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FBI, most likely. Torres's unit, if I'm lucky. Neil's people wearing bureau credentials, if I'm not.

Either way, the woman who just left this ranch knows enough about the corridor to put Sandy's picture in front of a man she found without bringing the warrant team.

I've spent months running from what I know.

I'm done running from what she knows.

I remember the facts because I've tested them for weakness every night since Lubbock. Sandy named the fee before I did. She knew Clint's name. She complained about Glenna's cut. When I asked whether she understood the arrangement, she looked irritated that I'd bothered. She was young, and she was certain, and I told myself that her certainty was informed.

Then Clint walked her out with his arm around her waist, and Neil watched her instead of him. That was the detail I misread. Sandy had consented to Clint. Neil was counting inventory.

Ten days later I drove past a federal building because Neil left the address on my voicemail, and the last man who asked about Neil's packets vanished off the circuit before anybody thought to look for him.

The phone in the glove box is powered down. I switch it on and wait for the screen to come up. No signal here, but I'll have one before Columbus.

My bag is already packed beneath the cot: two shirts, cash, water, the papers I carry in case I'm stopped, and the stock-supply catalog between the folded clothes where I put it this afternoon. If I'm pulled over, a ranch hand's duffel is ordinary. A catalog open to handwritten carrier codes is a conversation I can't afford.

Sandy's photograph goes inside the front cover. Engel's number I read twice, memorize, and put in my shirt pocket.

Red's trough is full. Eldridge is due tomorrow morning with feed, and I'll call him before then. I latch the bunkhouse and check the fuel gauge. Three-quarters.

I take the county road north instead of the direct route through Deming. The highway patrol watches the paved exits. Ranch roads belong to people who know where they lead.

Her tire marks stay clean in the road dust until the first junction. She took the north fork toward the highway, exactly where someone following a navigation app would go. The west fork is rougher and shorter. I take it.

The cutoff drops through a wash and climbs to the paved road ahead of where her track joins it. I kill my headlights and wait. Her truck appears below me, running steady toward the highway on-ramp. Half a mile behind her, a dark SUV rolls without urgency, matching her speed.

Backup. Far enough away that Red never heard it. Close enough to move if she'd missed her check-in.

I let both vehicles pass before I pull onto the highway. Following a federal agent is reckless. Following her backup would be worse. I settle far enough behind the SUV that its driver won't register one more set of headlights on a desert highway at night.

Engel came prepared. She confirmed Sandy is dead, held back what she didn't have to give, and left a photograph behind like a fishhook. She has the Torres connection, the Sandy file, and a read on my face that tells her I recognized the dead woman before my first breath landed.

I have the routing codes, every phantom carrier number that moved through the corridor, Neil Vogt's name attached to Sandy's last night, and a catalog full of compliance designations signed by someone whose initials I still can't place.

Engel may have a head start, but she doesn't have enough of one.

4

MORGAN

Carrick's truck pulled into the motel lot a few minutes after I did last night and parked two doors down with the engine off and the windows dark. He'd positioned it to cover my door and the highway exit at the same time. He must have cut across the ranch roads to reach the highway ahead of us and then fallen in behind my backup, because neither of us marked his headlights until he turned in. He knows the terrain south of Deming well enough to navigate it in the dark on an unpaved road.

I logged his plate and position, locked my door, closed the blinds, and let him sit. Approaching a person of interest at night in a motel parking lot with no recording and my backup parked across the lot ends careers and starts inquiries.

He wanted me to know he could find me. The information landed. The response could wait.

By sunrise the space was empty. Tire tracks in the gravel were the only proof he'd been there.

My ASAC picks up on the second ring. I'm standing outside the motel room with coffee going cold in my hand, leaning against the railing.

"Carrick is at Eldridge's ranch south of Deming," I tell him. "Mending fence for the property owner. No visible phone, no internet on the property, and the arrangement looks like cash. He found my motel last night. His truck pulled in behind me and parked outside my room. He was gone by sunrise."

"He located a federal agent's operational base."

"He located a Motel 6 and left because he'd delivered his message. But yes."

"What did he give you?"