Page 26 of Rope Burn

"It is if moving too soon burns the only chance we have to find the destination."

"Rachel isn't bait."

"No one said she was. We watch Clint, we protect Rachel, and if he approaches her again, we intervene before she reaches a vehicle." She meets my eyes. "Those are the terms."

She tucks the pen behind her ear and shifts the clipboard to her other arm.

"I already have someone under surveillance through teardown. Rachel will have it too as soon as I identify her."

"You brought people in."

"I requested resources."

"Without telling me."

"You're a source, Carrick. Not my supervisor."

The words are precise, professional, and they land like a hand on a bruise. She's right, and the fact that she's right doesn't make it easier to swallow.

I lean against the stock office wall and watch the fairgrounds go gold in the fading light.

Wade's voice is in my head: I remember you before Cheyenne. One didn't erase the other. The words landed in a place I don't visit, and they're sitting there, working on whatever I've been using to keep the door closed.

Morgan only knows me after. After the punch, after the sentence, after the corridor. She's never seen the version of me that existed before my hands became a criminal record.

I want her to see it. I don't know why. I just know I'm tired of being the version the parole board tells.

"There's something else."

She waits. She's good at waiting. A stock handler crosses behind the office window carrying a coiled lead rope, and the sound of his boots on the packed dirt fades into the distance between Morgan and me.

"You know I did time for manslaughter."

"I know what's in the public record."

"You know what the record says. You haven't heard it from me." I look at the dirt between my boots because the next part is easier with my eyes down, and then I look up because easier isn't what I'm here for. "His name was Jimmy Whitfield. Cheyenne. I was twenty-two, riding the best season of my life, and I walked into a bar after a steer wrestling win and found him shoving a woman into the wall behind the pool table."

The bar smelled like spilled beer, chalk dust, and the sawdust they spread on the floor to soak up whatever people dropped. The jukebox was playing Waylon Jennings, and nobody was paying attention to the corner behind the pool table except me. I can still smell it when I close my eyes.

Morgan doesn't move. She doesn't lean forward or lean back. She holds her ground the way she held it at the ranch when there was a digging bar within my reach and she stayed planted.

"I told him to stop. He swung on me. I hit him once." I hold up my right fist, the scars across the knuckles white against the tanned skin. "One punch. He went down and his head hit the concrete floor, and by the time the ambulance arrived, the bleeding in his brain had already done what my fist started."

I drop my hand. The air between us carries the sound of livestock and the distant cadence of the announcer calling a roping time.

"I pleaded to involuntary manslaughter. My lawyer was prepared to argue defense of another person. The prosecutor called the punch reckless and said I used more force than the situation required. I took the plea before a jury decided which one of them was right."

I let the air settle between us.

"The judge gave me fifteen years. I served five before they let me out. The parole board has owned my schedule ever since."

"What happened to the woman?"

She asks about the person who was being hurt, not about how I felt or whether I regret it. I file that.

"She testified at my sentencing. Said I saved her life. Fifteen years anyway, because a man who can kill someone with one punch is a man the state wants to think about for a while."

Morgan's eyes drop to my hand. The knuckles are still facing her, scarred and visible. No fear. No surprise.