Brooks comes to stand beside me. Luke on the other side. Wade just behind, which is where Wade always is, close enough to move fast if fast becomes necessary.
"It's enough," Brooks says quietly, watching Carver work. "What we have is enough to hold him. The phone records, the handler's employment history, the financial connection between Colt's accounts and the betting operation. It builds."
"Cole Garrett is still out there," I say.
"Quinn has two deputies looking," Luke answers. "Man with a record and no loyalty to anyone. His paycheck won't let him run far or smart. They'll find him."
I nod, accepting that, because the part I can control is done and the part I can't, belongs to Quinn and Carver and the process that moves slower than any of us would like but moves in the right direction when the foundation is solid.
The foundation is solid.
I feel it the way you feel something when you've been building it piece by piece for weeks and can finally stand back and see the whole of it. Not perfect. Not clean. But solid.
Carver says something to Colt that I can't hear from here. Whatever it is makes the composure slip one final time, a flash of something raw and unguarded crossing his face before the mask comes back down.
He says something in return.
Carver doesn't react.
She reaches into her jacket and produces a document, holding it out to him with the steady patience of a woman who has done this enough times to find drama unnecessary.
Colt takes it.
Reads it.
And then he looks up, past Carver, past Quinn, directly at me across the width of the back lot. What's in his expression in that unguarded moment is not anger or defeat or the remnants of the charm he's been running on.
It's calculation.
Cold, fast, and entirely focused.
My stomach tightens.
Because that's not the look of a man accepting what's happening.
That's the look of a man who just decided on his final move.
He takes one step back from Carver.
Then everything happens fast.
He drops the document and turns and runs, not toward the exit. not toward the parking lot. Toward the arena, toward the one place on these grounds where the dark is the deepest.
There are numerous exits and this man knows this layout as well as he knows his own name might be able to find enough space to disappear into.
Wade is moving before I am. Before I even finish my thought.
And somewhere ahead of us in the dark, Colt Ramirez is making the last desperate play of a twenty year game that just ran out of road.
Chapter twenty-four
After the Storm
Riley
They all come back together.
That's the part I wasn't expecting, the four of them pulling up the drive in Brooks's truck just after six thirty, the sky barely light. The ranch still quiet around the house. I'm already on the porch with my cold coffee when the doors open and they climb out with the particular energy of men who have been running hard and are only now letting themselves stop.
