Page 40 of Rope Burn

Morgan used to watch the exits. Tonight I build my own scan: mark every unfamiliar vehicle in the competitor lot, note which trailers belong to Thornton-era carriers and which are legitimate, keep the gaps between rigs out of arm's reach. The coverage is rougher than hers. It's what I have.

I pull the tape off my wrists behind the chutes and drop the adhesive strips in the barrel.

The competitor area thins as the evening card finishes and the handlers push livestock toward the transport pens. The lot lights buzz overhead, throwing sharp shadows between the stock trailers.

The first one comes at me from the left, between two Thornton rigs parked close enough that the gap is barely shoulder-width. He's quick, and the fist catches my jaw before I've finished turning. My head snaps sideways hard enough that my vision whites out at the edges, and the taste of copper floods my mouth before the pain arrives. My knees buckle. I catch myself on the trailer fender and the metal bites cold through my palm.

The second steps out of the shadow behind the trailer hitch. Broader, slower, carrying a lead rope with a heavy brass snap swinging from one end. The snap is solid brass and heavy enough to crack bone. The way he lets it pendulum tells me he's used it as a weapon before.

Corridor muscle. Neil's answer to a courier who stopped running errands.

The first one comes in again while my vision is still swimming. I let him close the distance because I need him inside arm's reach, and the fist he throws at my ribs lands hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. My back hits the trailer wall. The impact rattles through the metal panel behind me.

I catch his next swing at the wrist, lock the joint, and redirect his weight past my hip. The momentum carries him into the gap between the trailers, and I drive my elbow into the hinge of his jaw before he recovers his footing. The bone connects through my sleeve with a sound I feel in my teeth. He drops to one knee in the dirt.

The brass snap whistles past my ear close enough that I feel the displaced air on my skin. If it connects with my skull, the fight is over and so is everything else. I step inside the arc before the follow-through completes, because close quarters is the only place I own. I've spent my career closing distance with animals that outweigh me by hundreds of pounds, and the timing that drops a steer works the same on a man swinging rope.

I grab the lead hand and bend the wrist backward until something in the joint pops. The rope drops. He swings with the free hand and catches my ribs where the first punch already landed, and the pain is sharp enough to narrow my vision to a tunnel. My other fist finds his short ribs twice, each blow sinking deep, and the second one folds him forward with a sound that comes from somewhere deeper than his lungs. I put my boot on the brass snap and kick the rope under the trailer where neither of them can reach it.

The first one is back on his feet. Blood on his mouth, swelling closing one eye, but he's still standing and he's measuring whether a third attempt is worth the cost. My ribs are screaming. My jaw feels like it's been reset wrong. I'm standing between the two trailers with blood running down my chin and my hands loose at my sides because clenching them would show him how much the right one is shaking.

Voices carry from the loading pens. A stock handler calls out a pen number, and a diesel engine turns over near the transport lane.

He looks toward the voices. Looks at his partner on the ground. Looks at me. The approaching noise decides it for him. He drags the second man upright by the collar, and they leave through the gap they came in.

Nobody saw. Nobody asked. The bruise along my jaw will darken by morning and I'll blame it on a steer that threw its head. The circuit accepts that answer because the circuit has always accepted that answer.

My ribs ache where both men found the same spot. I lean against the trailer fender and spit blood onto the gravel.

Before the adrenaline fades, I pull my phone. The lead rope under the trailer, the swelling along the left side of my face, the Thornton plates on both rigs. I photograph all of it. The images go into a secure folder with a timestamp.

I'm not filing a report. The first patrol officer who runs my name will execute the warrant before I finish describing the attack. But the photographs won't prove a trafficking conspiracy by themselves. They can show Torres where to look and what was operating on the circuit tonight.

Morgan would have seen the approach. She would have had Torres on speed dial before the first fist landed.

Morgan Engel was never here. Morgan Carroll was, and I don't know which parts of her belonged to the operation.

I push off the fender, clean myself up as best I can, and then walk the back lot. Not toward the motel, not toward the highway. Toward the transport pens where the Thornton-era rigs are loading out for the next venue.

The lot is quieter now, the crowds thinned to the people who work the circuit after the lights go down. Stock handlers, transport drivers, the skeleton crew that keeps the operation moving between venues. The packed earth is darker where the loading ramps drain, and the smell of the pens carries a heaviness that the daytime dust burns off.

I've been watching the transport schedule since I understood what Morgan was tracking. Without her analysis, the observations are raw data. With what she showed me before the cover broke, the data has a frame.

Clint's presence at the wrong places during the wrong windows. Phantom carriers loading under APRA-certified stickers that trace to companies that don't exist. The timing between teardown and departure that creates a gap wide enough to move people through without being seen.

Clint's sorrel is tied to Quinn's trailer, but Clint isn't with the horse. Quinn is loading the bay gelding, working the lead rope with the quiet focus of a man who does one thing at a time and does it right. He doesn't look up when I pass.

I find Clint's truck parked behind the transport staging area, close enough to the loading lane that he could watch the rigs pull out without being seen from the competitor side. A carrier with an APRA compliance sticker on the bumper is backing into position. The number matches one of the phantom companies I wrote in my catalog at the ranch. High Mesa Livestock.

Clint is standing near the rig's cab with a phone pressed to his ear. He's facing away from the lot, his posture angled toward the transport lane where the haulers queue for departure.

The grin is gone. Whatever he's saying, he's saying it to someone who doesn't require charm. His free hand rests on the side mirror like he owns the vehicle, and the familiarity of the gesture tells me this isn't his first time standing in this spot.

I frame the plate number, Clint's position, and the sticker. The images join the assault evidence in the secure folder. The photographs won't prove anything by themselves, but they'll give Torres a map of the corridor's current operations when I'm ready to hand them over.

The sealed packets I used to carry had S.H. on every approval. The phantom carriers ran through APRA's compliance office. If S.H. is Steve Hendricks, and the evidence is beginning to point hard in that direction, then his office certified the routes the trafficking operation ran through. The markings on these rigs carry the same authorization codes I saw on Neil's delivery receipts.

I don't have a case file or a task force or a federal analyst to organize the connections. What I have is a stock-supply catalog with handwritten notes, a phone full of evidence, and enough time inside the corridor to know where the seams are.