I turn back toward the chutes. Merrick's bourbon salute and his dead-eyed smile go in the file with everything else I'm saving for later.
I catch Kenna's eyes in the press section as I pass. She's watching with that intensity she brings to everything, the same focus she brought to arguing strategy last night before the argument turned into something else entirely. Our eyes lock for maybe two seconds, and the heat in that look is enough to undo every rational thought I've built since getting out of bed this morning. She breaks first, dropping her gaze to her notebook, and the small victory of that shouldn't feel as good as it does.
Slade is still at the chutes.
I don't give him the option to walk away this time. I cut straight toward him, pulling off my riding glove as I go. Slade sees me coming and his weight shifts to his back foot, the instinctive rebalancing of a man whose body is deciding between standing ground and leaving. I close the distance before he can choose, planting myself inside his personal space with the casual territorial aggression I've used on every bull rider who ever tried to crowd me at a chute gate.
He doesn't step back. I'll give him that. Most men take a half-step when I get this close, an unconscious concession to thereality that I've got three inches and twenty pounds on them and a reputation for using both. Slade holds his ground, but his shoulders pull back, opening his chest, and the vein in his neck is beating a tempo that's faster than a man at rest.
We stand there for a beat, two big men in a narrow alley behind the chutes, neither willing to yield the space. The air smells like dirt and rosin and the sweat drying on my shirt from the ride, and the sounds of the arena are muffled behind the metal walls.
"Carrick."
"Holloway." His voice is flat and careful.
"You've been watching me all morning. Want to tell me why?"
"I watch a lot of people. Don't read into it."
"Sure." I tuck the glove into my back pocket and study his face. Slade's got hard features that sit close to the bone, with deep-set eyes and a crooked bridge to his nose that says it's been broken more than once. He's built for absorbing impact, and he's using that skill right now.
"I saw you looking at the Thornton pens," he says, his voice quiet and reluctant.
"I look at a lot of pens. Don't read into it."
His mouth thins. The point is taken.
"The new handler," he says. "The kid in the blue cap."
"What about him?"
"He's been working Thornton's stock for about three weeks. Showed up right after the Tucson event." Slade pauses, and the pause costs him visibly. He doesn't want to be having this conversation. Everything about his body says run. "Before that, nobody was doing Vic's old job. Thornton was shorthanded. Now suddenly he's not."
"You keep pretty close tabs on Thornton's staffing for a man who doesn't know anything."
Slade's eyes go flinty. "You want to bust my balls, or you want to listen?"
"I'm listening."
He glances both directions down the alley. Nobody is within earshot. His voice drops lower anyway. "That bull at Las Cruces. The one Grant drew."
Every muscle in my body locks tight.
"What about it."
"That animal didn't move like any bull I've ever seen. And I've been around livestock my whole life." Slade's hands curl into fists at his sides, then deliberately uncurl. "The spin was wrong. It was too fast and too sustained. A normal bull bucks and spins because it's trying to shed the rider. That bull spun to track, like it was targeting. And when Grant came off, the bull didn't disengage. A normal animal moves on once the rider's down. That bull came back."
My teeth are clenched so hard my jaw aches.
"I've wrestled a thousand steers," Slade says. "I know what livestock looks like on stimulants. I know what adrenaline does to an animal and what pharmaceuticals do. That bull was on something. The targeting behavior, the sustained aggression after the dismount, the way it kept circling back. That's chemical."
I take a breath that feels like swallowing sand.
"You pulled him out."
"I pulled him out." Slade's voice goes rough. "I was closest to the fence when Grant went down. I got over the rail before the bullfighters reached him. The bull caught me in the shoulder on the first pass, and then two other guys got in with flags and pushed the animal off." His throat works. "He was already gone by the time the medics got there."
"And you didn't tell anyone what you saw."
