"It's never the time. That's convenient."
Headlights sweep across the office windows.
Colt is on his feet before the light passes. He kills the flashlight, and the office drops into darkness.
Through the window, I can see a truck pulling into the gravel lot. There are two vehicles, actually. The lead truck parks by the barn, and doors open. Voices carry across the gravel, too far to make out words.
Then the second truck parks closer to the office, and Dale Thornton climbs out.
I recognize him from the circuit programs: he has a stocky build, a salt-and-pepper beard, and the Thornton Livestock logo on his jacket. He pulls a phone to his ear, and his voice is audible through the thin prefab walls.
"...journalist is asking too many questions. Same one who's at the Albuquerque event." There is a pause. "No, I don't have a name yet. McEnroe, maybe. Freelance credentials. She's been talking to riders, pulling financial records." Another pause follows, this one longer. "I understand. I'll take care of it."
Thornton is talking about me.
The casual phrasing, "take care of it," carries the same weight as "handled" in the ledger. It's the same administrative language for ending a person's life that these men use for scheduling livestock transport.
Colt's hand closes around my wrist. The grip isn't gentle. It's a command transmitted through pressure.
He's already moving toward the back of the office, toward the window on the far wall.
The window is small, a utility-sized ventilation opening hinged at the top. Colt pops the latch and pushes it open, and the night air rushes in smelling of sage and cooling desert.
"Go," he says. His voice is barely a breath.
I go through the window shoulder-first, catching myself on the exterior wall as I drop to the ground. The landing is graceless and loud enough to make me wince.
Colt follows, his larger frame barely clearing the frame. He reaches back and pulls the window shut behind him, and we press flat against the building's exterior wall.
Dale Thornton is still talking, just on the other side of the wall, wrapping up his phone call with whoever ordered him to take care of me.
We move along the back of the office building, around the far side of the barn, and across the open ground between the barn and the tree line. My boots crunch on dry grass, and every footstep sounds like a gunshot in the silence.
We're close to the truck when a shout goes up behind us.
Someone has spotted us moving across the open ground, or maybe someone heard boots on dry grass in a place where nobody should be walking. The shout becomes two voices, then the slam of a truck door, then the spit of gravel under tires.
Colt yanks the truck door open. "Get in."
The engine roars to life, and we tear down the access road without headlights. Colt navigates by starlight and instinct, andthe truck bounces over ruts and washboard gravel at speeds that would be reckless in daylight.
Behind us, headlights appear at the ranch entrance.
"They're following," I say. My voice comes out calmer than the rest of me.
My hands are shaking against my thighs, and my pulse is a jackhammer in my throat.
"I see them."
Colt hits the county road and cranks the wheel hard right. The tires scream on asphalt and the truck fishtails, the back end swinging wide enough that I grab the dash with both hands to keep from slamming into the door. He corrects without braking, feeds the skid into acceleration, and the speedometer climbs past seventy before I take my next breath.
He drives the way he rides: all instinct and controlled recklessness. The narrow road unspools in front of us, and the dotted center line strobes under the headlights he's finally turned on. Eighty. Ninety. The truck shudders over a rough patch, and my teeth click together.
Behind us, the pursuing headlights swing onto the county road.
They're closing. The gap between their headlights and our tailgate is shrinking, and I can hear the whine of their engine even over ours. Colt's eyes flick to the rearview, then back to the road, then to the rearview again. His jaw is set, his hands steady on the wheel, and he looks like a man who's been chased before and knows how it ends.
"Hold on," he says, and cuts the wheel left onto a side road with no warning.
