Page 62 of Rope Burn

"He waved at you. He's never waved at me."

"You mentioned that."

"It's still true. He waved at you once. Next time he won't bother waving."

"What did Clint's face look like last night?" I ask. "When the grin went."

He smooths the tape along the curve of his ribs before he answers. "Like Neil's at Lubbock. Like a man writing me down."

On this circuit, the men who keep lists pass them up the line. I've read the files on the ones whose names ended up on them.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand, and the screen shows a number that isn't supposed to call me anymore. Slade's hands stop on the tape.

"Carroll," I answer.

"Las Cruces resident agency. First thing. Bring nothing." Torres sounds as though she's been awake since yesterday and has decided sleep is a rumor. "Before you remind me, I know you're recused. From Carrick. You're also the author of a transport analysis my new analyst can read and can't speak. Your ASAC signed the request this morning, and a copy goes into your review file. You walk in, you explain your own work product, and you walk out."

"Why today?"

"Because the circuit hauls out today, and somebody decided to clean house before it did."

The line goes dead. Torres has never said goodbye in her life, and she isn't about to start.

Slade has turned from the mirror. He heard my half of it, and he doesn't ask for the other half.

He presses the last strip flat with his palm and reaches for his shirt. It goes over his shoulders with a hitch in the left arm that he'd deny under oath.

"Go," he says.

"I don't recall asking."

"You didn't. You've already got one boot on."

I glance down, and he's right.

The dresser rattles under his phone, beside my keys. He picks it up and reads the screen, and his face drops shut like a chute gate latching. Whatever came through, he reads it twice. Then he turns the phone face down and slides it into his back pocket.

The question rises, and I hold it where it is. A few nights ago I told him I'd never be his channel to the government again. The same promise runs the other direction, whether I like its shape or not.

"Nothing that's yours," he says, and the subject is closed.

It's the answer I'd give him, and it stings more than a lie would.

He takes the phone out onto the walkway and pulls the door shut behind him. Through the same sliver at the window, I can see him at the railing with the phone to his ear. He talks low, with his attention on the parked cars. The call is over quickly.

When he comes back inside, he picks up both bags without a word about it. Outside, he walks the row of cars before he lets me near mine. My sedan sits nose out behind the dumpster enclosure where he parked it, with dew beaded across the windshield.

He crouches at each wheel well in turn and runs a hand along the inside of the bumper before he straightens. Only then does he open the driver's door and stand in the gap, one hand on the frame, taking up the space between me and the seat.

"I pull out first," he says. "I go past the fairgrounds on the frontage road. Anybody sitting on this lot follows my truck. You give it a few minutes and take the interstate."

"You're using yourself as bait."

"I'm using what they already want. Clint wrote me down last night. Whatever Hendricks has on you, he doesn't get the rest of it by following your car."

"And who's watching your back while they follow you?"

"The text was from Torres. She knows what I'm doing, and she has eyes on my truck. That's all you need, and all I'm putting on you."