Chapter 14 #2
"Pops, no. Listen to me. Asher Addison is the stock contractor. I have known that man as Asher Addison since I was a teenager. He runs the Hellfire string. He’s supplied stock at half the qualifiers I’ve ever ridden.
He fixed my chute at junior nationals when I was sixteen.
He has been at every venue I’ve ridden in West Texas for almost ten years. "
The room goes quieter than I have ever heard it.
Holt’s holding Waylon on his lap and his arm has tightened around the boy without him noticing.
Pops is looking at me the way he looks at me when he is processing a thing he doesn’t want to say out loud. "Pops."
"Yeah, baby."
"He’s been close to me my whole career."
"Yes."
"He fixed my chute when I was sixteen. He was kind to me."
Spur's hand finds the back of my neck.
Pops stands up from the recliner, walks up to the TV, and turns it off.
He comes back and sits down on the coffee table directly in front of me, our knees almost touching. "Listen to me, Dakota."
"Yeah."
"Asher Addison is the name that man has been running under for ten years.
He buried Kane and built a life as a stock contractor.
He has been near you on a circuit because that is his livelihood.
He didn't pick you when you were sixteen, baby.
He picked you six months ago, when you signed the Wrangler deal and won at the Cody on his stock, and your face went on the cover of Western Horseman in his hometown. "
"Pops."
"He carried the grudge against me for years and waited until you became somebody. Until your name on a sponsorship was bigger than my name on a club. That's when it turned."
I close my eyes.
I think about the man who fixed my chute when I was a teenager.
The way he handed me a bottle of water afterward and told me I had a good seat on a horse.
I had thanked him by his name. Thank you, Mr. Addison. He had told me to call him Asher.
I had called him Asher.
I open my eyes.
Pops is looking at me steadily.
Holt is leaning forward in the armchair. Spur's hand is still on my neck. "Pops."
"Yeah?"
"I want him dead."
"I know, baby girl."
"I want to be in the room when it happens."
A few moments pass between us.
Pops doesn't say no.
Holt, from the armchair: "She's a Lyle, brother."
"I know what she is, Holt."
"Then she's in the room."
Pops looks at me for a long time. Then he nods once. "All right, Dakota. You're in the room."
The rest of the morning is brothers on phones.
Pops calls Uncle Cash in San Antonio. Uncle Holt calls Wells and Tread who are at the bunkhouse.
Spur calls Banshee at the round pen.
Rogue is in the kitchen at Marlena's table with three laptops open, running Asher Addison's name through every database he has access to.
The intel comes in fast.
Asher Addison Stock Contracting LLC, registered in Big Spring, Texas.
Federal tax ID. A truck registered to the company—white Ford F-450 dually, current plates.
A property in Howard County—a small ranch with a stock barn and pens. A bank account.
A phone number that matches the burner he's been using to text me.
He's not hiding. He never had to.
He buried the road name and built a life under his real one, and the Shotgun Saints never thought to look for him because they thought he was gone.
He has a wife. Holt finds it in a county record.
Married in 2019. No children. Wife's name is Loretta Addison. Lives at the Howard County address.
"He has a wife," I say from the couch.
Pops, on his phone with Cash, holds up one finger at me. In a minute, baby.
Holt comes over and sits on the coffee table where Pops sat earlier. "Yeah, baby girl. He has a wife."
"Does she know?"
"Hard to say. She might. She might not. We won't know until we get to her."
"Are you going to her?"
"Cash's chapter is closer to Big Spring. He'll send a brother to look at the wife and the property by tonight. We're not going in until we have the picture."
I nod.
He puts his hand on my knee through the pajamas. "You eat the rest of your breakfast."
"I'm not hungry, Uncle Holt."
"Eat anyway. You're gonna need it."
I eat the cold eggs and bacon, and I pour myself another cup of scorching hot coffee.
By mid-afternoon, Pops has pulled the brothers into the kitchen for a working session.
The dining table is covered in printouts. Rogue's laptops.
A Texas county map Holt brought in from his truck.
Photos of Asher Addison from the rodeo broadcast pulled and printed.
I sit at that table, between Spur and Holt, with my third coffee of the day and the hoodie sleeves pushed up to my elbows.
