Her social media accounts went dark weeks ago. A photography portfolio website that hasn't been updated since March. A LinkedIn profile listing her as a freelance sports and livestock photographer based in New Mexico. No current contact information. No forwarding address.
She disappeared deliberately. Someone helped her go to ground, which means someone cared enough to protect her. Some retired stock contractor, according to circuit gossip.
I try searching for retired stock contractors on the Southwest Circuit, but without a name it's a needle in a haystack the size of the whole Southwest.
The one person who might know more about the retired stock contractor, about Rainey, about the entire apparatus Grant built to expose this conspiracy, is the one person I've been warned away from by every survival instinct I possess.
Colt Holloway.
He knows more than he told me. At the bar, he hinted at someone above Thornton and then pulled back. He's sitting on more than he told me, and he's got no reason to share it with a journalist he just met.
He's been investigating on his own for two months. If Grant confided in anyone on this circuit besides Rainey, it was Colt.
But Colt's investigation has stalled. I could see it in the bar last night, the frustration behind the bravado, the exhaustion of a man who's been beating his head against the same walls for weeks. He's running out of leads and running out of patience, and the recklessness I watched him bring to that bull ride tells me he's running out of reasons to be careful with his own life.
A man like that is dangerous to work with. He's also dangerous to leave alone.
I need what he knows. He needs what I've found. Or at least I hope he does.
The financial records I pulled from the circuit's public database show a clear pattern of discrepancies at Thornton Livestock events. A bull rider wouldn't have press credentials to access the financial portal, which means this might be something I can bring to the table that he can't get on his own.
The math is simple. Separately, we're both stuck. Together, we might have enough pieces to see the whole picture.
The math is also terrifying, because together means lying to Colt's face every single day.
It means standing next to a man who loved my brother, who carries my brother's death like a wound he keeps reopening, and letting him believe I'm a stranger.
It means falling asleep every night knowing that if he finds out who I am, whatever fragile alliance we build will shatter. And the investigation, the one Grant died for, will shatter with it.
I start the car.
I can do this. I've been lying since the day I walked onto this circuit. One more lie, one more layer, one more person who thinks Kenna McEnroe is a real person with a real press badge and a real reason to be here.
The difference is that this time, the person I'm lying to has a grief that mirrors mine. And when he closed the distance at the bar last night, when his voice dropped low enough that I could feel it in my sternum, my body responded in ways that have nothing to do with the investigation and everything to do with the kind of trouble I can't afford.
That's the part I need to lock down. Tight. Permanently.
I start the car but don't pull out. The event starts at four. Colt will be here.
Tonight, I'll find Colt and offer him a trade: my financial data for his intelligence, my fresh eyes for his circuit connections, my cover for his credibility.
It's the smart play. The strategic play. The play Grant would have made.
I keep both hands on the wheel and stare through the windshield at the rodeo grounds, and the memory of Colt's voice in the dark behind the chutes sits in the passenger seat like something I can't shake.
4
COLT
I'm at the stock pens before dawn, hours before the Saturday afternoon load-in, because Thornton Livestock runs its operation in the early morning when the arena is empty and the only eyes around belong to men on the payroll.
I park my truck at the far end of the competitor lot and walk the fence line, staying behind the livestock trailers where the shadows are deep. The pens are half-full from last night's transport, loaded with bulls, broncs, and a handful of steers for the roping events. The Thornton trucks are parked nose to tail against the back fence, engines off, cabs dark.
One handler is working the pens. He's stocky, somewhere in his forties, wearing a faded Thornton Livestock cap pulled low. He moves through the animals with the mechanical efficiency of a man who's done this job a thousand times and stopped caring about it nine hundred and fifty times ago. He checks water troughs, throws flakes of hay, runs his hand along flanks and shoulders. Everything about the routine looks routine.
I watch him for a while.
He doesn't touch any syringes. He doesn't reach into his pockets for anything that doesn't belong. He doesn't do a singlething that would look wrong to anyone except a man who's been staring at Thornton employees long enough to know what wrong looks like.
