My hands curl at my sides. I force them open. "Tyler Brennan."
"Brennan saw something at the Fort Worth loading dock. A transfer at two in the morning. He started asking questions. Merrick ordered him handled."
"And Grant."
Thornton's face goes grey under the yellow light.
I can hear my own pulse in my ears, and the yard feels smaller, the trailers closer, the shadows deeper. Every instinctI have is screaming that we're exposed, that the overhead light makes us targets, that two men standing in an open lot having this conversation are exactly the kind of opportunity that Merrick's people don't waste.
"Grant found Brennan's notes," Thornton says. "He started digging into the same things Tyler had been asking about. But Grant was smarter—he didn't ask questions. He watched. He figured out they were drugging the bulls at specific events, and he went to Las Cruces to catch it on camera."
Thornton's voice drops to barely a whisper. "The bull was supposed to throw him hard enough to put him in the hospital. That was the order. Enough to scare him, sideline him, buy time. The handler went too far."
The words land in my chest like rounds from a rifle, and the rage that's been sitting behind my ribs all day breaks loose from whatever cage I built for it.
My vision narrows. Every instinct I have says grab this man by the collar and shake the rest of the truth out of him. I keep my hands at my sides and let him talk.
"Went too far," I repeat. My voice sounds like something being dragged across gravel.
"The dose was higher than Merrick specified. I don't know if the handler panicked or if someone in the chain changed the order, but the death wasn't planned. It attracted attention. It was supposed to be an injury."
"My best friend died in the dirt because someone miscalculated a drug dose. And you stood there and watched it happen."
"I wasn't at Las Cruces."
"You were in the room when they planned it."
He doesn't deny it. Can't. The silence between us fills with the sound of the desert wind and the distant hum of the interstateand the specific, grinding weight of a confession that can't be taken back.
His phone rings.
Thornton pulls it out, glances at the screen, and whatever color was left in his face drains so fast I can see it happen in real time, like watching water run out of a glass.
He answers. Listens for three seconds. Hangs up.
"We need to go. Now." The nervous energy is gone. What's left is raw, animal terror, the kind that strips everything else away. "I was followed."
I'm already moving. My thumb finds the text screen.
Grant.
Send.
Headlights appear on the access road. Two sets, moving fast, coming from the direction opposite Kenna's position.
Thornton scrambles toward his truck. I hear Wade's engine turn over on the south side.
The first shot is a sound my brain processes before my ears do—the flat, contained crack of a suppressed round punching through the desert air.
Thornton makes a sound that isn't a word. He drops to his knees in the gravel with one hand pressed to his chest and the other reaching for a truck door that's three feet too far away.
The second shot drops him flat.
I'm in my cab with the engine screaming before the third round spiderwebs my rear window.
Wade's headlights sweep across the yard as he tears out, and I follow the path of his taillights through the gate and onto the access road, driving with one hand and calling Kenna with the other.
"I'm here." Her voice is tight, controlled, every word precise. "I heard the shots. I'm pulling out. Dialing Torres."
