrel's head, holding a lead rope and murmuring to the big gelding while he stood on his bandaged legs.
A borrowed trailer was backed up to the stabling row, ramp down, ready to load.
Teagan's radio crackled on her hip. She'd heard the shots. She knew.
Striker crouched beside her. She didn't look up. Her fingers worked the knot—over, under, through, tight. The bandage held. The mare's bleeding had slowed to a seep.
"Both stable?" he asked.
"Both stable. Cuts are deep but clean. No tendon damage on either one." Her voice was controlled. Steady. The same voice she used on panicked horses. "The vet should be here in ten minutes. Lacey's going to haul them to the large-animal clinic in Canyon."
"Good."
Teagan tied the last knot and pressed her palm flat against the bandage. She looked at her hands—blood under her nails, blood in the creases of her palms, blood that belonged to animals she'd never met but understood in a way that went past language.
She looked up at him. Read his face. His knuckles. The blood on his boots that wasn't all his.
"Boggs?" she asked.
"The circuit's clear."
Her eyes held his for a long beat. He watched her process it—the violence, the necessity, the justice she'd wanted since Amy Reese sold a horse she loved because a man enjoyed making animals afraid.
"Good," she said.
She went back to the mare's leg. Checked the wrap. Checked the pulse in the pastern. Her hands were gentle, her focus absolute, and Striker watched her care for an animal that wasn't hers with the same fierce attention she gave to everything that mattered.
He stood and offered her his hand.
She took it—blood meeting blood, her palm warm against his—and let him pull her to her feet. They stood in the stabling area with the fires dying behind them and the arena dark and quiet ahead, and he kept her hand in his because letting go wasn't something he planned on doing.
"Let's go home," she said.
They loaded the trucks and drove into the dark, leaving the Canyon fairground to the vet and the fire department and the dead men in the catch pen who would never touch another horse.