Chapter 20 #3
"Task forces move at the speed of bureaucracy.
Meanwhile the system that created Merrick is still running, and if nobody tears it out by the roots, somebody else steps into his chair and the whole thing starts over.
" He holds my gaze. "I didn't transfer to this circuit for the competition, Holloway.
I came to finish what Grant started. The question is whether you're done or whether you're willing to keep going. "
I look across the competitor area at Kenna, who's standing with two other riders, her left hand moving as she gestures, the ring catching the light.
Grant rode a drugged bull to get evidence.
Tyler drew a Thornton bull at Fort Worth and never walked out of the arena.
Flint lost his son and spent years in silence.
Thornton tried to flip and took bullets in a storage yard.
The conspiracy didn't begin with Merrick and didn't end with his conviction. The livestock transports are still rolling, and whatever they're carrying is still arriving at the other end.
"I'm not done," I say.
Dax nods. His expression doesn't soften. "Good. I'll be in touch."
He walks back toward the bareback riders' area with the loose, aggressive stride of a young rider who has more fight in him than places to put it. I watch him disappear into the crowd and I'm still standing there, turning his words over, when Kenna finds me.
She's carrying two beers and wearing the ring and the grin. The combination hits me the way her first glare did, months ago, when she sat down next to me at the Broken Spur without being invited and started asking questions I wasn't ready to answer.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," she says.
"Just your brother."
"Dax?" The grin fades to something more complex. "He's been on the circuit and I still don't know if he's here for the riding or the war."
"He's here for both. And he's got plans."
"Dax always has plans. That's what worries me.
" She hands me a beer, and her fingers brush mine on the bottle.
She doesn't pull away. Neither do I. The ring glints on her left hand, and the sight of it there, on the hand that's touching mine, does something possessive to my blood that I have no interest in examining or controlling. "What did he say?"
"He said the smuggling corridor is still running. He said someone needs to keep digging."
She's quiet for a moment, and I watch the journalist reassemble behind her eyes, the instinct to chase the story, to pull the thread.
"He's right," she says. "I've been seeing the same patterns in my research. The infrastructure is too complex for one man. Merrick was a node, not the center."
"We can deal with that later."
"We will deal with that later." She tips her beer toward mine. "Tonight, we celebrate."
I clink my bottle against hers, and we drink our beers in the competitor area of the Thomas & Mack, surrounded by riders and stock contractors and the rebuilt machinery of a circuit that's learning to be honest.
She leans against my side while she drinks, and my arm settles around her waist, my thumb finding the strip of bare skin between her jeans and the hem of her shirt.
She doesn't flinch. She presses closer. Her hip against mine, her body fitting into the space beside me like she was engineered for it, and the warmth of her skin under my thumb makes my hand want to go lower in a way that has nothing to do with this venue and everything to do with what I plan to do to her when we're alone.
Somewhere, Grant is laughing. I can almost hear it, that full, reckless sound he made when life gave him something too absurd to process with a straight face.
He'd see his sister and his best friend standing together in arena dirt with matching beers and a diamond and the stubborn, infuriating, impossible refusal to let the darkness win, and he'd laugh until he couldn't breathe.
"Ready to go home?" I ask.
She looks at me. Her eyes hold the same fire I saw the night she walked into the Broken Spur with her fake credentials and her real fury, the night she sat down next to me and started an argument that hasn't ended yet and, if I'm lucky, never will.
But there's something else in the look now, underneath the fire. A hunger she stopped hiding from me months ago. The kind that makes her breathing go shallow and her pupils blow wide and her fingers tighten on whatever she's holding.
"Take me home, Holloway."
I pull her against me, my hand low on her back, my mouth against her ear.
I tell her exactly what I'm going to do when I get her alone.
Where my hands are going. Where my mouth is going.
How long I'm going to take. The sound she makes is quiet enough that nobody else hears it, but I feel it vibrate through her ribs and into mine, and the look she gives me when I pull back is equal parts outrage and intent.
"You can't say that in public."
"I just did."
"You're terrible."
"And you're stuck with me."
She grabs the front of my shirt and pulls me down for a kiss that has no business happening in a room full of people. Her teeth catch my lower lip. My hand tightens on her hip. The nearest camera operator finds somewhere else to point his lens.
Then she takes my hand, laces her fingers through mine, and walks me toward the exit.
The circuit isn't done with us. The smuggling corridor is still running. Dax has plans, Slade has secrets, and Wade is spiraling toward something ugly. The road ahead has teeth, and the woman beside me knows it as well as I do.
Let them come. I've got Kenna, and I've got the fight. That's all I've ever needed.