"I slept enough," he says. "We should go."
He's right. The key is warm from my pocket where it's been sitting since Rainey handed it over, and every hour it stays out of that safety deposit box is an hour Merrick's lawyers could use to make everything disappear.
The drive to the bank is short and charged.
Colt drives the way he always drives, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his thigh, and I watch the tendons in his forearm shift when he turns and remind myself that I have a federal case to build and a dead brother to avenge and absolutely no business thinking about what those hands felt like on my hips in the dark.
He circles the block twice before parking, checking sight lines and exit routes. "You think Merrick has people watching every bank in Albuquerque?" I ask.
"I think Merrick has people watching everything. I also think I'm probably being paranoid, and I don't care."
"Fair enough."
The moment the doors open, I walk into the bank alone. Colt stays in the truck, positioned where he can see the entrance and the side exit, his phone in his hand and his body angled toward the building with the coiled stillness of a man who will cross that parking lot in seconds if anything goes wrong.
The safety deposit box is in the vault. The teller takes my key, matches it with the bank's second key, and leads me to a private viewing room. She leaves me alone with the box, and I lift the lid.
Inside, stacked with the meticulous organization of a man who knew exactly what he was building and who would need to find it, is Grant's entire case.
Photographs first. Dozens of them, printed on glossy stock and organized by date. Vic Sutton crouching beside a pen at the Fort Worth event, a syringe visible in his right hand. Vic drawing liquid from a small vial while a Thornton Livestock handler watches from a few yards away. Hayes Merrick shaking handswith Dale Thornton at the VIP entrance to the Santa Fe arena, both men smiling for the camera, neither aware they were being photographed.
Financial documents next. Bank records, corporate filings, spreadsheets tracking prize money distributions against actual payouts. Shell company registrations in Nevada and Texas. Wire transfer records from Rusty Spur Capital Partners to Thornton Livestock to a series of numbered accounts.
Then the text message screenshots. Printed on plain paper, timestamped, between a number identified as Thornton and an unknown contact. The messages use code that is barely coded at all:"The gray needs handling at the Tucson draw.""Make sure the one in chute 4 runs hot.""Problem rider in the 12 slot. Take care of it."
One message, dated days before Las Cruces, reads:"Corbin won't stop. Handle it."
I sit in the viewing room and hold that piece of paper in both hands, and the clinical distance I've been maintaining cracks down the center.
Handle it.Two words that authorized my brother's murder. Written in a text message between two men who treated Grant's life as an operational inconvenience, a problem rider in the wrong slot, a line item to be managed and closed.
My vision blurs. I blink hard, twice, and the paper comes back into focus. I want to fold it into a small, sharp point and drive it through Hayes Merrick's eye.
Instead, I photograph everything before I disturb it. Every page. Every print. Every document. I need a complete digital record of exactly how the contents were stored in case anything happens to the originals once they leave the vault.
When I finish, I close the safe-deposit box, putting it back before locking it away. Then I walk out of the bank carrying the originals in a plain canvas bank bag the teller providedwhen I explained I needed a secure way to transport sensitive documents.
Colt is exactly where I left him. I climb into the truck and set the bag between us, and the weight of it fills the cab like another passenger.
"All of it?" he asks.
"All of it. Photos of Vic with the animals. Photos of Merrick with Thornton. Financials, shell company records, wire transfers. Text messages between Thornton and an unknown number ordering specific riders to be targeted."
I pull out the text message printout and hand it to him.
He reads it. His face goes blank, the way a face goes when the emotion behind it is too large for features to contain. His hands hold the paper steady, but the tendons in his forearms are pulled taut enough to cast shadows.
I've watched those hands wrap a bull rope and steady a spooked horse and cradle my jaw in the dark. Right now they look like they want to tear something apart at the molecular level.
"Handle it," he reads aloud. "Days before Las Cruces."
"That's a murder order, Colt. Written in a text message. Timestamped. If we can identify the unknown number, it's a direct link between the order and the execution."
He folds the paper carefully and hands it back. His knuckles are white. The controlled precision of the fold, the way he makes each crease exact when what he wants to do is crumple the paper and drive to Merrick's house and feed it to him, tells me everything about the war happening behind his face.
"Torres," he says. "Now."
I call Torres from the truck. She picks up on the second ring, which surprises me, because Colt has been calling this womanfor weeks and she hasn't returned a single message. When I identify myself as Kenna, Grant Corbin's sister, and tell her I have the evidence package assembled by Rainey Weathers, the silence on the other end lasts a beat too long.
