Chapter 17
KENNA
The debrief with Torres takes most of the morning.
The FBI agents from the Tucson field office arrive early, two men in dark suits stepping out of a black sedan in a motel parking lot that hasn't seen anything this official since the health inspector gave up on the place.
Torres joins by video from Albuquerque, her face filling a laptop the agents prop on the dresser.
Colt and I sit on the edge of a bed that smells like industrial detergent and give them every word Thornton said before the bullets found him.
Colt is still wearing last night's shirt, the sleeves pushed to his elbows, his forearms braced on his thighs.
He looks like exactly what he is. A man who survived a shooting the night before and hasn't slept and is holding himself together through sheer physical discipline.
He delivers the facts the way he delivers everything. Blunt. Stripped down. No editorial. The smuggling corridor. The livestock transports. Tyler at the Fort Worth loading dock. Grant at Las Cruces, riding a bull that was supposed to hurt him, not kill him. The handler who went too far.
Torres watches from the screen. Her face doesn't change, but her pen moves faster with every new piece of information.
When Colt gets to the part about the dose being wrong, about Grant's death being miscalculation rather than intent, his voice stays level. His hand finds my knee beside him on the mattress, and the pressure of his grip tells me what his voice won't.
The agents ask me about the financial trail.
I walk them through the shell companies, the ghost competitors, the prize money that disappeared into accounts registered to businesses that don't exist. Torres listens through the video feed, directing follow-up questions when the agents miss a thread.
The sharpness of her questions tells me she's already connecting Thornton's revelations to the financial patterns I mapped months ago.
Beside me, Colt sits through my portion of the testimony without moving. His jaw works. His shoulders fill the space next to me in a way that makes the two agents on the other side of the room look like they're built from lesser materials.
Torres's last words on the video call are that she has what she needs for the arrest warrants. Stay on the circuit, stay visible, stay together. She'll be in touch.
The agents pack their recorder and laptop into a case and leave. The door closes behind them, and the motel room is just a motel room again.
I look at Colt, who is sitting on the edge of a bed in a motel, with a morning of federal testimony behind him and the exhaustion of a man who just relived his best friend's murder in clinical detail for a recording device.
"I need food," I say. "And sleep. In whatever order doesn't require me to move first."
"I'll get food. You sleep."
"You're not tired?"
"I'm running on something that isn't going to let me sleep for a while." He stands, and the way he moves tells me that something is rage and grief and the combustible energy Colt generates when he's processing things he can't hit. "What do you want to eat?"
"Anything that isn't from a vending machine."
"High standards."
"The highest. That's why I'm with you."
His mouth does the thing it does when I've caught him off guard with something that sounds like a compliment. The near smile that he can't quite commit to.
"Go to sleep, Kenna."
I go to sleep, and the next few days crawl by in the limbo of waiting.
We rejoin the circuit. I drop the rental at an agency in Tucson, and we drive to Las Vegas together.
Colt gets the rear window replaced at a shop outside Kingman while I sit in the waiting room and pretend to read a magazine instead of refreshing my phone for a call from Torres that doesn't come.
We share a motel room and a truck cab and too many miles of desert highway with nothing to do but run scenarios I can't stop and Torres can't confirm.
On Saturday night, Colt is behind the chutes at the South Point Arena wrapping his bull rope.
I'm in the stands watching him work when my phone vibrates.
Torres.
"Ms. Corbin. We're moving tonight."
The words land like a punch thrown from a blind spot. "What do you need from us?"
"Stay in the arena. Don't leave. Don't contact anyone. We have arrest warrants for Merrick on charges of financial fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to commit murder. My team is en route to the venue."
"You're arresting him here?"
"He's in the VIP section. We have eyes on him.
" A pause. "Thornton's death accelerated everything.
A witness killed to prevent testimony is the kind of evidence that gets warrants signed fast. Combined with Rainey's evidence, Quinn's testimony, your financial analysis, and Holloway's statement, the case is airtight. "
"What about the smuggling operation?"
"That investigation is ongoing and separate. Tonight is about Merrick."
