Page 4 of Rope Burn

"You ever notice manifests moving with envelopes?" he asked. He kept his voice low and his eyes on the television over the bar, like a man who'd rehearsed the question and still couldn't make it sound casual.

I kept my eyes on the television too. "No."

"Right." He swallowed without tasting it. "Me neither."

We sat there for another round without saying anything else. Vic paid for both drinks and left through the back door, which was the first thing that told me he was scared of more than the question he'd asked.

Neil cornered me behind the chutes before the next performance.

"Vic say anything interesting before he left us?"

"No."

"Good answer."

A shadow crosses the bunkhouse window as the dust climbs above the roofline.

Vic's disappearance told me what Neil did with men who asked the wrong questions. The federal-building address told me he knew I was about to become one of them.

I drove south instead. If Neil could find Torres's office, he could find me at any event on the circuit, and the voicemails he left after that made the math simple: a date and my parole officer's name, delivered like a countdown.

There's a warrant out. I'm sure of that even without checking. The parole violation is real. Crossing state lines without authorization gives them another reason to revoke me. If someone finds me, the conversation moves fast from questions to handcuffs, and the next room I sit in won't have a view of the Florida Mountains.

I've been in a room like that before. The last time cost a man his life and cost me five years in a state facility.

Rodeo doesn't care what a man did as long as he can still perform. I came out on parole, quieter and harder, and the circuit took me back. I could still wrestle a steer faster than anyone in the Southwest, and it gave me something to be that wasn't a felon.

That lasted until Neil showed up with a padded envelope and a set of instructions that made it clear the reprieve had terms.

Outside, the dust plume has cleared the mesa. The vehicle is in the straightaway now, steady on the approach. The speed hasn't changed, which tells me the driver saw the ranch and didn't hesitate.

I walk out of the bunkhouse and leave the digging bar beside the corner post within reach. The truck stays where it is. Moving it would signal I'm preparing to bolt, and anyone who drove this far already knows enough to read the gesture. The cattle guard will force the vehicle to slow before the turnoff, and the fence funnels the approach into a single lane with no room to swing wide.

My left shoulder catches when I straighten up, an old injury the arena's adrenaline used to hide. The muscle memory of competition is still in my hands. The conditioning that went with it isn't. I've spent months mending fences instead of training, and my body has kept its own records of the change.

I pull my gloves off.

Red follows me along the run as I walk toward the turnoff. The dust keeps rising, slow and steady. I stop where the fence narrows the approach, the truck at my back and my hands empty at my sides.

I've spent months preparing to run. I plant my boots and let it come.

2

MORGAN

The livestock insurance lanyard sits crooked against my collarbone, and I leave it that way. Adjusting credentials too often is a tell, and Morgan Engel, regional claims specialist for Western Range Mutual, has worn this badge past the point where it feels like a costume. It hangs at the same angle as my sunglasses, slightly off-center, slightly forgettable.

The cover works because insurance is exactly boring enough to explain my presence at every venue on the Southwest Circuit without anyone wanting details.

The Las Cruces fairground smells like fried food, animal sweat, and the blend of dust and diesel that seems baked into every APRA event between here and Tucson. Stock trailers line the east lot in rows, their ramps down. Handlers push cattle through temporary alleys toward the holding pens. The grandstand announcer's voice carries over the warm-up arena in fragments, calling times for the barrel racing while the evening performance loads behind the chutes.

I'm standing near the vendor row with a clipboard and a stack of carrier compliance forms. The company exists on paper, and Morgan Engel appears on its payroll. The Bureau built both, and nobody on this fairground has bothered to verify either one.

My phone vibrates against my hip, and I check the screen below the edge of my forms. Torres. I step behind a stock trailer where the diesel generator noise covers conversation. I answer without greeting.

"The Socorro remains are identified," she says. Her voice is flat and professional, stripped to the facts. "Vic Sutton. Positive dental match, this morning."

The name connects to a file from the El Paso briefing. Vic Sutton was a bull handler on the Thornton Livestock payroll and Grant Corbin's informant inside the bull-drugging operation. He disappeared after Corbin's death in the Las Cruces arena. The running assumption was that he'd gone underground to stay safe.