Chapter 3 #2
"It's not just the bulls." Quinn drops his voice further.
The horses shift behind him, tails flicking at flies.
"Grant thought there was a connection between the stock draws, the prize money, and the people running the circuit.
He said it went all the way up. Higher than Thornton. Someone with real power."
Higher than Thornton. Colt said the same thing at the bar, that a stock contractor can't manipulate draws and bury investigations alone, that it takes pull. Someone with influence. Someone neither of them will name out loud.
"Did Grant have proof?" I ask.
"I think he was putting something together.
Some kind of proof. He never showed me what, but I'd catch him up late with paperwork spread out, or on his phone taking pictures of things he shouldn't have been that interested in.
" Quinn's hands are shaking. He shoves them in his pockets.
"I think he was going to take it to the FBI.
He had a contact. But he also had…" Quinn trails off.
"Had what?"
"A girlfriend." The word comes out reluctant, almost guilty.
"A photographer on the circuit. Rainey something.
Weathers, I think. She was always out there with her camera around the stock pens, the handlers, everything.
After Grant died, she just vanished. Nobody's seen her. Nobody knows where she went."
Rainey Weathers. A photographer. Grant's girlfriend.
My brother had a girlfriend on the circuit and I didn't know. The realization hits me somewhere behind my ribs, in the place where grief stores the things you can't process standing up.
Grant had a whole life out here that he kept from me. A woman he loved. An investigation that consumed him. A death he walked into with open eyes because he believed the truth was worth more than his safety.
And he never told me any of it. Not Rainey's name. Not the scope of what he was doing. Not the danger. He called me the night before Las Cruces and said he was onto something big, and that was it. That was all he trusted me with.
The old anger flares, quick and hot. He was protecting me.
I know that. Grant and Dax always protected me.
They became my only family. But protection and secrecy aren't the same thing, and if Grant had told me the truth, if he'd told me about Tyler Brennan and the drugged bulls and the woman he loved, maybe I could have helped.
Maybe I could have talked him out of riding that bull in Las Cruces. Maybe he'd still be alive.
Or maybe he'd have gone anyway, because that's who he was. And I'd have spent those last four days knowing what I was about to lose instead of being blindsided by the deputy on my porch.
I don't know which is worse.
I swallow hard and keep my voice even. "Do you know how to find Rainey?"
"If I did, I'd have found her already." Quinn picks up his coffee mug, and the rim trembles against his lip. "After Grant died, somebody drove her out of Las Cruces. I heard it was some old stock contractor, retired guy. That's all I know."
"And the proof Grant had?"
Quinn sets the mug down hard, and coffee sloshes over the rim. "That's all I've got. That's everything. And if you tell anyone I said any of this, I'll deny it."
"Quinn—"
"I'm serious." He turns on me, and the fear is front and center now, naked and awful.
"Grant asked the same questions you're asking. Tyler asked them before that. They're both dead. I don't want to be the next name on that list."
He folds the camp chair, shoves it behind the truck seat, and walks away without looking back. Long strides, head down, hands in his pockets. He rounds the end of the trailer row and disappears between the rigs.
I'm standing alone in the gravel next to his horses, watching the space where he was and listening to the sound of his boots fade out.
I walk to my rental car and sit behind the wheel with the engine off, processing.
Grant's investigation wasn't a side project. Quinn's description of late nights with paperwork and a girlfriend who kept her camera pointed at the stock pens tells me Grant was building something bigger than one man asking questions.
And all of it scattered when he died.
Rainey Weathers is out there somewhere with whatever her camera captured. The retired stock contractor who drove her out of Las Cruces might know where she went. The FBI contact Grant had is out there somewhere, waiting for information that never arrived.
I need to find Rainey.
I pull out my phone and search.
Her social media accounts went dark weeks ago. A photography portfolio website that hasn't been updated since March. A LinkedIn profile listing her as a freelance sports and livestock photographer based in New Mexico. No current contact information. No forwarding address.
She disappeared deliberately. Someone helped her go to ground, which means someone cared enough to protect her. Some retired stock contractor, according to circuit gossip.
I try searching for retired stock contractors on the Southwest Circuit, but without a name it's a needle in a haystack the size of the whole Southwest.
The one person who might know more about the retired stock contractor, about Rainey, about the entire apparatus Grant built to expose this conspiracy, is the one person I've been warned away from by every survival instinct I possess.
Colt Holloway.
He knows more than he told me. At the bar, he hinted at someone above Thornton and then pulled back. He's sitting on more than he told me, and he's got no reason to share it with a journalist he just met.
He's been investigating on his own for two months. If Grant confided in anyone on this circuit besides Rainey, it was Colt.
But Colt's investigation has stalled. I could see it in the bar last night, the frustration behind the bravado, the exhaustion of a man who's been beating his head against the same walls for weeks.
He's running out of leads and running out of patience, and the recklessness I watched him bring to that bull ride tells me he's running out of reasons to be careful with his own life.
A man like that is dangerous to work with. He's also dangerous to leave alone.
I need what he knows. He needs what I've found. Or at least I hope he does.
The financial records I pulled from the circuit's public database show a clear pattern of discrepancies at Thornton Livestock events.
A bull rider wouldn't have press credentials to access the financial portal, which means this might be something I can bring to the table that he can't get on his own.
The math is simple. Separately, we're both stuck. Together, we might have enough pieces to see the whole picture.
The math is also terrifying, because together means lying to Colt's face every single day.
It means standing next to a man who loved my brother, who carries my brother's death like a wound he keeps reopening, and letting him believe I'm a stranger.
It means falling asleep every night knowing that if he finds out who I am, whatever fragile alliance we build will shatter. And the investigation, the one Grant died for, will shatter with it.
I start the car.
I can do this. I've been lying since the day I walked onto this circuit. One more lie, one more layer, one more person who thinks Kenna McEnroe is a real person with a real press badge and a real reason to be here.
The difference is that this time, the person I'm lying to has a grief that mirrors mine.
And when he closed the distance at the bar last night, when his voice dropped low enough that I could feel it in my sternum, my body responded in ways that have nothing to do with the investigation and everything to do with the kind of trouble I can't afford.
That's the part I need to lock down. Tight. Permanently.
I start the car but don't pull out. The event starts at four. Colt will be here.
Tonight, I'll find Colt and offer him a trade: my financial data for his intelligence, my fresh eyes for his circuit connections, my cover for his credibility.
It's the smart play. The strategic play. The play Grant would have made.
I keep both hands on the wheel and stare through the windshield at the rodeo grounds, and the memory of Colt's voice in the dark behind the chutes sits in the passenger seat like something I can't shake.