Page 80 of Rope Burn

Slade's gaze moves to the younger man against the tire, then to the blood, then to me on my knees in the trailer with a stranger's pistol. Nothing moves in his face.

"Are you hurt?"

"He used his cattle prod on me twice."

"Where did he get you?"

"I'll show you where later."

"You will." He leans down until his mouth is close to the Thornton hand's ear. "Twice," he says, low enough that I barely catch it. "Lie still and think about which one you're going to explain first." The man lies still.

He pulls a pair of lead ropes off the side of the gooseneck and ties the Thornton hand's wrists behind him with a knot he doesn't have to look at. He does the same for the younger man, who moans when the rope crosses the broken wrist, and Slade doesn't pause on his account. Only then does he look up at me.

"Yours," he says, with a glance at the Glock.

I climb down out of the trailer. I clear the younger man's pistol. I drop the magazine, rack the chambered round out onto the gravel, and lock the slide open. The pistol and magazine go on the trailer's fender, and the loose round stays where it fell for the deputies. I take my Glock from the Thornton hand's waistband by the textured edge of the grip. I keep my fingers off the places his were and lay it on the fender beside the cleared pistol. I don't holster it. The deputies will want both, and so will a lab.

Behind me, Slade takes one long look at the fresh straw and the bright gouge in the trailer floor. He plants himself across the open gate, a wall between the scene and anyone who wanders down the row before the deputies arrive. My hands have started to shake now that nothing requires them to hold still, and I go to him.

He catches my jaw and tips my face up. "Look at me."

I do. His eyes move over my face, slow and complete, and he doesn't let go until he's finished taking inventory.

"You dropped your sunglasses," he says.

"I left you my sunglasses. They were expensive, and I expect them back."

He puts them in my hand. Behind him, the younger man's phone lies face down in the gravel by the pickup's back wheel, where it fell when I put him into the gate. It buzzes against the gravel, then buzzes again. Whoever is on the other end has noticed that his men have gone quiet.

My own phone rides in the Thornton hand's shirt pocket, evidence now. Slade crouches and turns the dropped phone face up with the edge of one knuckle. Neither of us has a warrant or any right to unlock it. I'm the victim of the assault it was used to arrange, though, and the lock screen shows what it shows.

The new messages stack there one above another, short enough to fit. Slade photographs them with his own phone and tilts the screen so I can read.

Status.

C14 past Ft Sumner. Mesa stays on 40. Let them follow the show.

Finish Engel. Then meet C14 at Texico. Director's call.

Slade reads it again. "Director's call." His voice goes low. "Neil's phone said that last night. Same man's giving the orders."

The screen goes dark. Slade rises, and when I straighten beside him, the ground tilts under me before it steadies. His hand lands at the back of my arm and stays there.

C14, past Fort Sumner, bound for Texico. Texico sits on the Texas line just past Clovis. The only carrier on my chart that starts with a C and runs that road is Clovis Livestock Transport, and I've seen the Clovis name once before.

The name sat on an intake record in pen six earlier this season, as the carrier that delivered a bay roan I expected to arrive on a Sandoval trailer. Clovis is a legitimate carrier, certified and insured, and the Director's stamp sat on its bill of lading. I flagged it and linked it to the Thornton transit logs. Then I built the rest of my analysis on the phantom carriers, because the phantom carriers were the pattern. Clovis was the exception, and it was the exception on purpose.

"I think they swapped the load," I say. "Torres's team followed the High Mesa rigs off the yard at dusk and has sat on them all night. They watched the trailers they followed and nothing else. Somewhere between dark and daylight, the load could have moved into a trailer nobody was watching." My voice holds. "This morning the High Mesa rigs stay on I-40, right where my lag said they'd go, and the text says they're there to be followed. If I'm reading it right, the women went out ahead of them in a certified trailer, on a road my chart never touched."

Slade looks at the men on the ground. "They didn't bring a trailer for a witness. They brought it for a body."

"Hendricks handed me his route exceptions on a flash drive with his own hands. His clerks saw the insurance woman pull carrier records up and down this circuit. He doesn't know Ostrander inherited my files, or that the Bureau preserved my analysis. He knows I'm the one who read his paperwork in the field." I look past Slade at the stock trailer and its fresh straw. "Take me off the board today, and he'd figure nobody left out here knows what a Clovis number means."

Slade puts his phone in my hand. "Call her."

I'm already pulling her number out of his contacts.

Torres answers on the second ring, and the roar behind her voice is wind and tires and an engine running flat out. "Carrick?"