Page 82 of Rope Burn

"We have the Clovis trailer," Torres says. "State police boxed it in on 84 east of Fort Sumner. The driver pulled onto the shoulder with his hands out the window before anybody had to draw."

"Are the women alive?"

"They're alive. They're dehydrated and scared out of their minds, and more than a handful of them made it." She keeps talking after a moment. "Fewer made it than those pens at Pecos Crossing were built to hold."

"Is Delilah with them?"

"I don't have names yet, Carroll. My people are giving them water. The names come after the water."

I close my eyes. On the side of a two-lane highway past Fort Sumner, women are climbing out of a livestock trailer into the sun. Some of the women who should be climbing out with them aren't in that trailer. I'm going to carry that part as long as I carry the rest of it.

"There's more," Torres says.

Slade bends his head to mine so the phone sits between us.

"The driver had the route exception in the cab," she continues, "because any APRA facility receiving that load would demand it, and because the paper made the trailer look legitimate if anyone stopped it. It was issued late last night under the Director's credential, and Legal's preservation request means the server logs will show whose account issued it. I'll read you the lines, because you're going to hear them in a courtroom someday anyway." Paper rustles. "Relocation: all stock, Pecos Crossing restricted-use facility. All units off the yard before daylight. Remarks: Director's call."

Beside me, Slade's jaw sets. "He put it in writing," he says.

If Torres hears him, she lets it stand. The same two words sat on Neil's phone last night, in the remarks of a route exception issued under Steve's own credential, and on a text arranging my funeral in a stock trailer.

"What happened to the High Mesa rigs?" I ask.

"My agents stayed on them into the I-40 port of entry near the Texas line, and the livestock inspector did the rest. They found a load of cull cows and an empty compartment behind a false wall. My people are photographing the compartment."

I shift on the tailgate, and the burns at my hip pull under the gauze.

"And the Hendricks brothers?"

"Marshals picked up Burl at his house an hour ago on a new complaint the AUSA filed off Vogt's phone. He's moving to revoke Burl's bond this afternoon." Her voice drops half a register, which is as close as Torres comes to satisfaction. "Steve went out the way he brought everything else in. He filed a Director's exception at dawn under his own credential for a certified carrier hauling out of Roswell. The load didn't pull out until late morning, after the carrier finished loading stock. He rode out in the passenger seat. It was a clean certified rig with a clean route to Texas and his own stamp in the approval column."

Slade's shoulder settles against mine, solid and warm through his shirt.

"It was on the list," I say.

"It was near the top of Ostrander's list. The state police stopped it at a port of entry on the Texas line. Steve asked the trooper if he knew who he was." A breath. "The trooper said yes, and asked him to step down out of the cab. He's cuffed in the back of a state police unit."

I look out across the fairgrounds. The PA calls another header and heeler into the dust. A few families are still eating lunch in the shade under the grandstand, and Quinn is leading two horses back to a trailer by himself.

"Carroll," Torres says. "The report says what happened, all of it. You're the assault victim and the reporting witness. You saw the lock screen, and your prior case knowledge is why C14 meant Clovis to you. Ostrander corroborates that against the preserved files. Every hand this passed through goes on paper."

The line goes dead before I can answer. Slade heard every word. He takes his phone out of my hand, sets it face down on the tailgate, and pulls me in against his good side.

The first time I saw that blue stamp in the approval column, I filed it as wallpaper, the signature of a man doing his job. Steve Hendricks is in handcuffs. The approval column is closed.

Slade's phone lies face down on the tailgate by my hip. Tonight he'll turn it over and call Wyoming. I'll be sitting beside him when he does.

19

SLADE

The statement is filed. The arrests are made. I'm still standing, and the phone in my hand has one call left in it, a number I've let ring through to voicemail for most of a year.

Morgan sits beside me on the motel bed with her back against the headboard and her boots still on. She hasn't said a word since I unlocked the screen.

The blanket is off the window, and the security light lays a yellow bar across the carpet. Every man I can name who had a reason to come through that door is in custody, except Tolliver, the compliance clerk who handed out envelopes.

I dial. It rings twice.