At night, the adjoining door stays open now. Not closed. Not unlocked. Open. Neither of us comments on the change.
My phone rings late on a weeknight, and the number on the screen is the one I've been dodging for weeks.
Dax.
I glance at the connecting door. Colt is in the shower. I can hear the water running.
I answer.
"Before you say anything," Dax says, "I know where you are. I know what you're doing. And I know who you're doing it with."
My stomach drops. "Dax?—"
"I'm not finished." His voice is ice over gravel, the cold fury that Dax wears the way other people wear aftershave. "You went onto the Southwest Circuit. Under Mom's maiden name. With fake press credentials. And you didn't tell me."
"How did you?—"
"I called your landlord when you stopped answering my texts. She told me you'd broken your lease and left Austin. Took me a few days to track you to a rodeo grounds in New Mexico. After that, a press credential search with McEnroe turned up the rest." His voice goes flatter. "Mom's maiden name, Kenna. You really thought I wouldn't figure that out?"
"I couldn't tell you."
"Bullshit. You didn't trust me."
"I didn't trust you to let me do it."
The silence on the line is the kind that has claws.
"Grant is dead, Kenna. Our brother is dead…”
“You think I don’t know that?”
Ignoring me, he continues, “And you decide to walk into the same operation that killed him, alone, without telling the one person on this planet who would have burned the whole thing down to keep you safe."
"That's exactly why I didn't tell you. You would have shown up and blown my cover in the first five minutes."
"I would have—" He stops. Breathes. The control it takes him to stop mid-sentence tells me he's been rehearsing this call for days and I just knocked him off his script. "You're not wrong. I would have made a scene. I would have made several scenes. And Grant's killer would still be walking around free because I don't have the patience for the kind of long game you're running."
"Then you understand."
"I understand and I'm still furious." A beat. "Holloway. You're with Holloway."
"I'm working with Holloway."
"That's not what the circuit gossip says."
"Since when do you listen to circuit gossip?"
"Since Quinn Gallagher called me saying he’d heard rumors about the article and told me everything, including the part where Grant's little sister is sharing a motel room with Grant's best friend."
"It's complicated."
"Kenna."
"Yes. It's serious."
Another silence. Longer. I can hear him processing the information with the same intensity he brings to a bareback draw, calculating the angles, measuring the risks.
"If he hurts you, I'll kill him. That's not a figure of speech."
