Page 81 of Captive

I sit there with the keys in my hand and don’t start the engine.

Thirteen days ago, a man took my keys out of another man’s hand and locked me in a room. Last night, that same man told me he loved me on a recorded state radio channel while he was bleeding out of his shoulder into a county car, and I told him to go to the hospital, and I turned my back on him and went to work.

I cry. Not a lot. Not for long. Just hard, with my forehead against the steering wheel and both hands over my face, the way I cried in that bedroom after the hoof pick slipped. Except that time I was crying because I hated him.

This time I’m crying because I don’t. Because I love him, and I said it to myself in a doorway and never said it to him, and he said it to half the state of Texas, and I made him wait.

After a while I stop. I wipe my face on my sleeve. I look at myself in the rearview mirror and I look terrible.

My phone rings.

It’s him. He sounds more awake now. The background is the quiet hum of a hospital room.

“Are you coming,” he asks, “because you want me? Or because you think my shoulder is your fault?”

I laugh. It comes out wet and wrecked.

I start the engine.

Chapter 26

Cole

She doesn’t answer my question over the phone.

“I’m coming,” she says. “Your lawyer wants a briefing first. We do that, and then I’ll tell you why I came.”

“Fair.”

“Don’t sound surprised.”

“I’ve been shot. My judgment may be compromised.”

“Then it’s lucky you won’t be signing anything tonight.”

She hangs up before I can flirt with her about medical compliance again.

By five, the hospital room holds my lawyer, Garrett, an outside reviewer, a county investigator, and two folders. My right arm is strapped to my chest in a sling that doesn’t let it move. The shoulder burns from front to back. My thigh pulls every time I shift more than an inch.

The investigator tells me the review of last night found I did what my written role allowed and nothing it didn’t. No weapon. Route advice only. I pulled the driver down. It doesn’t reinstate me. It doesn’t touch what I did to Sofia. It doesn’t turn a bullet into credit.

Garrett opens the second folder.

“The reviewer says to abolish the job you had,” he says. “Too many things answered to one man, and too many exceptions turned into private orders.”

“Agreed.”

He offers me something else, once I’m cleared. Director of site security and emergency planning, under an outside risk officer who can take away my access without a family vote. Scene command outranks me on every response. Three keys, logged, and people with the authority to take them back. Housing and my truck are separate from the job.

The old job made a heavy key ring into who I was. This one might give me three keys and a lot of people allowed to say no to me.

It doesn’t sound smaller. It sounds like the first honest description of the work.

“The charter includes training,” Garrett adds. “Crew handling. Low-stress work. The reviewer said our injury numbers are the worst in the county, and half of them are cattle-handling injuries.”

I look up at him. “Sofia told me that’s the whole job. Not being stronger than the cow.”

Garrett’s mouth moves at one corner. “Tessa told me something similar about fences. I think they’d get along.”