I press my thumbnail into my index finger. "Understood. We'll stay put."
"Ms. Corbin. Your brother would be proud of what you've done."
The words crack something behind a wall I didn't know I'd built. I hold the phone tighter and breathe through it.
"Thank you, Agent Torres."
I find Colt behind the chutes. He sees my face and excuses himself from a conversation mid-sentence, crossing to me in three strides.
His hand finds my elbow and steers me into the gap between two equipment trailers where the arena noise dulls to a muffled roar. The grip is firm enough that my feet barely make the decision to move before his hand has already made it for them.
"Talk to me."
"Torres is moving. Tonight. Arrest warrants. Her team is on the way."
His whole body goes still. Every muscle locked, every nerve calibrated. The focus of a man who has been waiting for this since the night Grant called from Las Cruces.
"Where?"
"Here. VIP section. Merrick is in the building."
"Jesus."
"She wants us to stay put."
"Stay put." He says it like the words taste foreign. "She's about to arrest the man who killed Grant, and she wants us to sit in the stands."
"She wants us to not interfere with a federal operation."
"Feels the same."
"It's not. And you know it." I put my hand on his chest. His heart kicks hard under my palm. "It's happening, Colt. After everything, it's happening tonight."
His jaw works. Then his hand covers mine, pressing it harder against his sternum, the heat of his palm over my knuckles, the thud of his heartbeat under my fingers.
Even now, with Merrick in the VIP section above us and Torres's team on the way, my body registers his proximity the way it always does. The low-grade awareness that never fully powers down no matter what else is happening.
"Then we wait," he says.
The arena holds a few thousand, and tonight it's running close to capacity.
Colt has to ride. His draw is early in the bull riding section, and scratching would raise questions neither of us can answer right now.
He goes back to the chutes and I find a spot on the railing with a clear view of the VIP section and the arena floor, splitting my attention between the man I need to watch fall and the man I need to watch survive.
Merrick is in the VIP section with a bourbon in his hand and the camera-ready smile he's been wearing for decades. The circuit commissioner. The sponsor magnet. The man who shook hands with governors and posed with championship buckles at every banquet from El Paso to Reno.
The man who ordered a bull drugged before my brother Grant rode him because Grant was getting too close to the truth.
I watch him laugh at something an aide says. Watch him lift a glass of bourbon. Watch him scan the arena with the satisfied expression of a man surveying a kingdom he believes is secure.
The first bull riders are loading into the chutes. Colt's name is third on the list, and I can see him on the platform, settling his rope, checking his wrap.
My phone buzzes. Colt, from behind the chutes.
You breathing?
I type back.
Barely.
Breathe. I've got this.
Three words and the tension between my shoulders eases. I hate that he can do that from across an arena through a phone screen.
The chute gate swings open, and the bull comes out hard, spinning right. I grab the railing. Before he suspected anything, did Grant ever wonder if the bulls were clean? If the stock had been tampered with? If the ride he was about to make was rigged before he ever climbed the chute panel?
Colt matches the spin, his body moving with the animal's pattern, his free arm high, his hips rolling with each kick. The bull reverses, drops its head, throws a move that would have put a lesser rider in the dirt; Colt adjusts mid-air like the laws of physics owe him a personal favor.
For eight seconds, the arrest and the investigation and Merrick and Torres and all of it ceases to exist. There is only Colt on a bull, doing the thing he was built to do.
The buzzer sounds. He dismounts clean, landing on his feet with the casual authority of a man who just won an argument with an animal that outweighs him ten to one. Ninety-one points.
He tips his hat toward where I'm standing, and even from across the arena, the look he gives me carries enough heat to make the wait bearable.
More riders load into the chutes. Above it all, Merrick orders another bourbon and waves off an aide with the casual dismissal of someone who has never considered the possibility that his authority might end.
Colt finds me at the railing. He’s still carrying dust from the arena floor and the energy of a man who just rode a bull and won.
His shoulder presses against mine, and the tension running through his body bleeds into mine through the point of contact.
Standing next to him when he's like this is like standing next to a loaded weapon with the safety off.