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"Don't," she says.

"I'm not asking you to carry it. I'm telling you where I've been."

"Then tell me where you've been. Leave the pictures where they are."

"Somebody followed me off the grounds," I tell her. "A pickup. I lost it at a truck stop and came back on county roads."

Her mouth tightens, and for a moment I watch the agent in her reach for the questions: make, color, plate, direction of travel. She puts every one of them down unasked.

"Your car is in the front row. Mine's already out of sight." I hold out my hand. “Let’s get yours where it can’t be seen as well.”

She looks at it for a long second. Then she drops her keys into my palm.

I move her car behind the ice machine and park it nose out, where it can't be seen from the road. I'm back inside with the chain on as she’s lacing her boots.

"We should be gone," she says.

"If we pull out now, we light up the lot and give anybody watching two moving targets. We stay dark and roll before daylight." I set both our bags by the door, packed, with her keys and mine on top. The bathroom window opens onto the back lot, and it's wide enough if it has to be. "Anybody comes through that door, you go out the window. You don't wait for me."

She crosses her arms. Her voice drops into a register I haven't heard from her before, low and entirely personal. "Vic Sutton informed on Thornton's operation, and they found him dead outside Socorro, staged to look like an accident. Now one of Thornton's men has seen you in the pens, and a pickup tailed you onto the interstate. I'm not asking what you photographed. I'm telling you I'm scared of what happens if you keep treating this like you're the only man who can finish it. I'm the one who sits in this room and waits to find out whether you come back."

That lands harder than the Thornton hand did. I don't look away from it.

"Alone is how I put Sandy on Clint's arm," I tell her. "I'm done with alone. Torres gets everything from today, and she gets it tonight, straight from me."

"Then I'll be here while you do it," she says quietly.

I sit on the edge of the bed and open the secure upload link Torres sent after last night's call. She stands at the foot of the bed with her arms crossed and watches me instead of the screen while I attach the photographs and type.

Subject: East chute, morning slack

Thornton trailer, High Mesa placard, plate attached. Compliance clerk handed the driver a sealed envelope, green seal, stamp in the upper corner. Clint Wilson present at the handoff. Same envelope format I carried for Neil Vogt. I'll swear to that part in person.

A Thornton stock hand found me in the sorting alley and made a call before I cleared the pens. A pickup followed me off the grounds afterward. Lost it at the truck stop at the next exit east. No plate. Driver stayed behind his lights.

I send it. The portal confirms receipt, and I leave the originals untouched on my phone. It weighs less in my hand than it did a moment ago.

"Done." I slide the phone into my shirt pocket.

Her arms come down. The tension she's been holding across her shoulders since I walked in goes out of her in one long breath. She comes around the foot of the bed to stand between my knees.

"Thank you," she says.

"I didn't do it for you."

"I know. That's why I'm thanking you."

I look up at her. The lamp throws gold along one side of her face and leaves the other in shadow. Over her shoulder, the door sits square in my line of sight, chain on, deadbolt thrown, a thin blade of lot light lying across the carpet under the sill.

Last night she apologized, and I took it without softening a word. Tonight she stood by a door and refused evidence she'd have given nearly anything to see. Neither of those facts erases the file she read before she ever met me. They sit beside it.

I reach past her hip and switch off the lamp. A lit room with shapes moving behind a blanket tells anybody in that lot which door to watch.

The dark comes down all at once. The only light left is the strip under the door and a faint gray seam where the blanket doesn't quite meet the window frame.

"Stand still." Her weight settles onto her heels.

I undress her by touch. My eyes stay on that strip of light, and my hands do the work. I find the hem of her shirt and draw it up her ribs, and she lifts her arms before I have to ask. The cotton catches in her hair, and I work it loose with two fingers. The clasp of her bra gives under my thumb, and I drag the straps down her arms slowly enough that she feels them go.