Pops asked me to be there. Said the brothers needed to know what I knew about the man, because I have known him longer than any of them have.
So I tell them.
I tell them the venues Asher Addison runs stock at on a regular basis—Sweetwater, San Angelo, Snyder, Stephenville, the Texas circuit, and the New Mexico border.
I tell them his Hellfire string and how he runs them.
I tell them about his trailer, his rig, the men he keeps on his crew.
I tell them about the chute boss in Sweetwater, who is also a friend of his, and the second man at his stock barn in Big Spring who Cassidy slept with two summers ago and Brynn and I have both heard her stories about.
Holt writes things down. Rogue types. Spur listens with his hand on my thigh under the table.
Pops asks me a question every few minutes—where would he stay if he came back through Sharp, what kind of vehicle would he drive on a Saturday, would he be alone or with his crew, would his wife travel with him.
I answer each one.
By four o'clock the table has a picture I built.
Asher Addison's circuit map. His habits. His people. His rig. His blind spots.
Pops puts his hand on the back of my neck when we break for an hour. "You did good, baby girl."
"Yeah."
"You knew more than I did."
"He's been around the rodeo circuit for years, Pops. I had to know."
"Yeah."
He kisses the top of my head and walks out to the porch with Holt to make a phone call.
Marlena pours me a fresh coffee around three and squeezes my shoulder when she sets it down.
* * *
Around six o'clock the dogs at the kennel start barking.
Spur's head comes up first. Then Pops'. Then Uncle Holt's.
A truck is pulling into the gravel drive at the front of the property—a black F-350 with a Lubbock license plate. Two more trucks behind it.
Holt stands up from the kitchen table. "Roan's here."
Pops walks to the front porch and Uncle Holt walks behind him.
Spur stays at the kitchen table for a half-second looking at me. "You comin', baby?"
"Yeah, Spur. I'm coming."
He holds his hand out and I take it, and we walk through the kitchen and out the front door to the porch where my father and my uncle are already standing in the late-evening sun.
The black F-350 stops in the gravel.
The driver's door opens and my Uncle Roan steps out.
He is the youngest of the Lyle brothers—thirty-eight now, dark hair the same as Pops and Uncle Holt, blue eyes, three days of a beard, a cut with the Lubbock rocker, dust on his boots from the road.
Two of his men get out of the back seat.
He looks at the porch, sees Pops first, then Uncle Holt, and me.
He crosses the gravel in long strides and stops at the bottom of the porch steps. "Brother," he says to Pops.
"Brother," Pops answers.
"Brother," Roan says to Uncle Holt.
"Brother," Uncle Holt answers.
Roan's eyes find me. "Hey there, kiddo."
"Uncle Roan."
He comes up the porch steps two at a time and pulls me into his chest, hard, both arms, the same hug Uncle Holt gave me in the parking lot of the Hampton in Abilene yesterday.
Cedar soap and the road and a man who has driven six hours in a truck to be here for me.
"I'm sorry, baby girl," he says into my hair.
"For what?"
"For bringing him to this family in the first place."
I hold onto him. "It's not your fault, Uncle Roan."
"I know it isn't, Dakota. But I'm sorry anyway."
He pulls back, kisses my forehead, and looks at Pops over my head.
Pops nods once.
Uncle Roan looks at Spur. "Spur."
"Roan."
"My brother says you're running the hunt."
"Yeah, I am."
"Then let me put my men down and wash my face, then you and me and my brothers sit down at the table and tell me what we're doing."
"Sounds good."
Uncle Roan looks at me one more time. His hand cups the back of my head briefly. "Your uncle is here, baby girl."
"I know, Uncle Roan. Thank you for coming."
He walks past me into the main house. Uncle Holt and Pops follow him.
Spur stays on the porch with me for a half-second and pulls me against him. His chin comes down on the top of my head. "Three out of four Lyle brothers in your father's house."
"Yeah."
"That hasn't happened since when, baby?"
"God, it has to be like ten years ago."
"And here we are."
"Here we are."
He kisses my hair. The sun is going down behind the western fence of Sharp. The oaks are throwing long shadows across the yard.
Inside the main house, my father and my uncles are walking to the kitchen table to plan how to put a man named Kane in the ground, and I’m going with them.