Chapter 4 #2
"You did. With Grant."
The name cuts through the conversation like a blade through rope.
She says it with weight, with reverence. The anger that flashes through me is immediate and irrational, because she's using a dead man's name to leverage her way into an investigation that will probably kill her.
"Don't use him to sell me," I say. My voice comes out lower than I intend, the vowels dragging slow. "You didn't even know him."
"No," she says. "I didn't."
The way she says it carries a weight that doesn't match the words. Her expression goes tight for a half-second before she smooths it out.
I look at the folder in my hand. The data is solid.
The connections she's drawn between Thornton Livestock's events and the prize money discrepancies are connections I've suspected but never had the documentation to prove.
Mesquite Ridge Holdings is the same name that came up when I started pulling on Merrick's business filings, and hearing it from her mouth confirms what I suspected but couldn't prove on my own.
"My rules," I say.
"What are your rules?"
"You don't publish anything until I say it's safe. You don't contact anyone connected to the investigation without clearing it with me first. You don't go anywhere alone after dark, and you don't use your real name with anyone on this circuit who's connected to Thornton."
"I'm already using a fake name."
That stops me. "What?"
"Kenna McEnroe is my pen name." She delivers the lie with absolute conviction and not a single tell. "My legal name is on my driver's license, not my byline. Standard practice for freelance journalists working sensitive stories."
"So what's your real name?"
"Not something I hand out to people I met yesterday." She holds my gaze without blinking. "My cover protects me. It protects you too, since anyone who comes looking for the journalist poking around the circuit is going to be chasing a name that doesn't lead anywhere."
That's a decent answer. Too decent, maybe. The kind of answer you have ready because you've rehearsed it.
"Then what do I call you?"
"Kenna. That part's real."
I study her for a long beat. She doesn't flinch, doesn't fidget, doesn't look away. Either she's telling the truth or she's the best liar I've ever met.
I file it away and move on.
"Merrick," I say. "Hayes Merrick. Circuit commissioner, investment group owner, and the man behind Thornton Livestock.
He's the one running this operation. The drugged bulls, the prize skimming, all of it.
He had Tyler Brennan killed, and when Grant picked up where Tyler left off, Merrick had him killed too. "
Her face goes still. She's not shocked, but she's processing, cataloging, filing every word away behind those careful eyes.
"How do you know?"
"Because Grant told me." I lean against the truck and cross my arms. "The night before Las Cruces, Grant called me.
He told me what he'd found. The drugged bulls, the skimmed prize money, Merrick pulling the strings through Thornton.
He told me he was going to ride Tombstone's Revenge to prove the bull was drugged.
I told him not to ride until I got there.
" I clench my jaw. "He didn't wait. My truck broke down outside Socorro, and by the time I got to Las Cruces, the arena was cleared and Grant was already gone. "
I pause and let the weight of that settle.
"Grant had a bull handler named Vic on a wire.
Vic confessed to drugging the animals on Merrick's orders.
That confession was recorded on Grant's phone.
" I uncross my arms and shove my hands in my pockets.
"After Grant died, the phone was recovered from the arena, but the recording was gone.
It was either wiped or never transferred.
Vic disappeared. Rainey Weathers disappeared with all the photographic evidence.
Flint, the guy helping them, stopped returning calls. "
"And the FBI?"
"Grant had an agent. Torres, out of the Albuquerque field office. She won't return my calls, which tells me she's either got nothing she can act on or she's been told to stand down. Either way, nobody's coming to save us."
"So hand her a case."
"With what?" I hear the frustration in my own voice, sharp and raw.
"Vic is gone. Rainey is gone. Flint won't talk.
The phone was wiped. Every piece of evidence Grant built has either vanished or is locked behind people who are too scared to come forward.
I've got suspicion, motive, and a pattern. That's not a case. That's a theory."
"You've got a theory." She holds up the manila folder. "I've got documentation. Together, that's more than either of us has alone."
The night settles around us. I can hear the crew hauling equipment out of the arena, a horse whinnying from the competitor trailers, the low hum of the highway beyond the parking lot.
I make a decision. It's probably going to bite me in the ass. Every decision since Grant died has bitten me in the ass, so at least I'm consistent.
"You're in," I say. "My rules. My timeline. You step out of line; I cut you loose."
"Fine."
"And Kenna." I wait until she looks at me. "If I find out you're lying to me about who you are or why you're really here, there won't be a conversation about it. I'll just be gone."
The moonlight catches her eyes, and for a fraction of a second I see something flicker behind the professional mask. Fear and guilt, the particular kind that comes from hearing a warning that hits too close to a truth you're already keeping.
Then it's gone.
"I'm not lying to you," she says.
She agrees. We share what we have. I give her the broad strokes: Merrick, Thornton Livestock, Vic, the drugged bulls.
Kenna gives me the financial data she's pulled from public circuit records, along with what she learned from a source who knew Grant: he had a girlfriend named Rainey, a photographer who was always around the stock pens with her camera, and some retired stock contractor drove Rainey out of Las Cruces after Grant's death.
"That retired stock contractor is Flint," I say. "I know him. I've been out to his ranch twice trying to get him to talk. He won't."
"And Rainey?"
"I've been looking for her since Grant died. Dead end after dead end. If Flint knows where she went, he's not telling me."
"Maybe he'll talk to someone he's never met."
"Don't bet on it."
We stand in a parking lot under a West Texas sky with a manila folder full of numbers between us like a contract neither of us has signed.
She's close enough that I can smell her—a scent that has no business being in a rodeo parking lot, and the pull of it cuts right through the tension.
I'm not stupid enough to pretend the attraction isn't there.
I'm just not sure which of the two is going to get one of us killed first.
The way she looks at me, direct and unflinching and with a heat she's trying to keep locked down, tells me she's running the same math and coming up with the same bad answer.
I know that Grant would tell me I'm an idiot for trusting a stranger. I also know that Grant trusted a lot of people, and the one time it mattered most, he didn't trust me enough to wait.
"Circuit moves to Albuquerque next," I say. "Why don't you ride with me. We'll work the case on the road."
She nods. She picks up her laptop bag and walks toward her rental car with that coiled, purposeful stride.
"Kenna."
She turns.
"Bring everything you have."
She gives me a look that lands somewhere between a challenge and a promise, and the dark swallows her up.
I stand there for a while after she's gone, leaning against the tailgate with the folder in my hands, reading her handwriting in the margins of financial documents by the light of my phone.
Her analysis is meticulous and precise, not the work of a journalist chasing a byline but the work of someone who needs the answers as badly as I do.
I close the folder and get in the truck.
Grant, you stubborn son of a bitch. If you're watching this, I hope you're entertained. Because your case and this woman are both going to make my life significantly more complicated.