Page 24 of Rope Burn

The back lot behind the competitor area empties out between events while the arena crew resets. Most riders head for the concession trailers or the motel strip. The stock pens thin to handlers and a few stragglers cooling horses. The air smells different back here, diesel, manure, and hot metal from a welding rig where a handler is fixing a gate latch.

Clint has plenty of reasons to be on the grounds with his roping done for this event. None of them explain why his truck is nose-in behind the Thornton rig at pen twelve and a second one that pulled in beside it overnight, while Quinn's bay gelding is tied across the lot.

I know this geography. Behind those rigs, Neil gave orders and sealed packets passed between competitors and the men who controlled them. Clint parking here on a day he isn’t roping is a signature I’ve learned to read.

An unmarked sedan has held the same position near the vendor exit since last night. Penny Jenner is at her table, display cases open, turquoise catching the light.

Whoever Morgan brought in is watching her, which means Morgan made a call and got protection on the ground. She's better at this than I expected.

I lean against a fence panel where the grandstand structure gives me a sight line without exposure.

Clint moves between the trailers with a girl I haven't seen before. She's young, early twenties maybe, wearing a barrel-racing sponsor shirt with a duffel slung over one shoulder. She looks like she's been on the circuit for a season or two, long enough to know the schedule and short enough to trust the men who set it.

Clint is doing what Clint does. Talking, grinning, standing close enough that his arm brushes hers. His body language is calibrated for a specific effect: casual, open, harmless. The contact establishes physical familiarity.

He's not hitting on her. He's building a bridge between where she is and where he wants her to go, and the construction is so practiced it reads as natural.

He’s steering her toward the back of the rig with one hand at her waist. Clint used the same easy touch when he walked Sandy out of the Lubbock bar, as if leaving with him had been her idea. The introduction I gave her was the last thing I did before she disappeared.

Clint lowers his voice as they reach the first trailer. I catch fragments through the gap between diesel engines cycling and the announcer's voice from the arena.

"... sponsor representative... looking for new riders... only in town tonight."

The girl shifts the duffel higher. "I thought that meeting was at the hotel."

"He's leaving early. Figured I'd bring you over before he pulls out."

There it is. Not an invitation to a party. An opportunity. The kind a woman starting her second season can't afford to dismiss without wondering whether she just turned down the break everyone else is chasing.

My fists close around the rail hard enough that the metal bites into the scars across my knuckles.

The girl laughs at something Clint says. She follows him deeper between the rigs, moving into the gap where the crowd noise from the arena doesn't reach.

I let go of the rail and close the distance. I don't have a plan. I have a direction. A girl who could be Sandy is following a man who smiles like furniture past the back of a Thornton rig.

The space between the trailers is narrow, ten feet of gravel with the rigs blocking sight lines from the main lot on both sides. The smell of diesel fuel and heated metal sits heavy in the trapped air. This is where the circuit's visible world ends and its invisible one begins, and Clint has brought a young barrel racer into it with a grin and a tour he didn't finish.

"Hey, Clint." I keep my voice even and my pace casual. "The office is looking for you."

Clint turns. The grin stays in place, but his eyes sharpen. The sharpening is brief, controlled, and if I weren't looking for it I'd miss it entirely. He reads my presence, adjusts, and the grin widens.

Behind him, the girl has stopped moving. She's standing against the rig with her duffel on her shoulder and no clear understanding of why the air between the two men in front of her just changed temperature.

"Tell them I'll be there in ten. Just giving Rachel here the grand tour."

"They seemed pretty insistent."

Rachel looks between us. She doesn't seem to understand what's happening, and she doesn't need to. She just needs to not follow Clint past that trailer.

"I should go check the posted times anyway," she says, hitching her bag higher. "Thanks for showing me around."

She heads toward the main lot. I hold my position between Clint and the direction she left, my weight balanced on both feet, hands loose at my sides. The sound of her steps fades toward the concession lights.

Clint watches her go.

Then he turns to me, and for a beat that lasts half a second, the grin is gone. What's underneath is flat and appraising, and I recognize the expression because I've seen it on men who handle inventory.

"The office doesn't need me for anything," Clint says.