I plan to survive this. The ride is the evidence. The camera catches the drugged bull's behavior, Torres moves on the case, and I walk out of the arena to call Rainey myself. That's the plan. But plans and two-thousand-pound drugged animals don't always coexist peacefully, and I've been around long enough to know the difference between confidence and delusion.
I text back:
If something goes wrong, tell Rainey I wasn't wrong about her.
Then I pull on my glove, grab my rope, and head for the chutes.
The walk from the locker area to chute four takes maybe thirty seconds. Long enough to hear the crowd noise swell as the previous rider gets thrown at six seconds. Long enough to smell the dust and manure and fried food and sweat that is the specific perfume of every rodeo I've ever competed in. Long enough to feel the rosin on my glove go tacky against my palm as I work my fingers, loosening the joints, getting the blood moving.
Tombstone's Revenge is already loaded when I reach the chute, and the first thing I notice is wrong. The bull beneath me is trembling, and bulls don't tremble. Whatever they pumpedinto his bloodstream forty minutes ago is taking effect. His muscles are twitching under his hide, involuntary spasms that ripple from shoulder to flank. His breathing is wrong, too fast, too shallow, nostrils flaring with each exhale. The whites of his eyes are showing, and when I settle onto his back, I can feel the difference in his body temperature. He's running hot. Dangerously hot.
A healthy bull in the chute is aggressive and contained. Controlled power, directed fury. This bull is a bomb with a lit fuse, and the moment that gate opens, he's going to detonate.
I wrap my hand into the rope. Once around, twice, pound the wrap flat. The rosin grips, tacky and secure. My left hand finds the rail, balances my weight. Tombstone's Revenge slams against the chute panels, and the metal screams.
The chute worker looks at me. "You sure about this one, Corbin? He's fired up."
"Open the gate."
"Grant—"
"Open the goddamn gate."
He does.
Tombstone's Revenge doesn't explode out of the chute. He launches. Vertical, spinning, a whirlwind of drugged muscle and chemically amplified aggression that bears no resemblance to a normal bucking pattern. My head snaps back, and the arena lights become streaks. One second. The bull drops his front end and kicks so hard his back hooves clear five feet off the ground. Two seconds. He reverses his spin with a violence that tears at my shoulder socket, and I feel something in my riding arm give way, a pop of tendon or ligament, followed by white-hot pain that races from my elbow to my fingertips.
Three seconds.
The bull sunfishes, torquing his body in a corkscrew that no animal moves through naturally. This is the drug. This is whatthey did to Hellfire's Revenge the night Tyler died. Amplified aggression, destroyed the animal's natural movement pattern, turned a predictable buck into chaos.
Four seconds. Halfway to the buzzer. My hand is going numb inside the rope wrap, and my riding arm is failing. Every counter-move I make is a half-beat late because the bull isn't following any pattern I can read.
Five seconds.
Tombstone's Revenge stops spinning and charges the arena wall. Full speed, head down, two thousand pounds of animal aimed at the steel panels like a battering ram. I bail. No choice. Throw my free leg over and jump, hitting the dirt hard on my left side, rolling as the bull slams into the wall with a sound that shakes the ground.
I'm up. On my feet. Moving toward the fence.
The bullfighters should be here. Red and yellow, drawing the bull away, giving me time to clear the arena. That's their job. That's the system.
The bullfighters aren't moving.
They're standing at the edge of the arena, positioned wrong, too far from the bull, too far from me. One of them glances toward the VIP section. Just a flicker, a fraction of a second, but I see it.
Paid off. Just like Vic said.
Tombstone's Revenge recovers from the wall impact and turns. His eyes find me. Not the random scanning of an agitated animal looking for movement. Focused. Locked on. The drug has turned his instinct from escape to attack, from bucking off a rider to destroying one.
He charges.
I run for the fence. Twenty yards. Fifteen. My knee buckles on the third stride, the old injury choosing the worst possiblemoment to remind me that bodies have limits. I stumble, catch myself, keep moving.
Ten yards.
The ground shakes with his hoofbeats. I can hear his breathing behind me, the wet, heavy snorts of an animal that's been chemically rewired to kill.
Five yards.
