"And the FBI?"
"Grant had an agent. Torres, out of the Albuquerque field office. She won't return my calls, which tells me she's either got nothing she can act on or she's been told to stand down. Either way, nobody's coming to save us."
"So hand her a case."
"With what?" I hear the frustration in my own voice, sharp and raw. "Vic is gone. Rainey is gone. Flint won't talk. The phone was wiped. Every piece of evidence Grant built has either vanished or is locked behind people who are too scared to comeforward. I've got suspicion, motive, and a pattern. That's not a case. That's a theory."
"You've got a theory." She holds up the manila folder. "I've got documentation. Together, that's more than either of us has alone."
The night settles around us. I can hear the crew hauling equipment out of the arena, a horse whinnying from the competitor trailers, the low hum of the highway beyond the parking lot.
I make a decision. It's probably going to bite me in the ass. Every decision since Grant died has bitten me in the ass, so at least I'm consistent.
"You're in," I say. "My rules. My timeline. You step out of line; I cut you loose."
"Fine."
"And Kenna." I wait until she looks at me. "If I find out you're lying to me about who you are or why you're really here, there won't be a conversation about it. I'll just be gone."
The moonlight catches her eyes, and for a fraction of a second I see something flicker behind the professional mask. Fear and guilt, the particular kind that comes from hearing a warning that hits too close to a truth you're already keeping.
Then it's gone.
"I'm not lying to you," she says.
She agrees. We share what we have. I give her the broad strokes: Merrick, Thornton Livestock, Vic, the drugged bulls. Kenna gives me the financial data she's pulled from public circuit records, along with what she learned from a source who knew Grant: he had a girlfriend named Rainey, a photographer who was always around the stock pens with her camera, and some retired stock contractor drove Rainey out of Las Cruces after Grant's death.
"That retired stock contractor is Flint," I say. "I know him. I've been out to his ranch twice trying to get him to talk. He won't."
"And Rainey?"
"I've been looking for her since Grant died. Dead end after dead end. If Flint knows where she went, he's not telling me."
"Maybe he'll talk to someone he's never met."
"Don't bet on it."
We stand in a parking lot under a West Texas sky with a manila folder full of numbers between us like a contract neither of us has signed. She's close enough that I can smell her—a scent that has no business being in a rodeo parking lot, and the pull of it cuts right through the tension. I'm not stupid enough to pretend the attraction isn't there. I'm just not sure which of the two is going to get one of us killed first.
The way she looks at me, direct and unflinching and with a heat she's trying to keep locked down, tells me she's running the same math and coming up with the same bad answer.
I know that Grant would tell me I'm an idiot for trusting a stranger. I also know that Grant trusted a lot of people, and the one time it mattered most, he didn't trust me enough to wait.
"Circuit moves to Albuquerque next," I say. "Why don't you ride with me. We'll work the case on the road."
She nods. She picks up her laptop bag and walks toward her rental car with that coiled, purposeful stride.
"Kenna."
She turns.
"Bring everything you have."
She gives me a look that lands somewhere between a challenge and a promise, and the dark swallows her up.
I stand there for a while after she's gone, leaning against the tailgate with the folder in my hands, reading her handwriting in the margins of financial documents by the light of my phone.Her analysis is meticulous and precise, not the work of a journalist chasing a byline but the work of someone who needs the answers as badly as I do. I close the folder and get in the truck.
Grant, you stubborn son of a bitch. If you're watching this, I hope you're entertained. Because your case and this woman are both going to make my life significantly more complicated.
