Page 25 of Broken Ride

I see her vet truck before she does. The driver's side door is hanging open, the dome light casting a yellow wash across the cab.

Equipment is scattered across the gravel beside the rear compartment. Sample coolers on the ground with their lids popped. Storage cabinets pulled open, contents spilling out: syringes still in packaging, bottles of sedative, wound care supplies, stacked paperwork fanned across the dirt.

Laney's out of my truck before I've put it in park. She crosses the gravel in long strides, and the way she moves tells me this isn't shock. It's inventory. She's already counting what's missing, assessing what's been touched, tallying damage with the same focus she brings to a sick animal.

I'm behind her in seconds, scanning the fairground lot. Empty. The livestock pens are dark. The competitor trailers are parked in rows with their lights off. Whoever did this is gone.

"My files," she says. Her voice is flat, controlled. "The transport records. The tox reports. The copies I made for Amy." She's standing in the rear compartment, looking at the mess. "They pulled the sample coolers. Opened every one. Went through the medication storage." She reaches down and picks up a manila folder, its contents strewn across the floor. "They weren't stealing. They were looking."

She climbs out of the rear compartment and circles to the cab. I follow her.

The glove box is open, the registration and insurance cards dumped across the passenger seat. Her personal bag has been upended on the floorboard.

On the dashboard, centered on the work surface where she writes her field notes, sits a white envelope. Placed carefully. Deliberately. Aligned with the edge of the dashboard like someone wanted to make sure she'd see it the moment she looked.

Laney picks it up. Opens it. Pulls out a single photograph.

The woman in the picture is Laney, but it takes me a second to reconcile what I'm seeing. Her hair is longer, past her shoulders, a shade lighter than the braid she wears now. She's smiling. Wide. Unguarded. A smile with no armor behind it and no exit strategy underneath.

She's wearing a sundress and standing in front of a house with a wide porch and a yard that goes flat in every direction. Oklahoma flat.

Laney holds the photograph for a long time. Nothing in her expression changes. She turns it over. On the back, in neat handwriting that isn't hers, two words.

Come home.

She sets the photograph face-down on the dashboard, positioned exactly where the envelope was. Precise. Unhurried. She's received messages like this before, and the only power she has is in the discipline of her response.

"That's not Thornton," she says quietly.

"I know."

She looks at me. The woman in the photograph is gone. The one standing in front of me is sharper, leaner, harder in every way that matters.

I've never wanted the woman in the sundress. I want the one who survived her.

"Garrett Voss," I say. "Canadian County. Deputy sheriff."

Her whole body goes still. The air between us holds its breath.

"Torres told me," I say. "Not because I asked. Because she ran the metadata on the surveillance photo and the trail led back to Oklahoma. He's been using his badge to track you through law enforcement databases for over a year."

She doesn't speak for a long time. The fairground is silent around us, the distant hum of the interstate the only sound. A moth circles the dome light in her cab, casting jittery shadows across the vandalized interior.

"How much did she tell you?"

"Enough to know you're in more trouble than Thornton."

Her attention moves from the photograph to my face. The expression isn't fear or anger or the flinch I saw across the desk yesterday. It's calculation. Cold, steady, measuring exactly how much trust she can afford and whether I've earned the price.

"Not tonight," she says. "But soon."

I nod. We call the local sheriff's office about the break-in, and I stay with her while she photographs the damage and inventories what's missing.

The original tox reports are gone. The transport manifests are gone. Her copies of the Thornton delivery records are gone.

The data is backed up. Laney pulls out her phone, taps through to a folder, and scrolls. Her shoulders drop by a fraction. "The digital copies are all here. Everything I documented. The photos. Amy's data. The delivery records."

They took the paper. They didn't get the evidence.