Chapter 13 #2
Torres shifts her gaze to me. "Ms. Corbin. I'm sorry about your brother. Grant contacted me through Flint before he died. He had the outline of a case, but he was building it piecemeal, and he died before he could deliver the evidence."
"He delivered it," I say. "Just not to you directly."
I open the canvas bag and spread the contents across the conference table.
Torres doesn't reach for anything. She sits and looks at the spread the way a chess player looks at a board, taking in the positions before committing to a move. Her eyes track from the photographs to the financials to the text messages, and I watch her calculate.
"Where did this come from?" she asks.
"Rainey Weathers. Grant's partner. She compiled it with Flint before Las Cruces and stored copies in a safety deposit box. She's been in hiding since Grant's death."
"Is she willing to testify?"
"She'll provide a signed statement and cooperate with the investigation. She won't testify publicly unless you can guarantee her safety."
Torres picks up the text message printout. She reads it, and her expression doesn't change, but her thumb presses hard against the edge of the paper.
"This is from Dale Thornton's phone," she says.
"We've had his number flagged for months.
The unknown number will need to be traced, but if it's a burner purchased in the area around the time of these messages, we can work with that.
" She sets the paper down carefully, as if it might detonate.
"I'll have our forensic analysts run the number today.
If we can tie it to a purchase location, or to any other communications in our existing file, this becomes the centerpiece of the case. "
She looks at Colt. "But you were right. I know you've been saying it for weeks, and I know nobody listened. You were right."
Colt absorbs the validation without moving. The cords in his neck pull tight once. That's it.
I know what that restraint is costing him because I watched him crack open over a bourbon last night and I know what lives underneath the surface he's showing Torres.
He wants to flip this table. He wants to drive to Merrick's ranch and drag the man out by his collar and hold that text message in front of his face.
Instead, he sits in a government chair and accepts a federal agent's apology with a jaw flex.
Watching him control himself is its own kind of devastating.
The discipline of it. The contained violence vibrating beneath his skin like a current running through a wire.
I've felt that current. I know what it does when it's aimed at something other than restraint.
I redirect my attention to Torres before my thoughts go somewhere that doesn't belong in a federal building.
"What can you do with this?" Colt asks. His voice is controlled, but I hear the strain beneath the surface, the effort of staying seated when every cell in his body wants to solve this problem with his hands instead of paperwork.
"I can build a case." Torres taps the financial documents.
"These shell company records, combined with the wire transfers and the prize money fraud documentation, give me enough for warrants.
Financial fraud, wire fraud, money laundering.
The photographs of Vic with the animals establish the drugging protocol.
The text messages establish intent and direct orders.
" She pauses. "The message ordering Grant to be 'handled' is circumstantial for murder, but combined with the pattern of Tyler Brennan's death and the other evidence, a prosecutor will take this seriously. "
"How long?" I ask.
"To build a case this size? Months. Warrants, forensic accounting, depositions. Merrick has money and lawyers. He'll fight every subpoena, challenge every piece of evidence, and drag this through every procedural delay his legal team can manufacture."
Colt's jaw sets. "Months."
"Justice isn't fast, Mr. Holloway. It's thorough, or it fails." Torres meets his gaze. "If you go after Merrick directly, if you tip him off, he will destroy evidence, move assets, and potentially flee the jurisdiction. Everything your friend died for will be wasted. I need you to let me work."
The tension in Colt's body is visible. Every muscle, every tendon, pulled against the restraint like a bull behind a gate.
I put my hand on his forearm under the table. The contact is brief and hidden from Torres, and the muscle beneath my fingers is coiled tight as a spring. He doesn't pull away. He doesn't look at me. His breathing slows by half a degree.
"She's right," I say. "Grant built this case to be used the right way. If we go rogue, Merrick walks. If we let Torres build it, Merrick spends the rest of his life in a cell."
His jaw works. A muscle in his cheek pulses. Then his arm shifts under my hand, and his fingers find mine beneath the table and squeeze once, hard, before letting go. The contact lasts two seconds. It says more than the hour of conversation that preceded it.
"What do you need from us?" he asks Torres.
"Stay on the circuit. Keep your heads down.
Don't contact Merrick, Thornton, or anyone associated with the operation.
Don't discuss this investigation with anyone outside this room.
" Torres collects the documents. "I'll need formal statements from both of you.
Detailed timelines, everything you know, everything you've seen.
Ms. Corbin, your financial analysis will be useful as supplemental documentation.
Mr. Holloway, your phone records from the night Grant called you are critical. "
"You'll have them," I say.
Torres opens a drawer and pulls out a recorder. "Let's start now."
Colt goes first. Torres records his statement in the same conference room while I wait in the hallway, and the waiting is its own kind of exercise.
I sit in a plastic chair under fluorescent lights and think about what he's saying in that room.
The phone call from Grant. The dying words relayed through a young rider.
The weeks of chasing leads and hitting walls and calling an FBI agent who wouldn't pick up.
I know the story because I've lived alongside it, and knowing he's in there alone with the telling makes the hallway feel longer than it is.
This man drove to Las Cruces when Grant told him to stay away. He didn't get there in time, and he's been carrying that failure like a wound he won't let close.
He's been fighting this fight alone since the night his best friend died, and the fact that he's sitting in a federal conference room cooperating with a process that moves at the speed of bureaucracy when his instinct is to solve problems with his fists is the most heroic thing I've ever watched someone do.
It is also, inconveniently, incredibly attractive.
The restraint. The discipline. The way he channels all that barely leashed fury into something productive instead of destructive.
I've seen what happens when he stops restraining himself, and the memory of it makes me press my back harder against the hallway wall and breathe through my nose like a woman trying to remember where she is and why.
When it's my turn, I sit in the chair that's still warm from Colt's body and give my statement with the same flat precision.
Torres records everything: the financial analysis, the trail from Rusty Spur Capital Partners to Thornton Livestock, the shell companies, the prize money fraud, every detail I've uncovered since I walked onto the Southwest Circuit under a name that wasn't mine.