Page 37 of Rope Burn

Slade comes to the room after dark without being asked.

He knocks once, two knuckles against the door frame, and I recognize the sound before the second knock would have come. When I open the door, he fills the frame with his shoulders and the dust from the competitor lot still on his boots.

I'm at the laptop with Torres's departure-coverage reports on the screen when he sets a paper bag on the dresser. He looks at the screen, looks at me, and closes the laptop.

"Eat." He unwraps a burrito, puts it in my hand, and drops onto the bed beside me.

"I was working."

"You can tell me about Penny while you chew. Yours has sour cream."

"Sour cream is a cooling agent."

"Sour cream is surrender."

I'd already seen the answer on the screen before he closed it. Penny left the last event under observation, vehicle logged at the gate. No contact with Wilson observed after the vendor row closed.

She left the grounds safely. She never arrived here.

I tell him about Penny while we eat. The empty booth, the substitute vendor, the neighboring vendor's description of a team roper near the exit during teardown.

His jaw works through a bite. "Clint's been near the vendor gate after the evening performance at the past few events. Off his roping schedule, no gear, no reason to be there. Solo vendors load out alone after dark. The transport trailers pull out on the same schedule."

Only someone who spent months inside the corridor's logistics would track that overlap. Clint's presence during that window places him where a woman hauling her own cases is most vulnerable and least observed.

I didn't have that timing. Now I do.

His hand settles on the back of my neck. The rough calluses are warm against my skin, and the grip is lighter than the one he uses in the dark but carries the same certainty.

His hand on my neck always means the same thing whether he's bending me over a dresser or holding me still after a bad day. I'm where he wants me. He's decided I'm staying.

"Come here."

He pulls the blanket down and lies back against the headboard with his boots on the floor. Before I've finished moving toward him, his arm hooks around my waist and pulls me against his ribs, arranging me below his jaw like the matter is closed and the discussion never started.

My hand flattens on his chest. His heartbeat is slow and steady under my palm, and the cotton of his shirt smells like arena dust and the soap he uses in motel showers.

Sleep takes me with his arm still locked around my waist. The last thing I carry into sleep is a stranger sitting in Penny’s booth space.

I wake to cold air against my side where his body was.

Slade sits on the edge of the mattress with his back to me and his phone in his hand. The screen casts blue light across his forearms and the rigid set of his shoulders. The room is dark, the highway quiet.

"Slade?"

He doesn't turn. He scrolls once across the screen, and his hand drops to the mattress. His fingers press into the bedspread hard enough to bunch the fabric.

Then he holds the phone out to me. Screen facing up.

Two messages from an unknown number, days apart. The first is an image file. The second is text.

The photograph was taken through a curtain gap. A long lens, a steady hand, someone who stood in the dark and waited. Two figures beside a dresser in a motel room I recognize from the previous event, the posture between them unambiguous.

My face is partially turned toward the glass, and the clarity is sharp enough that anyone who knows me would recognize me. His scarred hands are visible against my skin. The marks he left on my neck are visible too.

Neil, or one of his people, was outside that room while Slade's arm was around me. He chose the angle, waited for the light, and pressed the shutter while I looked toward the window without knowing anyone was looking back.

The patience behind the shot is worse than the exposure. He wasn't reacting. He was collecting.