“I hope you rot in hell,” Hud said. Then he nodded for the deputy to take him.
“Wait.” White’s voice came out smaller than before. “I’ll talk. I want a deal.”
“I told you. No deal. Not with an agent fighting for his life because of you.”
White was silent for a moment, then he sighed, sat down and talked. All of it. How he’d brought Whittingham in, how the money had looked easy, how each man had told himself it was just business. The exact location of the burned Peterbilt trucks, along with the tires.
Hud’s jaw tightened. “You stole livestock from ranchers whose entire livelihood depends on those animals. You think that’s just business?”
White said nothing.
Hud looked at the deputy. “Get him out of here. Let him sit until his lawyer shows up.”
He picked up the recorder, walked out of the conference room and out of the building.
It was over.
****
Blair was on her second cup of coffee when she heard his truck pull into the driveway. She looked at the clock. Later than she’d expected but not so late that she’d been worried. Much. He had told her when he got back to Clifton that it would be a few days before he could see her and she’d heard the hesitation in his voice, the worry that she’d be angry. She wasn’t. It was his job and he had to finish it before anything else. She understood that now.
She met him at the door. He looked tired, the kind that went deeper than just a long day, but there was something settled in his expression that hadn’t been there before he left.
“You got them,” she said.
“All of them.” He stepped inside and she closed the door behind him. He hung his hat on the rack and leaned back against the wall and just looked at her for a moment.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He reached out and pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on top of her head. She felt him exhale slowly, like he’d been holding it in all day. “I am now.”
She slid her arms around his waist and held on.
“Hungry?” she asked after a while.
“Starving.”
“I made soup. It’s still warm.”
She felt him smile against her hair. “Of course you did.”
She pulled back and looked at him. “What does that mean?”
“It means you take care of people.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It means I’m a lucky man.”
She held his gaze for a moment, then turnedtoward the kitchen. “Come on. Sit down and eat.”
He sat at the kitchen table, and she set a bowl in front of him along with a thick slice of bread from the loaf she’d picked up at Sweet Nothings that morning. He looked at it and then at her.
“You’ve been busy.”
“I had a long day waiting to hear from you. Keeping busy helped.”
He picked up the spoon and ate without talking for a while and she let him. She’d learned that about him already. He needed quiet to decompress after a hard day, to let the work settle before he could put it down. She understood that. She was the same way.
“Whittingham talked,” he said finally. “So did his wife. We have everything we need.”
“Good.” She watched him. “And White?”
