Page 53 of Captive

“Who signed the exam?” I ask.

She turns the tablet toward the camera.

Examining veterinarian: Dr. Sofia Rios.

* * *

I call Becca from the car before I drive home. I tell her about the permit. My name on nineteen cattle I’ve never seen, headed for my own county.

She’s quiet for a second. Then she says, “Okay. So what’s the blue pencil for this one?”

I laugh. It comes out cracked. “There isn’t one. I didn’t plan for this.”

“You planned for everything,” Becca says. “You just didn’t plan for it to be personal. That’s okay. You’ve got a state vet who believes you, a lawyer who likes you, and a very large man who apparently throws himself on farm equipment for you. That’s more than you had five years ago.”

“Becca.”

“I’m just saying. Five years ago you had me and a truck with a bad transmission.”

I sit in my car in the dark parking lot and hold the phone against my ear and don’t say anything for a while. She lets me.

That night, I sit on my porch until almost ten with the phone in my lap, looking at Cole’s number. The county driver gave it to me in case of a medical problem.

It isn’t a medical problem. I don’t call.

At ten-oh-four, it buzzes in my hand.

A text. Not a call. From him.

I’m writing a complete account of everything I did. The tank, the road, the room. My lawyer has the original. I want you to have a copy, if you want it. Not a summary. All of it. I can bring it tomorrow or send it with the county, or you can tell me no and never see it.

I read it three times.

I type: Bring it.

Then, before I can think better of it: Come at eight. The back door will be unlocked.

I watch the screen. The dots come and go twice.

I’ll knock anyway.

Chapter 16

Cole

Iknock on her back door at eight with forty-three pages under my arm, and she opens it before my knuckles leave the wood.

She’s in jeans and a white work shirt with the sleeves folded once. The blue grease pencil is in her pocket. Her keys hang from one finger.

“Front door?” I ask.

“Unlocked. The county car’s at the road turn. They know you’re here, and they know you aren’t security.”

“Good.”

She steps aside. The doorway is open, and it still isn’t mine.

I sit at her kitchen table and hand her the envelope. My lawyer has the original. This is a signed copy, every page numbered, because she asked to read the whole thing herself instead of hearing a lawyer turn it into safer words.