Chapter 13 #3
When I finish, Torres turns off the recorder and sits back.
The mask of professional detachment she's been wearing slips for a moment, and underneath is a woman who has been working this case from a position of powerlessness for months, watching riders get hurt and knowing she couldn't stop it without the evidence she now holds.
"Thank you," she says. "Tell Mr. Holloway the same. Grant would be proud of what you've both done."
The words hit me in a place I wasn't guarding. I press my thumbnail into my finger and hold.
We walk out of the FBI building into late afternoon sunlight. The parking lot is warm, the asphalt radiating heat, and the Sandia Mountains glow pink against the eastern sky.
Colt opens the truck door and stops. He stands there, one hand on the frame, looking at the mountains. His shoulders are down for the first time all day, the tension finally bleeding off now that the walls aren't watching.
"That was the hardest thing I've ever done," he says. "Sitting in that room and handing Grant's case to someone else."
"I know."
"I wanted to walk into Merrick's office with those text messages and make him read them while I decided what to do with my hands."
"I know that too. I was sitting next to you having the same fantasy, except in mine I was holding a recorder and a pen because my version of violence involves a byline."
His mouth twitches. "Remind me never to piss off a journalist."
"You've been pissing off this journalist since the day we met. I've got enough material for a very unflattering profile."
"You going to write it?"
"Depends on whether you keep making me coffee in the morning. The unflattering profile drops significantly in priority when caffeine is involved."
He looks at me, and the late light catches the angles of his face, the scar across his nose, the shift in his eyes that moves between storm and steel depending on what he's feeling.
Right now it's something softer than either of those, something that looks a lot like the expression he wore across the kitchen last night when he was deciding about those two steps.
"You did good today," he says. "The bank. Torres. All of it."
The compliment lands in a place I wasn't guarding. Praise from Colt, who sat in a federal conference room vibrating with the effort of not destroying something, who squeezed my hand under the table and said more with that grip than most men say in a year.
"You did too," I say. "Sitting still in that room for hours when every part of you wanted to be somewhere else, doing something louder. That took more than muscle."
"Careful, Corbin. You almost sound like you admire me."
"Don't push it, Holloway."
He climbs into the truck. I stand in the parking lot for a moment, feeling the heat of the asphalt through my boots and the warmth of his words settling into places I should probably be protecting.
I get in the truck. Colt starts the engine.
"We need to talk about going public," I say.
His head turns. "What do you mean?"
"I have journalism contacts. Real ones, not the fake credentials. If we write the story ourselves, using only the information I can independently source without touching Torres's evidence, we can put public pressure on the investigation. Make it harder for Merrick to bury."
"Torres said to keep our heads down."
"Torres said not to discuss the investigation.
A journalistic exposé on circuit corruption, financial fraud, and suspicious rider deaths isn't discussing the investigation.
It's reporting a story. A story I can source entirely through my own financial analysis, public records, and interviews with circuit insiders who are willing to talk. "
Colt considers this. I watch him run the calculation, weighing risk against reward, patience against action, and the intelligence behind the process is the part of him that people underestimate because they're too busy looking at the shoulders and the scars.
"Quinn," he says. "Quinn would talk. He's been carrying that guilt since Grant died."
"Quinn, and anyone else who's willing. If the story breaks big enough, the dam breaks. People come forward because the silence stops being safer than the truth."
The truck idles. The parking lot empties around us as federal employees head home.
"Torres won't like it," Colt says.
"Torres doesn't have to like it. She just has to use it, and she will. A public exposé puts pressure on every official who's been turning a blind eye. It makes Merrick's lawyers work harder. It makes witnesses feel safe enough to come forward because they're not alone anymore."
He studies me. The anger from the past few days has banked to coals, and next to it, the thing I've been watching grow since Creede. Respect, maybe. Or something with more weight that neither of us is ready to name, especially not in a federal parking lot.
"Write the story," he says. "I'll back you up."
"Was that an order or an offer?"
"Does it matter?"
"It matters to me."
He holds my gaze. "It's a promise. Write the story, Kenna. I've got your back."
My name in his mouth, said like that, with the weight of the day and the evidence and the kitchen and the two steps all packed into two syllables. It lands harder than the compliment did.
I pull out my phone and start making calls.