The four words:Colt is on the move.
The photo is a security camera image. Colt Ramirez walking out of a building I don't recognize, phone pressed to his ear, expression carrying nothing easy or champion-like about it.
He isn't smiling.
He's calculating.
He knows Dusty is in custody.
He knows the net dropped tonight.
And he's already deciding what to do about the fact that he's the only loose end left.
Whatever he just decided to do about the fact that his twenty year operation came apart at the seams, he's already set it in motion.
Chapter twenty-three
This Ends Now
Jace
The clock on the nightstand reads four seventeen when I'm dressed and out the door.
Riley doesn't try to stop me. Which tells me she understands what this is and has made her peace with it. She's right behind me in the kitchen when I come through pulling my jacket on. Her arms crossed and her jaw set. Her eyes carrying everything she's decided not to say out loud.
The ranch is dead quiet at this hour, that pre-dawn stillness where the dark hasn't fully decided to become morning yet and everything sits suspended between the two.
My boots on the porch steps sound too loud in it. The air is cold enough to see my breath.
I stop in front of her.
"Stay here," I say. "Lock the door behind me."
"I know the drill," she answers.
"I know you're aware of it." I put my hands on her face the way I do, tilting it up. "I need to hear you say it."
She holds my gaze for a moment, something moving behind her eyes that she lets me see instead of tucking away. "I'll lock the door," she says. "You come back in one piece."
"That's the plan."
I kiss her once, firm and brief, and then I go.
Brooks is already on the phone when I step outside.
He is pacing the length of the porch in the pre-dawn dark with the focused energy of a man who has been awake for longer than he wanted to.
The phone woke him and he has been working the problem since before I knew there was a problem to work. He holds up a finger when he sees me, finishing the call, and when he lowers thephone his expression tells me he has more than he did twenty minutes ago.
"Quinn has eyes on Colt," he says. "He's still on the rodeo grounds, back lot, near the stock contractor area. He hasn't left yet."
"He's looking for something," I say.
"Or someone," Brooks answers. "Quinn thinks he made contact with the gate handler before we could get to him. The handler is gone, Jace. Cleared out sometime in the last two hours."
I absorb that. "Colt's cleaning up loose ends."
"Trying to." Brooks looks at me steadily. "Quinn can detain him but she needs something solid to hold him on. Right now all we have connecting Colt directly is the handler, and the handler is in the wind."
