Her left hand rests on the center console between us, palm up, and I cover it with mine without taking my eyes off the road. Her fingers curl around my knuckles and hold. By the time LasCruces appears on the horizon, the afternoon light has gone gold and neither of us has let go.
The cemetery sits on a hill east of town, overlooking the mountains. The afternoon throws long shadows across the headstones, and the desert scrub is close to beautiful in this particular gold. A groundskeeper's truck is parked near the entrance, but the rest of the hill is empty. Nothing but stones and wind and the mountains holding the skyline.
Grant's plot is at the end of a row. The stone is simple granite, bearing his name, his dates, and a single line:He rode with everything he had.
I stand in front of it with my hat in my hand and the wind pulling at my shirt, and for a long time I don't say anything. Kenna stands beside me, her fingers laced through mine, steady and quiet. She doesn't try to fill the silence. She just holds on.
"Hey, buddy."
My voice sounds wrong out here, too rough and too alive for a place built around the permanent silence of the dead.
"We got him. Merrick. FBI arrested him at the South Point Arena, in front of cameras and sponsors and every rider on the circuit. Cuffs and the whole thing. Torres built a case so tight his lawyers can't breathe, and every piece of evidence you gathered is the backbone of the prosecution."
The wind shifts. A hawk circles overhead, patient and unhurried, riding the thermals above the ridge.
"Thornton's dead. Tried to flip and got killed for it. Before he died, he told me about the smuggling corridor. The livestock transports. What was riding in those trailers. You were closer to a much bigger truth than any of us knew. You paid for it with your life, and I'm going to carry that until I stop breathing."
I kneel in the dirt. The granite is warm under my hand, sun-soaked, holding heat the way desert stone does long after the light moves on.
"Rainey came through. She testified yesterday, everything you two built together. She's safe. Flint came forward too. Told the FBI about his son, the accident at the Thornton event ten years ago. You knew about that. You told me he carried something, and you were right, and now it's part of the case. Every thread you pulled is holding."
I run my thumb along the edge of the stone.
"I have to tell you something, and you're going to find it hilarious, because you always had the worst sense of humor about my personal life." The corner of my mouth lifts, and it hurts. "Kenna. Your sister. The woman you kept telling me about, the one you said I needed to meet, the one you claimed was smarter than both of us combined and twice as stubborn."
I can almost hear his laugh. That full, reckless sound he made when life handed him something so absurd that the only honest response was to let it knock him sideways.
"She showed up on the circuit with your mother's maiden name and a fake press badge and a fury that doesn't quit, and I fell for her before I knew who she was. Your sister. Of all the people on this circuit. The woman whose eyes I can't look into without seeing yours looking back."
I press my palm flat against the warm granite and hold it there, the way you'd press your hand against someone's chest to feel their heartbeat, and the stone gives back nothing but heat and silence and the carved name of a man who deserved more time than he got.
"You'd think it was funny as hell. And you'd be right."
I stay for a while. The shadows lengthen. The hawk makes another pass. The cemetery is quiet the way only open desert can be, holding space for things that need saying without an audience.
I tell him about the ride at the South Point Arena, the one I made the night of Merrick's arrest, when I rode like the manhe used to compete against instead of the one who showed up to his funeral. I tell him about Kenna's financial analysis and the way she took Whitfield's deposition questions apart with a composure that reminded me so much of him it tightened my throat.
When I stand, my knees ache from the hard ground and the sun has moved far enough west to put Grant's stone in shade. Kenna squeezes my hand, and the tenderness on her face tells me she knows what this cost and won't insult me by pretending it didn't.
"You okay?" she asks.
"Getting there."
"That's enough." Her fingers tighten around mine, the grip steady and warm and sure. "That's always been enough."
We walk to the truck together, her hand still in mine, and watch the sun drop behind the mountains. The sky goes through every color the desert knows how to make, and the cemetery hill catches the last light before the shadow of the ridge swallows it.
"He'd be proud of you," I say. "What you did for him. What it cost you."
"He told me about you for years.'My buddy Colt, the one who's too stubborn to lose and too mean to die.'"
"Looks a lot like I’m both."
She squeezes my hand. "Looks like."
We find a motel in Las Cruces and check in. The room smells like industrial detergent, and the air conditioner rattles in a way that suggests it has opinions about its workload, but the sheets are clean and the door locks and the parking lot is quiet.
Kenna showers first. She comes out in one of my t-shirts and nothing else, her hair damp and her legs bare from mid-thigh down.
