Page 41 of Rope Burn

The case Morgan was building from the outside, I'm building from the inside. I chose this. Nobody assigned it.

"Carrick."

The voice comes from behind the sorting pens, and the anger in it is familiar before the face is. Dax Corbin walks toward me with the contained, coiled energy of a man whose fuse burned down to the casing months ago and is running on whatever comes after.

He's leaner than the last time I saw him, the muscle stripped closer to the bone by competition and whatever he's been doing between events.

His bareback riding has gotten sharper since the Merrick trial. Anger will do that. It burns away everything that doesn't serve the purpose, and Dax's purpose has been the same since the day they buried Grant.

"Heard you left the circuit," he says. "Heard you came back."

"People hear a lot of things."

"They hear more when a steer wrestler disappears for months and then comes back posting top times like he never left." He stops close enough that I can see the edge of a print protruding from his shirt. Not a phone screen. An actual printed image, the kind you carry when you've been staring at it long enough that it needs to exist outside a device.

"You were at Las Cruces," he says. "You pulled Grant out."

"I pulled him out."

"And you've been carrying something since. Kenna told me you'd talk when you were ready." His mouth presses into a hard line. "Are you ready?"

"Depends on what you're asking."

Dax pulls two photographs from his shirt and lays them side by side on the sorting-pen rail. Both came from archived circuit galleries. He printed the event date and original file number beneath each image.

The first is from Fort Worth, the night Tyler Brennan died. The second is from Las Cruces, the event where Grant went down. In both images, the same man stands near the stock pens. Different hat, different shirt, same build and same bone structure.

He's not competing. He's not in a staff vest. He's standing where the livestock handlers work, and in neither image does he appear on any official roster.

"Who is this?" I ask.

"I don't have a real name. The Fort Worth stock contractor's day-hire sheet lists him under an alias. Las Cruces has no employment record for him at all." Dax watches my face. "He was present near the stock pens at both events, and the circuit has no employment file for him at either venue."

The stack in Dax's shirt is thicker than those two prints. I can see the edges of folded pages behind them. Notes. A timeline.

"Merrick ordered it," Dax says. "Thornton managed it. Somebody else was in the chain between the order and the bull, and that person is still on this circuit. The trial never named him. Nobody who testified accounted for him. But I've been looking, and the pattern is there if you know where to stand."

The research tells me Dax has done the work. It doesn't tell me his conclusion is right. The man in the images could be a drifter picking up day work at two separate venues, and the absence from rosters could mean sloppy record-keeping rather than deliberate concealment.

But Dax isn't guessing blindly. He has two confirmed appearances, a false name on a day-hire sheet, and an absence from the records where this man should exist. The discipline behind the rage is something I recognize because I wear it differently.

"I can't give you what I know," I tell him. "Not tonight. Not here."

"I'm not asking for tonight. I'm asking whether you're done standing on the sideline."

The question doesn't require an answer because the answer is standing in a back lot past midnight documenting phantom carriers instead of sleeping. Dax reads it on my face and nods once.

He slides the prints back against his chest. "Find me when you're ready." He walks toward the competitor parking without looking back, and the squared-off shape of the file against his shirt is visible until the lot shadows fold over him.

My phone buzzes. The number is the same one that sent the motel image and the vehicle records. Neil, who doesn't waste messages.

The warrant is still live. Your parole officer has your current location. How long do you think the protection lasts without your FBI girlfriend holding it in place?

The deferral. Morgan told me about it in the motel room with her back against the headboard and her voice stripped clean. Her operation decided I was more useful outside a cell than inside one. If the operation pulled back, the deferral could collapse and the warrant would execute.

Neil doesn't know the terms. He's betting I don't either. The deferral may still be holding, or my parole officer may already have my current location queued for a visit. Either way, Neil has found the uncertainty and pushed his thumb into it.

A second message arrives before I put the phone away.