Chapter 4 #2
She wraps both hands around the coffee cup and stares at something past my shoulder. The silence between us isn't uncomfortable. It's pressurized. Two people standing on either side of a line they can both see, neither willing to step across it yet, neither willing to step back.
"You check under your truck every night," I say. "You park facing out. You scan every lot before you get out of the cab. That's not a vet being cautious. That's someone who learned the hard way that caution keeps you breathing."
Her expression doesn't change. But her jaw tightens, and the warmth drains out of her face so fast the temperature between us drops.
"My parking habits aren't your concern."
"They are if someone else is paying attention to them too."
That lands. Her knuckles go white on the clipboard edge.
But she recovers fast, and when she speaks her voice is level. "I don't need your help, Ashcroft."
"I'm not offering to help. I'm offering information for information." I set my coffee cup beside hers on the tailgate. "You've got science. I've got relationships. Separately, we've both got half a picture. Together, we've got something worth looking at."
She's quiet for a long time. Then the calculation shifts. She stops weighing trust and starts weighing usefulness.
"Find out who's driving the Thornton rigs," she says finally. "Not the company name on the contract. The actual drivers. The men behind the wheel."
"I can do that."
"Then do that. And stop bringing me coffee like we're friends."
"We're not friends."
"Good."
"We're the only two people on this circuit who've noticed the same problem from opposite directions. That's more useful than friends."
She picks up her notes and walks back to the pens without looking at me. Her stride is even, her shoulders set. She doesn't check behind her.
But she drank the coffee. Something tells me she won't leave it sitting there next time either.
I lean against her truck and watch the lot while I finish the last lukewarm swallow from my flask.
The conversation is still running through my head, every exchange replaying itself in a different light.
She told me the animals are contaminated.
She gave me a task. She didn't give me her trust, but she gave me a job, and for a woman like her, that might be the same thing.
I also pushed on her habits. The truck checks, the parking, the scanning.
She shut me down cold, but the way she shut me down told me everything her words didn't. Her jaw tightened.
Her knuckles went white. Whatever she's running from, it isn't theoretical.
It's specific, it's personal, and it's close enough that a stranger noticing her patterns felt like a threat.
The crowd is thinning, trailers loading, the usual post-event migration toward the highway. I'm about to push off and head for my own rig when I see them.
The two men I noticed before. The same watchfulness that is not just looking around at a rodeo. This time they're not watching the stock loading. They're watching the vet truck. They're watching Laney.
I straighten slowly, keeping my body language casual.
Take a sip from the flask that's already empty.
The movements give me an excuse to turn, to scan, to measure the distance between those men and where Laney is working with her back to them.
Forty yards, maybe fifty. Close enough to watch.
Far enough to disappear if she turned around.
My hand is steady. The rest of me isn't. Something old and heavy is settling into my chest, the same feeling I get when a horse goes wrong in the chute and I know someone's about to get hurt before anyone else does. Instinct without evidence. The body knowing what the mind hasn't caught up to yet.
She doesn't react. Either she hasn't spotted them, or she has and she's choosing not to show it.
I walk to my truck and dial Colt.
"Thornton Livestock," I say when Colt picks up. "The hauling company that rebuilt itself and got the circuit contract after Merrick. What do you know?"
"That's a hell of a way to start a phone call." Colt's voice is steady, the calm of a man who's already survived the worst thing that could happen to him. "What's going on?"
The silence on his end isn't casual. It's weighted.
"Wade." His voice drops half a register. "Where's this coming from?"
"The circuit vet pulled some delivery records that don't add up.
I've been asking around, and contractors are telling me the same thing: animals arriving late, stressed, dehydrated.
Routes that don't make any geographic sense unless the trucks are going somewhere they shouldn't be between pickup and delivery. "
"You and the vet." It isn't a question. "You're both looking at this."
"From different angles. She's got the science. I've got the relationships."
Another silence. Longer this time. I can hear wind on Colt's end, the distant sound of livestock.
"Be careful," he says. "And I mean that."
"Careful how?"
"There was a vet on the circuit before your doc.
Guy named Salazar. Worked the Southwest stretch for a couple of seasons.
Good vet. Started poking around Thornton's operation: the routes, the schedules, why certain loads were running at odd hours.
Quiet about it. The same kind of digging you're describing. "
"What happened?"
"Nobody knows. He stopped showing up. Told the event committee he was taking personal leave. Never came back. Nobody's heard from him in months."
The air inside my truck feels thinner. I lean my head back against the seat and stare at the ceiling liner, water-stained and peeling at the edges. A vet. Asking the same questions. Gone.
I grip the phone tighter. "You're telling me a vet who went digging into Thornton disappeared."
"I'm telling you a vet who went digging into Thornton stopped being visible.
" Colt's voice is careful. "There's a difference.
Could be he got spooked and walked away.
Could be he got a better offer somewhere else.
Could be something worse. I don't know. What I know is that nobody went looking for him very hard, and that bothers me more than the disappearance itself. "
"Colt."
"Yeah."
"There are men on this circuit watching the current vet. I saw them today. They're not rodeo."
The silence on the other end of the line is the loudest thing I've ever heard from Colt Holloway.
"Get her out of there," he says quietly.
"She won't go. She's not the kind who runs from a problem."
"You know her well enough to say that?"
"I know her well enough to know I couldn't make her leave if I tried.
She found the contamination on her own, pulled the delivery records on her own, started connecting the pattern before I even knew there was one.
She checks under her truck every night and parks facing the highway.
That's not a woman who scares easy, Colt.
That's a woman who's been scared before and decided to keep working anyway. "
The silence on Colt's end shifts. I can hear him processing that.
"Then make sure she's not solving it alone." A beat. "And Wade. Whatever's in that flask of yours, tonight would be a good night to put it down." He hangs up before I can answer.
I sit in my truck in the dark lot and listen to the engine tick. The bottle is under the seat where it always is. I reach for it without thinking, unscrew the cap, fill the flask.
The movements are automatic. Same as hers when she checks the locks. The difference is her autopilot keeps her alive. Mine is doing the opposite.
A vet named Salazar started digging into Thornton and vanished. Two men in clean boots are watching a woman who's pulling on the same thread.
And I'm sitting here with a flask in my hand, trying to decide what kind of man I am. The kind who does something about it, or the kind who takes another drink and pretends he didn't see.
I take the drink. It burns going down. It solves nothing. Tomorrow I'll find out who runs the Thornton rigs, because whatever kind of man I am, I'm not the kind who looks away.
But tonight the flask wins, same as every other night. Colt told me to put it down. He's right. He's been right about everything since Grant died.
I take another drink and start the truck.