Slade meets my eyes for the first time. "Who was I going to tell? I've got a manslaughter conviction and a parole situation that means any involvement in a legal investigation puts me back in a cell. I tell the cops, and I'm a convicted felon saying a bull looked wrong. You know how that plays. You tried the direct approach yourself, and they wrote you off as unstable."
He's right. I hate that he's right.
"You can't sit on this, Slade."
"I'm not sitting on it. I'm standing here telling you, and that's all I've got." He pushes off the fence, and the conversation is over in his body language before his mouth catches up. "I'm not putting any of this on record. I can't. But you should know the truth, because somebody other than me should."
He walks away. I let him go.
I stand in the alley behind the chutes and let it sink in. For months, I've been the only person on this circuit who believed Grant was murdered. I've been the man with the conspiracy theories, the grief-addled bull rider who can't accept that his best friend died in an accident, the cautionary tale other riders use to remind themselves that the sport breaks people in more ways than the body. And now Slade Carrick, a man with every reason in the world to stay silent, just confirmed what I've been saying since the night I drove to Las Cruces and arrived too late.
The bull was drugged. The death was engineered. Grant's murder was real, and somebody besides me is willing to say it, even if he'll only say it in an alley where nobody can hear.
The validation should feel like relief. Instead it feels like the grief has been given teeth. Before, I had suspicion and rage. Now I have corroboration, and corroboration means the rage has somewhere to go. And the somewhere is a man named Hayes Merrick sitting in a VIP section at this very arena, watching the event with a drink in his hand and a smile on his face like the world is exactly the way he wants it.
I push off the fence and walk toward the arena. My hands are steady. The coal in my gut is burning hotter than it has in weeks, and for the first time since Grant's funeral, the fire feels less like it's consuming me and more like it's fueling something that might actually work.
The rest of the day passes in the blur of arena noise and livestock dust that I've lived inside for half my life. I ride the performance, collect my check, and make the rounds. Through all of it, two things burn in the back of my skull: Slade's confirmation, and the memory of Kenna's skin under my hands.
I find her in the stands after the evening performance, sitting in the press section with her notebook open and her pen still. She's watching the arena, but her eyes are somewhere else. When she spots me coming up the stairs, something flickers across her face, fast and complicated, before she smooths it into the professional expression she wears like body armor.
We don't talk about last night. Not here, not with press badges and riders and Merrick's people scattered across the venue.
"I learned something," I say, dropping into the seat beside her. I sit close enough that our shoulders touch, and the contact sends a current up my arm that I don't bother pretending I don't feel. She doesn't pull away.
"So did I."
She tells me about a pattern she found in the competition records. Three riders in the past two seasons sustained career-ending injuries at events where Thornton supplied stock. All three were ranked in the top ten. All three were replaced in the standings by riders who'd previously been mid-pack competitors with no obvious trajectory change, and all three of those replacement riders collected disproportionately large payouts at subsequent Thornton events. She's been pulling the numbers allday, cross-referencing entry fees and payout records through her press credentials.
"That's not coincidence," she says. "That's selection. Someone is clearing spots in the rankings and filling them with riders who benefit."
The woman is sharper than a good knife, and twice as dangerous. I should be focused on the data she's handing me. Instead I'm watching the way her mouth moves when she's working through a problem, and remembering what that mouth did against my neck before she started crunching numbers.
"You're staring," she says, without looking up from the spreadsheet.
"I'm listening."
"You're listening with your eyes on my mouth. That's staring." She flips the notebook closed and finally meets my gaze. "Save it for the motel. I'm working."
"I can work and appreciate the view. I'm capable of both."
"Since when?"
"Since the view got this good."
She opens her mouth. Closes it. A flush climbs her neck that has nothing to do with the temperature in this arena. She grabs the notebook and buries her face in the spreadsheet.
I let the quiet hold because winning a round against Kenna is rare enough to savor.
I tell her about the new handler and about Slade. I leave out the specifics of what Slade said about Grant's last seconds, because my throat closes every time I try to form the words. I give her the confirmation instead: an eyewitness to the drugged bull, a man who knows the truth, another door that won't quite open.
"He won't go on record," I say.
"He doesn't have to. Not yet. He corroborates the theory, and corroboration builds a case even without testimony." She'sthinking out loud, the journalist brain working behind those eyes. They remind me of someone, the way they narrow when she's calculating, and the recognition scrapes across the back of my mind and vanishes before I can hold it.
She pauses and glances sideways at me. "Your ride today was different."
"Different how?"
