I hold the look. I've been in this exact standoff with sources who've had more to lose and less reason to trust. The trick is patience and the willingness to be measured without flinching.
"I'm retired," he says. "Don't have much to say about the business anymore."
"That's actually what makes your perspective valuable. You've got the long view. You've seen the changes from the inside without being beholden to anyone currently in the game." I keep my voice warm and my posture open. This is journalist mode, the version of me that gets people talking before they realize they've said anything worth hearing. "I won't take more than twenty minutes."
He doesn't answer right away. His eyes drop to my press badge, then to my face, then back to the badge. The shotgun by the door tells me everything about his state of mind.
"You come alone?"
"I've got a driver waiting in the truck." It's not a lie, and it's not the full truth.
He unlatches the screen door and holds it open just wide enough for me to pass.
The inside of Flint's house is dark and close, with curtains blocking every window. The living room smells like coffee left on the burner too long and the dry cedar of a fire that's been out for hours.
Photographs line the walls: rodeo shots from decades past, prize bulls, and competition banners. Newer photos hang among them, including one of a younger man who shares Flint's jaw and the same hard-angled features, wearing a riding vest and a championship buckle.
I don't ask about the photographs. I don't know enough about Flint's personal history to bring it up without revealing how much I've already pieced together from other sources.
We sit at the kitchen table. Flint pours coffee without asking if I want any and slides a chipped mug across the surface. I take it. The coffee is burned and bitter, and I drink it without flinching because that's what you do when a source is measuring whether you're worth their time.
Colt drinks worse coffee than this on the road, and the thought arrives uninvited and I push it aside.
I start with the easy questions about how long he was in the business, what made him get out, how the stock contracting game has changed. Flint answers in short, practical sentences, the way men of his generation answer questions they consider too simple to deserve elaboration. He's the same breed as Colt: tight-lipped, built for endurance, allergic to wasted words. Thedifference is that Flint's walls are built from fear where Colt's are built from fury.
He relaxes by increments. His shoulders drop. He refills his own mug. He tells me about a bull named War Paint that won Stock of the Year in 1998, and the pride in his voice is the first genuine emotion I've heard.
I let him talk. This is the part of my job I'm good at, the listening, the patience, the willingness to let a person arrive at trust in their own time.
Then I steer.
"I've been looking into some irregularities on the current circuit," I say. "Financial discrepancies in prize payouts. Stock contractors whose animals seem to produce an unusual number of injuries at their events." I pause and let the words settle like dust. "A lot of trails lead back to Thornton Livestock."
The shift is instant. Flint's mug stops halfway to his mouth. His posture locks down like a gate slamming shut.
"Don't know much about Thornton's operation," he says. The words are too careful.
"I think you know more than you're comfortable saying." I set my own mug down and meet his gaze. "I'm not here to trap you, Mr. Flint. I'm here because a man named Grant Corbin died in a Las Cruces arena. The circuit called it an accident. I know it wasn't."
Flint goes very still.
"I knew Grant," I continue. "I know he was investigating fraud on the circuit. I know he built a case. And I know he had people helping him, including a photographer named Rainey and a retired stock contractor who cared enough about the sport to risk something." I hold his gaze. "I think I'm sitting across from that stock contractor right now. I have financial data that shows the fraud trail. I'm not a threat to you, Mr. Flint. I'm trying to finish what Grant started."
The silence stretches. The kitchen clock ticks loud enough to sound like a heartbeat.
Flint sets his mug down. He wraps both hands around it and studies the coffee like it's got answers swimming in it.
"You look a little like him," he says, his voice quiet, almost to himself. "Your eyes remind me of him."
The ground drops out from under me.
I keep my face still. I call on years of journalism training, years of sitting across from people who are deciding whether to trust me with something that could change their lives, and I use every second of it now. My hands stay flat on the table. My breathing stays even.
But underneath the professional surface, the grief slams into me so hard I feel it in my teeth. Somebody sees Grant in my face. Somebody besides me looks at these features and finds my brother there.
"I get that sometimes," I say. "People say I have one of those faces."
Flint watches me. He doesn't push it. But the look in his eyes says he's filed the observation away in a place where he keeps the things he's too smart to say aloud.
