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For one clean second I can’t hear anything.

Glass in my lap. Glass on the dash. The sound bouncing off the wash wall and coming back smaller. Then the pain, in two places, one under the front of my shirt and one behind my shoulder. My right hand won’t do what I tell it.

The driver is under the dash. Not hit. I keep my left hand on his vest until he says so.

“I’m good,” he says. “You’re bleeding.”

“Put us into his front wheel.”

He lifts just enough to see through the cracked windshield and moves us three feet. Our bumper pushes Vale’s tire sideways until the rim grinds against the concrete.

My right sleeve is soaked before we stop. I press my left palm high against the front wound. Blood comes between my fingers, warm and fast. Not fast enough to kill me. Fast enough to matter.

The pistol drops through the door gap and lands under our bumper. Vale turns off his engine. His hands come up against the windshield. The left one is shaking.

Officers come in from both sides using the wall and our car for cover. They pull Vale out first, then the passenger. Handcuffs on the gravel.

Vale turns his head toward me while they search him. “You have no idea what she injected into those cattle.”

“Tell it to the investigator.”

A medic cuts my shirt away, finds a hole in front and a hole in back, and presses down hard enough that pain climbs into my jaw. My fingers move. My shoulder doesn’t. The stitches in my thigh are bleeding into my boot.

“He goes now,” the medic says.

“After I know the cattle lane’s stable.”

“You can find out from the ambulance.”

“I need Sofia to tell me.”

The medic looks ready to explain blood loss in small words. The investigator saves her the trouble and gets the treatment lane on the radio.

Dr. Cho answers first. A fifth cow started trembling at one-oh-one. Sofia treated her. The fourth is holding.

That’s a clinical report. It isn’t what I asked for.

The radio changes hands. I hear cattle and a metal tray and Sofia telling someone to call the next check time before her voice reaches me.

“The lane is stable,” she says. “West pen closed. Middle pen closed. All nineteen accounted for. Nobody moves an animal until Dr. Cho says so.”

“You?”

“My arm will bruise. I’m working.” Her voice goes hard on the last word, because she knows what I’m about to ask. “I’m not leaving this herd to treat you, Cole. The medics have you.”

Every part of me that Barbed Crown built wants to make my blood the reason she comes. I’ve used danger that way once already. The lock was on her door and the excuse was mine.

“Understood,” I say.

Then I say the other thing. On a recorded state channel, in front of the investigator and the medic and Dr. Cho and whoever else is listening, because I’ve spent thirteen days learning that the things that matter should go where nobody can quietly lose them.

“Sofia. I love you. I wanted it on the record before anybody could tell me I waited too long.”

The channel goes silent.

The medic stops what she’s doing and looks at me. The investigator looks at the radio like it just did something he didn’t authorize.

Three seconds. Four.