I take a drink. Consider how much to tell a woman I just met who may or may not be who she says she is.
"Prize money," I say. "Rider registrations. The way certain stock draws keep landing certain riders on certain bulls at certain events. There's a pattern, if you know where to look."
"And you know where to look."
"I know where to start. Starting and finishing are different animals." I rotate my glass on the bar, leaving wet rings on the scarred wood. "I've been at this for two months. Every lead goes cold. Every person who knows something either vanished or shut their mouth."
"People don't vanish," she says.
"On this circuit they do."
The words settle between us like a stone dropping into still water. Down the bar, Jolene is wiping glasses with a rag, watching us with the careful attention of a woman who's seen enough cowboys self-destruct to recognize the signs. I catch her eye and she looks away. Professional courtesy. She won't ask, and I won't tell, and tomorrow she'll pour me another whiskey and we'll pretend tonight didn't happen.
Kenna goes quiet. She peels the label on her beer with her thumbnail in a methodical strip, top to bottom.
The gesture is precise, controlled, the kind of thing you do when your hands need something to hold onto. I file it away with everything else I've noticed about her, the clenched fists, the steady voice that costs her effort, the anger that runs deeper than curiosity.
"What if I could help?" she asks.
"You can't."
"You don't know that."
"I know that the last person who helped is dead." I say it flat, no inflection, because the truth doesn't need decoration. "And the person before him is dead too. So forgive me if I'm not recruiting."
She holds my gaze. Doesn't blink.
"Grant Corbin and Tyler Brennan tried to expose this from inside the circuit," she says. "They were riders. Known quantities. Easy to target. I'm a journalist. Nobody on this circuitknows me. Nobody's watching me. I can ask questions they couldn't."
"You think nobody's watching." I lean toward her, close enough that her shampoo overrides the spilled beer and old leather.
"The people running this operation have eyes everywhere. Stock contractors, handlers, officials. You don't know who's bought and who isn't. You walk into the wrong conversation with the wrong question, and you end up like Tyler and Grant."
"Then tell me who to avoid. Give me a map of the landmines. You've been walking this circuit for months—who's bought, who's scared, who's pretending they don't see it? I can't ask the right questions if I don't know which doors are locked and which ones are booby-trapped."
"I'll tell you this." I drain my whiskey. "Thornton Livestock doesn't operate alone. The stock draws, the prize money, the way investigations get shut down before they start. That takes pull. Influence. Someone higher up the food chain than a stock contractor."
"Who?"
"That's the question, isn't it." I set my glass down and hold her gaze. "You want your feature piece? Start pulling on the money. Follow the prize purse payouts at every Thornton event. Cross-reference them with the official circuit financials. If the numbers don't match, you'll see the same thing Grant saw."
"And if I find something?"
"Bring it to me. Something real. Names. Numbers. Documents. Then we'll talk."
"And if I do, you'll tell me the rest?"
"I'll decide whether you're worth the risk."
She doesn't react to that. She watches me with those eyes, calculating, and I can practically see the gears turning behind her face as she maps out her next move.
The jukebox switches from Waylon to Merle, and somebody at the pool table sinks a shot and lets out a whoop, and the bar goes on being a bar while two people at the end of it negotiate with something that isn't money.
"Fair enough," she says.
I stand and drop a twenty on the bar.
"One more thing," I say, and she looks up. "You asked why I'm willing to say Grant's name and call it murder when nobody else will. I already told you he was the best man I ever knew. What I didn't tell you is that he called me the night before he died, told me what he'd found, and I told him not to ride until I got there. My truck broke down on the way. By the time I got to Las Cruces, the arena was cleared and Grant was gone. This is the only thing keeping me upright."
