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Rope Burn

Page 72

by Delta James

"Nothing about who sent it?"

"No. I remember what I told you. I won't give you what I don't."

Torres's pen moves once. Something in her shoulders eases a fraction.

She studies me across the table. “What did Vogt mean when he ordered an introduction?”

“He’d give me a woman’s name and tell me to introduce her to Clint.”

“And you did?”

“At first.”

The AUSA sets down his pen. “What did you think you were arranging?”

“Glenna’s supplied women to men on the circuit. Escorts, prostitutes, buckle bunnies who wanted somebody else paying for the weekend. That was the story.”

“Vogt’s story?”

“The women’s.” My jaw tightens. “That was my rule. I had to hear the terms from her. What she was being paid, what Glenna kept, what she’d agreed to do. I never took Neil’s word for it.”

Torres’s gaze stays on me. “Why?”

“Because Neil’s word wasn’t worth anything.”

“But theirs was?”

“I needed it to be.”

The recorder’s red light burns between us.

“How many times did you make an introduction?” the AUSA asks.

“Enough that the rule let me sleep.”

“That isn’t a number.”

“No.” I look at him. “It’s the truth.”

Torres pulls a legal pad toward her. “When did the rule stop working?”

“A girl in Tucson, before Lubbock.”

“Name?”

“I never got it. Neil sent me behind the stock trailers to find her. Said she knew the arrangement.” I rub my thumb across the scar on my knuckle. “When I asked about the fee, she looked at me like I’d started speaking another language.”

“What did you do?”

“Told her Clint had left.”

“Had he?”

“He was standing outside the beer tent.”

The AUSA’s pen starts moving again. “Then what?”

“I sent him looking for Neil on the other side of the grounds. By the time he figured out Neil wasn’t there, she had reached her car.”