Colt is exactly where I left him, his driver's seat reclined two inches and his hat pulled over his face. He looks for all the world like a man catching a nap.
I know better. His body is coiled tight beneath the casual posture, every muscle primed. He was awake the whole time, watching the house through the gap under his hat brim, ready to come through the door if I didn't walk out.
I climb into the passenger seat and close the door, and the truck cab holds nothing but his cologne and my heartbeat. He pushes his hat up, and those steady, unreadable eyes find mine.
"Flint confirmed the FBI connection," I say. "Torres, Albuquerque field office, public corruption. He says she's been waiting for someone to bring her a case she can actually prosecute."
His jaw tightens. "I've called Torres. Multiple times. She won't return my calls."
"Because you're a bull rider with no evidence and a reputation for making accusations at public events. Flint says she needs something solid. We bring her what Rainey has, and she moves."
He takes that in. I watch him process the shift, the difference between a door that's locked and a door that's locked until you bring the right key.
"Rainey has everything. She has photos, financials, and copies of all of Grant's evidence. We find her and get the evidence to Torres, and the FBI has a case."
"Where do we start looking for Rainey?"
"Flint doesn't know where she went. She called him once, about six weeks ago from a blocked number. She said she was safe, said she was scared, said she'd come forward when someone could guarantee her safety." I pull out my notebook. "But we've got my journalism contacts. A photographer who abruptly left the circuit and closed all her social media leaves a trail. We just have to find it."
He starts the truck. The engine catches and settles into its diesel rumble, and the ranch shrinks in the rearview mirror as we pull down the dirt road toward the highway.
"The handler at the Albuquerque pens," I say. "The new kid. I was going to approach him tomorrow."
"No."
"He's jumpy and scared. That's exactly the profile of someone who'll talk if you offer them a way out."
"He's jumpy and scared because the last handler who talked to someone is in the wind. You walk up to that kid with your press badge and your questions, and one of two things happens. He runs, and Merrick knows we're closer than he thinks. Or he talks, and Merrick finds out he talked, and he ends up like Vic."
"Or he gives us the drugging protocol and we have a direct witness to the operation."
"You're not going near him."
"That's not your decision."
"It is when your safety is the variable."
"My safety is always the variable. I walked onto this circuit knowing that. You don't get to use my safety to veto every lead that makes you uncomfortable."
He doesn't answer. His hands adjust on the wheel, and neither of us speaks for the next forty miles.
He's wrong about the handler. I'm almost sure of it. The kid is ripe to turn. But Colt can't see past the math that says approaching him puts me in Merrick's crosshairs, and I can't reach the handler without Colt knowing, and the lead dies in the gap between what he's willing to risk and what I'm willing to risk.
It's the first time his protectiveness has cost us something concrete. It won't be the last.
Somewhere past Santa Fe, he turns the radio on. Country station, low volume. He's never played music in this truck. The gesture is so un-Colt that it takes me a second to read it — not an apology, not a concession. Just a man who knows the silence has gone on long enough and doesn't have the words to end it any other way.
I let the music fill the cab and stop replaying the argument.
His hand drops from the gear shift to my thigh, a brief, firm squeeze, and then returns to the wheel. The gesture is so casual and so possessive that my breath catches before I can stop it.
"Flint recognized something," I say, because the truth of it is sitting behind my sternum like a splinter, and if I don't say something, it'll work itself deeper.
"Recognized what?"
"He said I look like Grant. Around the eyes."
Colt's hands go still on the wheel. Then they resume, the movement deliberate and controlled.
