Page 12 of Broken Ride

Pulled the case files. Two more with norfentanyl. Both animals were penned near stock hauled by the same company. Bring everything when you come.

I read the message twice, then type the key details into a notes file buried under a label that means nothing to anyone who isn't me. I lock the screen.

Thornton Livestock.

The name surfaced in the Merrick investigation last season, buried in depositions and transport contracts that most people on the circuit were too relieved to read once the indictments came down.

Two more contaminated horses. All traced back to Thornton.

I lie in the dark and listen to the ice machine cycle on and off outside my window. The dresser is against the front door. My boots are beside it. My hairbrush is inside my duffel, where Garrett would have to open my bag in front of me to reach it.

Tomorrow I'll pull every Thornton transport record I can access.

I'll drive to the A&M lab.

Tonight I lie still and map the shape of something I can't see yet, the way I'd palpate a mass beneath a horse's skin, pressing gently along the margins, feeling for the edges of something that shouldn't be there.

4

WADE

I've been asking questions about Thornton Livestock since the last event, and the answers are starting to bother me more than the silence did. The circuit is a small world. People talk. The trick isn't getting them to open their mouths. It's knowing which stories to believe when they do.

Bowen told me the routes didn't add up. I filed that and started pulling on the thread during the lull between events, leaning against trailer fenders and buying coffee for stock contractors who've been running livestock longer than I've been alive.

Nobody thinks twice about Wade Ashcroft making conversation. I've been doing it for years. The public version of me is generous with his time, interested in everyone's operation, happy to listen. It's a useful reputation when you need people to talk without realizing they're being interviewed.

After the mess with Merrick, Thornton picked up the hauling contract for the Southwest Circuit's stock. Before that, three regional haulers split the work: short runs, competitive bids, nobody driving farther than they had to.

Thornton underbid all of them and took the entire circuit. Nobody could figure out how they were making money at those rates.

A contractor named Echols out of Las Cruces told me his steers arrived at the Tucson event looking dehydrated and stressed. Las Cruces to Tucson should take four hours. His animals looked like they'd been standing in a rig for the better part of a day.

Thornton blamed a mechanical delay, but the steers didn't look like they'd been parked. They looked like they'd been moving.

A bronc contractor named Villanueva said the same thing. His string arrived late to an event in Amarillo, animals agitated, hay bags empty, water troughs dry.

The paperwork showed pickup at dawn and delivery in the afternoon, but the horses had been in that trailer long enough to drink the troughs dry and eat through their hay. The math didn't work.

Two contractors at two different events, but the same hauler and the same story: animals arriving later and more stressed than the distance should account for.

I haven't told either of them what the other said. I don't plan to. Right now, the fact that I'm the only person connecting these conversations is the only advantage I have.

The morning event runs clean. I draw a solid bronc named Firecracker and ride him for a decent score, nothing spectacular, the kind of workmanlike ride that keeps sponsors from asking questions and keeps the younger riders from smelling weakness. Firecracker is honest. He bucks straight, no tricks, and I match his rhythm the way I've been matching horses for longer than some of these kids have been alive. The eight seconds feel like forty. They always do when your body is running on stubbornness and not much else.

The crowd likes it. A couple of the TV guys want an interview by the chutes, and I give them the version they expect: the grin, the easy answers, the thank-you-for-having-me that makes everyone feel like they've spent time with a champion instead of a man who can barely lift his arms above his shoulders. The smile is load bearing at this point. Take it away and the whole structure comes down.

The vet is at the livestock pens again, and my attention locks on her before I've decided to look. She's crouched beside one of the broncs from the afternoon string, a big dun gelding who's standing with his head low and his weight shifted wrong. Even from a distance the tremor running through his hindquarters is visible. Fine, rhythmic, the kind of thing most people would miss if they weren't looking for it.

She's looking for it.

I watch her work. She runs her hands along the gelding's barrel, checks his gums, pulls his lower eyelid and studies whatever she sees there. Her movements are precise and unhurried, each one flowing into the next like a good rider in the saddle. No wasted motion, no hesitation.

When she leans into the horse I catch the line of muscle in her forearm, the pull of her shirt across her back. I shouldn't be cataloging her body while she's treating a sick animal. My brain knows that. The rest of me doesn't. She speaks to the animal before she speaks to the handler. That hasn't changed.

The gelding's tremor worsens while she's examining him. His hind legs lose coordination for a beat, a stumble that has nothing to do with the ground underneath him. The gelding tries to catch himself and overcorrects, swinging his hindquarters wide enough that the handler jumps backward.

She doesn't jump. She stabilizes him with her shoulder against his flank and calls for a lead rope without raising her voice. Calm. Specific. The handler scrambles to comply while she runs her hand down the gelding's hind leg, checking for heat or swelling that might explain the coordination loss. She won't find any. Whatever's wrong with this animal isn't in his legs.