I absorb that, feeling the pieces of tonight clicking into their final positions the way they've been clicking into place all season, slow at first and then faster, each one making the next one more inevitable.
"Luke?" I ask.
"Already made contact with the officials," Wade says. "The draw sheets are in hand.
Everything Brooks pulled from the financial records has been passed to the right people." He holds my gaze steadily. "It's moving, Jace. Everything we set up is moving right now while Dusty is focused on getting out."
That's the thing about a man who has spent twenty years controlling every variable. Who has built his entire operation on the principle that careful and patient is always safer than fast and reactive.
He doesn't know how to respond when careful stops being an option., When the net he didn't know was there closes fast enough that patience becomes a liability instead of a strength.
He's running.
And running is the one thing that confirms everything we've been building toward, because innocent men with clean consciences don't leave an arena the moment a ride they tampered with fails to produce the outcome they needed.
I take the scoring card from the official who approaches me with it. My number written at the top and the score underneath it. It's high enough to put me at the top of the leaderboard with two riders still to go. I hold it for a moment feeling the particular satisfaction of a thing done right under conditions designed to make it impossible.
Then I look up and find Riley at the rail.
She is right there, both hands wrapped around the top rail the way she grips things when she needs something solid to hold onto. Her eyes find mine across the arena floor with an intensity that crosses the distance between us without any effort at all.
She is pale, steady, undone and composed all at the same time. Every wall she has built, visible in her posture. Every one of them in her expression. What I see on her face when she sees that I am fine and walking toward her under my own power is the most honest thing I have ever seen. She has tears in her eyes.
I cross to her and she reaches through the rail, Her hand finds my arm and grips it hard, not graceful or composed but real. The grip of a woman who has been standing at a rail for eight seconds, that had to feel like eternity, and now she is making absolutely certain that what she's touching is solid.
"You're okay," she says, and it comes out somewhere between a statement and a question and something that isn't quite either.
"I'm okay," I answer.
Her grip doesn't loosen.
I put my hand over hers and let her hold on as long as she needs to, because she has earned every second of it and I am not going anywhere.
Around us the rodeo continues, the announcer moving on to the next rider, the crowd resettling into the rhythm of the evening. The rodeo continues.
But underneath all of that, something else is turning too.
Dusty Rhodes is moving through the back of these grounds with Brooks McCallister behind him. Twenty years of carefully constructed lies coming apart at the seams. The ride is over but the night is not.
Since the moment I found buried evidence on the land that was supposed to be my fresh start. It's all about to come to its conclusion one way or another.
I squeeze Riley's hand once.
And turn back toward the arena.
Brooks finds me behind the chutes ten minutes after the ride.
He doesn't waste time on pleasantries, which suits me fine. His expression tells me everything before he opens his mouth, something resolved sitting on top of something that hasn't settled yet.
"Dusty has been detained," Brooks says. "Quinn made the call twenty minutes ago. She had eyes on him from the moment he left the stock contractor area." He almost smiles. "He didn't get ten feet past the back gate."
Wade's expression carries the particular satisfaction of a man whose wife just did something impressive, which knowing Quinn, is not a rare occurrence.
"She had the investigator standing by. Everything was coordinated before we even got here tonight."
"Wade called her yesterday," Brooks adds, looking at me. "Figured having someone with a badge who is also family wasn't the worst resource to have in play."
I look at Wade.
