"How long have you been living like this?" I ask.
"Been on the road since I was seventeen. Lost my father, lost the house, couldn't afford to stay still." She pulls up a folder on her laptop. "The camera gave me a reason to keep moving."
"That's a hell of a way to live."
"It's a hell of a way to survive." She turns the laptop toward me. "These are from the Fort Worth event. Two nights before Tyler died."
The screen shows a grid of thumbnail images. Rainey clicks on the first one, and it expands to fill the screen. Tyler Brennan standing by the stock pens, talking to someone I recognize. Vic Sutton, the same stock contractor who manages Hellfire's Revenge.
"Keep going," I say.
She clicks through the sequence. Tyler and Vic talking. Tyler looking angry, gesturing. Vic looking nervous, defensive. And then in the fourth photo, something that locks my jaw shut.
Vic's holding a syringe. Small, easy to miss if you weren't looking for it. And he's standing next to a pen containing Hellfire's Revenge.
"When was this taken?" I ask, voice tight.
Rainey checks the metadata. "Nine forty-three PM. The night before Tyler's ride."
The night before Tyler died. And Vic Sutton is standing there with a syringe next to the bull that killed him.
"You didn't notice this when you took it?"
"Not at the time. I was shooting the bulls for a stock genetics piece. Tyler and Vic were background noise." She pullsup another folder. "But after Tyler died, I went back through everything. Took me three weeks to cross-reference it all, which is why I didn't approach you sooner. Vic shows up in the background of shot after shot across multiple events, always near bulls, always looking nervous. He's in at least five photos where you can see syringes or medical equipment that shouldn't be anywhere near stock pens."
Three weeks. She's been building this case on her own for three weeks while I've been punching walls and riding bulls I shouldn't be riding.
"Why would Vic drug bulls?"
"Same reason anyone does anything on this circuit. Money." She clicks to a spreadsheet. "I cross-referenced every event where Vic handled bulls with rider injury reports, prize purse records, and stock contractor payout filings. All public records. High-profile rides on bulls Vic manages almost always end in injury or spectacular throws. And those events show prize purse discrepancies. Money going in that doesn't match what riders actually receive."
Juice the bulls to make them more dangerous. Create spectacular failures. Skim prize money through inflated purses with the difference disappearing into someone's pocket. Make money off riders getting hurt or killed.
Tyler figured it out. Confronted Vic. And two days later, he's dead in the arena.
"I need this photo," I tell Rainey.
"Already loaded on a flash drive for you." She hands me a small USB drive. "Everything I've got. The Vic photos from Fort Worth, the background shots from other events, the spreadsheet. Full resolution, metadata intact."
She came prepared. Had the drive ready before I knocked on her door. This wasn't a journalist stumbling onto a story. This was someone who'd built a case and needed a partner.
I look at the drive in my palm, then at her. "You've been investigating this for three weeks. Why come to me now? Why not take it to the police? A news outlet?"
"I tried the circuit first. Filed a formal inquiry about Tyler's death three days after it happened. Got a form letter back saying the matter was closed and the ruling stood." She meets my eyes. "A photographer with photos isn't enough, Grant. I needed someone with insider access to the riders and stock contractors. Someone willing to act on what I found."
"And you picked the guy with the death wish."
"I picked the only person on this circuit who's been asking the same questions I have."
There's more she's not saying. I can hear it in the pauses between her words, see it in the way her hands stay a little too still on the laptop keyboard. But she's given me more in ten minutes than I've found in three weeks of digging on my own.
"Thank you," I say.
She nods. "What are you going to do with it?"
"Find Vic Sutton. Make him tell me who paid him to juice Hellfire's Revenge." I pocket the flash drive. "And then I'm going to make sure Tyler's death doesn't get written off as an accident."
"Be careful. If there's big money involved, there are people who'll want this buried."
