"Grateful. That's new. I should mark the date."
"Don't push it, Holloway."
We climb in, and I pull out of the lot heading south. The road drops through the Rio Grande Valley, the river running low and brown, cottonwoods lining the banks. The land opens wide and flat and uninterrupted, the geography that makes a person feel small in a way that comes closer to relief than threat.
Kenna has her window down and her boots on the dash. The wind fills the cab with the smell of river water and warm earth, and it catches her hair and whips it across her face, and she doesn't bother fighting it. The hem of her jeans rides up above the boot line, showing a strip of tan skin that I have no business finding distracting and find distracting anyway.
She catches me looking. "Eyes on the road, Holloway."
"My eyes are on the road."
"Your eyes were on my leg."
"I can appreciate the whole picture."
"You're a man who's going to put us in a ditch." But her mouth twitches, and she doesn't pull her boots off the dash.
We eat at a roadside place outside Socorro that serves green chili cheeseburgers and coffee strong enough to strip paint. We slide into a vinyl booth with our knees touching under the table.The waitress calls me hon and refills Kenna's coffee without being asked, and the jukebox in the corner is playing something with a steel guitar that nobody is listening to.
"Rainey's deposition wrapped yesterday," Kenna says between bites. "Torres says it was devastating. Photographs, dates, names. Everything Grant and Rainey documented, organized and corroborated. FBI protective detail the whole time, done by video from Colorado."
"Good. She earned that protection."
"She earned more than that." Kenna sets down her burger. "Torres said Rainey was the witness who tied everything together. The photographs of Vic with the animals, the shots of Merrick with Thornton, the financial documents from the safety deposit box, all of it laid out in sequence with dates and locations. Whitfield's team is going to have a very bad day with photographic evidence."
"They'll try to discredit her."
"They'll try. And Rainey will sit there with her quiet voice and her organized files and bury them." She picks up her burger again. "You know what I love about Rainey? She's terrified. She's been terrified since Grant died. And she testified anyway. That's the kind of courage that makes Whitfield's billable hours look cheap."
"Flint?"
"Came forward too. He gave a written statement corroborating the timeline of Grant's investigation and Tyler Brennan's death." She takes a bite, chews, swallows, and the shift in her expression tells me the next part carries weight. "He also provided documentation about his own son. Ten years ago. A suspicious riding accident at a Thornton Livestock event that was ruled accidental. Torres is adding it to the pattern evidence."
A decade. Flint lost his boy ten years ago and sat on that grief while the circuit kept spinning and more riders kept dying. Theguilt of that silence is probably the reason he lives alone with his doors locked and his phone turned off.
Grant told me about it once, late night on the road between events, offhand and quiet, the way Grant told me most things. He said Flint carried something he wouldn't talk about, something heavy enough to bend a man's spine without ever touching his back.
"Grant knew about Flint's son," I say. "Told me once, driving between events. Said Flint carried something he wouldn't talk about."
"Grant was right."
"He usually was." I push my plate back. "There's somewhere I need to go."
"Where?"
"Las Cruces."
She goes quiet, her hands still on the napkin. "Grant's grave."
"Haven't been since the funeral. I need to go."
"Do you want company?"
The question is careful. She's learned that my grief operates on a schedule that doesn't accommodate other people, and the respect she gives that is one of the things I love about her that I haven't said out loud yet.
"Yeah," I say. "I want company."
We leave the diner and drive the rest of the way south in a quiet that doesn't need filling. The landscape shifts from valley farmland to open desert, the road cutting through low hills studded with creosote and yucca. I keep my speed steady and my hands loose on the wheel, and Kenna rests her head against the window and watches the terrain roll past.
